iZombie! Killing Eve! Elementary!
iZombie wrapped up its fourth season last night, and even though I assume there's only, like, three people reading this who care (out of the possibly six people reading this at all), I'm going to go under a cut for spoilers.
I'm usually fine with 13 episode seasons, but in this case I think at least a few more episodes would have been really beneficial, because it felt like some plots barely got resolved. For example, Ravi finds a cure in Isobel's brain, and even though only a little bit cured the rat, he gives the whole brain to Dale and now the cure is gone, and...huh? Wouldn't there have been enough for both Liv and Dale and, more importantly, for more research to be done on so that the cure could be replicated? Now, this may be resolved in S5 when we find out that Ravi did keep a portion for research; it would make sense to have him come up with a real cure for zombie-ism in the final season, but it was still weird that the final moments of this episode didn't take a second to show him saving some of the brain for later. There was a lot of time spent on Isobel and her friendship with Liv that just didn't pay off in the end.
Another story that seemed to resolve weirdly was the Brother Love plot. I'm not surprised that the character died, but I thought it was strange that it happened, basically, off-screen, with Blaine watching it on his laptop. But in thinking about it this morning, I realized that he might not have been killed off originally, and that the bit that Blaine watches might have been filmed later and added to the episode in order to dispatch with Robert Knepper, who has been accused of sexual assault. Anyway, I'm glad he's gone, both for the offscreen reasons and because the Brother Love stuff was my least favorite plot of the season.
I also thought that Major's character arc was all over the map this year, and I was a little disappointed that in the end, Chase Graves was reduced to being basically nothing more than the Big Bad; I actually thought he had a very good and defensible point about it being wrong for Renegade/Liv to create more zombies when brains were in such short supply. I sympathize with Liv trying to bring families together and help the terminally ill, but I actually think that Chase was right in most cases from trying to stop that from happening. Obviously, I'm not in favor of his public execution tactics or the way he went off the rails in the end, I'm just saying...he had a good point, and I think it got lost on the way to making him a pure villain.
One last complaint: I'm happy that Clive and Dale got married, and it was right for the plot and completely in character for Liv to give her cure to Dale for a wedding present so that she could be human again so that Clive wouldn't have to be turned into a zombie. But man, those wedding vows laid it on a bit thick about how Dale would never have kids and Clive was giving up his dream of being a father. I think one brief line from Dale and a quick cut to Liv looking sad/thoughtful would have conveyed the idea that Liv was going to give up her chance at a cure for Clive's happiness.
But, for all my complaints, I still have fun watching iZombie, and I liked how S5 was set up, with Major bringing Blaine and Don E. (the show's secret weapon, in my opinion), as well as Liv's operations as Renegade, into semi-legitimacy under the Fillmore Graves banner. That means that when next season starts, all of the major characters will be working on the same page and for the same goals. I'm not looking forward to the fact that Major/Liv is almost certainly endgame, because meh, but I'm resigned to it happening. It's going to be so romantic when she ends up with him because every other guy that she's ever been paired with has died.
Finally: "Remember me on this brain, because this is the brain that loves you." Awwww. Clive/Liv/Ravi is my OT3 for this show.
Okay, now that I'm done blathering about iZombie, did anyone else watch Killing Eve? I'm not usually a fan of the "Aren't psychopaths fascinating?" genre, but there was so much humor and sexiness and odd little quirks strewn throughout the season that, even though the plot is the kind of thing I've seen before, it still felt completely original. Sandra Oh (as investigator Eve) and Jodie Comer (as psychopath Villanelle) are both GREAT in their roles, and it's kind of refreshing to watch a show where most of the women are hypercompetent and brilliant, while most of the men fumble around, always at least one step behind them.
I also finally finished watching the first season of Younger on Hulu, and am now into S2. The premise is dumb (Sutton Foster is a 40 year old divorcee re-entering the workforce and pretending to be 26 because of the ageism in the publishing industry), but the actors are all charming and it's a fun show to put on when I want to watch something light before bed. I also like how specific it is about publishing and books as a workplace setting. It's a lot more interesting than if it were set in a generic office, and as far as I can tell, they get the details right.
I'm also watching Elementary right now, and really enjoying it for the most part. I do wish that the writers hadn't decided to make Joan's arc for the season about adopting a child. Childlessness is an actual option! It doesn't make her less of a person! Real women make that decision all the time, and it would be a nice thing to see it reflected on mainstream TV every now and then! But I was slightly relieved that she was at least looking into adoption rather than in vitro fertilization, if only so I don't have to watch a Watson pregnancy plot. Sherlock's arc regarding the aftereffects of a concussion is more interesting, and also makes me think that there should be fanfic where Giles deals with the same affliction.
