zwolanerd

If you’re looking for a TV show recommendation, today’s your day and this is your place.

Here’s a synopsis from IMDb:

Olivia “Liv” Moore was a rosy-cheeked, disciplined, over-achieving medical resident who had her life path completely mapped out, until the night she attended a party that unexpectedly turned into a zombie feeding frenzy. Now as one of the newly undead, Liv has devised a clever way to resist her baser urges to devour fresh human brains – she’s taken a job in the Seattle coroner’s office. In this appropriately dead-end job, Liv can secretly snack on the brains of the many Jane and John Doe corpses that make a final stop in the morgue.

I don’t know exactly why I watched the first episode of iZombie, because I don’t remember hearing about it beforehand and I don’t particularly care for zombie things (The Walking Dead is a pretty large exception to that). After watching it, I found out it was created by the same people behind Veronica Mars (though it is based on a comic book), and it totally makes sense now why I enjoy it so much. I’m a sucker for strong, smart, funny female characters, turns out.

There’s a few things going on in the show. First, Liv is coming to terms with the fact that she’s a zombie now. And, like, she’s not a gross and rotting one, because that wouldn’t make for fun television. She’s very pale and she gets brain cravings, and sometimes she Hulks out, fierceness-wise, not size-wise. Her personality has changed, to the dismay of her family, but that might be expected of a person who is a) a zombie, and b) trying to keep the fact that she’s a zombie from everyone.

Second, she works at the morgue. This is mostly so she can eat brains on the sly, but it makes sense for a zombie job.

Third, in a neat twist on the zombie standards, any time she eats someone’s brains, she gets flashbacks of memories from that person. She also takes on some of their personality for a time. In one episode she discovers she knows kung fu all of a sudden, and it happens at a fortuitous time, of course. When the effects wear off, so do the personality traits, and it’s an interesting way to add some flavor every week.

Fourth, she uses the memory flashbacks as a way to help solve crimes. The police officer she works with is under the impression she’s psychic, and he’s not really about that, but it works, so hey. He’d be less about her being a zombie, for sure.

Lastly, she’s meeting other zombies. I kind of feel like maybe she’s meeting too many other zombies? But I’m interested enough to see how and where it goes from here.

I will say that I still get icked out every time she eats some brains, even though it’s barely anything compared to most other zombie things I’ve seen. There’s something about her using chopsticks to eat bits of brain in pasta with hot sauce that just weirds me out.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! Hulu has the episodes you’ve missed so far, so you should be able to catch up pretty easily.

Written by: Mark