Summer series finales - iZombie
Aug. 16th, 2019 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Yes, in case you missed it, both iZombie and Legion wrapped up their television runs, respectively. iZombie, after 5 years on the CW, and Legion after just 3 years. Both of these series were well aware of that this would be their last season and technically had plenty of time to end things on their terms.
SPOILERS AHEAD OBVIOUSLY!
iZombie has never been a perfect series. We all know Rob Thomas, creator of Veronica Mars and iZombie, can have trouble with the follow through. I enjoyed watching it but I wasn't a die hard fan. It was a fun way to scratch (see what I did there?) 45 minutes.
iZombie's first three seasons were simple enough, Liv Moore was infected and turned into a Zombie after a wild boat party left her scratched. She has to eat brains to survive but discovers a side effect that makes her invaluable to the local police force - if she eats brains, she can see the memories of the victim.
The "cute" part of the show was that with each brain Liv ate, she took on the attributes of the person. This was the schtick for the first three years - crime of the week, Liv is some kooky character, murder is solved, the end.
There was a quiet background plot about the origin of the zombie virus and a crime lord named Blaine murdering behind the scenes to get "high end" brains.
Then things got complicated and, at the time, I was impressed! The show did things I didn't expect, like having more people become infected and eventually having all of Seattle walled off, using the infected as metaphors for being gay, being POC, and the plight of the refugee. HEAVY STUFF!
And then the season started again and it went right back into the "crime of the week" pattern. This has bothered me for the past two seasons. The world building on the show had advanced enough that Liv solving crimes were not where my interests were - it was this whole zombie apocalypse, Seattle vs. the World, humans vs. Zombies, zombies vs. humans stuff! I had hoped with the final season, they would just dive into this but instead they still insisted on shoe horning in a crime each episode and a goofy brain each episode UNTIL THE LAST EPISODE! NO JOKE!
And then there was the finale. Blaine, the antagonist for the entire season, (someone that they did a total 360 on; it felt like they wanted to redeem him and then BAM! he goes full evil homocidal no remorse) he dies by...falling down a well? Pushed in the well by his partner who he betrayed earlier in this season and then his partner dies when he is...also pushed down a well? Very anti-climactic. I know it was being played for laughs but it came off as rushed and lazy to me.
Then we get the ten year time jump (with special guest star, Piz from Veronica Mars...I think KB was the only one that didn't stop by the show, and they did make a joke about that in the finale). Lots of telling us how things happened. It is revealed that the cure worked and everyone was cured...except for the people who had fatal diseases, they stayed zombies.
This didn't work for me. First, it was already established that if you are a zombie, you never grow up or grow old. Well, the characters with all the fatal diseases we met in the show? Children. How sad is that, they will never grow up and be adults, eternally stuck at whatever age they are. If Rob Thomas was smart, he would have done the really obvious thing - if giving someone the zombie virus cures the disease, then wouldn't curing them of the zombie virus make them healthy? Was that too obvious for him?
And then having Liv and Major opt to STAY ZOMBIES and adopt all these not-sick kids.
And then, the thing that really bothered me, in the final moments, Liv and Major talk to Ravi, Peyton and Clive who have all moved away from Seattle. They joke about how Liv and Major still look the same and how unfair it is and then Liv makes a comment about how they could return to Seattle and become zombies too and how messed up is that? Pretty much saying they should die, give up everything?
It felt very immature to me. The moral of the story should be the joy of getting older and wiser and gracefully coming full circle. To have Liv trying to entice them back, especially when we know Clive has children, how is that healthy? Shouldn't it have been the other way around? Time to grow up, Peter Pan, come live with us? But because Thomas decided to keep the sick kids sick, it messed up the ending that could have been.
So, on a scale of Game of Thrones (0) to Buffy (10), I'd say this finale falls right about Scrubs level. Not awful, disappointing, especially when it had so much potential.
Whoa, this got looooooooooong. I guess I had feelings. I'm going to save my Legion write up for another day.
