‘iZombie’ recap: Liv Moore gets bro-active in ‘Zombie Bro’

Well hello, Daddy DeBeers. You seem like a horrible (undead) person and I, for one, can’t wait to get to know you better.

“iZombie,” already lousy with the walking deceased, has one more now in the form of Angus DeBeers, father to resident uber-villain Blaine DeBeers, who admitted last season to suffering from, as he put it, “Daddy issues, megalomania, greed.”

Now we know where he gets it.

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Poor motherless Blaine has never quite measured up to Dad’s lofty expectations, it seems. Is that why he’s a cold-blooded serial killer who creates his own zombies and then gouges them for overpriced brain food? It’s a start.

Fingers crossed that these two characters have considerable screen time going forward. More Robert Knepper, please! Their tense head-to-head confrontation is just one of the compelling relationship twists in this week’s episode of the dram-zom-rom-com, dubbed “Zombie Bro,” for its murdered Zeta Beta Theta member.

That homicide by ice pick is just a way to slip our dead(ish) heroine, Liv Moore (Rose McIver), into another wacky persona, one that burps out loud, excels at beer pong and scrawls “fart” on a sleeping friend’s forehead. It’s fairly one-note but sort of hilarious, if you like that kind of brotastic thing as much as I do. Go ahead, it’s OK to laugh.

There has to be some levity in this hour – courtesy of Liv’s “broactive” behavior and newfound penchant for playing a game called Do, Date, Delete – because much of it is streaked with emotion and heaviness. Major Lilywhite (Robert Buckley) starts self-medicating with Utopium to assuage his guilt over being a newly minted zombie hunter, and Liv can’t break through to him or begin to repair the rift between them.

And for the second week in a row, the killing at the center of the story is committed out of misguided love, not psychosis or premeditation, and catching the perp feels less like a victory and more like a defeat.

But, as this CW series is wont to tell us, actions have consequences. Right, Liv?

Let’s get to some entrails, I mean, details of “Zombie Bro,” which sees Blaine (David Anders) kicking off a violent takeover of the local drug trade and Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli) trying to jumpstart his research into a cure for zombiedom.

While the latter is a serious subject in “iZombie” land, it also gives us an awesome Ravi-at-a-rave scene, where the medical examiner gets his first taste of Utopium and EDM, strictly for educational purposes, of course. His notes from the field are mostly incoherent and drowned out by trance music, but his bare-chested dancing is spot on.

Det. Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin) and Liv find their stabbing victim splayed on the floor of a frat house, where he dropped during a kegger. No one stopped partying long enough to check his pulse.

Chad Wolcoff had been a pledge captain and notorious prankster and, as such, left behind a fairly lengthy list of aggrieved fellow students, some with shaved eyebrows. He also had a twin, in name only, at the same school whose teenage past involved a drunken vehicular homicide.

Neither sounds like a man of the year candidate. But Chad 2, now sober and making amends as a public speaker for his youthful crime, sometimes crosses paths with Chad 1, an unrepentant, beer-soaked jerk. Even the mail service can’t keep them straight.

So when the son of the car crash victim looks up Chad Wolcoff, he locates Chad 1 instead of Chad 2. Imagine how he feels when he sees Chad 1 doing keg stands and hazing freshmen. Dressed as a blue furry bear named Capt. Wozzles, he attacks Chad 1 with some lethal jabs to the kidneys.

How Liv and Clive unravel this mistaken identity mystery is less the point than the sadness that hangs over the guy’s arrest. No one wins.

Speaking of a rock and hard place … Major wants to keep Liv safe while protecting his own hide. That’s why he’s reluctantly working for Max Rager’s corrupt chief executive, Vaughn Du Clark, and he’s made his first zombie kill. The aftermath is not pretty. The man’s two kids are on the news pleading for information about his disappearance. No wonder Major feels like escaping.

Ravi drags him along on his research into the effects of Utopium, scoring drugs at a dance club. Ravi’s a happy drunk, it turns out, and Major’s a toilet hugger. Liv to the rescue.

She helps her former fiance with aspirin and electrolytes, and she thinks there may be a thaw in their icy distance when he asks her to stay with him and puts his head in her lap. It’s an unfortunately short détente, though, because Major pushes her away at the next available opportunity. Liv is heartbroken, again.

Ravi is shocked – and shockingly not hung over – when the guy he and Major bought Utopium from turns up with his throat slashed at the morgue. Three more rich kids follow, alerting Ravi to something nasty afoot.

Blaine?!

Certainly it’s Blaine, who suits up in his best, most intimidating zombie look – he’s human for the time being – to visit the Seattle district attorney. Those four dead trust fund babies? Expect more, Blaine tells the prosecutor, implying it won’t bode well for the public official’s run for mayor.

But there’s a way to stop the bloodshed, and it involves a takedown of Blaine’s dangerous and well-connected drug trafficking competition, Mr. Boss. The prosecutor, also a zombie, can’t find a way to refuse the offer but wants cash to make it happen

Blaine says he’ll pay in brains – he chose his new legit business, a funeral parlor, for obvious reasons – but goes to extort his father anyway. Maybe he just likes the feeling of metal on metal. He’ll take a half-million dollars, thank you, he says to Angus as he jabs him for being an awful parent (and ignoring Mommy DeBeers’ suicidal pleas for help and institutionalizing Grandpa and stealing his successful company out from under him).

Angus gives as good as he gets, berating the son who did not graduate from Wharton and hadn’t hit on any of his get-rich schemes. Have they not spoken in a while? Is Angus not fully aware that Blaine has moved up in the (under)world? Or perhaps he just can’t help himself because he’s still hacked off about being turned into a zombie by his own offspring.

Oedipal twist!

Here’s hoping for more Blaine vs. Angus, more DeBeers backstory and more half-naked Ravi, aka Princess Sparkles, in future episodes.