VMI 1.05: You Think You Know Somebody transcript
Hear this episode at VMIpod.com/1-05
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning drugs and violence.
Doesn't take a super smart teen detective to deduce that there will be spoilers for this episode of Veronica Mars. But there will not be spoilers for subsequent episodes of Veronica Mars.
A LONG TIME AGO, ON VERONICA MARS:
HZ: Smuggling steroids from Mexico doesn’t go according to plan.
JOY: Keith’s happy to be dating again.
HZ: Veronica is NOT happy Keith is dating again.
JOY: Logan is the least jerky jerk, for once in his precious life!
HZ: And Jenny’s visceral hatred for Troy at last proves to be justified.
JOY: I am VINDICATED!
JOY: Running a background check on dad’s new girlfriend, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs
HZ: And being sent away to Catholic school in Albuquerque, I’m Helen Zaltzman
JOY: You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 1, episode 5:
HZ: ‘You Think You Know Somebody’.
They could have called it ‘Trojan Horse’.
JOY: Wow, if it had been heroin in that bag, they really could have.
HZ: Let's be off to Tijuana. Let's follow the stereotypical accordion music to the neon-lit damp streets. And what is happening? A teen is up to no good
JOY: He looks pretty freaked out, sealing up that bull piñata.
HZ: Yes. Because it's quite shadowy, and all I spotted is someone who, it transpires, is called Luke, but for a lot of this episode, I was just thinking of as Adidas because he was wearing a lot of Adidas clothing.
JOY: Oh yeah, yeah or just “sweaty guy,” “super sweaty guy”.
HZ: Sweating from nerves a lot. And he's busy doing something with a bull-shaped piñata next to a dumpster.
JOY: We've all been there. Am I right? Bachelorette party weekend. Oh, sorry, hen party weekend, for our UK listeners.
HZ: Thank you, I translated. And what's he up to, Jenny?
JOY: Just hanging on to that bull piñata. And then once he’s satisfied that whatever he's feeling around for is in the bull piñata, he knocks on the window of a car full of dudes we know: Troy and Logan!
HZ: Having a nap in Troy's father's car, and there's a lot of banter about Logan dry-heaving. He's not allowed to dry-heave in Troy's father's car.
JOY: Oh, he's not doing good.
HZ: Only Troy's dad is allowed to dry-heave in the car.
JOY: I guess everybody's got to have their rules.
HZ: So this is the establishment of Troy's strict dad, who is a background feature of this episode. But off they head to the border, back to the US. There's still some jaunty music. Luke, however, does not look jaunty. He looks very uncomfortable.
JOY: Very uncomfortable, especially when the border officer leans down to the car and says:
OFFICER: Want to go ahead and hand over your contraband?
JOY: He looks extra sweaty when that happens.
HZ: Whereas Logan and Troy just giving these kind of cheesy privileged grins to the officer
JOY: Right, right, and then the the border officer is like, "Sometimes it works," and then he gets into their trunk, sends them on their way, they go to a diner that I have to say made me feel nostalgic for the New Jersey diners of my youth.
HZ: Ah, you could go to this diner - you live not too far away from the border.
JOY: I guess I could make my way down there, yeah.
HZ: They're doing some saucy chat about girls and closing deals with girls.
LUKE: You're the guy that can't close the deals.
LOGAN: Dude, what are you talking about?
LUKE: I'm talking about that girl, that girl Esmerelda.
LOGAN: The deal was closed back in VIP, my brother, make no mistake.
HZ: Troy is not participating. Troy’s in the bathroom. When he comes back, he wipes his hands on Logan.
JOY: Gross, boys are gross.
HZ: They leave the diner. It's still dark. They're still bantering about girls and - oh shit. Where's the car? Where's the car?
JOY: Where is the car? The car is gone as hell.
HZ: But what is amazing about this is that Logan says:
LOGAN: Well maybe it's like Brigadoon. If you come back in a hundred years, it'll be right back in this spot.
HZ: When did Logan watch the 1954 film or 1947 Broadway musical Brigadoon, about a Scottish village that only appears for one day every hundred years and the plot makes absolutely no sense at all? This seems like a deep cut.
JOY: That's what Brigadoon is about?
HZ: That's what Brigadoon is about. I would explain more but it's just too complicated. So yeah, where did Logan get that reference? Do you think you watched it with his grandma?
JOY: This is a mystery. This is yet another mystery of the show.
HZ: And of Logan.
JOY: It doesn't really line up with his deal.
HZ: He contains multitudes. Luke is incredibly stressed though. Logan’s taking it in his stride, enjoying his Scottish musical references. Not Luke.
JOY: Not Luke. Luke is way more stressed out than Troy whose parents come home in five days and he's gonna get sent to Catholic school if he doesn't get the car back in time!
HZ: In Albuquerque.
JOY: But somehow Luke is more stressed.
HZ: And then Veronica pulls up and she says, "Dude, where's your car?"
JOY: Helen, have you ever seen the film Dude, Where's My Car?
HZ: I have, Jenny; I have experienced the film Dude, Where's My Car? What a zeitgeisty reference for Veronica to make. And she's seems to know it's not a good time.
JOY: Yeah. It's also not a good time for that twin bun hairstyle. She's got some like Mickey ears going on.
LOGAN: Nice car, must have been a huge cereal box.
HZ: So she drives them all home and Troy again reiterates that he's in big trouble and in five days he'll get sent to Catholic school in Albuquerque. Ruh roh - and then titles!
JOY: You know what I love? When Logan gets out of Veronica's car, walks in front of her car, she kind of like pumps the accelerator even though the car is either in park or she's got her other foot on the brake, and then he kind of does this like whipping his shirt sort of like a matador’s cape kind of thing.
HZ: Logan can't stop punishing Veronica’s car - one day it's apple rolls, another day it's shirt whips. But he's got his yellow Jeep back, so he don't care.
JOY: True. Daddy gave his T-bird back.
HZ: Yes. It's not remarked upon; you can just see it in the background. It's a yellow Jeep; of course you can see it.
HZ: And Veronica says to Troy that she can make some calls to track down the car. And Troy's like, “Ergghh, Dad doesn't know I took the car, which means we can't activate the anti theft device.” But even this stress isn't enough to stop him from then flirting with Veronica and making suggestive remarks.
JOY: He kind of spends the whole episode just trying to get in Veronica's pants, and using the fact that he's gonna get in trouble as leverage. It's bad and weird. I don't like it. You may be shocked to learn that Troy did something that I felt skeeved out by.
