What’s Worth Watching: iZombie’s Ay-yi-Identity Crisis

iZombie, “Liv and Let Clive” (Tuesday, April 7, 9/8c, the CW)

It has taken a while for high-functioning zombie Liv (Rose McIver) to adjust to the “you are what you eat” reality of her undead life. The way it works: Every time she feeds her appetite by ingesting the brains of a victim in the morgue where she works, Liv begins to see from their POV and even adopts aspects of their personality. All of which adds to iZombie‘s whimsical supernatural kick—although it’s a kick to the psyche when Liv’s latest meal, a John Doe whose fingertips and molars were removed, reveals an alarming image: a brutal beat-down to the victim administered by her partner in crime-solving, Detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin). He has always been secretive about his time working vice, but could he possibly have resorted to torture or worse during his tenure?

Otherwise, it’s another delightful hour of genre cross-pollination between mystery and horror, as we learn more about the goals of bad-boy zombie Blaine (David Anders) and Liv must curb her jealousy when ex-boyfriend Blaine (Robert Buckley) appears to have moved on. Leave it to Liv to keep things in perspective: “What’s that old zombie saying: Today is the first day of the rest of your half-dead life.”