Friday, November 20, 2015

iZombie: Abra Cadaver


Is November sweeps over yet? I swear this month is going to kill me. At least there's the balm of turkey and falling catatonic from an L-tryptophan hangover to avoid the stampede of capitalism next week. For now, we have Abra Cadaver.

Our brain of the week is found in a hotel where we watch the maid knock on the door, slip inside, do something, then run out screaming. This dead Chris Angel simulacrum is one Sid Wicked who had his throat slit by a playing card. Quick, round up Channing Tatum and hold him indefinitely to stop this cursed Gambit movie from being made!

Apparently, there's some magician con going on which, it turns out, Ravi's super into. SUUPER into. Is there any nerdy thing Ravi hasn't suddenly developed a love of? I find myself wondering why his room looks so plain, but maybe he hasn't bothered to unpack the good stuff what with his roommate being a zombie assassin that bought himself a holy hand grenade of Antioch. Probably best, Ravi.

Back to our dead Magic Man, Ravi smells a foul odor and traces it back to a dead fish tossed in the waste basket along with a note "Enjoy the Decay." It's a literal red herring. Round of applause. You've been a great audience!

After eating a bit of brains, Liv's doing some magic tricks much to Ravi's childish delight. "I almost want to start killing magicians so it never ends." Turns out there are some of those pesky cameras in the hotel. They saw Sid go into his room alive, never leave, then *magic* he's dead. So our Magic Man sat in the room with the rotting dead fish just for funsies because it was that or film a plastic bag floating in the air.

Our friend Sid's turned Liv into a full goth chick just without the heavy makeup, though she's got the pale part going at least. She left a voicemail for Major saying drowning would be a beautiful way to die. I'm more surprised by the voicemail part. Who does that anymore? Death to voicemail! You can drown it in a bowl of dead flower petals if you need to.

Because they need to pair up every female cast member with a male, they've decided to kick off Steph because she's weighing Ravi down, man. Women be such buzzkills. He tried to complain to Liv about it, but since he won't suddenly turn Steph into a zombie from sex (come on people, read a damn immunology book!) she won't hear any of it. No matter what brain Liv's on, she's still got narcissist down pat. Ravi's also complaining about Steph to Peyton about how this girl's just cramping his style. We get it, you want him to move on. Boy did this whole set up come out of nowhere. The stages of this quick one off relationship seem to be:
  • "Hey, I met someone." 
  • "Did you guys know I met someone?" 
  • "This is Steph and she's cool." 
  • "I'm already bored of her." 
  • "As a robot I'm programmed to get sick of things much faster than you humans."
I have no idea what the point was aside from trying to make jamming Peyton back into the plot look a bit more seamless. Think you guys needed to add a bit more joint compound before slapping that coat of paint on.

Anyway, enough with Ravi's sudden need for drama - guess who's back? It's Blaine. Whenever I ask that, it's always Blaine. He swings by the morgue because he's got a key to every building in Seattle and tells Liv about the zombie assassin. A little surprising she couldn't figure it out at all - but that's Liv for you. If it's not staring her in the face, or her lunch, she's probably going to miss it. Blaine begs for her to help him solve his missing bottom line problem in the Blainiest way possible. "Help me Zombie Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope." Liv's hemming and hawing but we both know they're going to end up working together. They always will because Blaine is awesome in his self awareness and utter "doesn't give a shit" attitude. He's so much better than Max Rager's Von, who I'm happy to see got sidelined for awhile.

Anyway, back to our Brain of the Week. Seems the maid that found the dead body heard him yelling something earlier about Angels, so Clive pulls in his assistant who's named Angel. That wasn't even kind of subtle there guys. We all know who you're satirizing here, we just don't care. Angel's got the alibi of being surrounded by a bunch of people signing head shots instead of taking them. But, she tells them that everyone hated Sid because his shtick was revealing how other magicians tricks worked online. I'm surprised it took this long for the magician union to put a hit out on him. You don't mess with the Magician Union. All they found of the last guy was his handkerchief - ten feet of it.