HZ: You could say that this episode is kind of like the messaging of Andrew Marvell's poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’, but through the mouth piece of a smarmy teenage boy in Southern California.
JOY: Could you run down a brief explanation of that poem, please?
HZ: It's basically “We're all going to die one day. And if you died a virgin, that would be a shame, so let's get it on now.” But it's put very elegantly, so it might work on people, more than Troy is.
JOY: Alright.
HZ: And then we're at Mars Investigations, and Wallace is incredulous that Veronica can find Troy's car on the internet. Maybe people are still new enough for the internet that they're like, no, all the internet is like weird chat rooms and like animated little elves and things.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. Well, one other thing the internet apparently had at this time was privateeyez.com - eyez with a Z. The premier data search engine for all private eyez operating in 2004.
HZ: I find it really hard to believe that Veronica has not already searched for Wallace's record on these databases, but here's where she finds out that Wallace got his licence suspended last year!
JOY: And he still subscribes to Mad Magazine.
HZ: Is that on people's criminal records?
JOY: I think the magazine subscription component of privateeyez.com is something that continues to come up. I don't know why that would be a thing. Maybe if you're looking for - checking to see if somebody subscribes to like guns and ammo or like a particular like politically leaning one way or the other kind of publication.
HZ: Right. And they do a lot of references to Scooby Doo in this scene. And Veronica self-identifies as Daphne, Wallace says he would have to be Shaggy. Backup, I suppose is a Scooby Dooesque dog in profile. It's fitting.
JOY: Veronica's also considering taking Keith rock climbing for his birthday.
HZ: Yes, she's planning a surprise.
JOY: Which is sick. Yeah. But Keith overhears, because he has keen detective ears.
HZ: Sure does. He's probably bugging the room, even though it's next door to his room. But then in the Mars on Mars surveillance, when Veronica gets home, she listens to the voicemails:
FEMALE VOICE (REBECCA JAMES): Hi, Keith, it's me. I might be a little late to dinner since I came into work- Oh, wait a minute. Um, I'm sorry. I'm just going to call your cell.
HZ: What's that all about? Veronica realises Keith is alive in the pants area!
JOY: Jeeesus! Veering us quickly away from this topic, I must jump in to divert us. We haven't talked about this yet since we met Backup 1.0 but we see very clearly a different dog than was in the pilot playing Backup. And I just want to let everybody know that the original Backup was a white and brown American Bulldog named Gordo. But the episode three, I think, and forward, the Backup dog actor is a peachy cream Pitbull named Lefty. Apparently, Rob Thomas fired the trainer of the first Backup, Gordo - apparently there were some issues regarding the obedience and the salary. Gordo wouldn't obey instructions correctly, so they recast a new dog named Lefty as Backup.
HZ: Right! This is shocking information. Because I hadn't noticed when I previously watched it, you opened my eyes. Wake up, sheeple! What else have they replaced without you noticing? But Veronica says in this scene:
VERONICA: Change has a way of just walking up and punching me in the face.
HZ: So maybe she's used to having a different dog, because she's like, “Everything changes; I'll just call it Backup.”
JOY: OMG.
HZ: I feel like Veronica’s in a nihilist mood in this episode. She doesn’t seem to be in a very good place. But you know who also is not in a good place?
JOY: Luke!
HZ: Sweaty, stressed Luke. Having a terrible time.
JOY: The worst place he could possibly be is underneath a 300 pound bench press bar.
HZ: And some guy in a ponytail who is supervising Luke being crushed by a big weight and telling him, “Nobody's kicking sand in your face.” He's pressuring him about the package, which had been in the car.
JOY: Luke tells this big old ponytail that the package is in his friend's car. ponytail says you got till 9am. Yo, Helen, have you ever seen a TV programme called American Gladiators?
HZ: I have seen the British version of American Gladiators. It's just called Gladiators.
JOY: What were Malbu's special powers?
HZ: Is Malibu this creepy guy?
JOY: Yeah. Deron McBee, who was Malibu on American Gladiators, is playing the part of Zigman in this episode.
HZ: Wow. So I guess he's practised in making people feel physically inferior.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, he's ready to go.
HZ: He says:
HANK ZIGMAN: Okay, I'll tell you what. You got until 9am, otherwise I'm gonna hunt you down, and the closest thing you're gonna come to playing baseball is me shoving a bat right up your ass.
HZ: Very forward.
JOY: Extremely forward and unpleasant.
HZ: And also who mentioned baseball, hm?
JOY: No one yet.
HZ: So that's not gonna help Luke's stress levels at all.
JOY: No, no, that boy needs some beta blockers.
HZ: He could have got some of those in Mexico.
JOY: Truly.
HZ: And then it's the Mars house. It's the morning, Keith’s busy putting the rest of Lianne's stuff into storage. Maybe because Keith is moving on to another partner, it's time to get rid of the stuff. He doesn't necessarily go into his innermost state. Veronica, pouring cereal, asks Keith about dating Rebecca James. And she pretends it's cool. She quips, "Next time, could you shoot for an actual teacher? Because this has no potential benefit to my grade point average." But really, you sense discomfort, don't you? She's not ready.
JOY: Yeah, it definitely feels increasingly less and less comfortable for Veronica - even though it feels like she's also trying to make it okay, because she can see how happy Keith is, you know? But she's just not ready. And we see Keith is like, "Do you want to look through any of your mom's stuff?" and Veronica's like, “no” - but as soon as he leaves she's in that box digging, digging out a safety deposit box key.
HZ: If I saw a key, I don't know that I would recognise it as a safety deposit box key. But I guess she's a detective, and I'm not. So that figures.
JOY: That is the prime difference.
HZ: And I also don't know where you go to find a safety deposit box.
JOY: Well, a bank and did the bank have its bank name imprinted on the key with the box number? We're putting a lot of trust in the information that's available on this key, but...
HZ: Maybe it's all written in very tiny letters.
JOY: Teeny tiny letters. She's getting her out of her magnifying glass, of course. We know she's got one somewhere.
HZ: And then what’s she up to at school? She's in the classroom on a computer, making a fake death certificate, which seems like a weird place to do it in the open. She's got her own laptop. Couldn't she keep her death certificate photoshop for private?
JOY: Keep that stuff at home, Veronica, please. But good thing she's there, because Luke really needs to sweat all over her.
