Season premiere review: ‘iZombie’ – ‘Grumpy Old Liv’: Major changes

A few quick thoughts on the “iZombie” season two premiere coming up just as soon as Whitney Shamblemore begs to differ…

“iZombie” season 1 ended in pretty thrilling fashion, with Major going all Travis Bickle on the gang at Meat Cute, and Liv dividing Ravi's cure between Blaine and the briefly-zombified Major. With “Grumpy Old Liv,” the show had to establish where everybody stands after a lot of dramatic upheavals – Liv's mom and brother hate her! Blaine runs a funeral home! Major's being blackmailed by Max Rager into becoming a full-time zombie hunter! Clive is investigating Major! – while also working in a case of the week.

Turning Liv into a misanthropic old geezer who wants everybody off his lawn was to the broader end of what the show asks Rose McIver to do, even if I can understand the desire to have some lightness to balance out what's happening with Major, and between Liv and her family. But David Anders and Steven Weber are both having so much fun in their villainous roles (Anders' Jimmy Stewart impression was aces) that lightness already feels baked into everything. The idea of Liv Moore, fake psychic crimesolver, was what got the show on the air, and it can work very well at times, but in a busy episode like this one, I was eager to wrap up each one of those procedural scenes to get back to everything else.

It's going to be an ongoing attempt at achieving the perfect balance, and a lot of the new ideas – including Blaine and Major both being able to detect the presence of zombies – are promising. I'll check back in at some point later this fall, but continuing to enjoy this one quite a bit.

What did everybody else think?

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