Episode one of iZombie jumps right into the action. We get a brief scene of our hero as a normal woman going about the business of being a doctor, then she goes to a party and is scratched by a zombie, thus becoming one herself. We then flash forward a few months, and no one has noticed that she’s now a zombie. She quits her residency as a surgeon in favor of a job in the morgue, where she can help herself to brains when the need arises. A side effect of her braining eating is that she gets flashes of memory from the person whose brain she has consumed. Useful bit of business that.
iZombie is basically Quincy ME/Bones meets Buffy/Supernatural. It’s basically a normal cop show where the lead detective has some quirk that allows them to solve crimes, the quirk in this case being our hero is an undead monster passing as a human.
In the opening episode we met the zombie’s family, her co-worker who knows her secret, and a cop she helps to solve crimes who thinks she’s psychic. We see that she has some gnarly zombie powers and there are hints of other zombies roaming around that she has yet make contact with.
Our pretty little zombie was turned by being gouged by a zombie. This doesn’t bode well for the future of the human race. If all it takes is a scratch to be turned into a zombie, the apocalypse can’t be too far off. But then, these zombies do seem to be a bit smarter than your average shambler. Our hero does say that she gets dumber if she doesn’t get a regular meal of brains. Does every morgue have a zombie on staff?
I liked the look of iZombie and the acting seems good enough. Since iZombie is based on a comic book, the transitions are all stylized line drawings and look pretty cool. It’s a lot lighter in tone than the BBC’s zombie show In The Flesh, about the undead returning home and trying to blend in. There is even talk of a cure. I can’t help but think of I Am Legend. “I can fix this.” Well, good luck with that.
I liked iZombie. I just hope it gets a chance to develop beyond the first few episodes.
