Disclaimer: this review contains spoilers, visions of the future and references to Tax Forms. I am sorry for the last one on the list, but it is that time of year.
Here is what happened on this week’s episode (the short form or the 1040A):
The Medical Examiner’s office is called to a scene where a skydiver misses the drop zone and ends up impaled on a large tree branch. The decedent turns out to be a sorority sister of Liv’s. After doing a toxicology screening, they find that she was drugged and, therefore, murdered.
Sisters no more.
And that, my friends, is the plot of the episode in a nutshell.
What I really want to discuss is Max Rager. No, this is not a new character, but an energy drink on the show. This beverage may dictate the plot for the rest of the season.
To set the stage, the skydiving group is sponsored by Max Rager; a popular energy drink. It is shown that the motive for the murder is that Liv’s sorority sister found out that “one out of every thousand” who drink it become “psychotic.” She was going to blow the whistle on the company. She was silenced by an advertising executive who dove with them and drugged her.
Lowell likes Liv!
But people didn’t become psychotic, they turned into zombies. We get this idea from one of the skydiving team, a charming chap named Lowell, who quotes the movie “Warm Bodies” to Liv. Somehow, he is now a zombie. He recognizes that Liv is a zombie and the two hit it off. Lowell was not at the boat party that started Liv’s post-life.
Ahh! The Boat Party.
I had to go back and look at the Pilot Episode. When the party goes down the tubes and all hell breaks loose, we see Liv running away from the drink table. The drink table has a Max Rager table cover! So, it is not Blaine’s drugs that caused the zombie outbreak. It was the energy drink, Max Rager. In reviewing the scene, I would say a number of people went “psychotic” at that bash.
Each diver has a helmet cam. The tapes of what happened were erased, mainly because Lowell went into Full Zombie Mode before he jumped and the ad exec didn’t want anyone to find any evidence of Max Rager’s effects. Although they figure out that she is the murderer, the ad exec packs up and leaves before the police get to her hotel room. Or, did she get away? Not only are her clothes gone, but so is the shower curtain. What is better to wrap a dead body in? Did the silencer get silenced?
So, the zombie count is five with Liv, Blaine, Lowell, Blaine’s henchman and the owner of Meat Cute. Now make it six!
Meet Detective Clive Babineaux’s boss, a hard ass Lieutenant with a heart, well, equally hard. He discusses his morning regimen to Clive, mentioning that he spends part of his morning looking at bowls of spaghetti and other foods that he can no longer eat. He is on a health kick.
“Food is my porn,” he explains. In a private moment, we watch as he pulls a bottle of hot sauce from his desk drawer and add it to his coffee. Can you say zombie? Let’s see if he is also a Max Rager fan.
How many more are out there? When will it hit critical mass and the area will be in the midst of a full outbreak? Will the cover finally get blown on Max Rager? And, what about Naomi? (I can never resist the old “Electric Company” reference)
Jerome’s shoes surface on the feet of Blaine’s dye-jobbed henchman, and Major is there to see them. The lackey goes to Full Zombie Mode and makes short work of Major, leaving him a bloodied mess on a skate park ramp, serving as something for the boarders to skate around, and call “bitch.”
Lots of reading material.
Detective Babineaux also visits the skate park to find posters for up to sixty missing youths. Brain Club must be doing big business. Although he does it on his own time, the Lieutenant is not interested.
“When did we become Missing Persons?” Is the Lieutenant on the take? Is he a member of Brain Club, or is he bitter because he is now a zombie.
The first rule of Brain Club is, you do not talk about Brain Club. The second rule of Brain Club is: you DO NOT talk about Brain Club! Third rule of Brain Club: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, the feeding is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a brain.
We have potential for lots and lots of zombies, Major and Babineaux are going to end up on Blaine’s trail. Which one will be the first to understand the existence of zombies and which will be in on Liv’s secret first? And someone finally got the joke about the name. (“… and this is Liv Moore.” “Do you?”)
“May we never go to Hell, but always be on our way.”
