“I can choose to help find justice for a fellow dead girl.”
iZombie is the latest show from Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas. In some ways, the show serves as a spiritual (and supernatural) successor to Mr. Thomas’ previous show. It features a young, whip-smart and wise-cracking woman putting her brains and brawn to work solving crimes. It follows (at least in the pilot episode) a similar formula, and the short, blond protagonist named Liv (played by Kiwi Rose McIver) bears more than a passing resemblance to Veronica Mars actress Kristen Bell.
One huge difference, however, is that the main character of iZombie is dead. Or, rather, undead.
The setup for the show is handled quickly within the first ten or fifteen minutes of the show. Doctor in residency Liv Moore (wink wink) impresses a co-worker who quickly changes from potential rival to potential friend. She has a dreamboat fiancé and is great at what she does, and this potential friend invites her to a boat party. Unfortunately, the party turns out to be the center of a zombie outbreak, and Liv gets turned.
It’s a great setup, handled quickly and nicely recapped by the lovely title sequence with illustrations by the artist of the comic book series that serves as the source material for the show, Michael Allred.
https://youtu.be/4nSXg7qqtSQ
The first episode (and hopefully the rest of the season) finds Liv working in a morgue, where she is able to conceal her hunger for human brains by preying on unclaimed corpses. Via some very clever side-effects of her zombie-ism, Liv becomes an invaluable resource to a homicide detective, Clive Babineaux (played by Malcolm Goodwin), who is trying to nail his first collar. Detective Babineaux describes their partnership as “Cagney & Pasty.”
Veronica Mars had a similar structure as the one suggested by the pilot episode of iZombie. There would generally be an overarching crime that Veronica would spend the majority of the season trying to solve, but episode by episode, there were smaller cases she would take on that would sometimes contribute to the main mystery or sometimes would stand alone.
It was a strong structure and really well handled, and I would love to see Thomas bring that same level of polish to this show as well. In an interview with io9, he compared iZombie more to Buffy the Vampire Slayer than the series for which he’s best known.
“Veronica Mars, we were really serious about trying to write great mysteries and spending a lot of our beats and story points on that. I think on iZombie, we’re going to spend a little more time trying to get to fun zombie moments. We don’t want it just to be a ‘zombie solves a murder case,’ each week. We want there to be a real, zombie mythology and zombie story lines. I would say in Veronica Mars there was always a big murder case that encompassed the season. In iZombie, there’s a big zombie storyline that will sort of serve as the same role.”
Beyond the strength of the pithy premise, iZombie features a cast of characters with real depth and conflict. One of the issues Liv is dealing with in the first episode is her relationship with her (now) ex-fiancé: She loves him but feels she needs to keep him at arm’s length to avoid risking him getting infected with her condition. These kinds of conflicts are what put the meat on the bones of a simple but intriguing elevator pitch for the show, and a big part of what is going to keep me tuning in to iZombie every week.
