VMI 1.11: Silence of the Lamb transcript
Hear this episode at VMIpod.com/1-11
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning murder and violence.
It doesn’t take a whole sheriff’s department 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: A serial killer is on the loose, strangling young women with guitar strings.
JOY: But because the victims are “party girls”, Sheriff Lamb’s not too bothered about investigating
HZ: Luckily, Keith Mars is! He’s on the case! And he’s wearing a suit.
JOY: Yeah, I guess you could say he's hot and bothered then, since he is wearing a suit. Meanwhile Veronica is investigating high schoolers’ parents - and discovers shocking information about her friend Mac.
HZ: But to cheer her up, she’s got a new friend Leo to extract favours from, her favourite thing.
JOY: Hot! Leo. Is. Hot!
JOY: Too busy nailin' women to strangle women, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And busted trying to buy an eight ball from an undercover cop at an Eagles concert in 1974, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 1, episode 11: Silence of the Lamb.
JOY: Ugh, we should be so lucky.
HZ: Good lord, there is so much stuff happening in this episode. So many mysteries, such busy Marses - extraordinary.
JOY: There's a whole lot going on.
HZ: This episode was supposed to be broadcast before the last episode, the Echolls Christmas pumpkin-stabbing extravaganza.
JOY: Really?
HZ: Yeah, but they switched them because otherwise, their Christmas episode would have been going out in early January. Or maybe they thought, “There's no Logan in this episode; there's hardly any Weevil; they also weren't in episodes eight or nine, and who could survive so many episodes on the trot without those characters?”
JOY: Well, luckily for us, there's a new addition of a handsome, handsome young man.
HZ: Keeping Jenny Owen Youngs in the game for one more episode.
JOY: My heart is still in it for at least this episode.
HZ: We open at the Mars house in the morning. Keith is contemplative.
JOY: Yeah, he's real stressed out about Veronica possibly hanging out at bars, who knows when she would have time to hang out at bars between her course load and caseload?
HZ: If she's trying to entrap a crim and a bar is involved?
JOY: Is “crim” an abbreviation for “the criminal element” or “criminals”?
HZ: Is that not one you have in the States?
JOY: Well, it’s fairly intuitive so I guess it might exist, but I've never heard it before. It also just sounds like, you know, really sophisticated coming out of your mouth.
HZ: No, I think that's just your conditioning, Jenny.
JOY: No no no no no.
HZ: But Keith is very worried and all over the newspaper it says "The E String Strangler Strikes Again", a case Keith was working on a couple of years ago. But the mayor - the bloody mayor! - just wanted to pin the crimes on the Oakland Strangler. Because the Oakland Strangler was down in Southern California for a bit of mini golf vacationing and thought, “I'll just strangle some while I'm here.”
JOY: Our main attraction. Sure, yes. You know, it's disturbing to me that it's not specified whether it's the low E string or the high E string that the strangler is leaving as his signature - or a bass E string, I guess; we see it later, and it's definitely not thick enough to be a bass E string.
HZ: Do the press even know which guitar string it is, or have they just thought, "E string sounds like a thing"?
JOY: Oh, that's a great, great question.
HZ: Are they getting the music journalists on it or not?
JOY: Yeah, Pitchfork's Criminal Division, please report. I think that it would be easier on the hand to strangle someone with a with a low E string because they're easier to grip because they're thicker; the highest string is wicked thin and would rip into your hand.
HZ: Oh, like a cheese wire.
JOY: Exactly like a cheese wire.
HZ: But anyway, that's their signature. That's what we establish: there is a serial killer on the loose in Neptune. Is this the most serious Mystery of the Week that we've encountered so far?
JOY: I think so. Aside of course from the larger arc of Lilly Kane, I don't think we've we've seen a murder.
HZ: And clearly it's affecting the town - at school, Veronica and Wallace walking around with hot dogs. We know that Wallace likes those, given the other episode he had a tray of like 50 hot dogs. And he says his mom is afraid to drive home alone...from her dates with Keith? Hasn't been confirmed yet.
JOY: Oh, my God.
HZ: Veronica, by the way, is wearing a tiny bright pink cord jacket over a T-shirt that looks like a couple of Rothko paintings have melted down it.