SPOILERS AHEAD OBVIOUSLY!
iZombie has never been a perfect series. We all know Rob Thomas, creator of Veronica Mars and iZombie, can have trouble with the follow through. I enjoyed watching it but I wasn't a die hard fan. It was a fun way to scratch (see what I did there?) 45 minutes.
iZombie's first three seasons were simple enough, Liv Moore was infected and turned into a Zombie after a wild boat party left her scratched. She has to eat brains to survive but discovers a side effect that makes her invaluable to the local police force - if she eats brains, she can see the memories of the victim.
The "cute" part of the show was that with each brain Liv ate, she took on the attributes of the person. This was the schtick for the first three years - crime of the week, Liv is some kooky character, murder is solved, the end.
There was a quiet background plot about the origin of the zombie virus and a crime lord named Blaine murdering behind the scenes to get "high end" brains.
Then things got complicated and, at the time, I was impressed! The show did things I didn't expect, like having more people become infected and eventually having all of Seattle walled off, using the infected as metaphors for being gay, being POC, and the plight of the refugee. HEAVY STUFF!
And then the season started again and it went right back into the "crime of the week" pattern. This has bothered me for the past two seasons. The world building on the show had advanced enough that Liv solving crimes were not where my interests were - it was this whole zombie apocalypse, Seattle vs. the World, humans vs. Zombies, zombies vs. humans stuff! I had hoped with the final season, they would just dive into this but instead they still insisted on shoe horning in a crime each episode and a goofy brain each episode UNTIL THE LAST EPISODE! NO JOKE!
And then there was the finale. Blaine, the antagonist for the entire season, (someone that they did a total 360 on; it felt like they wanted to redeem him and then BAM! he goes full evil homocidal no remorse) he dies by...falling down a well? Pushed in the well by his partner who he betrayed earlier in this season and then his partner dies when he is...also pushed down a well? Very anti-climactic. I know it was being played for laughs but it came off as rushed and lazy to me.
Then we get the ten year time jump (with special guest star, Piz from Veronica Mars...I think KB was the only one that didn't stop by the show, and they did make a joke about that in the finale). Lots of telling us how things happened. It is revealed that the cure worked and everyone was cured...except for the people who had fatal diseases, they stayed zombies.
This didn't work for me. First, it was already established that if you are a zombie, you never grow up or grow old. Well, the characters with all the fatal diseases we met in the show? Children. How sad is that, they will never grow up and be adults, eternally stuck at whatever age they are. If Rob Thomas was smart, he would have done the really obvious thing - if giving someone the zombie virus cures the disease, then wouldn't curing them of the zombie virus make them healthy? Was that too obvious for him?
And then having Liv and Major opt to STAY ZOMBIES and adopt all these not-sick kids.
And then, the thing that really bothered me, in the final moments, Liv and Major talk to Ravi, Peyton and Clive who have all moved away from Seattle. They joke about how Liv and Major still look the same and how unfair it is and then Liv makes a comment about how they could return to Seattle and become zombies too and how messed up is that? Pretty much saying they should die, give up everything?
It felt very immature to me. The moral of the story should be the joy of getting older and wiser and gracefully coming full circle. To have Liv trying to entice them back, especially when we know Clive has children, how is that healthy? Shouldn't it have been the other way around? Time to grow up, Peter Pan, come live with us? But because Thomas decided to keep the sick kids sick, it messed up the ending that could have been.
So, on a scale of Game of Thrones (0) to Buffy (10), I'd say this finale falls right about Scrubs level. Not awful, disappointing, especially when it had so much potential.
Whoa, this got looooooooooong. I guess I had feelings. I'm going to save my Legion write up for another day.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-19 02:38 am (UTC)After watching the latest season of Veronica Mars I've decided that Rob Thomas & Co. are lazy writers because I was ready to turn it off after the third episode. Just really cliche crap and for some reason all of these thirty somethings are still acting like they are in high school and it is driving me crazy. How can someone write these characters and NOT want them to grow and evolve? Blah.