Another great episode of iZombie has the show reminding us of Veronica Mars more than ever—and that’s a good thing. “Dead Air,” written by Aiyana White and directed by Zetna Fuentes, is full of sex, pop culture references, and humor, and ends with a juicy cliffhanger.

As implied in the previous episode, Major has been beaten up again, this time while in jail for breaking into Julien “Candyman” Dupont’s car. Ravi (Rahul Kohli) and Peyton (Aly Michalka) meet for the first time while waiting for Major’s release, and Ravi believes he and Peyton shared a “moment.” Looks like the two of them are gonna go on a date—no thanks to Liv (Rose McIver), who spends the episode giving everyone unwanted psychological advice. She’s tasted the brain of a murdered radio sex-advice-show host who can’t keep her opinions on people’s mental states and motivations to herself, and she seriously gets on everyone’s nerves—especially Ravi’s.

The aforementioned pop culture references are many—we heard allusions to Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Glee, and Game of Thrones—but one of our favorites was by poor not-so-handsome-this-week Major Lilywhite (Robert Buckley), saying to Liv when she drops by and sees his boot-printed face, “I can’t talk about Fight Club. … Crap.” Major can’t get anybody to listen to him about the Candyman (Aleks Paunovic) and his Tupperware full of brains now that the remains of the missing teens have been found and their murders pinned on suspects who were killed by the police (zombie Lieutenant Suzuki [Hiro Kanagawa], specifically). And now that Major’s face is bashed in again and he’s been arrested, he’s also lost his job as a youth counselor at Helton Shelter. His new girlfriend Corinne (Elise Gatien) is also done with his recent weirdness and leaves him. And to top it all off, Liv shines him on when he confides in her abut finding the brain and believing nefarious things are still afoot. At this point she is on the verge of protecting her zombie secret at Major’s peril.

The big developments in the series storyline, though, are truly big. Ravi has successfully zombified a rat, and though he’s picked up a pair of chain-mail oyster-shucking gloves, he still manages to get bitten. Major is buying guns out of some guy’s trunk. And although Liv’s zomboyfriend what’s his-name (Lowell, played by Bradley James) told her he procures his brain meals from a funeral home, while leaving Lowell’s apartment she spies Blaine (David Anders) through the glass elevator walls, heading toward the building, lunch cooler in hand. At the same moment, the little taste of breakfast brain and eggs she nibbles at Lowell’s place before leaving gives her a vision of Jerome (Christopher Meyer), recognizable by his colorful size-12 sneakers, being abducted by Blaine. The episode ends just as it appears that Liv and Blaine are about to come face-to-face as the elevator door is about to open. Oh my!

We hope Liv can put the pieces together of Blaine’s new career as a brain-procurement specialist before her brother Evan ends up working for him. And we hope the fact that Major’s life is pretty actively being ruined by the underground zombie apocalypse doesn’t also ruin his relationship with his zombie ex-fiancée.