- calendar_today August 21, 2025
Meet Cute to Meat Cute: The Many Faces of Blaine’s Evil Empire
Zombies are an enduring part of pop culture, but they had a particularly strong run on TV in the 2010s. This was the decade that gave rise to megablockbuster The Walking Dead (2010–2022) and countless small experiments, from feature-length efforts like the Netflix horror-comedy anthology Into the Dark to its soon-cancelled horror-comedy The Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018). Somewhere in that middle column was iZombie, a supernatural procedural dramedy that aired on The CW for five seasons in the mid-2010s. It wasn’t a hit in the sense that the top-shelf superhero and horror properties were, but the series did manage to build up an impressively loyal and passionate fanbase, thanks to its biting wit, its likeable cast, and its unique combination of weekly crime-solving with slowly-unfolding zombie mythology.
The series’ heroine, Liv Moore, was played by Rose McIver, a former aspie medical student who had been working as a volunteer EMT with a long-standing crush on her best friend, Peyton (Aly Michalka). Her life was forever changed one night after an otherwise sleepy beachside boat party was suddenly a bloodbath. A combination of the energy drink Max Rager and an adulterated batch of the designer drug Utopium had turned into a highly infectious virus, causing an outbreak that night. Scratched by one of the zombies while trying to escape, Liv spent the night wandering before waking up on a beach, naked in a body bag. To her horror, she had become a zombie herself, with all of the attendant problems of needing to eat brains every 30 days or so or risk going completely insane.
Liv’s boss, Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli), did find her out, but rather than panicking or immediately firing her, he became utterly fascinated, vowing to work tirelessly to find a cure. (He had been fired from the CDC previously for warning of exactly this type of virus.) She was also partnered with Detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), who was convinced Liv was psychic. Instead, each of the brains that Liv consumed provided her with flashbacks of the deceased person’s memories, along with a few idiosyncratic personality quirks, some of which were useful in solving the murder case of the week. (Fluency in a foreign language to key witnesses, of course, but also fears, like ophidiophobia, which could help the team set a trap for a suspect.)
Brains, Villains, and the Show’s Unforgettable Characters
Like any good drama, iZombie required an evildoer, and it found one in Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), the zombie who bit Liv on the boat. A dealer of the contaminated Utopium, Blaine made the logical business decision to switch to brains, infecting those who had the financial means to create a steady and reliable client base. Charismatic and ruthlessly determined to make himself a fortune, his complicated family history also made him surprisingly relatable as well as a grudgingly helpful ally from time to time.
On the smaller scale, the show also had its fair share of jokes in unexpected places. For example, Major’s last name was “Lillywhite,” the name Blaine chose for his butcher shop in season one was “Meat Cute,” Ravi and Major adopted a dog with the name “Minor,” and the zombie bar Liv worked at was named “The Scratching Post.” Fans also became obsessed with the show’s weekly culinary offerings, from Liv’s ingenious stir-fries, pizza roll concoctions, and hush puppies to Blaine’s signature gourmet gnocchi stuffed with, you guessed it, the medulla oblongata.
In subsequent seasons, the show added an increasingly large group of colorful supporting characters. From Jessica Harmon’s Dale Bozzio, who went from being an FBI investigator to Clive’s partner, to Bryce Hodgson’s Scott E., a standout mental hospital patient who eventually returned as his twin brother, Don E., as part of Blaine’s operation. There were also several recurring and episode-only guest spots, like Daran Norris’s sleazy weatherman Johnny Frost or Steven Weber as Vaughn du Clark, the CEO of Max Rager. Rita (Leanne Lapp), Vaughan’s daughter and Clive’s former patient, had a memorably appropriate end in the second-season finale after she ate his brains while “full Romero” just before being killed herself.
Possibly the most reliable source of entertainment was the rotating gallery of side effects from the brains that Liv ate each week. From a dominatrix to a curmudgeonly older man to a LARPing professor to a kids’ basketball coach, McIver was a versatile enough performer to pull off a vast range of comedic and emotional beats week after week. The effects of these brains were not always needed to serve as the episode’s character hook, either—like the time Lowell accidentally ate a gay man’s brain right before a date with Liv, or Liv, Blaine, and Don E. comparing conspiracy theories after eating paranoia-fueled brains.
In the standout “Flight of the Living Dead,” Liv ate the brain of her party-girl former sorority sister, Holly (Tasya Teles), who had died under mysterious circumstances during a skydiving accident. Experiencing Holly’s adventurous attitude about life and her death made Liv question her fear of fully living again after her zombification, and the show, more generally, in later seasons, often ignored its own rule that Liv needed a brain every 30 days, causing her to become visibly unglued when this was shown on screen.
