TV Review: IZOMBIE: Season 2, Episode 5: Love & Basketball [The CW]

The CW’s iZombie Love & Basketball TV Show Review. iZombie: Season 2, Episode 5: Love & Basketball showed off Liv’s (Rose McIver) ability to coach a team and giving pep talks after eating the brains of a security guard who was also a community basketball coach. McIver became more amusing in her role as she gave words of encouragement and knew exactly what to say. It turned out that her words of wisdom went through to Major (Robert Buckley) in his time of need as he came back to the man he once was. There were some basketball references made on the show, but not too much for those who don’t know the lingo to those who don’t follow the sport.

McIver continuously proves that she can adapt into different types of personalities, but seeing her be herself with Ravi (Rahul Kohli) was a great scene to watch. It has become a necessity for Liv to eat the brain of the victim in order to solve the case of the week, but it would be nice to allow Liv to take a breather so we can spend more time with the real Liv rather than whatever brain she ate. Obviously that would never happen because eating brains is the only way for her to stay fully human without going full zombie. But, it would be a nice change and break out from the norm despite iZombie doing remarkable work with integrating the case of the week with the main story arc.

As we said, Liv becoming a motivational speaker gave Major a wake up call. Seeing Major trying to get back together with Liv did feel a little rushed, but it didn’t go too far. Major was in a bad place, but Liv knew where he was coming from and understood that what he needed was a friend and not a relationship. It was nice seeing them together after so long, and it was worth the wait. Their relationship looks totally believable to the viewers and they look adorable together. The show has it’s depressing moments with the cases and the zombies, but sometimes being cute can work as well.

It’s been fascinating to see Major’s transformation from the boy next door to killer and then back to being normal. Major kept going down with no way out, pushing the character to his limits. Robert Buckley has certainly brought some charisma and edge to his role. He can play a nice guy and bad guy very well. It will be interesting to see how Major balances his work with Liv as he faces a bigger problem with Max Rager.

One of the other best parts of the episode had to be the scuffle between Blaine (David Anders) and Ravi. Seeing these two fight over the tainted Utopium looked like something out of a sitcom in the most hilarious scene in the episode. Having Blaine take it out carelessly and leave the room like it was nothing was a brilliant performance on David’s part. Scenes like these are exactly why Rahul and David should be doing more stuff together on the show. Besides the comedic elements, it was clever for the show to derail the cure again. It gives the show longevity so we can get more storytelling without having to worry about making a cure.

Even Clive Babineax (Malcolm Goodwin) had some of the spotlight. He made some developments in the Meat Cute case, so Clive might get closer to the truth regarding the existence of zombies. We also feel that he’s starting to suspect Liv of hiding something. The detective has already taken notice in the changes that Liv goes through in the office. At some point, Clive will be putting the pieces together and figuring this all out. We finally get to see how good of a cop Clive is. Even watching him beat the crap out of RJ’s father shows us what he is capable of.

The episode really made some great developments for Major as Liv’s ex-flame starts to get out of the darkness that he has occupied himself into. Even though it was hard to witness what he’s been going through, it was a great way to build up Major as a character. This installment also started putting some pieces together in the Meat Cute case as Malcolm gets one step closer to figuring out the truth.

Leave your thoughts on this review and this episode of iZombie in the comments section below. For more iZombie photos, videos, and news, visit our iZombie Page, subscribe to us by Email, “follow” us on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ or “like” us on Facebook.