Those on the Outside of the Cone of Truth

"iZombie" wrapped up last month and I have found it enjoyable.  One thing I noticed was that since in this case, the central character, Liv was female, and so one of the main people out of the loop on what was really going on was (as in her zombieness), her ex-fiance Major.  (Yes, his first name is Major.)  (Also, spoilers ahead.)

So, in much of the paranormal stories there are characters who are out of the loop.  This list usually starts out big, and dwindles as core characters are let in on the secret.  What was semi-unusual, was that Major was not in on the secret. Now of course, it's understandable that Liv didn't sit down and say, so, hey, I know we love each other, but I'm a zombie now, and since we haven't actually officially promised in sickness and in health yet, now seems like a good time to call it quits. 

As she said later, he likely wouldn't have believed her, likely would have tried to tough it out once he did, and given that they didn't really know how the zombie stuff transmitted, fluid to fluid contact seemed a likely suspect.  (I have to say, I appreciate that Liv and Ravi, who was in on it pretty much from the start, have not discarded their medical training and have approached zombieism rationally, for the most part.)

Now there's still family members and friends who were also confused about Liv's rapid life (un-life?) changes but Major also worked at the shelter that turned out to be the center of a lot of unexplained disappearances that, well, made a little more sense when you knew there were zombies about and one of them was running a little brain factory and needed fresh supplies.  So, Major's investigation into those disappearances led to his discovery that someone was harvesting brains, and well, there might be zombies.  Or at least something that seemed to not die when you shot it.  So he checked himself into a mental institution.  Because that's nuts, zombies aren't real.  Ravi and Liv did eventually discuss that Major was getting really close to the truth and maybe they should tell him.  And Liv decided that Major had already gotten in this much trouble, just knowing what little he did.  Confirming his worst fears would just make him more determined to go after them. 

Now, let's face it, this is a dressed up version of, "it's for his own good".  But, it was believable that he'd already unknowingly survived a number of encounters with zombies, maybe at least the red tape of the right ways to handle this would slow him down.  And Major, in turn, didn't just decide to go in without a large amount of firepower.  Sure, do I think it would have been, I don't know, eminently wiser to go with more people?  Yes.  But I had presented with reasons that Major thought this was important to him, and why he thought it needed to be stopped now.  And that helped a lot.  Of course he did not survive the encounter, technically. 

So, it's hard to parse how much this is different due to the genders involved, but it certainly seemed like the viewers, at least in my corner of the internet, found Major's approach reasonable based on the information we had, and Liv and Ravi's choice fair based on their concerns. Which is in contrast to several shows where it's a girl outside the info.  (And I have not forgotten Liv's roommate, but, her overlap with other zombies had been minimal.) Honestly, I think the largest difference is that "iZombie" had a short first season, so Major figured out the truth in half the time a normal (ex) love interest would have.  I hope other shows take a look at this, because it was really fun to watch.  Of course as a viewer I knew he would find out, would be in danger, they would wish they had told him sooner, but it moved at a pace that I was able to buy into why they were holding off.