iZombie Review: Chivalry is Dead (Season 4 Episode 8)

iZombie Season 4 Episode 8, “Chivalry is Dead,” feels less like an exhilarating fight to the death and feels more like someone trying to crack a few jokes at a somber funeral.

Considering this show is well into the back half of season 4 now, you would expect more build up to a climax of some sort and yet no clear antagonist has emerged. This is despite Liv’s underground railroad directly violating Fillmore Graves intentions for New Seattle.

While iZombie has always been firmly against having a new bad guy for the brain gang to go head to head with every season, a battle between Liv and Fillmore Graves seems like the only logical direction for the show to take at this point in the series.

One can only hope this lack of conflict between Liv and Chase Graves is due to an unseen enemy that will emerge later on in the season.

The fire lit inside Liv to seek revenge after Mama Leone’s death is a powerful force that has confidently bulldozed through the dragging fatigue earlier episodes have experienced. It is such a shame to see that fire is missing from this episode because without a driving force behind Liv’s leadership “Chivalry is Dead,” feels like one big missed opportunity for the series.

And that seems to be the main reason why this comes off as one of iZombie’s weaker episodes.

There are far too many missed opportunities to set up for future storylines and this ends up causing most of the conversations that take place to feel unimportant, especially when they are never circled back to.

The entire investigation into how a larping (live-action-role-playing) knight of the undead dies from a mundane stab to the chest is a refreshing new twist for Clive and Liv to explore.

However, the reveal that their victim is just pretending to be a zombie is anticlimactic.

With the zombie cure in Blaine’s hands and Liv still unaware of that information, this would have been a perfect moment for those two plot points to overlap. It would also make for a much more complicated investigation like Blaine’s involvement in the murder of a hockey player earlier in the season.

Throwing in the part about another larper’s wife cheating on him with the victim is a nice touch but its delivery feels rushed and messy to the overall story. Plus that scandalous part of the investigation is never circled back to when the killer claims there is no evidence to support Clive’s theory.

What really makes this investigation feel like it is lacking something is the missed opportunity to delve deeper into the LARP world.

Usually, when Liv eats the brain of a victim she experiences their traits in more ways than one. One of those ways being that she finds herself in situations unique to that brain of the week.

When Liv was on hockey player brain it was only a matter of time before she found herself taking to the rink. At one point in this show, the only way for Liv to trigger her visions was to put herself in a situation the victim would have found themselves in.

However, we are not once treated to Liv larping in the park or participating in the zombie Thunderdome we are just now hearing about.

Other than a couple of cute corsets and a British accent worth a few laughs, Liv is watching from the sidelines for the majority of the investigation and that is a great hindrance when telling her story.

It also means we miss it on some foam sword fighting sequences that surely would have been worth a few laughs.

While it is nice to see Liv find new meaning in her undead life besides having visions to solve crimes, some kind of indication from Clive or Ravi that they notice this shift in her focus would be nice.

Another missed opportunity comes between Liv and Major when they cross paths at the Thunderdome. iZombie has the nerve to make us watch their conversation from afar and without sound, depriving us of a British Liv confusing a very Southern Major. Why, oh why, do we have to miss that?

“Chivalry is Dead,” doesn’t give us the full live-action-role-play experience and in return, the episode suffers from it.

Thankfully our knight in shining armor comes in the form of some very creative accents on Liv and Major’s part that provide for goofy dialogue this dull tale desperately needs.

What did you think of this episode of iZombie? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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iZombie airs Mondays at 9/8c on The CW.

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