iZombie: Wag the Tongue Slowly – Season 3, Episode 4 Review

In “Wag the Tongue Slowly”, we rejoin Team Z the morning after Ravi makes his drunken mistake with his former boss, Catty. Blaine has come to see him in the morgue and get a quick check up to see if the serum has done anything for him. Ravi, clearly hungover, confirms there is no change yet to Blaine’s vitals or memory capacity. Blaine is fine with this, but Ravi is dismayed. Ravi tells Blaine that if the serum works, it will kick in no later than Saturday at 6am, and Blaine should probably have someone watch him. In a quick scene later in the episode, Blaine asks Peyton to be that someone.

Liv appears and Blaine thanks her for appearing at his show the night before. Even though Ravi seems upset about this as Blaine leaves, Liv tells Ravi that she is not there to judge. She does give Ravi the laundry list of what he’s done wrong- in a tone that indicates that even if she isn’t judging, she is pretty pissed on behalf of Peyton.

We cut to an office, where two women are gossiping by the water cooler. One of the women then makes her way to the fax machine, and then to the team café, and then to her desk, where she gossips with different office workers, who all seem less than interested. In the middle of a yogurt snack, the fire alarm goes off, and our gossip queen leaves. After the coast is clear, two other women gossip in the ladies room before they notice feet under the stall door. Cheryl, the gossipy woman from earlier, clearly owns the feet. When Cheryl does not respond to the women, they open the stall door and find Cheryl dead.

Cheryl is in the morgue with Ravi, Clive, and Liv standing over her. She died after someone put Utopium in her yogurt and it mixed with her anti-depressants. Clive mentions that Cheryl worked as a salesperson at a dental company and had recently booked a vacation- an unlikely suicide. Evidence shows that the yogurt Cheryl was eating was likely spiked with Utopium when the fire alarm went off. Liv makes lunch out of Cheryl.

That night, Major and Ravi play video games and Ravi drinks. Major’s cough is getting more than a little concerning and Ravi gives Major an inhaler. This calms the coughing temporarily, but the two agree that it’s time for Major to consider taking the cure that will erase his memory. Major will carry the cure with him for when he’s ready. Liv, doped up on gossip brain, starts telling Ravi about Blaine and Peyton sneaking off together. Even in this state, it seems odd that Liv didn’t seem concerned for Major.

At Clive’s desk, he gives Liv a stack of papers about the Tuttle-Reed murders and Clive is weirded out by Liv’s new nosey ways. They both head into the interview room with the head of the dental company’s HR department (one of the women who found her in the bathroom). When she reveals Cheryl was a gossip, Clive and Liv both understand why Liv is so chatty about other people’s business. The HR manager provides an entire binder of complaints against Cheryl.

Next, Cheryl’s cubical neighbor, Jim, shows up to be interviewed. Clive says that in the binder provided by the HR manager, Cheryl had been the one to out the interviewee as gay, and caused his divorce. He argues that he was not actually mad at Cheryl- he was relieved to finally come out of the closet. He has an alibi that he was the first to the gathering spot for the fire alarm and that all the other employees saw him.

Another employee, Pete, is brought in. Cheryl had been mad with him for eating her string cheese and the two had an escalating situation at work because Pete had chosen to keep eating her food because it made her mad. He admits to having poor sales numbers, but he finally got a call where he thought he could really push dental chairs. He stayed through the fire alarm to complete the sale, but at the last moment, the customer (who had an Italian accent) pulled out of the deal and left him hanging.

At Ravi’s, he half-heartedly plays video games and waxes emo while Major listens and eats popcorn. Blaine texts Major to tell him he got an order for brains from Osbourne, who was someone who knew Natalie. Major proposes a stake-out and tells Ravi to come along- he doesn’t even have to wear pants!

Vicki, another employee of the dental company, is questioned. Cheryl had ratted her out for abusing the company’s sick leave policy. Liv tells Vicki that her boss (Ravi) likes to make personal calls on business time… to England! Vicki says that when the alarm went off, she was in the bathroom, and met everyone downstairs and she has witnesses. She says that Rhonda Diaz was not present.

Rhonda Diaz is questioned and says that she hadn’t been there because she was on a coffee run. She proves this with a receipt on her phone. The fire alarm was going off when she returned, so she met everyone in the parking lot. Clive brings up Rhonda’s possible motive: Cheryl had told everyone in the office that Rhonda was a porn star and had emailed her filmography to everyone in the office. Rhonda says this is not the first time she’s had a hostile work environment, so Cheryl’s antics were nothing to her.

