It's hard not to feel giddy about the CW, a network that began as a step-up from MTV in the "shit television for dumbass tweens" market but slowly branched up and out into creatively done shows for dumbass tweens, wry twenty-somethings, ironic thirty-somethings, and the not-dead-yet over-40 crowd.
The suits in charge of what was once the WB and UPN have since earned an A-plus for astutely predicting viewers' impending horror obsession with vampires via Buffy, witches via Charmed, and evangelical Christians via 7th Heaven. All they had to do was look at the YA fiction market and see how fast Goosebumps books were flying off the shelves. They also have a way of applying premium channel indie creativity to mainstreamslam-dunk plot devices. The Gilmore Girls — ostensibly about a single mom running a B&B in a sleepy East Coast town who juggled work, relationships, and raising a kid — was about much more than that. It was lightning-quick pop culture allusions, freaky-deaky eccentric villagers, counterintuitive stereotypes, and awesome jokes. The CW takes risks and then gives them time to build an audience.
That brings me to iZombie, the CW's latest foray into the "let's have a supernatural sleepover party!" market. Oh yes, were I 10 again, my pals and I would be bingeing on this show all night, devouring Freschetta pizza and Sour Patch Kids.
That sounds fucking terrible was the general response I would get when describing iZombie before it debuted. Its detractors did have a point, at least as far as the premise went. Girl goes to party and gets attacked by a zombie. Girl becomes zombie but manages to still look hot and also have a cerebral cortex. Girl needs to eat brains. Girl gets job in morgue so she can have access to all the medulla oblongatas one can eat. Girl gets visions and takes on the personality of the person whom she has just eaten, which of course helps her solve the mystery of his or her death. It could either be the worst show or the best show ever produced, right?
For me it's somewhere in the middle, which isn't a very safe place for a show about a hot monster, but
I'm holding out hope that it could eventually reach Buffy's levels of awesome. iZombie is based on the Vertigo comic of the same name, and each episode has comic-book illustrated vignettes. There's also a hint of that same hyper-self-conscious cornball vibe from the original Batman TV show in the '60s, though it's shellacked with just enough good acting and pathos to suck us in and make us forget that the premise is ridic.
That's probably because the show is created by Veronica Mars alumni Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright. (Thomas was also behind one of my favorite shows, the short-lived Party Down, about the wry adventures of a catering company.) On iZombie, we have the same subtle humor and strong central character, Liv Moore — clever! — well-played by Rose McIver. Who would ever think that a zombie could have puppy dog eyes? She's smart, lovable, and resigned to her undead fate. Life gave her lemons and she made a lemonade/brain smoothie.
Liv's co-worker Ravi (Rahul Kohli) is in on her secret, which is great since he's a pathologist who has to figure out how people died. The weakest member of the cast is police detective Clive Babinaux, played by Malcolm Goodwin. Things were going swell on the pilot before he showed up because, simply put, he can't act. Ah well, I thought to myself. It's the pilot. Producers often dump people who appear in pilots. (Look at The Golden Girls, which axed the gay housekeeper once the show was picked up.) Surely Thomas and Ruggiero-Wright could see that Goodwin wasn't cutting it? But nope, he now features prominently in the series, using what he thinks are Liv's "psychic" abilities to solve each crime. And that's my next beef — the crimes alone aren't very interesting. It's okay to have a good mystery each week, really. Go for it, iZombie!
And if all else fails, Send more paramedics.
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