NOTE: Full spoilers for this episode of, “iZombie” are present in this review
iZombie is continuing to up the humour and character conflicts most of all this week, as Liv winds up having to eat an especially amusing brain, and Major’s latest obsession continues to spell trouble for him. “Wag the Tongue Slowly” gives Liv and Babineaux another especially eccentric murder to solve, after an office gossip is killed by a drug spike in her yogurt, while Peyton and Blaine fill in the story gaps, as an emotionally broken Ravi tries to indulge Major in his latest ill-advised crusade.
If you were hoping that the show’s procedural element would pick up in this week’s iZombie offering, well, it doesn’t really. Credit where credit is due though, at least this is a fairly creative case that stands as one of the most memorable Season Three murders so far. This is because Liv and Babineaux keep turning up dead ends in their investigation, as seemingly everyone had a motive to kill the gossip, yet no one can be exactly placed as the perpetrator.
The offbeat trail of evidence leads to a fairly convenient, if noteworthy final result, but the real highlight of the procedural end of this episode was, once again, Liv’s latest brain humour. Naturally, the latest victim’s brain gives Liv an incredible desire for gossip, which tests Babineaux’s and Ravi’s patience in lots of humourous ways, even if it also doesn’t much benefit the case directly, yet again. Still, the end result of several of the gossip’s co-workers being behind the crime, an accidental death that resulted from Utopium reacting badly with anti-depressants, as revenge for the gossip humiliating them in the past, was a solid way to end the latest mystery.
Liv and her gossip brain injected most of the fun into the episode, but we also got a pretty enjoyable subplot with Ravi and Major, after Major drags Ravi along with trying to locate Natalie’s zombie pimp. Once Major gets a lead, a violent confrontation results in Major successfully bugging the pimp, which eventually leads him to Natalie. The reunion between Major and Natalie was nicely emotional too, especially when Major gives her his only emergency dose of the zombie cure, before shipping out to parts unknown at the behest of Fillmore-Graves. This likely means that Major is putting his life on the line, and it’s likely that this decision will come back to haunt him very soon.
The remaining subplot, which proved to be the big standout this week, involved Blaine testing the serum that’s supposed to counteract the side effects of Ravi’s second potential zombie cure. The serum doesn’t appear to work at all, but Ravi nonetheless advises that Blaine be supervised for the next several days, in case any adverse effects pop up. This has Blaine crashing on Liv’s and Peyton’s couch, giving plenty of time to further develop the budding romance between Peyton and the ‘new’ Blaine.
Disappointingly, the show somewhat glossed over the big blow-up between Ravi and Peyton, at least in terms of character development, since Peyton immediately moves on, and Ravi’s angst is largely, and surprisingly, just played for laughs with Major. Granted, this is still a highlight subplot, as Blaine and Peyton both struggle with the possibility of Blaine suddenly returning to his old self overnight, thus killing their renewed relationship. Blaine even suggests that the two wait to have sex, highly going against his former behaviour, but when the deadline comes, and Blaine is still without his memories, Peyton decides that she’s not waiting any longer. Looks like that’s curtains for Ravi, at least barring his serum being far more slow-acting than he imagined it was.
Once again, the case-of-the-week didn’t really feel that developed compared to everything else that was going on, especially as Liv finds herself stuck with increasingly unhelpful brains in the latest season of iZombie. That said though, “Wag the Tongue Slowly” still offered some great subplots with Major, Blaine and Peyton, even if it felt like Ravi got the short end of the story stick. Liv and Babineaux also at least offered plenty of fun with their latest murder case, but I have to say that Babineaux being aware of Liv’s zombie condition now seems to be expediting their cases and making them too simple to solve, even with supposed curveballs like multiple accidental perpetrators. I guess that’s good news for the Seattle PD, but perhaps next week, they should get a more challenging murder, since it doesn’t look like we’re going to be getting much movement from Fillmore-Graves or The Scratching Post quite yet.