The philosopher Gregory House once said, “It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies.” This is definitely one thing that Liv doesn’t struggle with — she’s been lying since episode one. Fortunately, just about everyone else in her life weaves tall tales, except Clive.
The truth rears its head in tonight’s aptly titled episode, “The Whopper.” Secrets are revealed and, more importantly, characters start questioning the lies they’ve told themselves to get through life. Unfortunately, the truth also comes with a heavy dose of expository dialogue, which is at times quite annoying and only made manageable by the episode’s focus on Blaine.
Ravi and Major are back to digging around that field, looking for the tainted batch of utopium that was buried with a drug dealer’s body. They stumble upon a drug dealer’s corpse, but it’s not the one they’re looking for — it’s only a few months old. Ravi suspects that the guy who killed the dealers they want probably killed this victim too, and hopefully, his brain will help Liv find an exact location on this sprawling field.
So, Clive and Liv get called in. The trail takes them to a bar, where the bartender identifies the victim as Corey “Big Fish” Carp, so nicknamed because he lied a lot. Yep, Liv is on pathological-liar brain. Soon after, they discover that Corey worked for Stacey Boss.
As Clive and Liv investigate their latest murder, Clive notices Liv’s new tendency to make up stories. He asks Ravi if he’s noticed how Liv copies the traits of their murder victims. Up until now, Clive has rationalized Liv’s behavior, telling himself that she’s just doing what she needs to do to get psychic readings. Now, he’s starting to grow suspicious. And honestly, it’s time iZombie made it clear that Liv’s personality swings weren’t lost on Clive. He’s supposed to be a detective, after all.
Anyway, the bullets in the victim’s body match an unresolved case involving a dockworker who was killed by a man named Terrell Johnson, who Clive and Liv suspect was Boss’s hitman. They track Terrell down and pay him a visit, but he won’t talk to them without an attorney. When Stacey Boss gets word that Terrell is alive, he sends Drake to handle him. So, that’s the end of Terrell.
Similarly to Clive, Liv has been lying to herself about her relationship with Drake. She knows something isn’t quite right — he hangs out with Blaine and Boss — but she’s falling for him. “The Whopper” forces her to confront those suspicions. When Drake comes home after murdering Terrell, Liv flashes. She sees Corey shoot Drake in the field right before Blaine’s man, Don E, shows up and shoots Corey.
It’s implied that Drake tells Liv that Corey is the one who killed the two utopium dealers. He promises to take her to one of their homes to see if she flashes on anything, but later, he bails at the last minute. So, Liv decides to go without him and meets the dead dealer’s mother. She then flashes on some pictures and sees where the two dealers were killed.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot going on with Blaine. It’s time for the reading of his father’s will and, much to his disdain, his nightmare nanny receives all of his father’s assets. In his will, Papa Blaine stipulated that his son wouldn’t receive anything if he died under “mysterious circumstances.” (Like, say, being murdered by a serial killer.) Meeting Blaine’s abusive nanny explains a lot — his father never cared what the nanny did to him, and that’s part of the reason why they have such a damaged relationship. It also explains his contempt for authority.
Blaine’s still in luck, though, because Don E and Chief catch the Chaos Killer, a.k.a. Major, and bring him in for interrogation. Major comes clean about almost everything; he doesn’t tell them who hired him to take out zombies. In exchange for his life, Major agrees to unfreeze Blaine’s father.
Having Blaine discover Major’s dark secret is a great way to tie this season’s many disparate plots together. This major development also blunts the pain of the episode’s whopping amount of exposition. As things slowly come together, it feels like the season is finally heading somewhere. Also, I can’t wait for Blaine to meet Vaughn.
As the episode winds down, Blaine wakes his father up to the sounds of “One Day More” from Les Mis. When his father refuses to amend his will, Blaine orders his henchmen to torture him until he complies. It’s payback for all of the abuse his father tacitly encouraged.
“One Day More” continues through the final scene, which finds Liv, Ravi, and Major digging up the murder location. As they celebrate finding the prosthetic leg with the drugs, we hear the chorus kick in: “Tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in heaven has in store.” It’s quite fitting since, unbeknownst to them, the FBI shows Clive a photo of Major they took at Blaine’s funeral home. For now, our gang has this small victory. Tomorrow, they’ll have to deal with a new problem.
Liv’s Meal of the Week: Brain Cheeseburger
Leftovers
- Ravi, after Clive calls his FBI girlfriend by her last name: “If she bears your children, you’ll start calling her by her first name, right?”
- Blaine, when he wakes Major up in a coffin: “Rise and shine, Major Bummer.”
- Liv, as she eats more of the pathological brain: “What’s that Missy Elliott song? ‘Cerebellum, Don’t Fail Me Now?’”
- Hey, Liv mentions her brother tonight! She still hasn’t patched things up with him and her mother. At least iZombie hasn’t forgotten about that dangling thread.
- Liv, Major, and Ravi find the tainted utopium just in time. New Hope, a.k.a. the cured rat, has died, which means time is running out for Major and Blaine. And that brings us back to that climactic Les Mis lyric — they definitely know what God has in store from them if Ravi doesn’t fix his cure.