HZ: This is the most sweaty scene. I hope she's getting paid to help him. He admits there was more to this car thing than just the missing car. There was a piñata full of steroids on the backseat. And he did this run for Malibu the Gladiator, because he wants to get pumped.
JOY: And you know, Helen, you know how committed I am to this podcast, and my preferred avenue of podcast preparation is method podcasting. So I took the liberty of getting some tonsillitis recently so that I could get a steroid prescription.
HZ: Get pumped!
JOY: I'm currently on steroids. And I want you to know how valuable they feel. Just in case there was any doubt in anyone's mind about whether somebody would really pay a bunch of money for steroids, I think they're worth it for medical applications with a prescription only, thank you.
HZ: Yeah, in the case of tonsillitis, they're meant to de-pump your -itis.
JOY: Right. I guess that's interesting, isn't it, they are definitely depumping. They are an anti inflammatory thing. I haven't noticed myself getting any more jacked than I already was.
HZ: Well, that's a relief. Luke says that Logan knew about the drug-getting plan but wasn't in on it. This episode is pretty low key on Logan. He just bystands a bit. And Veronica says she doesn't help dealers find lost product, and Luke says she'd be saving his life.
JOY: Yeah, he's definitely gone from a "recover the drugs" mental state into a "please God, don't let the huge man with the ponytail break all of my limbs".
HZ: Scary grownups. Scary scary grownups. Veronica says Luke will have to return the steroids and the cash. And then she prints out a death certificate and leaves. And she goes to the bank, that she magically knows which bank.
JOY: And tells them her mom died last year and presents the death certificate. This is so dark even for Veronica. I know she needs answers. But like damn, dude,
HZ: Right. Yeah. And I suppose it's another instance of Veronica's appearance working for her advantage because she seems small, cute, vulnerable, unthreatening.
JOY: Hot girl privilege.
HZ: Tiny hot girl privilege. So they let her in, and what's in the safety deposit box?
JOY: Okay. So there are photographs of Veronica. Surveillance photographs. And then there is a red gunsight, which seems like it had to have been added in post, like this person took these photos and then was like, "Heh heh heh, I'm going to just Photoshop a little gunsight over Veronica's face and then send these pictures to her mom.”
HZ: Why are these pictures there? Lianne doesn't have the key to the box anymore, but if she needed the pictures, she could take them with her. I don't really understand what's going on with this photo box.
JOY: It’s very curious.
HZ: Or even really, how these photos feed into the plot? But is it Veronica thinking, “My mom loves me enough to surveille me from a distance through the long lenses which I love so much?”
JOY: Maybe her mom left town because she couldn't stand to lose Veronica. Maybe these were sent to Lianne in a threatening fashion, and Lianne couldn't couldn't handle it.
HZ: You know how Veronica has picked up a lot of tradecraft from Keith, whether deliberate or not? I wonder if Lianne did as well, living with him for so many years. Does she have any spy skills? I suppose she’s disappeared quite effectively.
JOY: She has disappeared effectively. But also Keith was a police officer while they were together, and not so much with the PI.
HZ: Back at Mars Investigations, Veronica is looking at the photos. Then Rebecca arrives for her date with Keith and Veronica says them dating is not awkward. But the atmosphere suggests the opposite thing.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. Rebecca says she came by to try to make things less uncomfortable, but is failing epicly.
HZ: You’d think a guidance counsellor might be a bit better at the psychological management of kids. But maybe she's not dealt with this situation before of dating one of her students' dads? Is it allowed?
JOY: Yeah, plus we're all humans, you know?
HZ: Yeah. Fragile humans.
JOY: Figuring it out as we go. And she's probably all worked up because she's hot for Keith.
HZ: Right? Who isn't? Don't answer that.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: So Veronica is driving Troy somewhere. She tells him there's no sign of the car at the impound yard. And Veronica says that if going to Tijuana was Logan's idea then maybe stealing the car was the master plan. And Troy, not wanting Logan to get the credit, says it was a meeting of minds.
JOY: Aha.
HZ: And so Veronica asks what they were doing on this night of debauchery, and Troy does some jokes.
JOY: Yes, love a joke that ends with donkey shows.
TROY: Let's see. From, uh, eight to nine, we brainstormed on how to overthrow Kim Jong-Il. From nine to ten, we deleted the records of the black voters of Florida. After that it was, uh, yeah it was all donkey shows.
VERONICA: So the usual?
TROY: Pretty much.
HZ: Jokes. jokes jokes, Veronica is not wanting the jokes right now.
JOY: No, this is serious, Troy.
HZ: She's suspicious.
VERONICA: Anything else?
TROY: If you wanna ask something, you just ask.
VERONICA: Okay. Did you meet anyone odd or were you followed? Did you see any suspicious activity?
TROY: How about all of the above - and have you ever been to Tijuana?
HZ: Troy is peeved. I think they are both assuming that she's probing about whether Troy got involved with other women on this jaunt, right?
JOY: Yeah. But then she kind of turns it around is just like, "The more info I have about the car the better chance I have a finding it," and dude, she doesn't want Troy to get shipped off to Albuquerque.
HZ: Which seems like a random choice of a place to choose to be this child's nightmare place but OK. And Troy's only just arrived at this school. He's barely had time to settle in.
JOY: Yeah, jeez. He's been there for like a couple of weeks.
HZ: And then they're at an office of the company that does the car tracking systems that Troy's dad's car has got. And Veronica is like, "I got this - just watch." And she walks up to a man with a buttoned up jacket and a massive lanyard and gives him some bullshit about how her boss, Troy's dad, needs to activate the vehicle theft system and she's worried because she's only worked there for two weeks and he already thinks she's a ditz, and thus she tiny-blonde-cutes the guy into saying, "Super Roger to the rescue!"
JOY: Ah, God, this guy!
HZ: All these prostrate dorks!
JOY: And then Veronica almost gets it done, if it wasn't for that pesky supervisor.
HZ: She's not cuting at that supervisor, who seems very tightly buttoned. But the supervisor says that they can't trace the car because it's not been reported stolen, of course.
JOY: You’d think you'd be able, as the owner, to just make that happen? Or as a representative of the owner, you'd be able to make it happen. But I guess not.
HZ: Maybe not. And then Logan drops off Luke at his house, and who pulls up but Malibu - yikes! And a chase ensues. it's quite a parkour-esque chase. Luke is running through a lot of gardens, leaping walls, leaps over some wicker furniture. It's a kind of classic running-through-garden montage, like in Ferris Bueller or something.
JOY: Yeah, and Luke does so well. I'm surprised he wants steroids. He seems in peak physical condition.
