TV Review: IZOMBIE: Season 3, Episode 8: Eat a Knievel [The CW]

iZombie: Eat a Knievel Review

The CW’s iZombie: Season 3, Episode 8: ‘Eat a Knievel’ was one of the darker episodes of the season and it had a lot to do with the case of the week. The case dealt with the murder of an online stunt performer who happens to have no redeemable traits. The more we learn about the victim, the more we start to hate him. iZombie gives a refreshing take on the traditional procedurals where we don’t get emotional over the victims. The weekly murder cases don’t turn into dramas but more like commentary on the victim. It’s a show on brains and how it’s used to solve murders. Sometimes we get sympathy from the victim, but it’s not the case for a show like this.

It was fun seeing Liv (Rose McIver) taking that daredevil-type personality for the whole episode. It seemed like the episode was trying to make fun of the world of online pranks. We have a victim who takes many risks and it doesn’t sit well with anyone. Finding out the suspect was pretty easy to figure out in the first few minutes of the episode. We had some entertaining scenes between Liv and Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) as Liv tries to drive her partner crazy with some silly pranks. Other than watching Liv doing some weird stunts of her own, the case didn’t offer anything exciting and became more of a satire on the whole online prank video craze.

Other than the case of the week, there were some big developments from Philmore Graves as Major’s (Robert Buckley) human status is about to be exposed. The CEO of the company, Vivian Stoll (Andrea Savage) learns of his secret and has Major out of the sanctuary, but it’s not until she seemingly gets killed on a helicopter. Major’s secret is still safe, for now. It’s possible that Vivian might still be alive because iZombie is no stranger to bringing people back from the dead. It’s basically the nature of the show to do that, but it also wouldn’t be surprising if that didn’t happen. Now it’s the question of who killed her. If it wasn’t the zombie truthers, who else did it? There are so many factors to consider, especially if this may possibly be an inside job.

Until then, we have Vivian’s brother Chase (Jason Dohring) taking over as the new leader of the company. Under our first impression, we can see that Chase is a man that doesn’t mess around. He immediately scolds the team for taking for taking the night off for Vivian’s wake. Chase goes as far as shooting Justin (Tongayi Chirisa) in the stomach after admitting he took six cans of Super Max. Vivian saw the company as a family business, but with Chase, he sees it more as an army of defense against those who oppose the zombie population. It will be interesting to see what Chase does with the company and how that’s going to affect Major and keeping Chase from figuring out his secret. Plus, how cool is it that Veronica Mars’ own Jason Dohring is getting to play a completely different character from Rob Thomas’ hit series? We have to love those Veronica Mars cast members making an appearance on the show.

Things seem to be going well between Jason and Liv, but it doesn’t seem like their romance is going to last long. These two characters don’t share any chemistry at all, which makes us wish that the show didn’t push Liv into other guys who aren’t Major. It was pretty cool seeing Ravi (Rahul Kohli) and Liv going undercover as a couple to infiltrate the zombie truthers. We never got to see Liv all natural for a while, so it was nice seeing a normal Liv for a bit.

Another big highlight from the hour was Blaine (David Anders) as he reverts back to his old self as he takes revenge on his old man Angus (Robert Knepper). After taking out his zombie henchmen, Blaine went after his father in an interesting approach. He puts his father down a well for what looks like forever and plans on taking over the brain business once again. We even get to see Blaine and Don E (Bryce Hodgson) back together working as partners. Even though Blaine tried to be a good guy for a bit, it was nice that the show went back to it’s roots and reminded us why we loved David’s character in the first place.

Overall, this week’s episode got much darker in content but balanced it well with some humor. With Major avoiding exposure as a non-zombie, it makes us wonder how long he can keep the charade going with Chase taking over the reins. The mystery of Vivian’s murder will keep us glued until we found out who the real culprit. For now, at least we have Blaine back to who he was at the beginning of the series, which is alright with us.

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