Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 86% (Critics) / 95% (Audience)
Directed By: Rob Thomas
Written By: Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero
Starring: Rose McIver, Malcolm Goodwin, Rahul Kohli, RObert Buckley and Aly Michalka
Network: CW
Synopsis: Olivia “Liv” Moore was a rosy-cheeked, disciplined, over-achieving medical resident who had her life path completely mapped out, until the night she attended a party that unexpectedly turned into a zombie feeding frenzy. Now as one of the newly undead, Liv has devised a clever way to resist her baser urges to devour fresh human brains – she’s taken a job in the Seattle coroner’s office. In this appropriately dead-end job, Liv can secretly snack on the brains of the many Jane and John Doe corpses that make a final stop in the morgue. – (Source)

The Good:
I love the feel of this show. It is completely a Rob Thomas show complete with interesting female protagonist, snappy and witty banter and an unobtrusive voice-over narration.
I like all of the changes to Liv now that she is a zombie too: she can’t taste anything that is not super spicy, she picks up more than memories when she eats a persons brains, adapting some of the person’s character traits (like becoming a klepto after eating a thieving hooker’s brains), she becomes more zombie like if she doesn’t eat on a regular schedule and she has a tendency to go “full zombie” if pushed to a certain point.
Rose McIver also pulls off most of the necessary beats of the part and she looks great…almost like the character from the comic book come to life. And her interactions with her boss at the morgue and her new police detective partner are a hoot and have a lot of room for growth.

The Bad:
I enjoyed McIver in the role but do wish she had brought a little bit more April Ludgate to her zombie persona. Everyone was talking about how she had become so apathetic but she still seemed a bit too plucky and engaged to me.
I also am hoping that the show doesn’t take too long to start digging into the mystery of just where the zombies came from and instead stays a quirky procedural.

The Ugly:
Liv’s best friend and ex-fiancee are as dull as calculus. This section of Liv’s life is going to need some serious attention to make it stand up to her crime-solving stuff because from this one episode I found myself not caring at all about Liv’s friends and family.

Final Verdict:  Pretty much ZOMBIE VERONICA MARS, which is not a bad thing at all since I loved VERONICA MARS and zombies, plus it is good to have Rob Thomas back in that area of TV again. The supporting cast is 50/50 with Liv’s family and friends paling in comparison to her work associates and I am hoping for a little more supernatural elements to be tossed into the procedural stuff but as a first episode this one did a pretty good job of getting me interested enough to add it to the DVR.

Grade: B