HZ: Well, he wants to be jacked, whereas actually he's kind of lithe. But maybe he's wearing all these sports clothes because he does the sports. Maybe it's not just fashion athletic wear, it's for real athleticism. Malibu can't keep up.
JOY: He's too bulky. That's what happens when you take steroids. Too bulky to run.
HZ: Really slows you down, and his clothes are very tight as well. Not good for leaping. And so Luke gets away and Malibu shouts:
HANK ZIGMAN: You better run, you punk bitch!
HZ: Why don’t you just wait outside Luke's house until he comes back? He'll come back eventually.
JOY: Yeah, maybe he just doesn't have that kind of time.
HZ: Right? He's got a threatening gym to run. He's got tortures to do. This can't be his only deal. And then we're in the school hallway. And Logan is at his locker, which is at floor level, which gives Veronica the opportunity to come up and loom over him for once.
JOY: For once.
HZ: Not for long. And she asks about the steroids Logan bought last weekend - nice attempt to trap - and he says, "You mean the steroids Luke bought."
JOY: Not so fast, Veronica.
HZ: Logan says:
LOGAN: Wow, you suck at this Nancy Drew stuff. You should get a new hobby.
HZ: Logan's with all of the references this episode, isn't he? Brigadoon, Nancy Drew. Typical lunchtime an appetite of a rich teenage boy.
JOY: But just as Logan's getting fed up with this conversation, Troy rolls up trolling for more distraction sex, if possible.
HZ: Yeah, you know how couples in the early stages of coupledom - it's just better not to be around them. Veronica and Troy are in this stage, they're kind of huggily walking off in slow mo. And you're a bit like, "Get a room" you can sense the, like, saliva exchange.
JOY: Yeah, get an island maybe.
HZ: Go hide in a piñata, until you're ready.
JOY: When Veronica gets back to chez Mars, who does she find rummaging through the cabinets but Miss James, wondering where the sifter is and also getting some kitchen help from Backup who's like, "I know where the sifter is, might be in this drawer or this cabinet."
HZ: He's a detective dog, he knows everything, very smart.
JOY: Truly.
HZ: She's trying to curry Veronica's favour by cooking dinner, fettuccine. And what's what's the what's for dessert? Guess, go on, guess! Veronica’s like, “I'm not playing your games.” And she says, “Waffles and ice cream, your favourite! You're six years old, right?”
JOY: Rebecca, it's too soon. You've got to be cool with a teenager. You can't just put it all out there. Let them come to you.
HZ: She's already wearing an apron though! She's well installed. And then this sends Veronica into a flashback to a noticeably nicer and brighter kitchen than the current Mars house, and she and Lianne are having a nice chat. Lianne's saying, “When are we going to cook for your boy?” And Veronica says, “We're Mars women? Shouldn't we play to our strengths?” Of getting baddies.
JOY: Lianne's like, just naming every boy in the high school that she can think of being like, is it this guy? Is it this guy? Is this guy? Is this guy? And when Veronica finally says it's Duncan Kane, Lianne looks so shook. She's like, “Oh, no, not the boy without a face.”
HZ: Lianne's face falls. The waffles burn, and this wakes Veronica from the flashback - Rebecca has dropped something, Veronica helps her pick up the broken pieces, that maybe represent Veronica's old life. And then Keith arrives home ready to play house with Rebecca. But Veronica says she can't stay for dinner, she's helping a friend at the Sac-n-Pac for a school project. What a random excuse - she's already done her project at the Sac-n-Pac in the pilot.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, this is thin and very conveniently timed.
HZ: I suppose she wants them to know that she's lying, because she doesn't want to spend time with them. But again, they're a new couple. No one wants to spend time with new couples, it’s better to isolate a new couple.
JOY: I know that Keith is aware of of how this could be difficult for Veronica. Maybe just don't allow for a situation where Veronica comes home to find your new girlfriend who you've just barely been dating going through the kitchen cabinets, getting ready to make dinner. It just it feels like Keith could have handled this a little more delicately, and then maybe this episode wouldn't have ended the way that it does for Keith.
HZ: Instead, Veronica goes off to a car yard. There's lots of dudes, lots of cars, wheels rolling around, that kind of thing. And she and Weevil ride up on Weevil’s hog. Finally, she's riding Weevil’s big hog!
JOY: Hurray!
HZ: But Weevil's helping her out and talks with his uncle Angel. Weevil talks in English and his uncle answers in Spanish and says that Troy's dad's car has already been and gone. He doesn't know the name of who bought it and don't bring people to the car yard that he doesn't know. And by the way, someone called Mario has taken the piñata for his kid's birthday. Weevil translates all this for Veronica but she already knows: she hid the fact that she can speak Spanish. So she's playing her ignorance again just for safety.
JOY: Oof! So it's a mad dash for Mario's house trying to get to the piñata.
HZ: They ride the big hog to the kid’s party. They follow the stereotypical music and they get there right on time to see the piñata smash open. Veronica runs in and tells them to stop. Too late! Candy is everywhere.
JOY: Everywhere!
HZ: But you know what? People don't seem that surprised or displeased that there is just a random stranger standing right in the middle of the kid’s party wearing a knee length leather coat even though it seems very warm.
JOY: Seems very warm for that coat. I mean, they're - the women are definitely saying like "Who is she? What the heck?
HZ: Yeah, but they're not really physically reacting. They're not ushering her out. They're not offering her a drink.
JOY: Neither!
HZ: Maybe they're not paid for speaking extra parts.
JOY: Perhaps, perhaps. Meanwhile, Veronica's gotta break it Luke that he's gonna have to just pay Zigman back because: steroids are gone, my dude.
HZ: Yep, it's bad news in the toilet office for Luke. He needs to find eight grand. And he's a bit moany, like it's Veronica's fault. And she's like, "Figure it out!" And then she walks past the guidance counselor's door which sends her into a flashback.
JOY: Yeah, she flashes back to Lianne pulling her out of school.
HZ: “Come to Palm Springs, come to Palm Springs, come to Palm Springs!” Every kid wants to go to Palm Springs, right?
JOY: Yeah, when she's got like tests and projects and all the stuff she's got, all the school responsibility, but Lianne doesn't care. And we find out that this was just three days before Lianne disappeared.
