Well, you can’t have zombie knife fights every week – and sadly, after the great episodes we got so far, I was kinda expecting a slower one. So strap in, we’ve got an uninteresting brain of the week, our manchild CEO, and the return of an old character I’m calling Papa John’s Commercial from here on out.

To the recap!

We open on a pretty white lady with the creepiest eyes I’ve ever seen getting attacked by the world’s most bumbling assassin. While trying to kill her with the power of Cheeto palms, they both fall off the cliff. He should have studied under Major first, because holy shit, is that guy scary out of nowhere. Remember when he was just the goofy councilor who kept getting beaten up by Lenny the zombie?

Turns out the assassin, whom I named Beardy, posed as a realtor to kill our brain of the week. He originally worked at a car detail and thief emporium. Ravi quips: “Thief posing as a Realtor. Seems like a lateral move.”

Clive assumes it’s the spouse, because he always does. “When rich wives get killed, it’s either about money or sex.” Meanwhile Liv’s gotten clingier than usual, wanting to spend Friday hanging out with Ravi and Clive, which they imply has happened before. I’d love to have been a fly on that wall with Ravi spinning quips at the napkin dispenser, Liv crumbling from her last lunch, and Clive groaning into his beer wondering who cursed him.

Can we take up a collection to send him on a nice vacation? He’s earned it.

Since the brain of the week is about as exciting as white bread in a white room during a white sale, we’re also watching Major continue his downward spiral into becoming a Batman villain. He’s been crossing names off the list by sensing who isn’t really a zombie and letting them live. Gilda gets to him by mentioning that Von’s original plan was to just send letters to all the alleged zombies, get ’em on a boat and sink it. Though, given her cut-throat nature and gleam in her eye, I kind hope it was actually her plan. I fear they’re softening her up for reasons coming up, but Von – while ruthless – feels a bit like watching a toddler with all the money in the world. Gilda being the cold, heartless one would be so much more fun.

Major understands her threat and finds himself another zombie to off. Because half of this show is trying to destroy the guy – after he drugs the man (Von must have given him a deal or something), the zombie wakes up in his trunk begging Major to not kill him or his dog. Major does one of those, and dumps the guy into the Dead Body River. Clive, I know you’re busy dealing with whatever weird shit Liv’s into now, but you might want to notice the bodies piling up in the drainage system. It’s starting to smell.

They do tie our brain of the week to Von; turns out her husband sits on the Max Rager board. Does Max Rager own Seattle or something? It’s like the Wayne Tech and Star Labs of iZombie but instead of creating – in theory – helpful tech or medicine, it only produces energy drinks and zombies. Damn, that’s dark.

Clive and Liv go to ask Von some questions about Taylor (our brain of the week), and Liv gets her first flashback that I think we’d all like to burn out of our brains. Bleach is in the second cabinet below the sink! Seems Taylor was screwing Von, which he’s quick to deny because he’s not a moron – though his brain seems to be stuck at age 21 in a frat house.

Apparently he’s Seattle’s most eligible bachelor because the rest of the options are hipsters. He and Liv have an entertaining exchange where, after talking about Taylor and Terrance’s marriage, he says, “There’s a reason you won’t catch me getting married .” Liv cuts back with: “Because you can’t legally marry your own reflection?”
“Burn.” This is why I’m hoping it’s Gilda who’s the true brains, because you just don’t want your super genius CEO to go around spouting memes at the drop of a hat. Have I mentioned yet that I miss Blaine?

On the way out, Liv runs into Major in Von’s office. She rightly freaks out, then less rightly slaps him. He takes it like a kicked puppy, though Von’s entertained as hell. At least with Major knowing the truth Liv can kinda try to explain it as brains making her act weird – except Major never ate any. He has no idea about zombie vision, so…eh, he’s so broken I’m sure he’ll forget about it.

Gilda was working on her Evil Scout lurking badge and overheard the entire conversation. Later, she confronts Von about risking everything just to screw Terrance’s wife. He says: “I promise it’ll never happen again…because she’s dead.” Then we get the bombshell that Gilda is actually his daughter from one of many random one-night stands. I assume the mother, after giving birth, realized who she slept with and went all Oedipus, as all of Von’s partners do.

Gilda finds Major in what I’m assuming is a private gym that Major now lives in. She presents like a mandrill so depression, drugs, and daddy issues can all coalesce together in one quick bang session on the sweaty mats. Major is going to need 10,000 years of counseling after this.

Back to the Brain of the Week. I know, I know. Clive’s finally got his meeting with the rich husband. This is mostly to establish that Terrance was with his personal stylist at the time of the murder *flashing klaxons* and so Clive can smoothly ask him if he knew that Taylor was banging Von. Terrance flips out and smashes his fist through the coffee table. Liv and Clive wonder if it wasn’t an act later, but is it ever wise for a person under possible murder investigations to go and beat up furniture? Seems like a great way to point the finger right at you, but I’m not the Undead Columbo here.

Liv and Clive swing by the stylist – Bethany – to ask her a few questions and mostly have the finger pointed at Taylor’s best friends and red herrings Deborah and Camile. I assume they were all trying to get their own reality show, considering the fact that everyone hated everyone else but had to stay friends for the invisible cameras. One of the friends – it doesn’t matter who – reveals that Taylor was pissed at Terrance after finding out he was on Sugardaddyo.com. They added an “O” onto the name because the cool, hip cats are all saying Daddy-o. Seattle’s freaking weird.

