Fellow zombies, we finally have something to sate our hunger with the release of the iZombie S1 DVD. After the whirlwind of Liv Moore’s undead life took over our televisions and hearts, we can own a piece of this amazing brainchild of Rob Thomas and DC comics Vertigo author Chris Roberson. The show has been dramatic, hilarious and enduring with amazing writing and acting.

Released today for $35.98 with preorder from Amazon or $39.98 regularly, it includes a 3-disc set of the 13 episode season (with available subtitles in English, Spanish and French and in wide screen), deleted scenes and a copy of the casts 2014 Comic-Con panel with a full   run time of 780 minutes. For a more in depth look at the set, please go read fellow nerdy and worthy writer kleffnote’s post (find her on twitter at @kleffnotes) as she was able to secure an early look at the DVD and see how it truly turned out. I was hoping for a Blu-ray version of the series and a gag reel, but so far those popular requests have fallen on dead ears. The set is also only based for region 1 viewers, sorry zoms outside of the United States and Canada.

To celebrate the iZombie release, I wanted to take a look back at the first season and see how far the characters have come in such a short time. In case it needs to be said, spoilers are up ahead and they are big ones. If you have not seen the show, I do not recommend reading this unless you like spoilers, big spoilers.

We begin with our beloved main character Olivia Moore. She was a medical resident who from what Peyton and Major said was a bit up tight. The one time she decides to let down her hair she ends up on the worst boat party known to man and ends up getting scratched by a raging zombie and drowning. She wakes up in a body bag with a white streak in her dark hair and a hunger for brains.

She spends the next part of the year in a deep depression, quitting her medical residency to become a coroners assistant at the Seattle morgue so she can have a constant supply of food. She breaks up with her fiancé, Major Lilywhite, whom she loves deeply but fears he cannot accept the monster she has become or he will but will give up everything ‘normal’ they had hoped to have in their lives to accommodate for her particular diet. Liv also withdraws from her family and best friend/roommate Peyton Charles, although they all think she is doing this because she has PTSD from the boat party incident.

Liv keeps her secret from everyone, to protect them and herself. This is an understandable decision on her part I think, although it is hotly debated between fans. While honesty is the best policy, there are also consequences to telling people such a big secret. Many people can’t accept a drastic change in a loved one’s life that differs from how they have always saw them. I have seen people lose contact with family and friends over dating partners let alone the truth that Liv has become a real life monster of fiction that requires cannibalism to survive. In other words, not everyone is a fan of zombies and Liv chose the side of caution and discretion to the particulars of her new ‘life.’ As the series progresses Liv’s choices have good and bad consequences. She is able to solve crimes through her new job and help out police detective Clive Babineaux and Liv helps her boss create a small batch of cures for zombism. On the down side, Liv’s fear of rejection from her secret materialize when both Peyton and Major find out (in the worst ways possible) and immediately run from her and reject her.   For being clinically dead, Liv’s life gets really hard.

Liv is not without ally’s   though. Her biggest one is her new boss, Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti. He is not only the first to find out Liv’s secret, but the only person in all of Seattle to figure it out by himself. A brilliant doctor who was fired from the CDC for obsessively preparing for biological attacks, he now works as Seattle’s premier coroner.

I have been in awe of this character since he was first   introduced and it has only deepened as the season progressed. Not only does Ravi not consider Liv a monster, but he immediately wants to help her. He sees zombism as a disease and not as a death sentence. Ravi is the embodiment of hope and steadfastness in this show. He barely even knows Liv, but he is aghast when she let’s it slip that she thought she was stuck as a zombie forever and that there was no hope. He keeps Liv’s secret no matter what, even from Clive, Major and Peyton.

There is also Lowell Tracey. A musician and fellow zombie that Liv soon starts dating. It’s a bit odd to say watching two zombies date was adorable, but it truly was. Lowell quickly wormed his way into not only Liv’s heart but every fans as well after his name is cleared from suspicion of murder. He understands Liv’s out of brain experiences as he has several of his own. It is refreshing for both of them to not have to hide or lie to each other about their issues.

His arc in season 1 is an emotional one after we find out that he was turned by Blaine and has been buying his brains from him in secret. Liv is angry with him and in one of the seasons most charged scenes, Lowell shows up and apologizes to Liv.   He tells her about how he watched a teenagers funeral and then dug them up to eat the brain. Lowell is a broken mess when he tells Liv that they’re monsters that eat people to survive. It’s the first time Lowell has really examined what he has become and the consequences of that on his humanity. Tragically Lowell is taken from Liv and us after he tries to kill Blaine when Liv is unable to do so. It is probably the most shocking death of the season.

