iZombie 2.16: "Pour Some Sugar, Zombie"

“Can we go now? I feel like I want to take a bunch of showers.”
-Peyton

I mostly enjoyed “Pour Some Sugar, Zombie” because both contained an interesting mystery of the week and advanced the show’s overall mythology in a big way. There were several twists that I think will play out in a very interesting way in the season’s final few episodes. Blaine gets to find out the side-effects of Ravi’s new prototype zombie cure. Major experiences the inevitable re-zombification. And that’s just the beginning. In addition to all that, I thought this week’s mystery was compelling. Liv ends up eating a stripper’s brain to help Peyton crack the Boss case. And help it definitely does. We’re at the point in the season where I’m very anxious to see how this season’s overarching plots resolve themselves.

The episode opens with the aftermath of Blaine taking the latest iteration of the zombie cure. He is passed out when Don-E finds him and has to really work to wake him up. The newly (re) human Blaine has some serious amnesia, though. Meanwhile, Liv is at home, about to enjoy a shower. While she is in the shower, Gilda (sort of…she still has a key) breaks in, and she tries to raid Liv’s fridge for brains. Before she can eat anything, though, an armed special forces type (from Max Rager, no doubt) finds her and takes her away. When Liv steps out of the bathroom, all she sees is Gilda’s scarf, which was left behind in the struggle. Liv doesn’t have time to contemplate the scarf, though, because Peyton arrives along with Ravi and Major. Peyton is moving back in with Liv. After all Peyton’s stuff is situated, the group lounges around to discuss the possibility of Ravi and Major renting the apartment across the hall, “Friends”- style.

Peyton steps away to take a call from Cassidy, a stripper who has been dating one of Mr. Boss’ henchmen. While she is talking to Peyton, clearly agitated and ready to spill some good info on Boss’ organization, a car approaches Cassidy, and a passenger hits her in the head with a tire iron, killing her. At the crime scene, Ravi figures out the cause of death pretty quickly, which means the team is looking for two suspects: the driver and the wielder of the tire iron. Nick, Cassidy’s henchman boyfriend, is on GPS monitoring at the moment, so Babineaux is able to pretty easily confirm that he was at the scene of the crime. It appears to be a straightforward case.

Since the case already seems to be solved, Liv has no desire to eat Cassidy’s stripper brain. Peyton, however, has other ideas. Cassidy knew things about Boss’ crew, including the location of a major storehouse, and she wants Liv to retrieve those memories. Liv eventually agrees, but I think she might regret it when Peyton immediately tries to grill her about the stash house. Liv, who has a bit of extra ‘tude thanks to Cassidy’s brain, tells Peyton that it doesn’t work that way. Something has to trigger the flashbacks. They go to Cassidy’s strip club to see if anything there will trigger Liv. Liv immediately starts giving skeevy guys lap dances and picking fights with the other strippers. Peyton just tries to keep her distance, although she does get schooled by one women who is stripping to pay for law school. Then Liv gives Peyton a lap dance in the VIP room, which Peyton barely tolerates.

Ravi goes into Major’s room looking for some nail clippers, and he notices that Major keeps a safe in his closet. Major has no interest in showing Ravi what is inside that safe, which naturally makes Ravi more curious. Major directs Ravi out of the room and shuts the door. Meanwhile, back at the strip club, Liv interrupts her dancing to take a call from Babineaux, who says they found the GPS ankle bracelet in a random backpack, which jives with Peyton’s knowledge that Boss has a guy to take care of ankle bracelets. Liv then gets flicked by another stripper’s ponytail, and when she follows that stripper into a bathroom to call her out, it triggers a vision. She sees a house with a mailbox marked Thompson, and when the door opens, she sees someone cutting drugs. The stripper in the bathroom finally calms down enough to talk to Liv and Peyton, and she says she suspects none other than Seattle’s favorite skeevy weatherman, Johnny Frost, who is a regular patron of the club. He says Cassidy stole his identity and charged a bunch of crap to his credit card, but he doesn’t seem to really harbor any ill will.

Liv and Peyton next got to Shady Plots to see Blaine. He offers them coffee, and he seems to have no clue who they are or what they want. This is quite perplexing to Liv and Peyton. And Blaine, come to think of it. Back at their house, Ravi and Major are hanging in the kitchen. Ravi sees a picture of the dog of one of the Chaos Killer’s victims in the newspaper, and he thinks the dog looks an awful lot like Minor. And Major seems to think the milk in the refrigerator has gone bad, even though it was just purchased the day before. Neither of these things seem like positive developments for the awesome bromance that is Ravi and Major.

Back at the morgue, Liv is cleaning up when she is grilled by a detective named Vega about Drake’s whereabouts. Liv says she knows nothing, of course. Babineaux shows up too, and he and Vega exchange a look as Vega leaves. Babineaux and Liv then head back to the strip club. Babineaux asks the ladies for any information on the case, and Liv notices that one of them is texting. She and Babineaux decide to hang around and follow the texting stripper (which sounds like a very odd game). They see a shoe-shine guy yelling, and that triggers another vision for liv. In the vision, Cassidy is on the phone with Peyton when she hears someone yelling, not long after, she gets hit with the tire iron. The yelling someone was the shoe-shine guy, and he’s a witness to the murder. He tells Babineaux and Liv that all he saw was a blue hatchback.

Ravi, always a glutton for punishment, goes to the police station and asks about the dog involved in the Chaos Killer case. The detective he talks to asks him to look at a drawing of someone who was seen at one of the scenes of the crimes. Ravi instantly recognizes it as Major, but he doesn’t say anything. Meanwhile, Babineaux and Liv have followed the texting stripper, and they’re on a stakeout. Clive dresses up as a pizza guy and discovers the texting stripper is in a hotel room with Nick (Cassidy’s boyfriend). Babineaux brings him in for breaking parole. Back at the station, Babineaux gets a very important phone call. The blue hatchback in question belongs to Johnny Frost.

When Liv returns to the morgue, Ravi is examining Blaine. Blaine has a significant amount of amnesia and doesn’t really understand what is going on. Liv tries to accuse Blaine of faking the amnesia, but it’s clear that he’s not. Meanwhile, Johnny Frost is being interrogated at the police station, and he brings with him files on someone who works for Mr. Boss. Peyton is able to identify that someone. She also has pictures of different houses with Thompson mailboxes for Liv to look at. Liv is able to definitely identify the house from her vision. Babineaux is going to go arrest a stripper named Destiny and her accomplice. The supply house also gets raided. Meanwhile, back at home, Ravi, after a lot of effort, manages to break into Major’s safe. He finds Major’s book of names, the tranquilizers, and some spray paint. Of course Ravi starts to think the worst.

At the police station, Babineaux interviews a man who was connected to Destiny (the accomplice I mentioned previously). He has an alibi that checks out, so Babineaux moves on to destiny. She tries a bit too hard to pin the whole thing on the texting stripper. It turns out that the texting stripper was driving, and Destiny is the one who wielded the tire iron and killed Cassidy. At Shady Plots, with Blaine semi-out of commission, Don-E tries to take control of things for himself. He wants to take advantage of Boss’ diminished market share, so he has one of the other minions turn him into a zombie. Liv also pays a visit to Drake’s mother, who reveals that her son was an undercover cop. This makes Liv feel even worse about Drake being missing. Finally, Ravi confronts Major with all the evidence from his safe. Before he can do much, the stress turns Major back into a zombie. Ravi immediately tranquilizes him.