What the iZombie TV show teaches us about CoVid-19
If there's any show that can be a great look at what the world will be like in a post-CoVid world, it's iZombie.
What do you do when you're living with knowing you could kill the people you love at any moment?
The CoVid-19 crisis has a lot of people asking that question. There's so much we don't know about what we're living with these days. So the question becomes what to do about it? Thankfully we can find some answers in a show like iZombie.
Liv Moore (Rose McGiver) was recently scratched by a zombie at a boat party that got way out of control. As a result, her entire life is turned upside down. She breaks up with her fiancé Major (Robert Buckley), quits her job and retreats from everyone around her. All in an effort to keep the people she loves safe. Does that remind anyone of anything?
That's just where the story begins however, because what she grows to learn over time is that she can't stop living, even if she is the undead. Despite the potential danger she poses to the people around her, she has to keep going. She gets a job at a morgue to get access to brains and spends all her free time working with her boss Ravi (Rahul Kohli) to find a cure for her condition. It becomes her whole life pretty much.
With one exception of course.
As a result of her condition, she sees visions of people's memories when she eats their brains. She then uses those visions to help detective, Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) solve the murders of people in Seattle. Obviously we all can't go around solving murders right now and most medical professionals would advise against eating brains as a solution to our current predicament. That doesn't necessarily mean that the other lessons the show puts forward can't be a great opportunity for people to learn.
Based on a comic book of the same name, the series was created by Rob Thomas, the writer of Veronica Mars not the singer from Matchbox Twenty, although the singer does make an appearance. There's a lot to be learned from the show. As with his other work, you can learn a lot about yourself and who you want to be after the world completely changes.
Fundamentally, that life doesn't always end during an outbreak. Living with the ongoing threat of a disease and being an outcast are not necessarily the same thing. The important thing is that you just be extra careful. Accept the reality of your situation but you still have to be yourself.
But most interesting of all is the idea that looking for a cure for your circumstances and actually having one are very different things. Do you need a cure to be happy? Can you live with a disease and still be happy? Can other people live with you if you're not? What does life look like if they're not?
These are all questions that many people will be dealing with in the near future, and iZombie might just be a nice, safe, non-contagious way of beginning to explore them. But perhaps the best advice from the show comes from this:
"If you live every day like it’s your last, eventually you'll be right."
All five seasons of iZombie are currently available on Netflix in most areas.