iZombie (TV Series, Season 1)
Sep. 6th, 2016 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWhen Liv Moore is turned into a zombie, she opts to take a job at the local morgue to deal with her hunger for brains. As those brains give her flashes of former owner’s memories, she uses her talents to help hunt down murder victims.
Jethrien argues that it’s Tru Calling with a splash of Dead Like Me, and that’s really pretty accurate. Though there’s a season arc and some running subplots, every episode has a murder victim whose brain Liv eats and then goes through fairly standard TV procedural beats solving the murder. Does it get too repetitive / formulaic? Maybe, especially if you marathon it, but I found it entertaining nonetheless.
They dropped virtually all of both the mythology and the supporting cast from the comic, keeping pretty much just the initial pitch. Heck, they changed the main character’s name! But while in the comic Gwen was a zombie among all manner of monsters, here the only monsters are the zombies. (And even that is given a sci-fi gloss rather than the comic’s fantasy explanation. Over the course of the season, Ravi isolates the cause of zombism and works out a possible cure, all using SCIENCE.)
Like several other series with a superhero secret, I found myself yelling, “Tell him! Just f—ing tell him!” by halfway through. For all the Superdickery, at least Clark has never let Lois voluntarily commit herself to a mental hospital. (Though, to be fair, Major is completely off his rocker at that point. He’s right about the murders and the zombies, but he’s also going full-on vigilante with illegal weapons. Which is crazy.)
The thing is, I’m less in this for the dramatic moments and more so for the witty ones. I love Ravi and his interactions with almost everyone. Some of Liv’s inherited personality traits don’t work, but some of them really, really do. One episode was totally a pastiche of I Know What You Did Last Summer that just goes horribly, horribly wrong; and it’s hilarious.
Overall: It bears little resemblance to the original comic, but I enjoyed it regardless. I worry it may outgrow its premise, but I’m definitely willing to give season two a shot when it becomes available to me.
Jethrien argues that it’s Tru Calling with a splash of Dead Like Me, and that’s really pretty accurate. Though there’s a season arc and some running subplots, every episode has a murder victim whose brain Liv eats and then goes through fairly standard TV procedural beats solving the murder. Does it get too repetitive / formulaic? Maybe, especially if you marathon it, but I found it entertaining nonetheless.
They dropped virtually all of both the mythology and the supporting cast from the comic, keeping pretty much just the initial pitch. Heck, they changed the main character’s name! But while in the comic Gwen was a zombie among all manner of monsters, here the only monsters are the zombies. (And even that is given a sci-fi gloss rather than the comic’s fantasy explanation. Over the course of the season, Ravi isolates the cause of zombism and works out a possible cure, all using SCIENCE.)
Like several other series with a superhero secret, I found myself yelling, “Tell him! Just f—ing tell him!” by halfway through. For all the Superdickery, at least Clark has never let Lois voluntarily commit herself to a mental hospital. (Though, to be fair, Major is completely off his rocker at that point. He’s right about the murders and the zombies, but he’s also going full-on vigilante with illegal weapons. Which is crazy.)
The thing is, I’m less in this for the dramatic moments and more so for the witty ones. I love Ravi and his interactions with almost everyone. Some of Liv’s inherited personality traits don’t work, but some of them really, really do. One episode was totally a pastiche of I Know What You Did Last Summer that just goes horribly, horribly wrong; and it’s hilarious.
Overall: It bears little resemblance to the original comic, but I enjoyed it regardless. I worry it may outgrow its premise, but I’m definitely willing to give season two a shot when it becomes available to me.