Angel also points the finger at our next two fish in wastebins - Houdina and the Magnificent Magnus. Ravi's put on twitter duty to see who all's been threatening Sid (and oh my god, maybe it's because I'm female and have seen the Gamor Gaters on the regular but Magician trolling is saaad. 'Excuse me, but I thought you were being rightly mean to me, and I'd like you to stop please' sad. The stuff that wouldn't even register being worthy of a block kind of sad. Come on magicians, if you aren't going to threaten to send wand pics and insinuate someone's mother is a white rabbit, I just can't take your anger seriously). Meanwhile Liv and Clive stop by Houdina's to show how this red herring's been taking deadly throwing card lessons.

Is this a thing now? Arrow just had tattoo guy and now this premise. Oh god, does this mean the Royal Flush Gang is going to get its own movie. Please no, I'm begging you. I'll even throw my support behind the Chaning Tatum Gambit movie if....nope, can't do that either. HE LOOKS LIKE A HAM WITH FEATURES!

Dicing celery with playing cards is all so Liv can have a zombie vision of Houdina throwing a diamond ring back in Sid's face. Turns out they almost got married once before she got freaked out by all the death and piles of pancake makeup. Then, because Sid is such a gentleman, he turned around and revealed how her tricks are done before tweaking it and using them himself. The great Revealo is such a jerk. Houdina's missing the four face cards from her deck, but that seems to be a regular occurrence. I imagine the lost and found bin is bulging after the Magician conference given how sticky fingered everyone is. Do they all meet up at the next one and hand back stolen wallets, watches, and underwear?

Clive and BlondieFBI are meeting up to "Netflix and Chill" though Liv buys that excuse and thinks they're really going to a movie, so she's sitting outside Blondie's house with Blaine. This scene doesn't do much more than establish Clive can sometimes get it, and Liv and Blaine need to team up to fight crime together. The next day they break in to rifle through Blondie's piles just left on the table. Does no one use a computer in Seattle? Paper, actual paper stacked up on the table. Maybe Blondie is that out of touch vampire I was hoping for.

After rifling for an hour Blaine's the one to find a picture of Major's new dog he got courtesy of freezer zombie. But they haven't learned anything more than what they already knew. Seems the FBI also doesn't know a thing about zombies despite there having been that Max Rager leak from a season ago, and there was the fact Ravi used to work for the CIA drawing up zombie plans. Granted, just for fun, but come on, no one else there is putting the two together? A whole lot of brainless bodies popping up doesn't ring a few bells?

While picking over a cop's stuff and leaving their prints everywhere, the mail drops off the report on Suzuki's beer fridge brains. Liv goes on a magician rant about how best to break into it without leaving any evidence, while Blaine just slits it open with his blade. See, perfect crime fighting duo. If this zombie thing doesn't work out, you know. Just put it on the back burner. Liv offers to doctor up the pages to make it look like the lab results came back as cow, because in no way would the lab guys be thinking "Huh, wonder why the hell they needed us to test human brains. Think we should check up on that?"

After a night of Steph having to turn super annoying because we all must hate her now, she decorates Ravi's place (seriously, can everyone lock pick in Seattle? Is that what they teach you to do while waiting in line at Starbucks?) to look like a brit exploded in there. Ravi waits to dump her until the next morning because, see, she made him drink and have fun. She's such a bitch like that. It's not like he could have said he wasn't into it before that.

Clive's trying to interview the Magician Magnus but first he has to show off his powers to some Three Card Monte. After winning, he quips "I grew up in Brooklyn. You don't play in Brooklyn." Hipsters are serious magicians, they'll make your sense of dignity disappear. Our Magician Magnus is the kind of sleazy guy that insists he's chivalrous while slobbering on your hand and trying to guess what color your knickers are. Turns out his alibi is an auburn haired woman who drug him to the bathroom for a little tickle and then crying for five minutes and swearing that never happens.

Liv has a quick zombie vision of Magnus confronting Sid about some terrible blurb for his book. Much like their trolling efforts, it's far from the most biting commentary ever worthy of killing someone over. Shit, Fantastic Four would probably use it on their DVD covers. "It's a...magician!" This was the red herring that sent the actual red herring in a basket to our brain of the week, so you know he didn't do it. Red herring squared is no way to solve a murder.


