Enter the Hitman

What you see before you is the start of a murder. This man, posing as real estate agent is about to push the woman, a lovely Trophy Wife and absolute bitch, over the edge of the view that she has from her back patio. It’s a long way down. Of course, realizing that the fall could be lonely, she grabs him and the two go over together.

So the linkage begins.

Liv eats the wife’s brains with tuna in a half of a tomato. Yummers!

Tonight’s “iZombie” episode is all about connections.

The first connection is the Hitman and Vaughn, our friendly neighborhood Max Rager CEO. It seems that the Hitman was once thrown out of a showing of a house owned by Vaughn! Not only that, but it is also found out that the Trophy Wife is the wife of Terrence Fowler, a member of the Board of Directors at Max Rager!

A waste of good sparkling water.

Liv and Babineaux go to question Vaughn at his office. During the questioning, Liv has a vision. Fowler’s wife was having an affair with Vaughn. When questioned by about this, he readily admits to the affair. Liv, under the influence of the wife’s brains, throws her sparkling water with a twist of lime in Vaughn face. Interview over. Besides, Vaughn’s 3-o’clock appointment has arrived. It turns out to be Major. Liv is astonished. Major is Vaughn’s personal trainer?

Olivia Moore, Trophy Zombie

But, what about Major? Well, he has connections with Gilda, Vaughn’s loyal assistant. She finds him at the gym and tells him to get out there and kill more zombies. After all, there are over 320 of them little undead ones running around the city. Vaughn tells her to sod off (my words, not Major’s). She explains that he is Plan B. Plan A was to tell all the zombies they won a free cruise to Hawaii. Then, in the middle of the ocean, they would scuttle the ship.

For those unfamiliar, the concept of scuttling goes back to the time of wooden ships. A crew would basically cut a huge hole in the bottom of the boat and let it sink.

Gilda tells Major that if he doesn’t work out, there is always Plan A.

Needless to say, Major finds another victim, who is out walking his basset hound. Drugged and stuffed into the trunk, Major and the dog, now an accomplice, ignore the pathetic pleadings of the victim from the trunk of the car. Trunk man is more concerned about his dog than himself. In the end, Major shoots him in the head and dumps him off the same bridge as the first victim. Major keeps the dog.

I said Basset Hound, not Basselope!

Flash back to Vaughn’s admission of the affair. Who is within earshot? Of course, Gilda. It looks as though she is coveting Vaughn, while Vaughn is coveting anything in a skirt (except, possibly, the occasional Scotsman). Yes, she is pissed and later lets Vaughn know it. Vaughn is very cavalier about the whole thing. He knows he can do whatever he wants. He don’t care!

Gilda does the next best thing: Revenge Sex! She finds (the currently dosed with Utopium) Major in the gym. With some suggestive verbal foreplay, the two begin to engage in exercises that cannot be found in any Jack Lalanne work out book.

Jack Lalanne: 1950’s-1970’s Fitness Guru

Who have I left out? Oh, yeah, the husband Terrence Fowler.

When questioned by Liv and Babineaux, he seems shocked that Vaughn and his wife were having an affair. He puts his hand though a glass coffee table. However, a vision by Liv shows that he knew about it long before he was questioned.

As a matter of fact, Fowler has been running around with any number of online floozies, or as Liv puts it:

“This kind of women don’t call men, they just stand upwind and drop their panties.”

So, the list of suspects who hired the killer is Vaughn, Fowler, or some internet skank. As it turns out, it is one of the stable of floozies, who has attached herself to Liv as a personal designer.

The two take to fighting in a clothing store. The woman pepper sprays Liv’s eyes, which doesn’t blind her, but causes her to go total Zombie and put a hurting on the assailant. Although they cannot pin the murder on her, yet, she has enough outstanding warrants for other felonies to put her away for a long time. Case closed.

But wait… there is another connection and a rather large non-connection, and then some.

Before the crime is solved, Dr. Ravi and Liv are having some witty repartee in the morgue. On the television is our friend, Blaine’s DA. He is telling the criminal element selling Utopium in Seattle that their time is over. He is going to root them out and throw them all in jail. And he is going to have help. A stunned Liv and Ravi see Peyton, Liv’s best friend step up to the microphone and speak. Neither knew that Peyton was back.

Peyton and Ravi… together again?

Peyton shows up at Ravi’s apartment. She is still trying to wrap her head around the zombie thing and Liv. She finds out that Major knows and is still trying to adjust. She and Ravi have a nice talk.

Liv has told no one that it is her birthday. It has been mentioned a couple of times when she had to show her ID, but Ravi and Babineaux don’t know. She made a vain attempt to go out with the two of them that evening, but was blown off. Despondent, she buys some low rent Fireball to take home and drown her troubles. Going into the refrigerator at home, she finds a birthday cake has been left. Gilda informs her that the cake was left by another woman, whom she is jealous of her looks. Liv realizes that Peyton left the cake. Another connection made.

We leave with the last connections of the night. Fowler confronts Vaughn after hours and lets him know that he has enough votes to cause a hostile takeover of Max Rager and throw him out on his rear! Vaughn says that if only he understood what his plans were, he’d see that the company was in good hands. He offers to show Fowler his research, which happens to be in a secret sub-basement in the Max Rager building. He manages to get Fowler locked into a testing area while he looks for Dr. Holland, who can explain the science part better than him.

Anyone remember Dr. Holland from last season?

He was the one killed by Vaughn’s zombie hitman. And now, he’s a full-fledged zombie. Fowler is no match for him and is left a bloody mess, under Vaughn’s approving stare.

Last season, I made the observation that things seem to move too slowly in developing the zombie side of the story. I should have been more careful what I wished for. Everyone has a story. Lines cross all over the place. We may need a scorecard to follow this season.

The show is definitely darker, with pretty boy Major on drugs and callously killing zombies who love and are loved. Liv cannot make even the slightest connection with anyone, including her mother and her brother. Ravi is looking for love in all the wrong places and still pines for Peyton. And Blaine combed his hair. I’m not sure how I feel about all this, especially Blaine’s hair. But I think only time will tell.

Next time: Liv sings the Blues!