In other news, Ravi is the best. It was a weird week in “Love & Basketball.”
Spoilers ...
The death this week was of a beloved basketball coach. Which means the Liv comedy was in her constant sports references. It also is mostly irrelevant. The important parts of the episode have to do with Major’s questionable life decisions, Ravi’s medical experiments, and Clive’s investigations.
This episode picked up where last week’s ended: Liv and Major making out. Which Liv puts the kibosh on when she realizes that she could re-zombie Major through the sharing of bodily fluids. She does want to make sure they stay friends, though.
And so comes Major’s redemption arc, condensed. Liv yells him off of Utopia, gets him a job as the replacement coach for the basketball team, and generally inspires him to walk away from Max Rager’s kill zombies employ.
That last one is not going to stick. First of all, Major tries to end it all by telling Glinda that no one on the list turned out to be a zombie. When, of course, it’s that he knows that they’re just people. Second, he managed to piss her off by ending their sexing and Liv unwittingly lets the whole kissing debacle slip to her roommate. Third, Gilda also took Liv’s blood as a way for the Max Rager scientists to study the difference between a rabid and normal zombie and how to sedate them. That is so ending up in Major’s hands. Fourth of all, what’s the fun of giving Major hope if this show doesn’t destroy it in epic fashion?
A cleaned-up Major also tells Liv he wants her back. C’mon man, you’ve got a billion things you need to clear up before you can ask her for that.
In other plots, Blaine delivers Ravi a bottle full of the tainted Utopia from the boat party that ended with Liv among the undead. With that and Max Rager, Ravi is ready to re-start his cure research. Which everyone from Liv to Blaine insists he rush. Because rushing research involving zombies is a good idea.
In case that message wasn’t clear, Blaine shows up demanding the cure. Since he got the Utopia by turning the guy who made it and promising him he’d be cured. Instead, the dude injects himself with just the Utopia/Max Rager mix and not Ravi’s cure. And falls over dead.
Blaine points out that Ravi made the “anti-cure.” Instant zombie death. The two of them come to the conclusion that this is a big deal and have a hilariously protracted fight for it. Ravi wins, and Blaine bounces.
It was a very dignified fight.
Clive’s also winding his way to zombietown, since he’s figured out that his Captain’s death was less “heroic killing of villains” and more “suicide and taking all the credit.” Plus, there’s the fact that there’s DNA from that missing astronaut on the scene. And the Captain’s wife delivers Clive a box of brains her husband kept in his minifridge. By the way, there is something up with Agent Dale Bozzio, the only ally Clive seems to have. I don’t know what. Is a zombie, lost a family member to zombies, etc. Whatever it is, she is up to something.
Everyone’s moving forward, and it looks like there’s big events in the offing. And, as much as I say the death this week was incidental, the way it weaved into Major’s story was good. Would that all shows balanced their procedural and mytharc elements this well.
There are two other things I’m going to point out that have nothing to do with anything but are fun: 1) I love Ravi and the Tacoma MD’s banter so much. When that dude tried to say Ravi was hired because of “quotas,” and Ravi snarked back that it was just that they insist on hiring qualified experts, I wanted to ascend to heaven on the force of my love. 2) Liv says “Did you go to Hearst?” And now we know for sure this show shares a universe with Veronica Mars.
Photo: Cate Cameron/The CW
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