It’s been over ten years since “Veronica Mars” premiered on The WB, before it became The CW, and the show finally has an ending. Seven years after the show ended, showrunner Rob Thomas (not the guy from Matchbox 20) brought the cast back to make a movie that would act as the ending that the show never got, almost in the vein of ”Firefly” being followed up by the movie “Serenity”. The Kickstarter campaign raised the 2 million dollars that it needed in under 11 hours, and went on to break almost every Kickstarter record. “Veronica Mars” has gone on to become a cult classic; one that has garnered great critical praise but a small fan following.

Last fall “iZombie” premiered on The CW. I decided to give the show a chance, even though I think the zombie phase has hit it’s ceiling. The overall story of the show is that it follows Olivia Moore (played by Rose McIver) after she goes to a boat party and people start transforming into zombies after taking a bad batch of a new drug. Liv is attacked and turned into a zombie and must find a way to hide this fact. The pilot, like most pilots, was rough. Liv’s boss, Ravi, discovers that she’s a zombie almost immediately, but instead of being scared he is unusually calm and decides to help Liv find a cure. Liv becomes the partner of a detective after consuming a brain and absorbing that person’s memories. She uses the memories of the dead person to find their killer and bring them to justice. Liv also has complicated relationships with her best friend, Peyton, and her ex-fiancée, Major. The show itself is a crime procedural; meaning it uses a case-of-the-week story to keep the show going, but also has an overarching story that binds all the episodes together. Also, it infuses its stories with a large amount of comedy. Imagine a small, pale, blonde girl acting like a stoned hippie or a beefed-up-bro. It’s really a treat to watch Liv portray the person who she has eaten each week.

“Veronica Mars” has a very different plot to it. Veronica (played by Kristen Bell, who also is the voice of Anna “Frozen”) is a teenage girl in her last years of high school. Veronica works for her dad, a former sheriff who is now a private detective, and helps him solve cases, even taking on her own clients as well. Each season (there are three) has a different overarching theme but they all follow Veronica as she investigates the crimes happening around her as well as trying to navigate through tough romantic situations. The first season see Veronica try to find the person who killed her best friend (played by Amanda Seyfried). The second season follows Veronica as she tries to find out why a bus full of high school kids plunges off a cliff. The third season is a short season as the show was canceled about half way through and follows a loose story line involving college rape.

The reason I bring up “Veronica Mars” in the beginning of this article is because iZombie has a very similar storytelling method. In “Veronica Mars” there was frequent use of the flashback, usually used by the main character to help move the overarching story along. This is comparable to iZombie when Liv eats the brains of a deceased and gains their memories. Veronica Mars was also a crime procedural, although not in the same way as iZombie. Veronica Mars was a neo-noir; a show that used elements and styles from old private investigator movies and books. iZombie is more like Medium or Law and Order in the way it does it’s procedural. The way the story is told is almost the same in the two shows. In both Veronica Mars and iZombie the main character does an internal monologue that acts as a narration. Even the two main characters are incredibly similar in looks!

Some may be asking, whats my point? Clearly I’m not saying that iZombie is a bad show, on the contrary, I’ve said already that it is one of my favorite shows that’s on air right now. I wanted to point out the similarities of these two shows so that I could reveal who the show-runner for iZombie is. That’s right, Rob Thomas. The man who created Veronica Mars also created iZombie. Sometimes I watch iZombie and think that Thomas is purposely reusing some of the same tropes and storytelling techniques that he used in Veronica Mars to prove, possibly to himself, that Veronica Mars was a great show that was ahead of it’s time. That iZombie is Thomas’ redo. It’s his chance to show The CW that they were wrong to have canceled Veronica Mars all that time ago. Thomas throws in the same razor sharp dialogue and humor that made Veronica Mars so popular a decade ago. Is iZombie Veronica Mars 2.0? You could say that. Or you could say that iZombie is its own show, with an incredibly diverse cast and absolutely splendid writing. Watch both shows and decide for yourself.

Veronica Mars, the TV show, can be watched on Amazon Instant Video. iZombie is on Netflix and is currently airing it’s second season on Tuesdays on The CW.