Outside of dead brains, Liv's talking to dead roses and Major's taking it all in stride. I'm really expecting another major breakdown from him for the way he's trying to act like everything's "Cool, so cool. Super cool. No problems. None at all." They've got some new rule where they never lie to each other (because let's try healthy relationship for once), and Liv tells Major about the zombie assassin. Of course he lies to her immediately, but promises that Liv won't get taken out by this guy - though it may not be a guy, who could be about my height and weight - that's killing zombies because someone might have some dirt on them. Nope, not at all. Forget I said anything and drink your single plum floating in perfume in a man's hat.

At even less healthy relationship land, Peyton swings by Blaine's mortuary where he's singing O Danny Boy (god, I love this guy). Seems she's still freaked out about Boss' warning. As Blaine puts it: "For a little guy, he's enormously terrifying." Because Peyton has no standards, she accepts Blaine's cellphone number while giving him the eyes. With Ravi now trying (and failing) to kiss her, they're setting up the weirdest love triangle. This "let's make Peyton interesting and relevant" train is really going off the rails.

When not failing at female interactions, Ravi's reading through the angry tweets and finds one where Sid responded to a group called *sigh* Smok & Meers. He threatened to reveal their trick next. Considering these magicians were all performing to a smattering of people in a Holiday Inn conference room, I feel like everyone was seriously overreacting to their modicum of power. I wouldn't be surprised if our Sid Wicked's youtube channel got like 5,000 views at best.


But, because Clive leaves no stone unturned, he interviews Smok & Meers. We're all gonna pretend they're not supposed to be Penn & Teller, right? Okay. Can we at least acknowledge Meers is obviously a woman dressed like a man? No? You're no fun! Seems they're filming some cable special (I assume they really meant special access cable), and Meers shtick is to write everything out on a whiteboard instead of just not talking. Smok & Meers *sigh* say their alibi for the murder was sitting in on Houdina's show. Except ,after her disappearing act she never came back for the bow which was weird. Dun dun DUN!


Clive and Liv confront her where she hasn't moved since they last saw her two days ago. You accidentally glued your butt to the window, didn't you lady? It's okay, you can tell us. We won't judge...much. She has to point out that she was the cocktail waitress that pops up to ask about the rabbit. The magic isn't real. Sometimes the solution is obviously in front of you. Like a woman poorly dressed like a man. Seriously, Lucille Ball looked more like a man for one of her wacky schemes.

Liv and Clive figure out that the reason the only one to go into Sid's room was the maid was because the maid killed him. Except Erina's vanished. Wooo. And there's no home address because she's undocumented. But wait, Liv spots a bit of writing on the wall and they all finally figure it out. But for the few viewers at home that were getting snacks and/or on their phones, here comes the big reveal.

While Smok & Meers *Seriously?!* are, oh let's call it performing, Clive pops up to arrest them. Turns out that Erina was Meers the whole time. Wow! I am shocked. Shocked. They killed Sid to stop him from revealing how their anvil trick worked to all fifteen of his fans. Meers took a part time job as the maid, killed him with the card, then ran out screaming about finding his dead body.

But that's not all. Liv rolls out an old flash pan cart and yanks off the tablecloth to expose the auburn haired woman that they paid to seduce Magnus (I hope she got her body weight in gold bullion for that one). Seems that they wanted to hedge their bets by having two people to blame the murder on, not that it mattered in the end because, oh no, they got exposed on cable access television that Meers can actually talk...and is a woman. Though I suspect the latter was less surprising. Oh and the murder thing.

Liv drops off her doctored report (are magicians also accomplished forgers? I feel like the FBI would be watching them more closely if that was the case) and we're shown dun dun dun, a random woman we've never seen before watching Liv. Is this the female werewolf I've been hoping for? I have no idea, all we learn of her is that she drops a big white envelope off in front of the door marked for Occupant. Mystery lady leaves us with a big question for the coming break.

This episode ends on Liv dressed for an Irish wake playing with a Ouija board. Major, finally, can't take all the weirdness and just leaves.

So that's all we got this week. Not too much set up beyond a few pawns shifting around the board and one new mystery lady. There's a week break coming up for Thanksgiving, and then we'll be back in December. Enjoy your lovely turkey dinner with brain stuffing. Me, I can't wait for cerebellum pie.

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