At the stake-out, Ravi and Major are bored and sitting in the car. Major plans to put a GPS on the car they are watching, but they must wait until the car is accessible. Later in the night, Major wakes Ravi up from a deep sleep and they tail the car.

Liv returns home and begins telling Peyton about how Ravi is holding up (poorly), when she notices Blaine is making cocktails. Peyton says she’s keeping an eye on Blaine to make sure he doesn’t have issues with the serum. Liv seems unsure how to react.

Back in the car, Major has lost the car he was trying to follow. When they catch up, they find the car has stopped and the driver is standing in the road with a gun. He forces Major and Ravi out of the car and takes their wallets to read their IDs. He tells Major if he ever sees him again, he’ll kill him. Major turns to tackle the man and misses. He kicks Major in the stomach several times and then leaves. After the car drives away, Major starts to laugh and reveals he stuck the GPS tracker in the jacket of the man. Ravi flips out and makes Major promise to leave this whole ordeal alone.

Of course, Major doesn’t, because he’s heroic. He follows the GPS signal to an apartment building.

In the morgue, Liv gossips with Ravi about Peyton and Blaine until Ravi pulls out a power saw to shut her up. Clive shows up and says that the Italian customer on the phone with Pete turned out to be fictional. He is going to go through all of Pete’s calls to see if the call was made up. He locates the call and feels like Georgina, the Italian lady, seems to be trying to keep Pete on the phone. A binder full of company texts reveals that Vicki and the other employees that were interviewed earlier were sending each other exclamation points at times that coincide with the crime, leading Clive to believe that the texts are a signal of some kind between co-conspirators.

Later, Clive calls Liv to see if he can talk through the crime until it makes sense. When he begins to gossip a bit about the office, it triggers a vision in Liv. She enlists Ravi to go through Rhonda’s porn filmography to find her in a scene where she has an Italian accent.

In the funeral parlor, Peyton lays in a coffin and talks to Blaine about the possibilities of his past. He worries about whether he tortured animals or even had anyone who cared about him. He worries about what happens if he remembers and whether he’ll stay his new self or revert to being a jackass. They go to Peyton’s apartment to make dinner and get a little flirty until Liv shows up. When Blaine heads to the bathroom, Liv questions Peyton about whether she realizes that even though she seems to like memory-less Blaine, this means that if Major takes the serum, he will forget who he is.

In the morgue, Ravi finds the porn Rhonda made with the Italian accent and the group identify that Rhonda is clearly the Italian woman on the phone call meant to keep Pete in the office during the fire alarm. Clive rounds up his suspects and gives them the rundown of how the crime happened. The group had originally meant to prank Cheryl, but ended up killing her. The group had hoped that the Utopium in the yogurt would make Cheryl act strangely so that gossip would be about her for once.

Major continues to scout out the apartment complex and notices Natalie, the zombie he’s been searching for all season, standing on the balcony. He immediately dashes into the building, past security, though his face is caught on the elevator camera. He goes to the apartment where he saw Natalie and she is shocked when she opens the door. When he explains he is there to save her, Natalie instructs him that he needs to leave. She explains that Seattle is not safe and he needs to run. He gives her a vial of the cure and explains the memory loss that comes with it.

Peyton and Blaine are watching a movie and Peyton expresses her concern that she wants Liv and Major to be human again, but that she’s also used to them being zombies. She admits she’s attracted to Blaine and they both worry about what might happen if Blaine wakes up in the morning with his memories. Peyton wants to spend at least one more night with “this Blaine” and kisses him. He stops short of taking things further and says they should wait until they know for sure who he’ll be in the morning.

Major is on a plane on his way to battle, in full army fatigues. He takes a shot of his inhaler. Liv is in the morgue reading through paperwork, and goes to see Clive about a man who owns a gun range and who hates zombies. The next morning, Peyton wakes up Blaine to see which version of him wakes up- and when she sees he is the Blaine with no memories, she leads him to the bedroom (but also feels guilty that Major will be memory-less in the future).

At the gun range, Clive and Liv meet Mr. Johns, who owns the place. He is very anti-zombie, anti-cop, and pro-white. Clive immediately shuts down the commentary by showing off his gun skills. He says that his brother was killed by zombies, but managed to get a photo of one first. Just as Clive and Liv are leaving, he tells them that “you can’t murder what ain’t alive”.

This was a jam-packed episode with lots of development, particularly for Peyton and Blaine. It is possible that Ravi was incorrect in thinking that the latest the serum would work is Saturday morning, but we’ll have to wait and see!