Clive Babineaux is also an ally of Liv’s, but he still does not know about her secret. Clive believes that Liv is psychic and helps him solve his cases. He is routinely the main person to deal with Liv’s seeming mood swings from whatever brain she has most recently eaten and is absorbing their personality. While I think Clive must put this odd behavior down to ‘women are crazy,’ he generally does not comment on it, but oh how his facial expressions speak volumes. Still he trusts Liv’s visions and backs her up almost every episode, even when he is suspicious of her. When Liv has been in danger, Clive is one of the most relieved to see she is alright. One of the most memorable lines during the season for me was when he told a shaken Liv that, “If that was your body we were zipping up, that would be the tragedy.”

The friendship between Liv and Clive throughout the season is a professional one, but it is slowly changing into a more personal one the more their lives become intertwined. Clive has been on the edge of the zombie world since episode 1 and he has been shown to be an intelligent man that can read between the lines of what he’s being told. I believe he is suspicious of Liv’s visions, but with no other evidence but her and Ravi’s word he has nothing else to go on. Yet. Clive has shown to be increasingly antagonistic towards Major. First introduced as a favor from Liv to help Major find some runaway teens, Clive has watched as Major became more dangerous and seemingly deranged. The finale has definitely placed Major at the top of Clive’s most wanted list, but we will have to wait and see how it turns out and if Clive will finally step fully into Liv’s world.

Major Lilywhite plays both protagonist and antagonist in the show. He is understandably upset when some of the homeless teens he works with end up missing. What is unusual is the lengths Major goes to find out what is going on. It becomes more of an obsession to find out the truth, no matter the cost to himself (It is no wonder Liv loves him, they are very alike in some ways). He gets into fights, is fired from his job, stalks people, vandalizes vehicles, buys illegal arms and eventually goes all out Rambo.

He can’t quite bring himself to believe in zombies at first, even thinking he must be going crazy, but when he does he decides they all need to die. No matter what. This is a very hard line to take and it is no wonder Liv was reluctant to tell him the truth. If he had always known about Liv, would his mind have changed at all? He still would have wanted to get rid of Blaine and his cronies. He wasn’t impressed when Liv told him why she worked at the morgue. He took the stance that zombies are monsters and not people and monsters are easy to kill. He certainly didn’t have the moral quandary Liv did right before Lowell died when he shut down Meat Cute forever.

All this said, Major is really a very nice man caught up in a messed up situation and he made some questionable choices. He was trying to protect the other homeless teens and all of Seattle from an unknown enemy. The police weren’t any help and even when he confided in Liv, she didn’t tell him the truth, hoping to keep him out of danger. Major is a man of action and it is ironic that he complains to Liv that she made him a zombie without his say so, but he had decided the fate of all zombies without anyone else’s say too. They both acted in ways they thought right and be damned what the consequences would be. I have a feeling season 2 will be dealing with that.

A man not concerned with consequences is our main antagonist, Blaine DeBeers. A loser drug dealer who was turned by drugs given to him by Max Rager, Blaine knows how to take a lemon and turn it into a zombie. He is street smart, charming, cruel and shrewd. When he finds out how zombies are made he immediately sets out making himself cronies and customers. He then has his cronies bring in people that won’t be missed to his butcher shop, Meat Cute, where they sell the brains to Blaine’s handmade customers who must buy it or risk dying or causing the zombie apocalypse. It is genius and evil and I applaud him for taking the American dream and making it horrifying.

Blaine and Liv are   mostly frenemies throughout the show until she finds out how his business operates and he murders Lowell. The relationship between Liv and Major is unknown to Blaine until almost the end of the season where he immediately puts it to work for him. Big mistake as you know from the finale, definitely blowing up in his face. Blaine may also have to deal with Clive investigating him after his   business unexpectedly ended.

While the characters have been put through a lot during season 1 it has been set up wonderfully for them all to continue and grow in new ways for season 2. That premiere’s on the CW at 9 eastern on October 6^th, by the way. In the meantime, I and I hope all of you fellow zoms will be buying the season 1 DVD and binge watching it one more time before the new season starts. I’ve found through the reruns all sorts of jokes and foreshadowing the show writers have thrown in. I cannot impress enough upon you how smartly this show has been written. Not to mention all the new extra deleted scenes and the Comic-Con panel the DVD collection has included.

If you ever want to do a rewatch of the show, I am happy to watch it with you. You can follow me on twitter at @quietlikeastorm where you will find me rewatching many shows and movies. I will also be live tweeting the new season along with the #iZombieObsessed horde. I hope to see you all there and also reading my article next week about my season 2 predictions for iZombie.

~*This is a repost of the original article found on Nerdy and Worthy by the same author. The article had originally been reblogged but due to technical errors that made the person who makes this site pretty insane, the easiest option was to repost.*~