I'm usually fine with 13 episode seasons, but in this case I think at least a few more episodes would have been really beneficial, because it felt like some plots barely got resolved. For example, Ravi finds a cure in Isobel's brain, and even though only a little bit cured the rat, he gives the whole brain to Dale and now the cure is gone, and...huh? Wouldn't there have been enough for both Liv and Dale and, more importantly, for more research to be done on so that the cure could be replicated? Now, this may be resolved in S5 when we find out that Ravi did keep a portion for research; it would make sense to have him come up with a real cure for zombie-ism in the final season, but it was still weird that the final moments of this episode didn't take a second to show him saving some of the brain for later. There was a lot of time spent on Isobel and her friendship with Liv that just didn't pay off in the end.
Another story that seemed to resolve weirdly was the Brother Love plot. I'm not surprised that the character died, but I thought it was strange that it happened, basically, off-screen, with Blaine watching it on his laptop. But in thinking about it this morning, I realized that he might not have been killed off originally, and that the bit that Blaine watches might have been filmed later and added to the episode in order to dispatch with Robert Knepper, who has been accused of sexual assault. Anyway, I'm glad he's gone, both for the offscreen reasons and because the Brother Love stuff was my least favorite plot of the season.
I also thought that Major's character arc was all over the map this year, and I was a little disappointed that in the end, Chase Graves was reduced to being basically nothing more than the Big Bad; I actually thought he had a very good and defensible point about it being wrong for Renegade/Liv to create more zombies when brains were in such short supply. I sympathize with Liv trying to bring families together and help the terminally ill, but I actually think that Chase was right in most cases from trying to stop that from happening. Obviously, I'm not in favor of his public execution tactics or the way he went off the rails in the end, I'm just saying...he had a good point, and I think it got lost on the way to making him a pure villain.
One last complaint: I'm happy that Clive and Dale got married, and it was right for the plot and completely in character for Liv to give her cure to Dale for a wedding present so that she could be human again so that Clive wouldn't have to be turned into a zombie. But man, those wedding vows laid it on a bit thick about how Dale would never have kids and Clive was giving up his dream of being a father. I think one brief line from Dale and a quick cut to Liv looking sad/thoughtful would have conveyed the idea that Liv was going to give up her chance at a cure for Clive's happiness.
But, for all my complaints, I still have fun watching iZombie, and I liked how S5 was set up, with Major bringing Blaine and Don E. (the show's secret weapon, in my opinion), as well as Liv's operations as Renegade, into semi-legitimacy under the Fillmore Graves banner. That means that when next season starts, all of the major characters will be working on the same page and for the same goals. I'm not looking forward to the fact that Major/Liv is almost certainly endgame, because meh, but I'm resigned to it happening. It's going to be so romantic when she ends up with him because every other guy that she's ever been paired with has died.
Finally: "Remember me on this brain, because this is the brain that loves you." Awwww. Clive/Liv/Ravi is my OT3 for this show.
Okay, now that I'm done blathering about iZombie, did anyone else watch Killing Eve? I'm not usually a fan of the "Aren't psychopaths fascinating?" genre, but there was so much humor and sexiness and odd little quirks strewn throughout the season that, even though the plot is the kind of thing I've seen before, it still felt completely original. Sandra Oh (as investigator Eve) and Jodie Comer (as psychopath Villanelle) are both GREAT in their roles, and it's kind of refreshing to watch a show where most of the women are hypercompetent and brilliant, while most of the men fumble around, always at least one step behind them.
I also finally finished watching the first season of Younger on Hulu, and am now into S2. The premise is dumb (Sutton Foster is a 40 year old divorcee re-entering the workforce and pretending to be 26 because of the ageism in the publishing industry), but the actors are all charming and it's a fun show to put on when I want to watch something light before bed. I also like how specific it is about publishing and books as a workplace setting. It's a lot more interesting than if it were set in a generic office, and as far as I can tell, they get the details right.
I'm also watching Elementary right now, and really enjoying it for the most part. I do wish that the writers hadn't decided to make Joan's arc for the season about adopting a child. Childlessness is an actual option! It doesn't make her less of a person! Real women make that decision all the time, and it would be a nice thing to see it reflected on mainstream TV every now and then! But I was slightly relieved that she was at least looking into adoption rather than in vitro fertilization, if only so I don't have to watch a Watson pregnancy plot. Sherlock's arc regarding the aftereffects of a concussion is more interesting, and also makes me think that there should be fanfic where Giles deals with the same affliction.