iZombie Season 5 Episodes 3 & 4 Review: “Five, Six, Seven, Ate!” & “Dot Zom”

It’s no surprise that “Five, Six, Seven, Ate!” is the most fun episode that iZombie has delivered so far in its final season. Any installment that features both Liv and Ravi doing their best auditions for Dancing With the Stars is bound to be more lighthearted and laugh-filled than hours that feature suicide bombings and the deaths of characters like Jordan and Baron. However, “Five, Six, Seven, Ate!” does not exist solely as a breezy, entertaining romp; it packs an emotional punch by the end of the hour, as Jordan’s brothers, Michael and Jaelyn, are revealed to be the two zombie students being harassed and discriminated against at their school, ensuring that the third episode of iZombie Season 5 is the season’s most balanced and, therefore, best episode yet.

Frankly, that balance is what had been missing from the first two installments of iZombie‘s fifth and final season. Both “Thug Life” and “Dead Lift” leaned so heavily into the danger and death posed by the rising tensions between New Seattle’s inhabitants that, throughout most of their running times, they nearly forgot to remind viewers of the main reason they tune in each and every week: the relationships between the series’ main players. Characters like Liv, Major, and Clive have felt so isolated from others, such as Ravi and Peyton, that there have been times throughout these opening installments of Season 5 that iZombie has felt like two totally different shows.

Thankfully, “Five, Six, Seven, Ate!” gives us so much character interaction goodness, especially between the Big Three of Liv, Ravi, and Clive, that I can almost forgive the table-setting nature of the season’s first two hours. That dance montage alone, in which Clive helps teach Ravi how to dance in hilarious fashion (including having him hold his gun while he really gets into it and Ravi dancing while using the morgue’s scale to weigh whatever bodily organ he was looking at), is pure, unadulterated fun. But it’s also much more than that, especially the celebration between the three of them at the end—it’s a reminder of how many cases the three of them have solved, how many deaths they’ve witnessed, how many secrets they’ve shared, and how many challenges they have overcome, all while working together. The three of them have earned the opportunity to let loose and smile together, and given how dark (and potentially deadly, given the threat of nuclear annihilation at any point) life may get this season, they should bask in all of these little moments.

Because as Jordan’s death and the lasting pain it has brought her brothers show us, no one is guaranteed a long or happy life in New Seattle. With tensions between humans and zombies nearing a critical point, it’s incredibly important to enjoy the simple things in life, whether that’s flossing in a dance competition or laughing your way through awkward encounters with your now pregnant ex-girlfriend at pregnancy support class with your still relatively new wife (more on how awesome Bozzio is in my “Other thoughts” section). Because as that silly dance sequence reminds us and as Baron’s sacrifice reminds Jordan’s brother (“He was a human?” “Yeah, all coyotes are human”), keeping our humanity in a world we may not recognize is essential to survival, and that’s true whether you’re a human or a zombie.

While “Five, Six, Seven, Ate!” delivers numerous emotional highs, “Dot Zom” is more plot-focused, pushing two central storylines (Peyton and Ravi’s efforts to launch Hi, Zombie with Jimmy and his comedy group and  Blaine’s criminal past finally starting to impact his present). Although the Hi, Zombie story is certainly entertaining, especially with its meta winks and nods to iZombie itself, the most compelling part of “Dot Zom” is easily the Blaine-centric plot, which introduces us to Gage Golighty’s Al Bronson, a reporter for Bluster magazine who is writing a profile about Blaine. However, by episode’s end, it becomes quite apparent that Al is writing a puff piece and that she’s not as fooled by Blaine’s wit and charm as he believes she is.