HZ: Yeah, and I noticed that they've styled Veronica to look extra young and girly in this: she’s got two long plaits and this tiny little knotted pink cardigan. She looks like a tiny doll to contrast with her hardass look in the present. And she says, "At the time, I thought it was just one more on the growing list of odd things my mom was doing. I chalked her nerves up to the vodka, but now I think she really was scared". Do you get the impression they know what they're doing with the Lianne Mars plot at this time? Or are they just, "She's disappeared and then we'll decide."
JOY: I think they have it all mapped out. I don't know if I'm giving everybody too much credit. But this - it feels to me like they're leading us somewhere specific.
HZ: Hmmm.
JOY: What do you think, you disagree?
HZ: I'm not sure. But I find it hard to get a handle on Lianne. You're told a lot about her, like she had an alcohol problem. And there's this mystery with Jake Kane, but you don't really get a sense of her character in these flashbacks. Whereas compared to Lilly, who you only see in flashback as well, you get her character straight away.
JOY: Definitely. That's definitely true. I think I think maybe up to this point, like they're keeping Lianne more mysterious and less concrete because we know so little about what exactly is going on right now.
HZ: Yeah, I asume you see a bit more of Lianne in this episode to contrast with Keith's dating life now. Whereas Veronica is still dwelling on his previous relationship. Back at home, she is in her room, licking envelopes: she's sending cell phones to people who might know where Lianne is, just to get her to call Veronica. I wonder how much burner phones were in 2004.
JOY: Oh my God, where does she get all this funding?
HZ: It's probably like a cheap cell phone website for private detectives.
JOY: Private phonez with a Z dot com.
HZ: Keith gets in walk of shame late.
JOY: So late!
HZ: It’s practically day.
JOY: So late that it's early.
HZ: And Veronica needs his help and explains the problem that Troy's car’s been stolen and no one wants him to be shipped off to boarding school in Albuquerque. And Keith says:
KEITH: I'll be nice to your boyfriend if you're nice to my girlfriend.
JOY: And they make a deal, we think anyway, at least on paper. A gentleman's agreement.
HZ: Keith keeps to his half of that deal, because he goes to the office of the car trackers and he's in "Keith Mars playing an authoritative person that is just going to barge in and get what he wants" - it’s such a delight to watch Power Keith.
JOY: Love Power Keith.
HZ: Who could resist Power Keith? Not the boss who shut down Super Roger earlier. So they switch on the car tracking system. At school, Luke and Veronica are watching some online auction thing where Luke is selling his possessions to get the eight grand - he doesn't want to sell his signed baseball and Veronica is like:
VERONICA: It's a ball!
HZ: Which is how I feel about sports memorabilia.
JOY: Truly.
HZ: And then Troy turns up again and does some more innuendo. Maybe that's how he manages his stress? Some people are able to make innuendo out of anything. I remember, in English class when I was 16 or so, and we were trying to get through the bit of Shakespeare where it says, "Where the bee sucks there suck I./In a cowslip’s bell I lie." and that took like an hour for these four boys to deal with all of the potential sex references in that.
JOY: Oh, God.
HZ: Troy wants her to come over and play detective. She doesn't play detective, Troy; she is detective.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. And she's like, How can you be so chill? And then Wallace - so he can get his full episode pay - just walks up stands in between them and says, "How come your parents are shipping you off essentially on your, like, first offence, so why don't they just ground you?" And then walks away.
HZ: I love that. This is the only Wallace we see, but he’s just sort of like, let's move this along.
JOY: Yeah, the drive-by Wallace. Pick up the pace, guys.
HZ: Yeah. He just walks up behind them somehow full of knowledge of what they've been saying. Maybe he's bugged these people this whole time. He's been learning!
JOY: Everyone is bugged by everyone else on this show.
HZ: Well done, Wallace. You're a sharp pencil in the box. And then there's this very weird scene in journalism class with Veronica and another girl, Ashley, having to fake-interview each other and they're just being so mean.
JOY: Oh, God, I do not miss high school.
HZ: And it doesn't show the best of Veronica because Ashley is just like, "How do you respond to the rumours that your boyfriend hooked up with strippers in Tijuana last weekend?" And Veronica says:
VERONICA: Miss Banks. Have you decided which parent you’re gonna live with after the divorce? And, follow-up: can you believe your father's choice in mistresses?
HZ: So rude.
JOY: So brutal.
HZ: Veronica is not a nice Veronica this episode. She's very low charm.
JOY: Very low charm, but also this girl sucks.
HZ: Yes, she does suck.
JOY: Miss Dent keeps her after class and is like, “Hey, girl, sometimes the lies we let ourselves believe are for our own good.” Does Veronica internalise this?
HZ: It's sort of the thesis of the series. Do you think a teacher would admonish a student for being so bitchy by saying something this philosophical to them?
JOY: I think that a teacher would admonish a student for behaving the way Veronica just did, but I don't know that I would buy the philosophy bit. What do you think? Does this feel teacherly to you?
HZ: No, I feel like Miss Dent is one of the nicest people in this whole thing. And unfortunately, they can't afford to keep Sydney Tamaiia Poitier in the series. But she's like Veronica's conscience that has somehow gone missing this scene. I do feel like the Veronica that dates Troy is not Veronica's best self, which is often a bit of a flag that a relationship isn't the right relationship for you, isn't it? That your friends are like, "You're not nice right now."
JOY: You know what's almost a red flag? A pink scarf! This, I think - this might be the premier of Veronica's "I have a long skinny scarf that I will wrap once tightly around my neck so it's sort of sort of like a choker” scarf. And it serves no purpose other than to be ornamental, because it's far too skinny.
HZ: It's a winter choker.
JOY: She looks like that woman in the campfire story who wears a black velvet ribbon around her neck and after she marries her husband, he unties it and then her head falls off and the ribbon was holding her head on her neck the whole time.
HZ: But then Veronica does go in for clothes that are like tiny versions of normal clothes. Her sleeves are tiny, her jackets tend to be tiny, she has these little shrunken chokers. Next time she’ll wear a tiny hat?
JOY: Oh God, I hope not. And this scarf is what she chose to wear to the occasion of searching for Ms Freaking James on privateeyez with a z dot com. Rude, Veronica. Yeah, you don't need to protect your father. Your father protects you, that's how this works.
HZ: Yes, Keith is furious when she's like “Happy Birthday, here's your girlfriend's background check.”
KEITH: Makes me feel good about myself. Wanted in a way that I haven't in a long time. It makes me wake up with a smile on my face. And we didn't ignore your feelings. We tried to make you feel comfortable, but you chose to be snotty.
