iZombie - Season 4 - Review

Zombies are a familiar genre trope. Perhaps too familiar. It’s not hard to argue that in the past decade or so there have been too many movies and TV series devoted to zombies. You know the basics – for whatever reason, the dead start coming back to life with a hunger for human flesh. However, the CW show iZombie (now wrapping up its fourth season) takes the mythology of zombies and flips it on its head.
 
The story centers on Olivia “Liv” Moore (Rose McIver – UTA|Artists First) a promising young Seattle medical resident who has everything – a great job, a perfect fiancé in Major Lilywhite (Robert Buckley – APA|Interlink Management), and an awesome best friend, Peyton Charles (Aly Michalka – Gersh). All that changes when Liv goes to a boat party in which everyone becomes a zombie after taking a drug distributed by series villain, Blaine (David Anders – Gersh|Lieberman-Zerman Management). In the ensuing fracas, Liv is turned into a zombie and her perfect life is shattered.
 
Now Liv can’t die and has a powerful craving for brains. Instead of being a shambling zombie, however she has her full cognitive abilities – unless she doesn’t eat brains, in which case she becomes a zombie. She calls this going “full Romero.” She has to keep the fact that she’s a zombie a secret and be able to feed herself. So she sets herself up as the medical examiner in the morgue for the Seattle PD, allowing her access to all the brains she needs, while her partner, Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli – United Agents – UK|Artists First), works to find a cure to the zombie plague. Liv learns that when a zombie eats someone’s brain they gain the memories and personalities of that person. These memories appear in psychic-like flashes. This leads Liv to linking up with homicide detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin – Paradigm|MJ Management), and the two solve a murder case each episode. Initially, Liv passes herself off as psychic, but eventually Clive learns the truth.
 
Showrunner/creators Rob Thomas (UTA) and Diane Ruggiero (WME|Make GOOD Content) take the tone of their previous series, the neo-noir infused Veronica Mars, but replace the detective tropes with zombie and horror movie tropes. In fact, much of the same writing staff from that earlier series has carried over here. The show is liberally adapted from the Vertigo comic series of the same name, created by Mike Allred (Felker, Toczek) and Chris Roberson (currently unrepped).
 
There’s a lot to love about iZombie. A ton of credit has to go to McIver who not only imbues Liv with a righteous sense of justice, but also pathos and a sense of humor. Because as she eats a new brain every episode – she has to take on that person’s personality, making the show a sort of zombie version of Quantum Leap, and every episode an acting showcase for her. The other characters are all great as well, particularly Robert Buckley whose sometimes romantic, sometimes fractious relationship with Liv adds a lot of drama, humor, and heart.
 
In the first three seasons, Liv was committed to keeping the zombies living in Seattle a secret, but by the end of the third season the creators changed the nature of the show and the zombie secret was revealed to the entire world. As season four opens, Seattle has been walled off from the rest of the U.S. to contain the zombies, creating the city of New Seattle.
 
Another great thing about this show? When you expect it to zig, it decides to zag – season four could have become a post apocalyptic show, but instead the show explores a city that’s on the brink of chaos – i.e. the institutions that hold law and order together are still in place, but hanging on by their fingernails. This allows the show to keep its format, but also allows iZombie to explore political themes such as revolution, and religion. Indeed, season four contains allusions to post war Iraq and the French revolution. Last week the series was renewed for a fifth and final season. Here’s hoping that next week’s finale again turns the premise on its ear.