JOY: It burns if you look directly at it, would not recommend. And then we're on to this kid named Jackson Douglas, who heard that Veronica can dig up dirt on people.
JACKSON: I hear you do detective stuff for people.
VERONICA: I do favours for friends.
JACKSON: I can pay.
VERONICA: Sit down, friend. What can I do for you?
JACKSON: I was hoping that you could find some dirt on my parents.
VERONICA: Why Jackson Douglas, I do declare! You want me to dig up dirt on your own parents.
JOY: And it gives Veronica a second opportunity to whip out her Scarlett O'Hara impression which - we've heard you. We have heard all of you on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. We acknowledge the error of our ways, this is a tremendous oversight.
HZ: In episode nine.
JOY: Yes. I've never seen Gone with the Wind, have you?
HZ: I haven't. It's very long.
JOY: Very long… Just really not a lot of I think overlap between its interests and ours, perhaps.
HZ: Even though I haven't seen Gone with the Wind, I am familiar with certain tropes and quotations from it, but I think one of the reasons I missed it in episode nine was I was just so incandescent with rage at Veronica using one.
JOY: Right?
HZ: That's my excuse.
JOY: I am and I would like to second that excuse, let me hop on, tightly grab the coattails of your excuse, and ride along.
HZ: I'm happy to share with you. Anyway, this guy Jackson, he needs leverage because his parents are very strict and he just got grounded for two months for smoking, allowing Wallace to say this excellent line:
WALLACE: Apparently you've never spent time in a black woman's house. Be glad you're still walking.
HZ: I'm always here for any scraps I can get of Wallace's home life. Love it.
JOY: Same.
HZ: Veronica asks if Jackson can handle the truth of the 1970s and 1980s and of his parents’ lurid past; but before they can talk fees, they are interrupted by a string quartet striking up ‘Birthday’ by The Beatles, of course.
JOY: Dude, who's responsible? I cannot confirm nor deny definitively, but this string quartet sounds an awful lot like the 33-key mini Casio keyboard I had as a child. This sounds like some very budget scoring getting done behind the scenes.
HZ: Who's this display for? Madison Sinclair.
JOY: It’s Madison Sinclair's birthday.
HZ: She's like, “I love my parents”. I would never forgive my parents for this public humiliation.
JOY: Yeah, this is way, way, way, way, way too much. Also, does Madison Sinclair even like the Beatles?
HZ: Do you think she even knows it's the Beatles?
JOY: No, she's just like, “Look, the proof I'm rich”.
HZ: Do you think she loves string quartets?
JOY: I don't think so. I think she loves like Creed.
HZ: They could play some Creed. Or, they could get Creed to sing happy birthday to her.
JOY: Oh yeah, yeah, if they really cared about her.
HZ: This would just be my nightmare for anyone to do a surprise like this for me but she seems to be living for it. A man with a bow tie and a very short mustard jacket that he must have borrowed off Veronica comes out with a big cake, which, like Madison herself, is white with pink trimmings. Madison's wearing a very confusing outfit by the way. She's wearing a very thick sweater but it's off the shoulder, so her torso would be very warm but her shoulder's cold. She's got like a little flippy pale blue skirt, and then what look like the kind of boots that you wear when you work at a slaughterhouse.
JOY: OMG! What's the word? Wait...
HZ: Abbatoir?
JOY: Yes, for some reason my mind was skipping on “bordello, bordello.”
HZ: Well, maybe; people have kinks for all sorts of thing.
JOY: I mean, hey, why not just mash those two things together and really hit the middle of a very hot Venn diagram.
HZ: She's handing out flyers to her birthday party and requests no gifts - because she already owns everything.
JOY: Because she's way too rich.
HZ: This is clearly a thing. Because Veronica says:
VERONICA: The rite of fall. Madison Sinclair’s birthday.
HZ: Now, fall is not after Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere. Proof that these episodes were broadcast out of sequence.
JOY: Traditionally no. But who can really tell seasons apart in Southern California?
HZ: Very good point. Jackson's like, “Madison's party is the best party of the year, and I can't go because I'm grounded.”