And that’s what makes the Blaine and Al story in “Dot Zom” the strongest part of the episode. This isn’t just iZombie using David Anders’ comedic gifts for a lighthearted, goofy aside from the more heavy material that has been showcased so far in Season 5. Instead, the series appears to finally be reaping the sins that Blaine has sown for himself over these four-plus seasons, crimes that reached their pinnacle when he publicly murdered Mayor Baracus on a live-stream midway through Season 4 in order to prove how Ravi’s cure worked at the time. Given that Al was previously profiling Baracus before his death and the fact that she discovers the mask that Blaine wore during the murder video, I’d say it’s a safe bet that, if she hasn’t already fully uncovered what Blaine’s been up to, she’s going to very soon. And while I always enjoy Blaine as iZombie‘s central criminal and main villain, it’s time for him to answer for some of his past actions, and it’s refreshing to see someone seemingly get the best of him when he’s usually ten steps ahead of everyone else.

When “Dot Zom” isn’t spending time with Blaine or showing us the creative ups-and-downs of Jimmy’s comedy troop, it focuses on Liv. In this episode, the show’s main heroine eats the brain of tech genius, Cornell and, as a result, is open to using mushrooms to help “expand” her ways of thinking and more than agreeable to the idea of Mr. Moss, a high school teacher who is fired for being a zombie, tutoring the kids at Renegade’s hideout. Liv’s behavior in “Dot Zom” leads to a couple funny moments here and there, but it’s nowhere near as entertaining as her actions in “Five, Six, Seven Ate!” (Dancer Brain is going to be a hard one to top this season).

However, her decision to invite Mr. Moss into Renegade’s headquarters is an important one, and it may prove to be a costly choice, due to the fact that the recently fired teacher is being forced to spy on Liv and her allies by a new, mysterious villain. This antagonist is only referred to as “The Boss,” and by the end of Episode 4, we never learn his true identity (although my iZombie Radio co-host, Blaise Hopkins, has a fantastic theory about him being patient zero of the zombie outbreak, given his use of Utopium and his ability to going into full-on zombie mode so quickly). The only specific details we know about The Boss are that he believes zombies are the superior race to humans, he is working with the Fillmore Graves Inspector, Enzo, and that he and Enzo plan to thaw out Fillmore Graves prisoners from the ice box in order to help them accomplish their mission.

Will The Boss be the new central antagonist that takes Blaine’s pace if Al Bronson helps bring him to justice? Will he be the villain that unites not just Liv and Major but also Blaine during iZombie‘s final episodes? Will he be responsible for taking the life of at least one of our main characters before the series ends? (I’d put money on that last one.) Who knows for sure? The only thing that’s guaranteed after “Dot Zom” is that iZombie is ramping up the tension and the drama for its final nine episodes. The show is in the endgame now, and the writers and audience know it, even if the characters still remain unaware.

Other thoughts:

• Dale Bozzio putting aside the awkward past that she, Clive, and Michelle have together, not to mention the uncertainty over whether Michelle’s baby is Clive’s or not, in order to be Michelle’s partner during their pregnancy support class just goes to show how strong, compassionate, and just plain awesome a character Bozzio is. Also, given iZombie‘s sketchy history with love triangles (Need I remind anyone of Ravi, Peyton, and Blaine in Season 3?), I am so happy to see the characters (and writers) take the more mature route and not bog Clive and Bozzio down in any unnecessary drama during this final season.
• While “Dot Zom” plants the seeds for Blaine’s downfall, it does still allow him the opportunity to be cool while also, in typical Blaine fashion, a little bit over-the-top, as he uses the brain of Brazilian dance fighter to take down the DeadEnders outside his club.
• I am loving the full-circle nature of Major’s journey in this final season. He begin the series as a mentor to orphaned teens, and he now appears to be finding a home in that role again when he works with Jordan’s at Renegade’s hideout.
• “I Wanna Dance With Zombie” is easily one of the best comic-book title cards iZombie has ever produced.
• “Don E., I went to the Wharton Business School for a semester and a half…”
• “This might be weird, but I think Clive just got me pregnant.” “Let’s not joke about that right now.”
• “I’ve been saving this up for a while now…That girl was poisoned. As was that guy with cyanide. Very sad.”
• “Nobody puts Ravi in the corner.”

What did you think of “Five, Six, Seven, Ate!” and “Dot Zom”? Did you have a favorite of the two episodes? Comment below and let me know!

[Photo credit: Jack Rowand/The CW]