VERONICA: Mom is still out there somewhere. Do you even care if she ever comes back?
KEITH: You didn't care until I started dating. You've been hard on your mom for months.
VERONICA: You can find anybody! If she were a criminal, you'd make a couple of grand tracking her down and you'd have her back in a week.
KEITH: Well, maybe I don't care to find her. Have you ever considered that?
HZ: It's some great Enrico Colantoni performance, but angry Keith is just heartbreaking.
JOY: We hate to see it. And this is just like so rough and to top it all off, possibly fueling a smaller secret rage in Keith Mars is the fact that Veronica used so much inkjet printer ink to print out that purple background page from privateeyz.com.
HZ: Surely there's a printer-friendly version? Come on.
JOY: Honestly, come on Mars.
HZ: You can just just get it in black print on a white page. That's like $16. What Veronica says in voiceover the beginning of this scene as well seems so cynical for a teenager.
VERONICA VOICEOVER: Love is an investment. Information is insurance. With someone whose heart has already been crushed, I say you can't be too careful.
JOY: Yeah, this is rough to see. hate to see it. Poor, sweet Veronica. She's already been hurt so badly.
HZ: And now she and Keith are hurting each other and they're their main people in this world. But Keith at least does give Veronica the code for Troy's car security system. So that night, Veronica and Troy go off and follow the car’s signal - Veronica's very confused is weaving all over the place. And they get out of the car. She's like, “This is a weird place to hide a stolen car, in mansionland.” There's this dramatic low shot. There's greenish light, the signal's right on top of them. What is this, a flying BMW?
JOY: No, it's a very good boy. The car tracker has been attached to the collar of some kind of giant golden dog, maybe a yellow lab, maybe a golden retriever, maybe a mix of some kind.
HZ: Maybe it’s original Backup wearing a wig.
JOY: Maybe. I would take this dog over a BMW any day, personally.
HZ: Absolutely. Take that dog to Catholic school, you've got a friend. And then next day, at the Mars house, Keith offers Veronica breakfast. She doesn't want it. And she probably also doesn't want the other thing he gives her, which is a file on Troy. And I find it impossible to believe that Veronica has not run her own background checks on every boy that she's been on half a date with.
JOY: Yeah, it does seem out of character that she wouldn't have already done this.
HZ: And then a sad scene. In a cafe Rebecca's hanging on to Keith, because new couples - stay away, leave them to it. But, we know the axe is about to fall, don't we?
JOY: Yeah. He doesn't want to do it, but he has to do it because he's world's greatest dad.
HZ: Yeah. Veronica is not ready to see him dating. Oh!
JOY: And he's putting Veronica's comfort ahead of his own because he's a great dad,
HZ: Best dad. Best dad. And Rebecca recognises he's being the best dad because she says, ”Can you give me another reason? Because I can't bitch about you being a great dad.” How do you think this affects her guidance counsellor work? Would she be able to be a useful guidance counsellor to Veronica? Because she's probably going to be a bit bitter about Veronica trashing this quite promising relationship. And yet, it's still her professional duty to work with Veronica, isn't it?
JOY: Yeah, it feels like this is exactly why parents shouldn't date their children's teachers and guidance counsellors because then it will be a conflict of interests and it'll be a lot harder for Rebecca James to do her job effectively moving forward.
HZ: And Keith kisses her forehead, which means you know, this is done, the romance is over. And another romance is about to end.
JOY: Yeah. Veronica has curled her hair especially for the occasion of laying down the law upon Troy, here it comes:
TROY: Hey, sexy. Give me a kiss, make all my troubles disappear?
VERONICA: All your troubles? That would take a lot of kissing. I'm just glad we weren't dating when you were kicked out of those two schools for drug possession and trafficking. My lips would've fallen off.
JOY: “Oh, you got kicked out of some schools for drug possession and trafficking? Oh, you got kicked out of those schools with your girlfriend Shauna?"
HZ: She's furious that Troy hasn't told her about any of this. And he's like, "Maybe I would have if I'd known you for more than a month, I'd tell you my dark secrets. I wanted to wait for you to like me before I tell you that things I'm not so proud of."
JOY: I don't know, I don't really feel like he had any designs of telling her.
HZ: Although it's true, if you put that all out there on the first date, when you've you've made a good impression initially by helping her fix her car tires, then you probably would want her in the circle of trust. So that's probably at least the three month mark. After that gross new couple thing wears off around three months, then you can go in with the “So, a few things in my backstory..." But he says, "I don't have to tell you that; you’re Veronica Mars, you know everything." She really let her private eye side slide; she was dickmatized into not running the background checks.
JOY: Yep. Too in love to do her thing.
HZ: Are you happy, though, that finally Veronica and Troy are torn asunder?
JOY: Yeeesss? Yes. Forgive me, but I am so glad they are split.
HZ: He's not your type.
JOY: He's not my type. This is not my first watch, but even watching it the first time he just gave me a bad feeling the whole time.
HZ: Is it because he just was this kind of smarmy rich kid?
JOY: He's a smarmy cocky rich kid trying to act like he's not like all the other smarmy cocky rich kids.
HZ: Yeah, well, he's not, because he's got this drugs business.
JOY: True. Yeah, there's just something so like, fake and weird about him. But hey, it's not our concern anymore because he's about to be gonezo.
HZ: But after this sad break up, one thing happens, which is that Luke comes up gives Veronica an envelope with eight grand. And so at least she can sort out Luke's problems. Back at the torture gym, it doesn't say whether no dogs are allowed, but Veronica and Backup zoom in there. And she kind of flirts with Malibu about his car. Easy way in, isn't it? Which, from earlier, you see is a red Hummer. And then he says, "So you're here to get pumped?"
JOY: Gross.
HZ: But yeah, Veronica is not here to get pumped. She needs to settle Luke's account and Zigman's trying to get her to go into the office. She's like, "No, I'm not!"
JOY: No, no.
HZ: And then she opens her phone and snaps a picture of Zigman and then she answers a call from Wallace and says, “It's a piece of cake.” I couldn't quite work out what the point was of this call from Wallace in this just to remind us that she has her sidekick Wallace that they haven't written any scenes for this episode.
JOY: I think this phone call was timed so that she would have a reason to take her phone out and take a picture of him without him realising that she was taking a picture of him.
HZ: It was very hard not to realise that she was taking a picture of him.
JOY: Yeah, not saying it was a perfect plan.
