Dead Air

"Dead Air" is the eighth episode of Season 1 of iZombie. It was written by Aiyana White and directed by Zetna Fuentes. It is the eighth episode of the series overall, and premiered on May 5, 2015.

Synopsis
Liv and Clive work together to solve the murder of a morning radio talk show host who specialized in relationship straight talk. Liv becomes filled to the brim with insight after consuming the brains, making Clive extremely uncomfortable when Liv starts getting personal. Meanwhile, Peyton steps in to help Major, and Blaine issues a warning. Lastly, Ravi's unexpected romantic connection has the potential to make things awkward for Liv.

Recap
Liv is in bed, seemingly having sex, but in fact when the camera pulls out, Lowell is giving her a foot rub. Major calls, and she declines it.

Later, she's in the car, smiling to herself that she has finally had sex again for the first time since she was turned. As she's at a red light, she's listening to a "love doctor"-style radio host.

At the police department, Ravi is waiting impatiently for news on Major's release from jail while filling in a child's activity puzzle. Peyton comes in, finding a paperwork snafu that gets Major out of jail. Ravi looks on, impressed and clearly attracted to her.

A pair of cops walk Major out to the waiting room, his face covered in cuts and bruises.

In the waiting room, Major explains why he was attacked, and Peyton offers to put him in touch with someone to help him sue the city. He says he doesn't want that; he just wants to find out what happened to Jerome and Eddie. Ravi tells Major that their remains were found among those at the cultists' compound last week.

Major says that he knows who killed them, and it wasn't the cutists. Everything the police say is a lie, and this isn't over.

Back at work, Sasha the love counselor is trying to talk a caller out of killing her husband's lover. Liv is captivated by it despite Ravi's jokes. There's a scuffle on the radio show, followed by silence. Shortly thereafter, the host has been electrocuted; her microphone was intentionally miswired to kill her when she touched it. Clive wants to find the caller who threatened to kill her husband's mistress -- apparently the mistress was, in fact, the host.

In the studio, the producer says that "Cheated on in Chattanooga" was in fact from Seattle. Sasha, the host, had taken a dozen or so calls from the caller recently and the radio station gives Clive and Liv the audio files for Liv to go through.

At the morgue, Ravi asks Liv about whether Peyton is seeing anyone. He wants to ask her out. Ravi heads into the supply closet where he had been keeping the lab rats. He reveals to her that four of the five rats have had their brains removed. The fifth, they find, is white and murderous; Ravi has successfully made a zombie rat. Liv, of course, loves it.

Clive comes to say that Sasha has been having a feud with a rival drivetime radio show; they've been getting increasingly childish and unprofessional. Clive and Liv head to the other host's station to talk to him. At the studio, the man briefly hits on Liv before Clive presents a badge. When they sit to talk to him, he says that the feud with Sasha was all for show; it was good for ratings to get his misogynist audience fired up about Sasha's anger. Over the course of the conversation, though, he shows a photo of his wife, which Liv recognizes as someone who had poured a drink in Sasha's face. Sasha had been sleeping with the man.

He says it couldn't be his wife; she's a mail-order bride from Eastern Europe, who couldn't possibly pass for "Cheated on in Chattanooga."

At home, Ravi's girlfriend is angry at him for missing a date; he's at home researching brains. When she sees his face, and then what he's doing on the computer, she breaks up with him, telling him to get help.

In a warehouse, Blaine meets with Clive's superior officer, who doesn't want to play ball anymore. He's also annoyed that Blaine didn't give him a heads up about Liv. Blaine tells him to shut up and listen.

At her apartment, Liv is listening to audio from Sasha's show, when she gets a vision of Sasha throwing a temper tantrum directed at her producer.

They call the producer in; she admits that she had been shopping herself around. It worked itself out, though, with Sasha eventually fighting to get her a raise.

In the morgue, Ravi reveals that Corinne had dumped Major and Liv wants to know what's going on. He's still asking about Peyton. Liv tries to steer him away from it using Sasha's dimestore psychology, but Ravi is undeterred.

Liv goes to see Major, shocked when he answers the door all bruised and cut. She feels terrible that she didn't take his call. His mug shot in the police blotter got him fired. He tells Liv that he doesn't believe the cultists killed the kids. He tells her about the brain in the Candyman's car. He's certain that it was human, and he wants her to believe him.

She tells him that she thinks he's hanging onto the case to hang on to the friends he lost. He promises her that he's going to back off from the Candyman, and sees her out the door. As soon as she leaves, though, he goes back to his research.

She goes to see Lowell, thinking about what she's missing in terms of her relationship with Major. She feels like the relationship is shallow. He eventually talks her down, though, making her realize it's just Sasha's brain. But when the pair of them jump into bed together, Liv has a vision of Sasha having sex witha young man named Sam.

She heads home to Peyton, who asks who the guy is. She knows Lowell when Liv says his name. Peyton is single at the moment, although she does have a list of suitors. Back at the morgue, Liv relates all of this to Ravi, telling him essentially that he shouldn't bother because Peyton is out of his league and will crush him. He finally snaps at her for having "a bit of an ass" for a brain and leaves.

Later, Liv hears something she likes on the audio and goes to see Clive. A voice in a local ad is clearly Cheated on in Chattanooga. They go to see the producer and ask, finding out that one of Sasha's assistants, Kayleigh, was the one who recorded it. They go find her at home, asking her where she was at the time of the murder. Her alibi is flimsy and halfway through the conversation, Sam comes to the door for her, saying he knew she wasn't going to get over his cheating with Sasha.

In interrogation, Kayleigh claims she didn't kill Sasha and that she had hatched the Cheated calls as a way of getting even without getting fired, nothing more. She says there's no way the ad ran recently since the company had folded a year ago. Clive confirms that on his cell phone. They figure out that Jane likely killed Sasha and then planted the ad to incriminate Kayleigh.

When they go to arrest her, she's trying to get her big break behind the microphone, but Sasha's listeners all think she's boring. SHe nearly confesses on air during a breakdown before they take her away.

Later, Liv is heading out to Lowell's place when she gets a call from Ravi on Peyton's phone. She encourages Peyton to say yes when he asks her out -- but shortly after she does, Ravi is bitten by the zombie lab rat.

After eating some of Jerome's brains, Liv has a vision of his being abducted by Blaine; she makes the connection after seeing Blaine carrying a cooler into the building she's in.

Starring

 * Rose McIver as Olivia Moore
 * Malcolm Goodwin as Clive Babineaux
 * Rahul Kohli as Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti
 * Robert Buckley as Major Lilywhite
 * David Anders as Blaine DeBeers

Guest Starring

 * Aly Michalka as Peyton Charles
 * Bradley James as Lowell Tracey
 * Elise Gatien as Corinne
 * Jillian Bach as Jane Bowman
 * Hiro Kanagawa as Lieutenant Suzuki
 * Britt Irvin as Kaley Taylor
 * Erica Cerra as Sasha Arconi
 * Aaron Douglas as Chuck Burd

Co-Starring

 * Bart Anderson as Kevin Barker
 * Drew Tanner as Sam
 * Olena Venidiktova as Oksana
 * Jennifer Kitchen as Impervious Clerk
 * Rob Carpenter as Creepy Looking Man

Soundtrack

 * Got It by Marian Hill
 * Time of the Season by Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
 * Heart Is a Drum by Beck

Episode Connections

 * Liv makes a reference to Game of Thrones when she says "The Lannisters send their regards".