JOY: Based on what we see later of this party, I would like to respectfully disagree.
HZ: Well, the bit where they're just reading books in the library looks like a fine party to me.
JOY: Yeah, that looks great. But that's like solo little sis punishment quarantine party. That is a separate party.
HZ: Over at Mars Investigations, Sheriff Lamb swaggers in, we haven't seen Sheriff Lamb for a while. Have you missed him, Jenny?
JOY: I haven't missed him. He got a haircut. He looks even worse.
HZ: He calls Veronica by her full name, drink!
JOY: Drink!
JOY: And then he asks where her daddy is.
HZ: Yeah, I like that she sasses him with Lamb related jokes.
LAMB: Is your daddy here, or is he busy peeking in people's windows?
VERONICA: You stop dressing up like Little Bo Peep, he'll stop peeking.
JOY: So it's like Lamb-related, but it’s also like, is she kind of accidentally sort of dissing her dad?
HZ: This is curious because she's implicated Keith as a Peeping Tom. She also seems to be a bit down on Sheriff Lamb wearing female-identified clothing. But then, there is a Bo Peep outfit in Neptune because we saw it at the Echolls family Christmas - well, the Halloween Party.
JOY: Oh, true.
HZ: The mayor is also there, by the way. The mayor wants to see Keith and Veronica goes into Keith’s office and says very pointedly, “Deputy Lamb is here,” rather than Sheriff Lamb. That's a good diss.
JOY: Deep, deep burn, so, nice.
HZ: I quite enjoy the font of Keith Mars's ‘Keith Mars’ desk sign. He's got a large model ship that he can gaze at from his desk that I had not noticed before.
JOY: Do you think that was a gift from Veronica? Do you think they built it together father daughter time?
HZ: Oh, maybe. That's nice. Or Keith built himself with Backup when Veronica was out dating Troy.
JOY: 1Also possible. Oh my gosh, they could take it home and put it on Veronica's waterbed and then gently poke the corner of the bed and watch the boat undulate. Ride the waves?
HZ: That would be thematically wonderful.
JOY: The mayor and Lamb exit the office and leave and there's some hand shaking, and it is revealed - are you ready? Hold on to something - Keith Mars is going back to work at the sheriff's department! I'm ready for this.
HZ: It's been a while. What a thrill!
JOY: Based on what we've seen from Lamb in terms of his approach to law enforcement, I am relieved that A) they are calling in somebody who actually seems to a give a shit about people.
HZ: Especially party people.
JOY: 1Especially including party people - and B) somebody who is actually interested in capturing the killer and not just like checking a box on a to do list.
HZ: He's the closest thing they've got to an authority on the E String Strangler case. So the mayor wants him. And then Keith explains to Veronica:
KEITH: A killer preying on partying college girls tends to kill the spring break business.
HZ: And then puts on a wonderfully smug expression because he did a dad joke - about serial murders.
JOY: Maybe just let this one go by without a dad joke, maybe?
HZ: Time and place, Keith. Veronica is like, “Well, since you're going to be in the Sheriff's office, any chance you could go rifling around Lilly Kane's murder file to get the recordings of the Crime Stoppers hotline anonymous calls that pointed the finger at Abel Koontz?”
JOY: Were you shocked by Keith’s cold-eyed rebuttal? They just had like a “Let's share our research” moment not that many episodes ago, they are back on the case together. So it felt it felt weirdly pushy-offy of him.
HZ: Do you think he's just like, “Dude, seriously, I'm only just getting back into the sheriff's office, and I have to stay away from the shit that got me kicked out of it”?
JOY: Maybe. Good point. He wants that check.
HZ: Veronica's busy earning money at the toilet office, where there are snow person paintings behind her, because this is set around the festive period, and she's dishing out the info on Jackson's parents.
VERONICA: Here are the highlights. Your dad was busted trying to buy an eight ball from an undercover cop at an Eagles concert in ’74, your mom had five speeding tickets and a collision on her record before she graduated high school. She hands the file to Jackson who is listening in awe.
JACKSON: I don't care what they say about you, Veronica Mars. You rock.
VERONICA: Yes, I do. I also take cash.