HZ: It's the long lens of flip phone cameras. She gives Malibu the envelope and he says him and Luke are not square - “the little bitch let him down and will have to pay." And Veronica says, "Remember this moment, because you're going to regret it. Toodles!"
JOY: And she's loading that pic in your computer, printing it out real big, writing something on the piece of paper and faxing it somewhere - I wonder where?
HZ: So, kids, a fax is like an email made flesh.
JOY: Oh my god, an email made flesh, truly.
HZ: And then we're Troy’s house, and consequences are landing. He's in the driveway.
JOY: His dad's sending them off, sending him off in that cab.
HZ: Cab is ready!
JOY: A cab to Albuquerque?
HZ: It'll only take a couple of days. He says Troy's used up all his chances, he needs to learn discipline and respect. Do you think that if Troy's already been expelled from a bunch of schools that the Albuquerque one is really going to make the difference? Surely it just means Troy can get up to no good much further away from his dad's watchful eye.
JOY: Well, maybe it's just a stricter school than Neptune High.
HZ: Maybe it's the Catholicism. And it's too late for him. He's made his bed, his bed of drugs. And the cab door is open, but Troy sets off for the other side, which surprised me.
JOY: It is weird, a weird choice.
HZ: A more successful parental scene is taking place at the Mars house. It's Keith's birthday.
JOY: Veronica made a cake.
HZ: Yeah, it looks like a piece of shit. But also quite cute. And Keith says everything Veronica makes leans to the left. Aaah.
JOY: And probably tastes really good.
HZ: It probably does taste really good. And you know what else tastes good?
JOY: When your dad stops dating your guidance counsellor?
HZ: Veronica is savouring that, Keith, not so much; he does a big sigh, but he's very nice to Veronica. He's very sweet.
KEITH: I should be able to do whatever I want because it's my birthday. I just wanna have a piece of cake with my daughter and that's all I want.
HZ: What a dad.
JOY: And then we all cry.
HZ: Top Dad. And the cake candle is a question mark rather than a number.
JOY: Very polite and sensitive, Veronica.
HZ: Nice little touch. But then back to Troy - he's getting dropped off by the cab, but not at Catholic school.
JOY: No, he's getting dropped off back at the diner where he goes into the bathroom, moves the ceiling grate, pulls the steroid package out of the vent then gets into - now this is confusing to me - is he getting into his dad's BMW?
HZ: I assumed so. And he receives a call from his old co-conspirator Shauna. And he says:
TROY: Hello?
SHAUNA: Hey baby, it's Shauna.
TROY: Can you feel the heat yet? I am getting so close, baby, your panties ought to burst into flames any minute now.
SHAUNA: Troy, what's with this girl calling me? You gave her my number?
TROY: Oh, whoa. What girl?
SHAUNA: Some girl named Veronica.
TROY: Uh, you didn't tell her you'd be seeing me soon, did you?
SHAUNA: She caught me off guard. What was I sup-
HZ: Just one last bit of yuck.
JOY: And then we all leap into the void. Something to remember Troy by.
HZ: Troy hangs up on Shauna and rips the package open with his teeth whilst driving - very unsafe. And what's in it? Where the steroids at?
JOY: Candy!
HZ: His own tiny piñata!
JOY: Yeah, and even more dangerous. He proceeds to read a full letter while continuing to drive on the highway.
HZ: It's from Veronica saying: “Sorry we didn't get a chance to say goodbye, and good luck at your new school. Took me a while to figure out where to start the steroids, but there's only one place you were alone, right?" Toilet - toilet plot! And she says, "In case you're wondering, the former contents of the package are somewhere between my toilet and the Pacific Ocean." Why do these people keep flushing drugs into the water? No wonder everyone in Neptune acts up - there’s so many drugs in the water.
JOY: The water supply is so contaminated in Neptune! Just stop! Find a different way to dispose of illegal substances, please.
HZ: Surely, surely you could just put them in the bin. And then another adversary is being taken care of at the border. There's some nice blippy music happening, I enjoyed that. And Malibu is trying to go through the border. But Veronica's fax has reached border control.
JOY: And he gets the old "Want to turn over your contraband?" line from the border officer. And this time, it's not just a fun joke.
HZ: Veronica was relaxing in her room listening to a Discman, which means she doesn't hear her phone ringing - it is Lianne Mars somewhere, somewhere that looks like outside a stadium or something?
JOY: Possibly.
HZ: And she's like, "Don't try and find me. You'll understand when it's time." When will it be time? Veronica's clearly capable of understanding a lot of stuff - it'd be so much easier, if you were honest.
JOY: Give us a timeline of some kind, please.
HZ: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because it's not like Veronica has a record of being easily fobbed off with the absence of information, is it?
JOY: No.
HZ: And Lianne says to wish Keith a happy birthday.
JOY: Ah, she remembered.
HZ: Yeah, should bloody hope so, they were together a long time.
To verify the Southern Californianess and legal procedures of this episode of Veronica Mars, let's turn to our correspondent who is expert in these matters, Lo Dodds, for this week's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
LO DODDS: So this is the big drug trafficking episode. There's actually not that many crimes that are actually committed, because people get caught before they commit the crimes. So Luke could have been busted for possession, possession for intent to distribute, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute.
JOY: What are the charges that Luke would face compared to those that Hank Zigman, who he's getting the drugs for, would face?
LO DODDS: They would both be charged probably with felony drug trafficking, based on the fact that they said there was about $8,000 worth of steroids that he was picking up in Mexico. But Luke: we would have to assume that it's Luke's first offence, so he gets about five years, maximum five years, and he'd get a fine, probably like quarter of a million dollars. But Luke is also going to fold like a cheap sweater and turn over Ziggy and plead out. So you can just assume that Luke is probably going to get a much better deal than Ziggy. And actually, we don't know that Ziggy is a hardened drug trafficker. Luke said he was doing a run for Ziggy. So it sounds like he's probably pretty bright and has stupid college kids go down and get his drugs in order to keep his rap sheet clean. So if he didn't have any offences, he would also get the quarter million dollar fine, less up to five years in prison. If it was a second offence, it gets up to 10 years in prison, half a million dollar fine.
And Veronica also could have been convicted of a crime for faking the death certificate.
HZ: Whoa, what kind of crime is that?
