Comic book fans you've seen me review a ton of comic book shows that feature superheroes and hell you've seen me take a look at a few that don't feature superheroes. This is one of those shows and it's also a show that i've not really seen for a really long time and since I don't just want to cover comic book shows that feature superheroes I thought that this would be a good show to cover and so here is my review of the first episode of Izombie called "Pilot" enjoy the review everyone because I know that I will.
The story for this episode is a girl is found dead and it's up to Detective Clive Babineaux and morgue worked / newly turned zombie Olivia Moore to find who did it and why. The plot in my opinion is honestly really well told since it does a good job of telling the story of how Olivia Moore became a zombie in the first lace as well as telling the aforementioned plot both of which are really interesting and engaging in my opinion.
Starring in the episode is Rose McIver as Olivia Moore , Malcolm Goodwin as Clive Babineaux and Rahul Kohli as Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti. Also starring in the episode is Robert Buckley as Major Lilywhite , Aly Michalka as Peyton Charles , Molly Hagan as Eva Moore , Ty Olssen as Detective Pratt , Nick Purcha as Evan Moore , Daran Norris as Johnny Frost , Hiro Kanagawa as Lieutenant Suzuki , Alexandra Voicu as Tatiana , Elysia Rotaru as Tess and Jenna Berman as Monica.
In all honesty the acting in this episode was alot better then what I remember it being and I know that I say that or something like it alot but i honestly feel that it's true here since i've only seen this episode and this show once which was when it was first being broadcast. It would have been very easy for the actors in this show to go over the top with there acting since the premise of the show is kind of stupid but no they all went the serious route with there acting and it pays off because for me that makes the comedy and the more dramatic moments work better.
For those of you who don't know this TV show and thus this episode is based on the comic book also called Izombie which was published by DC Comics under there Vertigo banner. The book was written by Chris Roberson with artwork by Michael Allred , Jay Stephens , Jason Bone and James Rugg the book was published between 2010 and 2012 with the series lasting twenty eight issues which means the makers of this show didn't really have alot to work from when adapting the book for TV screens as such I have to assume that the TV show isn't that much like the book but i could be wrong.
While I cannot say if the book is any good since i've not read a single issue of it and nor do I plan to for that matter. I do hope that it is somewhat like the show just because the show was really fun to watch and would get really creative in some episodes and so I would love for that creativeness to be present in the book as well as the sense of fun that there is in the show as well but at the same time I hope that the comic book is nothing like the show just because I feel it would give the show more of a chance to stand on it's two feet.
In most zombie media the infection that causes you to become a zombie is caused when a zombie bites you. Here tho it seems to happen when a zombie scratches you which while it does work given the TV budget and the fact that this show aired on The CW nothing beats a traditional zombie bite there's just something about being bitten by a zombie that makes it feel more personal and at the same time more tragic.
Compare that to getting scratched and it just looses something because getting a scratch isn't personal hell it could be something that happens by accident and thus the idea of someone getting turned into a zombie looses that something that made the idea creepy and scary to begin with. Hell if you want to do something that's more TV friendly and yet still scary then why not have the zombie virus infect people at random this way your constantly on edge over who could turn next and that way should a cast member decide to leave the show you already have a way that they could leave the show.
This episode does introduce something that is honestly kind of cool and that's the fact that when a zombie is enraged he or she get's super strength. I honestly feel that this is actually a pretty cool idea and it's one that given the right property could work in other zombie related media and ity does create some drama for future episodes and future seasons of this show since now your left wondering when our main zombie girl Liv (Rose McIver) will fly of the handal again and if she does would she actually kill someone since she nearly does that in this episode.
One of the biggest issues for me is the episodes running time since the episode is forty two minuet and forty two second long. Which I feel is kind of long for this show since there are huge portions of the episode where nothing is happening to advance either the characters or the plot and as such the episode can at times feel very boring if anything this show should have had episodes that are at least twenty two to thirty minuets long but that's just what I think.
Now then boys and girls since this is a drama that does mean that I have to talk about the shows more dramatic moments. Which is honestly where this episode shines the brightest in my opinion since the show doesn't really hammer the drama down your throat at all it has only a handful of drama filled scenes with the rest of the episode being dedicated to the episode's main story as a well as setting up the main cast which is honestly more important then having a load of drama in every scene or at least that's what I think anyways.
Overall this was a really good and fun episode in my opinion and it's a really good example of how good this show could be. That being said as i've listed in this review the episode does have alot of problems and it's because of those problems that I cannot give this episode a perfect ten out of ten however I can see why this show caught on the way it did because this is a really good episode as such this episode gets a 7 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used in this review came from an online comics website which shall remain nameless but i'll just say that it uses "other methods" for people to read comics and the official Izombie TV Series fandom wiki page. Since the majority of the images that were used in this review came from the official Izombie TV Series fandom wiki page I have no choice but to recommend that you use the official Izombie TV Series fandom wiki page for images from either this episode or the show as a whole since alot of the images that I found were really high quality which is for me at least is an important thing when i'm creating a review.