This gives Liv her second zombie vision as she sees that Terrance knew about Taylor’s affair and punched a wall in. Man’s really got something against furniture and drywall. So now we’re back to the husband did it.

But, enough about that, cut to Ravi in the lab wishing that Liv was back on the bro brains instead. After interrupting him, they finally switch over to the conveniently-on TV to find out that the city’s cracking down on utopium (Blaine’s influence to take down Mr. Boss?) and the city decided to bring back Papa John’s Commercial to do it! That’s right, Peyton “I have a personality when the script calls for it” if she had a last name no one noticed it, is back. Liv’s all concerned about Ravi’s reaction, but he rightly responds, “We were only dating for a few weeks. I guess I was ready to move on.” Oh, Ravi.

The stylist calls up Liv and tells her she found some shoes for her that look like shoes. *klaxon blare again* *are you listening* For some reason, they pal around in Liv’s closet, with Bethany poo-pooing most options until they find an old dress of Peyton’s. Given the height differential, it must have fallen to Liv’s ankles. Liv becomes BFFs with Bethany *Klaxon waves arms! Oh, why am I even trying?* and they decide to have a me day together, which also happens to land on Liv’s birthday. A fact she didn’t feel like sharing with Ravi or Clive because she’d rather wallow in self pity.

While Liv’s girling out with Bethany, Clive continues to do his real job and finally interviews the guy who would have ended this episode in about ten minutes. Beardy’s boss doesn’t point the finger at Terrance, but instead says that some girlfriend of Beardy talked him into becoming the world’s worst assassin. He knows this through his mighty sleaze powers.

As we all saw coming a mile away, Bethany hooked up with Terrance on the Sugar Daddy-o 23-skidoo website and used Beardy to bump off his wife. Clive calls Liv to tell her the good news, and she manages to totally screw up acting cool. Bethany elbows her in the face and tries to make a run for it, but Liv dives on top of her. Bethany whips around to mace Liv, but that kicks up zombie time. In full red eye mode, Liv beats the shit out of Bethany, somehow never leaving a mark.

Meanwhile the shopkeeps watch on rather unimpressed. This must happen on a weekly basis. One of them snootily says: “Miss, we’re calling the police.” Liv adjusts her dress and answers: “I am the police. Close enough.”

Bethany was some SugarDaddy-o Can you dig it? widow that’d find rich guys and then take all their money and/or kill them. Give her a costume and a stupid name and we got ourselves a new vigilante. Robin Heels? I’m still working on it. Despite having a sort of connection to our Max Rager man-child, this brain of the week petered out pretty bad in the end.

Who cares, we’ve still got closure of a sort to get to. My next note is “Ravi’s freaking adorable.” I assume this is in reference to the way he’s acting after his date, but it’s also universally true. He comes home to find the dog from the zombie Major killed. Then he turns the corner and gets a bigger shock: “When did we get a dog? When did we get a Peyton? This house is full of surprises. Will you be revealing our new chef, or should I prepare my own snack?”

Peyton tries to apologize to some guy she was only dating for a few weeks. It’s weird, just really weird. Sorry, but I’m getting zero chemistry off these two. Okay, it’s not as bad as Oliver and Felicity (shudder), but Ravi seemed more excited about random girl named Stephanie than this character we’re supposed to care about. All the Peyton bits seemed particularly off, as they gave us almost nothing before she learned the truth about Liv and beat feet. Trying to jam in pathos for this flat character is like putting toothpaste back in the tube. Sorry, don’t really care.

About the only moment of “Oh, that’s nice” was Liv coming back home in full on mope mode to find a birthday cake in the fridge that Peyton left for her. It was a nice reminder that maybe they do have a lot of history that we never saw or even had hinted at. If they’re going to turn Peyton into the Twoface of iZombie world, they’re going to need to add a lot more to her. Right now she’s just pretty, lawyery, and knows a good bakery.

Terrance, fresh off burying his wife and visiting his old girlfriend in jail, confronts Von for sleeping with his wife. He’s threatening a takeover and says he has all the votes on the board to kick Von out. I assume this is exactly how American Apparel got rid of Dov Chaney, though he was probably doing yoga without pants on.

Von’s not one to go down without a fight, so he invites Terrance to the lab. Never smart, Dude. When people pull out secret panels to scan their fingerprints, you suddenly remember you had something else to do that night and run. Von gets Terrance into a room with a torture chair in it. A freaking torture chair! God, this guy has the survival instincts of a toddler.

Chuckling, Von releases the old Doctor Holland (the one zombie Sebastian beat to death) on Terrance, chewing him to tiny rich guy pieces. Thus Von’s secured himself even more questions from the police. Wouldn’t someone still be watching Terrance, a high powered and very wealthy man who just got chewed up by a zombie?

Then again, Von does have the impulse control of a puppy. It’s just another mess for Gilda to clean up.

Fingers crossed that Blaine returns next week. Maybe if I wish really hard on the Great Pumpkin, it’ll come true!