HZ: And now all the students want the dirt on their parents. It's a nice sideline. They're front-loading the episode with it, but in itself, it's not relevant.
JOY: Suddenly, Veronica is much more popular than she was.
HZ: Yeah, I've always found it surprising that Veronica is not popular; I've always thought that was a bit arbitrary, given her popular-person qualities in isolation. At the sheriff's department, Keith has a pin board with E String victim pictures and he's explaining the case with Sheriff Lamb standing on the other side of the board Lambsplaining the case. So when Keith is like, well, this person and this person will found on these dates both were undergrads and Lamb’s like, “They're both partiers - don't bother investigating, guys, they're people who've been to a party.”
KEITH: The first two victims, Katherine Wills and Andrea Sims, were found in 2001 and 2002 respectively. They had certain shared characteristics. Both were undergrads on break, both were attractive social girls -
LAMB: - Hard partiers.
KEITH: Both had high levels of alcohol in their blood and both were abducted on Friday nights.
LAMB: Technically, early Saturday morning from midnight to closing time.
KEITH: The bodies were found in the bay. A single nickel-plated guitar string tied around their necks. The latest victim, Amy Polk, was killed with the exact same MO.
LEO: So he kills them with the guitar strings?
KEITH: Naw, that’s just -
LAMB: It’s his signature. His mark.
JOY: Um, yeah, Lamb seems pretty convinced of the idea that anybody who gets murdered between the hours of like 11pm and 5am was asking for it. That seems to be the vibe.
HZ: Yeah, you just expect it. And in this scene is the first appearance of the regular character Leo, played by Schmidt! AKA Max Greenfield.
JOY: Love to see Max Greenfield here. And throughout this episode, what a cute little Officer Muffin. I love him.
HZ: He doesn't seem to be a jerk, which is such a novelty!
JOY: Yeah, how priceless, it's fucking great, so nice - someone's not a jerk.
HZ: And Keith and Lamb are kind of struggling - you know that scene in Bridesmaids where Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne are both giving speeches at Maya Rudolph's engagement party and they just keep one-upping each other? That's what Keith and Lamb are doing here, but about serial killings.
JOY: Which, maybe the one time to put your personal feud to the side is when there's a serial killer on the loose and you're in charge of catching him.
KEITH: The girls are asphyxiated. The strangler thing came from the press, it’s a misnomer. There’s evidence that these women have been held for 48 hours in a contained space, basically suffocated.
LAMB: The murders are reminiscent of the Hillside Strangler case.
KEITH: Except the Hillside Strangler actually did strangle the girls.
LAMB: Party girls, like ours. Picked up outside of bars. Killer leaves his mark.
KEITH: Okay, except for the asphyxiation, the imprisonment, the body disposal, these cases have a lot in common.
HZ: But what we get from the scene is that a) guitar strings are involved; b) the lab is trying to analyse a smudged phone number on one of the victims’ hands; and c) Keith's take on this killer is that he hates women - sure - craves attention, he's a loser.
JOY: So far it sounds like Lamb.
HZ: That would be an incredible twist. He kills on the weekends, so maybe he's too busy working during the week, which, I don't know - that could be a stretch, there could be other reasons, but okay.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HZ: Toilet office again, and the show loves this close shot of Veronica in front of the snow paintings and I also love it, as she reads dossiers on parents’ misdemeanours to a variety of delighted students.
VERONICA to Crystal: Your mom sued her parent for emancipation when she was sixteen and then moved to Hollywood. According to the Internet Movie Database, she went on to play such roles as “Trucker’s girlfriend”, “Screaming maid” and “Bi-curious room mate.”
VERONICA: Your mother was married in 1985 for 36 days.
JASMINE: Shut! Up!
VERONICA: To a pro skier she met on Spring Break. They drove to Vegas, did it drive-through style and she had it annulled.
JASMINE: And she calls me boy-crazy. You just made my year.
HZ: These parents sound like thrilling people that we never meet.
JOY: Thrilling people but once upon a time, and now they're trying to confine their children. The nature of parents and children, I suppose.
HZ: Maybe because they know how things can go spiralling out of control.
JOY: They don't want their children to get caught trying to buy an eight ball from an undercover cop at an Eagles concert in any year.
