iZombie Dances Its Way Into Your Lap

Overdrawn At The Memory Bank

Alert Type: Forgetfulness Alert.

Issue: Don E. comes into Shady Plots seeking contact info for Blaine's go-to bagpiper, only to find Blaine unresponsive and very hard to rouse.

Complicating Factors: Though Blaine plays it off like he was just sleeping, he calls Don E. "Scott E." (Don E.'s dead twin). Later, when Peyton and Liv come by, in part to find out why Blaine blew off a meeting with Peyton to firm up his testimony against Stacey Boss, he's definitely not himself ("Can I interest you ladies in a cub of decaf java? Organic, fair trade, shade-grown: barely discernible carbon footprint!").

Resolution: It doesn't really get resolved: Don E. brings Blaine to the morgue so that Ravi can examine him. Liv assumes Blaine must have just eaten the brain of a person who had dementia, but apparently not. Ravi determines that Blaine is human again and therefore must have taken the cure; he doesn't think Blaine is faking his memory loss.

Spoiler: Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does a criminal organization.

Gilda Killed-a?

Gilda, not looking so hot after her run-in with that zombie at work...

...lets herself back in at Liv's just as Liv is getting into the shower, and starts rifling through the fridge for brainy leftovers. She finds something in the freezer...

...as we see someone else is there...

...but then he isn't...

...but then he is. By the time Liv comes back out of the bathroom, good old Janko has absconded with Gilda, leaving nothing but her head scarf, which Liv contemplates thoughtfully -- but not for long, because then Peyton's there with Ravi and Major, moving back in! Let's hope Liv doesn't rage out when she notices she's down a sandwich.

Naked Capitalism

Cassidy is still on the phone with Peyton making threats against her cheating boyfriend, Nick The Stick, when a car pulls up beside her and someone in it hits her with a tire iron. R.I.P. Cassidy, I guess! You seemed like kind of a dick, though!

While Ravi and Liv are examining the body, Clive rolls up to say that Nick was currently on house arrest and that his ankle monitor puts him at the time and place of the murder. "Hooray for dumb criminals!" - Ravi.

Back at the morgue, Ravi is already joking about the kinds of shenanigans Liv is sure to get up to when she eats Cassidy's brain, but Liv's going to pass: "I've had my eye on the guy in drawer #3. Terminally ill hiking enthusiast who committed suicide so that he could go out on his own terms? I mean, the exercise'll be good for me, quality time in the great outdoors -- no visions of gross men putting their hands all over me...."

Right on cue, in comes Peyton. Even though they know who killed Cassidy OR SO IT WOULD SEEM (spoiler), Peyton's got a total justice hard-on about all the other stuff Cassidy knew about the Boss organization, which she was just about to tell Peyton about when she was killed. Liv is annoyed...

...but she's also a good friend, so she soon turns Cassidy into a club sandwich.

Liv hasn't even swallowed before Peyton is demanding information. Chill out, lady, it's not like Liv starts tripping on brain the second she takes her first bite! Although I guess Peyton's off-putting eagerness is on theme for Cassidy's story.

The Naked Truth

Alert Type: Stripper Alert.

Issue: As Liv explains to a chill-free Peyton, if she wants Liv to start having Cassidy visions, something's going to have to trigger them. So off they go to The Voulez-Vous, Cassidy's former stomping stripping grounds. Liv immediately locks into peeler mode, flirting forcefully with the male patrons and aggressively defending her turf against the other dancers until finally she and Peyton decide the best course of action is for them to go into a private room so that she can give Peyton a lapdance.

I'm not really sure why (a) none of the other dancers nor (b) any of the club's management prevent Liv from dancing for tips she presumably would not share with the house, except that this plot is already pretty baroque. To wit...

Complicating Factors: Even though at first it had seemed as though the case against Nick The Stick was pretty solid, Peyton soon learns that Nick's ankle monitor was found in a tourist's backpack, so it might not have been him at all. Then another dancer tells Peyton and Liv that Nick was at the club the night before, blackout drunk; she points them toward one of Cassidy's regulars, who had a huge fight with Cassidy that night but didn't get kicked out because he's famous. What do you know, he's actually there right now!

What up, Johnny Frost? He tells Peyton and Liv that he and Cassidy fought over her having committed identity theft against him; she had access to his secret credit card and used it to run up all kinds of exotic dancerly charges, such as "tattooed eyeliner, laser hair removal, chantilly lace plunge teddy with a mesh y-back..." They also figure out that the murderer was riding in a '70s-era Chevelle that can be traced back to Johnny, sort of: this was another charge made by the identity thief...