LO DODDS: Well, I think she could have been convicted of fraud. But it's a little bit iffy, because she didn't gain anything from it, like any monetary value. So if you're the bank, you're probably just going to be like, well, we should probably up our controls for what our tellers are allowed to give out. Because in real life, she wouldn't have been able to do that. To get into a safety deposit box for a deceased person, you need to file something with the court that says you're the representative, you need to file a declaration, there needs to be probably a notarized declaration. And at that point, the people from the bank are definitely going to go visit that safe deposit box with you. They're not just going to let you rifle through stuff and just take whatever you want. So yeah, that wouldn't have happened, I don't think, in real life.
JOY: Did anything else in the episode catch your eye or set off your bullshit detector?
LO DODDS: I did want to note that there is not a website that you can go on to with a special PI password and find out all of the bad things that people do. I wish there were!
HZ: Nooo! privateeyez.net.gov.mars?
LO DODDS: It's not true. I feel bad. But what most people don't know is there are legal search engines that if you have subscriptions to and they are expensive, you can log onto there and find a lot, a lot about people. I did some jury stalking for about three months as a job. And public records are an amazing place to find a lot of information about people that people do not realise is just available out there for the public to see.
HZ: Incredibly sinister.
LO DODDS: Well, they're already putting it on Facebook. So what's the difference right?
HZ: And was it common for you Southern Californian teens to take little trips across the Mexican border?
LO DODDS: Actually, it is common to do that. Not in high school, though. But Wednesdays is college night in Tijuana. So UCSD and San Diego State and those schools, there was a regular night that people will go down to Tijuana. And you could actually drive to the border and there was a bus station there, you get on the bus and the bus would just take you right across the border into TJ. So you didn't have to take your own car into TJ. And I only did that once. And I went to a really boring techno concert and fell asleep. But we did have people that when they went there go to the pharmacia to get drugs, because there's a tonne of stuff that's legal in Mexico like steroids that is not legal in the United States, and then bring them back.
HZ: But you could take your piñata of drugs back on the bus! One way to do it.
LO DODDS: I think that was kind of the point, the point was that you wouldn't have your own car impounded and stolen or anything like that, you just get on the bus. But also it meant that the bus was probably subject to search all the time from Border Patrol agents that knew exactly what was happening on Wednesday nights. But we were not stopped. I don't remember if anybody that I was with bought illegal drugs or whether they were all also just really bored by the techno concert.
HZ: You can get a generic piñata in America, they'd really be no need to carry something that bulky back from Mexico.
HZ: So Jenny, I have some questions about this whole plot.
JOY: I'm ready.
HZ: Do you think Troy has cultivated the relationship with Veronica from the start just so that she investigates Luke, and throws the scent off Troy entirely? Or does he genuinely like her but can't help deceive her and carry on with his drug trade plots? And how do his actions in this episode fit in with his portrayal in the last three episodes, aside from him being kind of a smarmy, gross douchebag?
JOY: I find it very difficult to reconcile previous episodes Troy with this Troy. He does seem to like be a nicer guy and be genuinely interested in Veronica prior to this episode.
HZ: He's been quite helpful before.
JOY: Yeah; changing her tire, taking her to Homecoming.
HZ: Did he put the tracker on the dog himself?
JOY: I think he must have.
HZ: And then what was his cover story plan to be? If, you know, he'd already sent the car off to be chopped and shopped. And if Veronica hadn't clocked his involvement, he would have been sent away to boarding school to do drug plotting on a different border or...? I don't get it - was he going to run away with his eight grand, which wouldn't keep you for that long?
JOY: No, but he seems to be good at obtaining and then distributing drugs. So maybe he was just going to make a real go of it with Shauna.
HZ: He's also quite good at getting caught, which is perhaps why he concocted such an elaborate plot this time. And so Jenny, how do you rate the mysteriousness of this week's mystery?
JOY: I thought it was pretty solid. I felt like the whole rollout and progression and gradual unravelling of the mystery, coupled with the fact that we never have to see Troy again, and also that Veronica like got him real good at the end. I'm going to give them four out of five former American Gladiators.
HZ: I wasn't that bothered when the plot was mainly just "Luke needs to get eight grand in steroids back" because I didn't have any intellectual or emotional investment in Luke. But it does get more and more mysterious because Troy has gone to some effort to make quite a convoluted scheme. So I'll give it four out of five blobby chocolate cakes.
JOY: Ah, I'll take one of those blobby chocolate cakes.
HZ: I'll send you a blobby chocolate cake. It'll definitely slope to the left after it's been in the mail. And so we say goodbye to Troy, portrayed by Aaron Ashmore, one of the Ashmore twins, because there's also a Shawn Ashmore. And they're identical. And they were both in Smallville. If you were thinking, “Well, one of them was in Smallville, that's how you tell them apart” - no, gotta find another rubric to tell your Ashmores apart.
JOY: Curses.
HZ: And do you have a favourite line in this episode?
JOY: My favourite line comes from Logan. When when Veronica pulls up to pick them up at the diner, and he digs on our car and says, "Nice car, must have been a huge cereal box."
HZ: Logan is having a really good time this episode, isn't he? They're building up Logan's charm, dialling down the jerk behaviour.
JOY: And what do you take for a best line?
HZ: I felt like this episode was low on best lines. Because Veronica wasn't really having a fun quippy time with Keith, or with anyone because Wallace also wasn't really in it either. And maybe those two characters make Veronica a nicer person than she is when she's just surrounded by drug-dealing jerks. So maybe it's when the scene where things fall apart for the relationship of Troy and Veronica and he says, "Hey, sexy, give me a kiss. Make all my troubles disappear," and Veronica's like, "All your troubles? That would take a lot of kissing."
JOY: Oh Jesus.
HZ: It's not rich pickings.
JOY: No, no, no, but I salute you for making the effort.
HZ: Thanks. That's cold comfort to me.
HZ: Another episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: I guess that brings us to case closed.
JOY: That was Veronica Mars Investigations Season 1, episode 5: You Think You Know Somebody.
HZ: Watch season 1 episode 6 and join us in a week to investigate it.
JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
HZ: The website, where the show lives along with a piñata full of steroids, is vmipod.com.
JOY: You can hear more of my speaking voice on my other podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer and you can hear some of my singing voice at jennyowenyoungs.com, home of all my music stuff.
HZ: You can hear some more of my speaking voice at The Allusionist - theallusionist.org - and Answer Me This at answermethispodcast.com, and you can hear some of my singing voice hopefully never. It's not good.
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Zach McNees.
HZ: With music from Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
JOY: Hey now.
HZ: The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
JOY: Distributed by PRX.
HZ: Until next time, who’s your daddy?
JOY: Who’s your daddy?
HZ: He's sending me to Catholic school.