Season 2 ended with a massacre and the revelation that [spoiler alert] Philmore Graves (Fill More Graves, get it?) CEO, Vivian Stoll, is a zombie.
Season 3, episode 1
Liv & co. (Ravi, Peyton, Major and Clive) decide they need to be “Team No Big Secrets From One Another” and update everyone on each other's news at the start of the episode, providing a useful recap. Peyton being saved by her ex squeeze Blaine, Liv and Major being zombies, and what Vivian said to Liv while eating Rob Thomas' brain. That she wants Seattle to be the zombie capital.
Clive, Liv and Major meet with Vivian who explains they are preparing for D-day, when the humans en mass discover that brain eating zombies exist. Vivian and Major believe humans will attempt to exterminate zombies, Liv claims humans can be reasoned with and Clive just worries that he'll be the human who let the zombies take over. When they visit a zombie classroom Clive meets a friend, Wally, the son of a woman who became very special to him, this is the moment when he starts to worry about the safety of zombies. Probably because Liv has always managed to look after herself.
Clive and Liv's friendship develops beautifully over this episode. It is Clive's shoulder Liv cries on when the soldier brains wear off. She had to shoot her boyfriend in the head and feels pretty bad about it. As you do. But Clive assures her that he was already dead and in doing what she did, Liv saved Clive's life. He also gets her very drunk. “Want to know how cops deal with this?”
A conspiracy theorist radio presenter interviews the security guard at the Max Rager party and people start using the Z word to describe the violence. One caller claims zombies live next door.
Liv and Ravi are called out to a murder. The victims have been shot in the head and there's very little blood. Wally, his mother and his uncle are the victims. The murder is a hate crime against zombies. Bringing home to everyone that D-day might be closer and more violent than they imagined.
The premier plays out with Liv and Major continuing on the soldier brains from last season and therefore we don't experience the customary mood swings and personality shifts of other episodes. Thankfully this changes for episode 2 when we see Major on teenage girl brains.
Episode 2 explains Clive's relationship with Wally, and perhaps more importantly Wally's mother, through flashbacks. We get much more of a feel for why Clive is so upset about their deaths. They also track down the man who called into the show about the zombie neighbours and of course he lives next to Wally. The man has an alibi but shows them a thread full of people calling for the extermination of zombies and identifying the house of the victims.
To balance Clive's sadness we have Major acting up on teenage brains. There's a hilarious scene where he's staring at the army guys at Philmore Graves. “You look like your sculpted from marble,” he says, complaining he feels inadequate in comparison.
Ravi fails at being the perfect guy this week. I guess everyone does at some point, but his obsession about the past relationship between Blaine and Peyton degrades him. I hope he takes Liv's (soldier brain) advice and gets over himself pretty quickly.
So why is Major taking teenage girl brains? Well there's this murder case, but it's not that interesting and they solve it pretty quickly. I think it was more a way to inject some great comedy into the episode.
Summary
We have three dead zombies all connected to Philmore Graves. Vivian seems very upset by their deaths, but does she seem a bit too sweet to be running an army of zombie soldiers? Could the murders have been planned by her to ensure Liv and co.'s support with her plans? She did notice how fond of Wally Clive seemed to be. On the other hand, we have Libertarian gun toting internet users, threatening zombies and encouraging each other to find and kill them. Vivian has a zombie island project where the zombies will be able to self segregate after D-day and she has posters for a potential zombie mayor. As a side story there's still Blaine with his is he or isn't he amnesia, and a very pissed off Don E defrosting Blaine's dad and plotting revenge.