‘iZombie’ recap: ‘Physician, Heal Thy Selfie’

First, if there is now or ever will be a pasty-faced, bleached blond Liv Moore look-alike doll named Sally Tiny Tears, I want one. Immediately.

Second, on the scale of “iZombie” merchandise suggestions, such a product would rank right up there with branded hot sauce, Seattle morgue paraphernalia and copies of “The Upright Position.”

But I digress only slightly with the recap of this week’s episode of the dram-zom-rom-com, dubbed “Physician, Heal Thy Selfie,” simply because the scene with a confidential informant who said Liv reminded him of a creepy kid’s toy was so much fun.

This brief bit is tucked in, and it zips past, but it’s a sterling example of what makes this show such a razor sharp, self-aware pleasure. And aside from being a salty piece of comedy, it ties into the larger narrative, with the street-level drug slinger giving Liv and Clive a window into the illicit scene.

Namely, he lets them know there’s a rival to Mr. Boss who’s pushing a more potent, cheaper form of Utopium called Lucky U. Liv figures out who the shady entrepreneur is in the final minutes of this hour, and this intel will be really, really important to our heroes.

On to the down-and-dirty of this hour, which sees Liv Moore (Rose McIver) using her own brain to solve a triple murder -- the victims are headless! -- and gives shippers everywhere something to swoon about on the Peyton and Ravi front. Friendly advice: Don’t get ahead of yourselves.

Major Lilywhite (Robert Buckley) and Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), in their parallel universes, seem to take a few steps forward and several back as their deceptions start to catch up to them.

It’s perfect that “Physician, Heal Thy Selfie” is all about the oversharing that defines today’s social media, when the show itself revolves around its characters’ closely held secrets. What they don’t know -- what they hide from each other, however well-intentioned -- does hurt them.

Liv has no such filter, at least for a while, when she ingests the brain of an unfortunate 25-year-old gal named Madison who was addicted to Twitter and Facebook and Yelp and on and on. The Snapchatting millennial was too fixated on her smartphone to see that city bus coming straight for her. (Resist making any hashtag jokes here).

Liv ends up turning into an “online influencer” who says things like, “Of course I ‘grammed it. That fish was on fleek. #SushiObsessed.” She takes more selfies than a Kardashian and suspects her crush is up to no good because he has no digital presence. She’s right, but that’s because Drake is a double-crossing ex-con zombie with anger issues, not because he doesn’t have a Tinder profile.

The murder du jour is actually a triple homicide, and the victims’ bodies are found on a riverbank minus their noggins. What happens to Liv’s “psychic” mojo when she can’t snack on their gray matter? (It’s the first time in “iZombie” history that she’s eaten brains from a non-murder victim).

Minus the visions, she and Det. Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin) do it the old-school way, following trails that tell them the victims worked for Mr. Boss. One was his machete-toting nephew.

Were they responsible for the apparent abduction of the missing district attorney? Was that the intended payback for the Mr. Boss indictments? And are they copycatting the Chaos Killer, complete with anti one-percenter graffiti, to throw police off their trail?

Yes, yes and yes. But somewhere between the plan and its execution, three armed and dangerous thugs end up decapitated by a 40something lawyer who’s now in the ether. Sound suspicious?

It sure does to Vaughn Du Clark (Steven Weber), who rakes Major over the coals about this incident. If Major had correctly ID’d and done away with DA Floyd Baracus, a zombie on the down low, this would’ve never happened.

How many other members of the walking undead have slipped through the cracks, Vaughn asks Major, the actual Chaos Killer. And just to flex his evil muscles, Vaughn promises to kill someone every day -- picking from the vast pool of Max Rager trolls -- until Major makes up for his mistake. (He admits he cut Baracus loose from his zombie-hunter web because he didn’t want to snatch the guy in front of his young son).

This isn’t the first time Major gets blackmailed with his own sense of morality, and it probably won’t be the last. Poor Major.

Peyton Charles (Aly Michalka), newly armed with all the Blaine back story she can stomach, tries to quit her job because she’s crossed a line with her snitch. Blaine tries to keep their relationship, such as it is, alive, but his charm doesn’t work on her anymore.

And Blaine finds out that Peyton and Liv are besties. There’s a crash, and it’s his worlds colliding, and it doesn’t end there. Mr. Boss buries his nephew from Blaine’s funeral home, recognizes “John Deaux” as his former lackey and strong-arms him for lost inventory.

Blaine is indebted to Mr. Boss to the tune of about $80,000, dating to the infamous boat party and the tainted Utopium that started the whole undead plague in Seattle. His plan to become the local kingpin seems to hit a snag, except this is slippery, slimy Blaine, who bribes a zombie reporter to expose Mr. Boss for his hit on DA Baracus. Blaine, master manipulator, is the king of self-preservation.

So where is Baracus anyway? He had been hiding out in his rural cabin, with Liv feeding him random brains and empathizing with his plight. He can’t admit he killed those goons, whose heads were stowed in his refrigerator, he can’t come clean about being a zombie and he can’t resurface because of the looming Mr. Boss threat. What can he do?

Major, thinking fast to save as many lives as possible but still keeping his night job a secret from his friends, works with Baracus to fake his death. Into the bottomless zombie freezer he goes!

The opposite of cold: Late-night drinking sessions between Peyton and Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli). These two are fabulous together, no doubt, even though they’ve never really been together.

They weren’t a couple before -- they were in the flirtatious nascent stages at best -- and they may never be. But it’s a joy to see them do shots and watch “Zombie High,” with Ravi comparing her to the Karen Allen character in “Raiders of the Lost Arc.” “And I’m that fat Nepalese guy who ends up under the table.”

Peyton decides to keep her job and moves out of the Ravi-Major compound. Ravi is sad, but his liver is saved. And Liv, through some brain food, sees that Blaine is the pusher behind Lucky U. What does that say about Drake? No more horrible makeovers from his wacky mom? And another budding relationship bites the dust? Poor Liv.