Resolution: ...who turns out to be a Pablo Balaban, seen by Liv in a vision from Cassidy's brain at a Boss stash house; he was working in concert with Destiny, one of Cassidy's fellow strippers. After Nick got so wasted at the strip club, Destiny helped Lorelei (yet another stripper, who was and still is also seeing Nick) load him into the Chevelle. Lorelei was driving Nick home with Destiny in the front seat bitching about Cassidy's threats to send Pablo to jail when they saw Cassidy on the side of the road; Destiny told Lorelei to pull up beside her so Destiny could scare her, but then she hit and killed her instead. Pablo's got his own issues what with his ties to the stash house and a garage full of merchandise purchased on Johnny Frost's credit card, but Destiny says Pablo doesn't know she killed Cassidy to keep her from ratting on him. "There's loyalty, and there's being an idiot," muses Liv in a voice-over. "Sometimes it looks the same."

Spoiler: Liv's about to find out how big an idiot she actually is.

Fail Safe

Soooooo Major is starting to figure out that Ravi is not an idiot and that this is potentially going to be a problem for him. First, he happens to wander into Major's room while Major has the closet door open, noticing that Major's acquired a safe; he's somewhat curious about it and asks whether he might store his green card in there (good call, Ravi), but Major is super-skittish about it and Ravi ends up grabbing his nail clippers (ew, dudes: don't share those) and backing out of the room.

Later, as Major's announcing that the milk's turned though Ravi said he just bought it the day before (food tastes different to Major? HMMMMMM), Ravi's looking at a big spread in the paper about the Chao$ Killer and notices that Minor is part of the story. Major flat-out denies that it's Minor -- the story says the hound in question was found on a bus, but Ravi knows quite well Major returned Minor to his owner!!! -- but Ravi isn't convinced...

...which is how he ends up in Major's room when Major's out, going through six-digit combinations of numbers significant to Major to try to open the safe. And because, unlike Ravi, Major IS an idiot, he does so, apparently without much difficulty.

And what he finds is strange and alarming. Way to go, Major: you have a whole offsite freezer facility but you keep your hunting tools in your bedroom?!

Don E. shows Chief a news report about Boss's stash house getting busted! "It's a sign, man! It's not like our fearless leader's up to the task," Don E. notes, pointing toward Blaine, who's probably been set to the task of cleaning blood off an embalming table, but actually just curiously swirling his gloved finger around in it. Guys, you know Blaine is confused: fucking clean that shit yourselves! Anyway, Don E. continues: "We'll never get a chance like this again." He presents his forearm to Chief...

...who reluctantly cuts Don E. with his nail. "Let those bitches try and kill me now," Don E. gloats. I blame Blaine for making the zombie lifestyle look so cool!

Having learned A Lesson from the sad story of Pablo and Destiny's mutual denial about each other, Liv voice-overs, "If you love someone despite what they do, you're lying to yourself. You can't love someone you don't really know. But it can sure as hell feel like you do." With that in mind, she goes to Drake's mother's house so that she can find out where he is and have it out with him. "He's dead, honey!" wails Drake's mom as soon as she sees Liv. "I know he's dead! Mr. Boss killed him, I know it!" They talk all the time, she says, but she hasn't heard from Drake in four days. She asks Liv to come in because she could really use the company!

Inside, Drake's mom says she's just been looking at old photos of him...and what do you know, there's one in her (very slapdash) album of Drake the day he graduated from the police academy!

"I told him I didn't want him working undercover!" Drake's mom exposi-blabs. "'It's too dangerous,' I said!" Uh oh, Liv jumped to the wrong conclusion!

Back at the bro-stel, Ravi's jumped to the right conclusion; he's just been waiting for Major to come home so he could lay out Major's murder tools and tell him all about what he's discovered. I honestly don't think I've ever been as emotionally affected by anything on this show as I am by the sight of Ravi with tears in his eyes as he goes through the notes Major kept on his targets, ending by telling Major, "You knew Colin Andrews went for a run with his dog in Seward Park every evening. Of course we knew where that dog ended up." Major plaintively asks why Ravi did this, and Ravi screams, "Because I have a right to know if I'm living with a murderer! I should know my friend is killing people!" Major, yelling back, tries explain that he hasn't killed anyone, but Ravi's not having it -- "They're not people? They're zombies? So what's Liv to you?" and then Major's not having that...

...so Ravi has to press pause on this conversation with an assist from Major's Little Helper. Leaving aside the shitstorm that's going to ensue in the next three episodes of the season...for real, how fucking dumb is Major? Dumb enough not to be able to remember six digits that HAD NO MEANING, APPARENTLY!