‘iZombie’ recap: ‘Even Cowgirls Get the Black and Blues’

Like a lot of good country songs, this episode of “iZombie” has love, betrayal, lies, confessions, mistakes and heartbreak.

But, this being the twisted dram-rom-zom-com that it is, it’s also filled with strangulation, wearable pheromones, banjo jokes, evangelicals and fried brain fritters. As it should be.

There are two incredibly satisfying scenes in this hour, dubbed “Even Cowgirls Get the Black and Blues,” and they, blessedly, put our heroine back in touch with two of the most important people in her life.

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Liv Moore (Rose McIver) and her BFF Peyton Charles (Aly Michalka) finally have that face-to-face meeting where they apologize, admit how desperately they’ve missed each other and warmly hug it out. It’s exactly the scenario I wanted to see but was afraid might not happen.

And Major Lilywhite (Robert Buckley) hits rock bottom, which isn’t the good part, but he turns to his former love, Liv, for help. That’s the heart-melting part.

But I worry that this is a temporary reunion because just as Liv was trying to protect Major from her new monstrousness, he’s been doing the same for her. I fret. But for today, I have to be happy that he reaches out in a time of real need, and she takes him in.

Except if that kissing at her front door turns into something more passionate and intimate. … Well, that might just derail everything.

Let’s get into the story, in which Liv crushes it at an open mic night, Peyton pursues a crime boss and Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli) rocks some serious Western wear.

And Blaine DeBeers (David Anders) is back and more immoral than ever, torturing a former drug dealing cohort and turning snitch on the city’s reigning crime boss. He’s also flirting with Peyton so, yeah, he’s as depraved as ever. Never go away again, Blaine!

This may be the only time that Liv’s visions don’t solve the murder du jour. One of Seattle’s finest, Det. Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), handles that job this week, with an assist, of course, from newly minted singer-songwriter Liv.

Two killings actually happen back to back, with a convenience store clerk gunned down during a robbery and a honky-tonk waitress strangled in her apartment. The former crime commands more attention and manpower since it happened in a tony area of town. Liv, Clive and Ravi work the latter, discovering a shady ex-con ex-boyfriend and a lecherous bar manager in victim Lacey Cantrell’s life.

Either man could be responsible for the death of the transplanted Texan, since both have flimsy alibis and strong motives. Liv pan-fries Lacey’s brain so she can figure out who and why.

And after she snacks, she just can’t stop spouting down-home clichés and Southern truisms. She buys a guitar from a pawn shop – where Clive makes a “pickin’ and grinnin’” crack about accompanying her on the banjo – and starts scribbling lyrics in a notebook.

It’s an ongoing conceit of the show for her to adopt personality quirks and traits of the person whose brain she eats. This one suits her especially well.

McIver can play guitar and sing IRL, and producers had reportedly been waiting for the right time to bust out these skills. She’s learned plenty of new things specifically for the series, as the die-hard fans already know, like kung fu, Romanian, motocross and extreme sample-sale shopping. It’s good to see her trot out another talent for a live performance of an original song at Lacey’s restaurant. Plus, now we know that Ravi’s a little bit country and that he looks foolish (but still handsome) in a Stetson. Question: is he still wearing the pheromone cologne?

As it turns out, it’s the convenience store murderer who kills Lacey. Looking for a place to hide and being pursued by police, the stickup guy ducks into her house. He attacks her when she comes home from her shift and finds him stashed in her closet.

It’s simply a case of wrong place, wrong time. Liv knows all about that.

She has an epiphany while singing about doomed lovers and decides to let Major go – really, release him – forever. She makes a heart-wrenching speech to him about how she’ll never stop loving him, but the dream is dead. The future they’d planned cannot be, post-zombie infection and its complicated aftermath.

His response? “Thanks for stopping by.”

Icy cold, Major! He’s pushing her away because he’s self-medicating with Utopium and indiscriminate sex as a salve for his indentured servitude. He’s reminded constantly that he’s now a zombie hunter-killer by news reports of prominent citizens who have gone missing. He’s responsible and he can’t tell anyone out of guilt and fear. (Vaughn Du Clark is blackmailing him over the Meat Cute vigilante murders.)

In the wake of Liv’s visit, he’s even more despondent. He goes to score Utopium and runs into a kid he used to know at the youth center where he worked. That’s his crash-and-burn, and he ends up at Liv’s door and in her arms asking for help.

Peyton, who’s heading up a high-profile drug task force, can’t make any headway with the local thugs. She’s trying to turn them against Stacey Boss, the area’s crime lord. Just as she’s most frustrated, she gets an avalanche of vital inside information. She’s grateful to her new source, who’s undeniably hot. Who is it? None other than Blaine DeBeers, trying to knock off the competition. Put a pin in this situation because it will be important going forward.

When Blaine isn’t singing like a canary, he’s putting the screws to an old drug-running buddy, Gabriel, for the stepped-on Utopium recipe. He needs to give that formula to Ravi so the medical examiner can cook up more zombie cure.

Gabriel, who has left his lawless days behind, doesn’t seem inclined to give Blaine what he wants, even after being kidnapped, beaten and turned into a zombie. But that will change once the hunger sets in.

Usually, Blaine gets what Blaine wants. It’s just a matter of when.