This week’s iZombie delivered enough healthy doses of thrills, adventure, and shipping to keep us reeling in all the best ways.

Prego

The episode opens as a pregnant Emily Sparrow stumbles upon a group of teens getting drunk in the woods. The next day, Clive’s police department meets with the press to discuss the now dead Emily and her surviving baby. A reporter calls the police chief out for not focusing more efforts on the missing skate park kids.

At the morgue, Emily’s parents meet Clive and Ravi over their daughter’s body. Emily’s father tells Clive that the ex-boyfriend named Dylan is the one responsible for Emily’s death. Liv eats Emily’s brain and immediately takes over Emily’s maternal personality, pestering Ravi for not eating his vegetables.

At the hospital where Emily’s baby is, Liv talks with her own mother about Liv’s sudden motherly feelings. Liv flashes to a fight as Emily’s parents kick her lover out and threaten to lock their daughter in the house forever.

To make a zombie virus…

Liv relates to Clive the incriminating memory of Emily’s parents, but the detective tells her that Lieutenant Suzuki will be the one interviewing Dylan as a suspect in favor of Emily’s parents’ case against the boyfriend. Dylan and Emily fought a lot in their relationship. After Dylan discovered Emily was having his baby, she hitchhiked home, and was picked up by a truck towing a camper full of barking dogs.

Liv gets very upset when she learns that Dylan will soon gain custody of Emily’s baby. Major calls Clive to press more on the missing skate park kids, but the call turns south when a Seattle Observer reporter starts to grill the detective.

Lowell visits Liv at the morgue for some zombie tests. Ravi hypothesizes that the combination of a drink called Max Rager and Utopium (the drug Blaine was pushing at the pilot zombie party) somehow created the zombie virus. Lowell buddy punches Liv on the shoulder playfully, spurring doubts of their relationship status. Clive storms in to show Liv the muckraking article Major’s reporter wrote up about the skate park kids.

Rumpelstiltskin’s cradle

Liv finds herself drawn to visiting Emily’s baby, and comments at the exhaustion she feels worrying about her “son” all the time. Liv meets with her hospital coordinator of a mom and brother as he prepares for his interview with Blaine.

As Clive takes heat from his coworker, he discovers a nice paper trail leading to a cottage that Emily’s parents own. Clive then delivers this week’s winning snark. “The press will have a field day!” says Liv, questioning the secrecy of the cabin. “No comment,” Clive responds. “Just practicing. My lieutenant is making me write it a hundred times on the chalk board, like Bart Simpson.”

The two enter the basement and find an intricate baby cradle. Suddenly, dogs bark as the door to the basement slams. Liv flashes to Emily crying while being held captive. Emily’s dad calls Clive’s cell, realizes it’s him, and invites the two sleuths to take a look around the cottage. Emily was a straight laced allstar who turned a new leaf when Dylan came around.

Side by side on my piano, keyboard

The sleuths hypothesize that the man that had Emily locked up was related to the Animal Control branch, so they have in a goofy Animal Control officer named Margo to ask her about anyone fitting the description of the man in Liv’s brain flash.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled recap for Rob Thomas’ most overused reference to date:

A Peeping Gerald was recently fired, but has been in jail for the past four months, leaving, ahem, Cliv without a lead, but with a noticeably rising ship…

Speaking of ships, Livwell sinks. He’s gay. Temporarily. PHEW. But still: “Do Harry. Dump Zane. Date Liam.” Um. We’ll order 500% more gay Lowell, let alone just Lowell himself. Pleaseandthankyou.

And then Livwell eat cheese puffs out of a head bowl, do the moonwalk, play with a cootie catcher, and basically have the best chemistry of any undead lovers with temporarily incompatible sexualities that we’ve ever seen.

IN A WORLD… where car alarms don’t exist

Liv brain flashes to Emily’s escape from her imprisonment, leading to the conclusions that a couple was holding Emily captive, and that a river carried Emily downstream a bit. Clive finds a man that owns a cabin fitting Emily’s escape radius. This scruffy man not only fits who Liv saw the profile of, but is also married to the goofy Margo…

Major stakes out the Candyman, and breaks into the zombie’s car. Julien Dupont is the Candyman’s real name, but that’s not all Major discovers. Digging through Julien’s stuff, Major opens up a container with a full human brain inside. The cops arrest Major (although there wasn’t any alarm to alert them of the break-in…) as he shouts about the Utopium-pushing criminal. Julien narrowly avoids arrest with a fabricated story of calf brains.

The stakeouts continue as Liv and Clive watch over Margo’s house. Suddenly, gunshots ring out as the sleuths narrowly avoid headshots. Backup arrives with heavy artillery as Liv discovers the treehouse where the girls are held captive. Clive’s lieutenant is shot in the gut, goes full zombie, uses the fridge door as a buster shield, and annihilates the couple. Liv rescues the trapped girls, as the lieutenant and Liv share a “I know you’re a zombie” moment.

At the police station, Suzuki talks to reporters about the ritualistic human sacrifices and sister-wife practices the twisted couple partook in. Dylan thanks Clive for keeping his word, and has a reality show pitch that Liv does not appreciate. It seems like Liv was able to talk some sense into Dylan though, for he decides to give Emily’s baby to Emily’s parents.

Major faces some interesting characters in his jail cell as a “thanks” for the scathing article. “New brains today! Feeling more hetero” ring in on Liv’s cell, as a zombie rat from Ravi’s experiment, with fur white as snow, chomps down on his fellow rat buddies.

iZomie airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on The CW.