HZ: Evidently the toilet office hasn't been closed for its regular business because Mac walks through, washes their hands and witnesses what is happening and later goes to visit Veronica at the Mars office. She has got a business plan, the purity tests were just the start of her money making ingenuities.
MAC: Okay. You’re exposing parental secrets for fifty bucks a pop. We create this website, double the fee; we have no overhead because I’ve already bought the domain name. With your sleuth prowess and my programming skills, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we would rule the entire known universe.
JOY: This is this is a great idea. I am shocked Veronica's like “I barely have time for school and my cases as it is”. She could leave all her cases behind the potential here is so massive think of the money, Veronica, it seems like you're always thinking of the money except right now. Why?
HZ: I mean, how long does it take to look someone up on private eyez with a z dot com?
JOY: Right?
HZ: I like this website. It reminds me of when websites had annoying slow flash intros.
JOY: Yep, those were the days Helen.
HZ: There's like a cute cartoon skeleton that toddles out shrugging and a speech bubble pops up saying “Do what I say, not what I do.” Someone had a great time creating Mac's websites for this show.
JOY: Yes, agree, I love them.
HZ: Mac wants information about her own parents.
MAC: It's not that they're bad parents. They just...don't get me. They're nachos and NASCAR people and I'm more...
VERONICA: Falafels and Fellini?
MAC: Exactly.
JOY: Yeah, could we just like take a moment and stand here at this line and look ahead throughout the episode at Mac's life where her father builds her shelves when she accumulates so many books that she runs out of space, and her mom accommodates her vegan diet by making her “freako vegan snacks”; they take her camping and they're like, "Oh, do you have all your books that you need for our camping trip, because we know that you like” -
HZ: They’re so nice!
JOY: Her parents are so sweet! She has such a nice life. I get on some level what's going on with Mac, but I feel like they didn't do a great job making her parents feel inherently disconnected from her.
HZ: Her mom and her even dress the same. And what's wrong with nachos?
JOY: Absolutely nothing. Nachos are delicious.
HZ: My dad watches a lot of rugby, which is a sport I don't give a shit about, and it hasn't occurred to me to get a private detective to turn up dirt on him in the hope that he is not my bio dad. What am I missing?
JOY: Well, to be fair though, you're not hanging around Veronica Mars all the time.
HZ: It's true. It's just a higher level of difficulty because she's not someone I see in the toilet. Veronica gets Mac's parents information up on the screen and she’s like, “Oh, you had a birthday a couple of days ago” - who else had a birthday a couple of days ago?
JOY: I can't remember. HMMM!
HZ: Neat little bit of misdirection, though, because Mac just says, “Yes. Can't wait to leave home in another year.” Veronica finds nothing strange in Mac's parents private eyez with a z .com profile. Except something catches her eye...
JOY: $1 million. They won a $1 million lawsuit against Neptune Memorial Hospital. What could it be?
HZ: In 1992. And so even later on this dark night, Veronica is at the library, scrolling through microfiche - much easier to be Veronica Mars now that media is digitised and searchable. There's a nice shot of the microfiche scrolling across Veronica's face.
JOY: And she finds an article that sheds a little light on the situation - which reveals that, oh fuck, Mac got sent home with not her birth parents.
HZ: Baby swap! Five-year legal battle! According to the article, both families agreed to keep the children they'd already been raising.
JOY: I can't imagine what I would do in this scenario, as a parent, if you've already been raising a kid for four years, and they're a part of your family. But then, what about your biological child and the biological child’s relationship - that you're raising - to their actual biological parent, like it just seems kind of unfair, but I guess it makes sense for the time period. I think if something like this happened today, people would be more likely to be like, “Oh, let's open the door and allow our child - the child we’re raising - to have a relationship with their biological family as well.” Like, it just feels a little funny that they were like, “Let's just like keep a great big secret.”
HZ: If you pretend, it goes away.
JOY: Oh, yeah, I forgot that if you pretend it goes away.
HZ: I think we all know the best way to deal with an emotionally complex situation is just to keep lying for the rest of your lives.
JOY: Okay. We've now reached the scene, the first scene that I really am going to - I don't know what's going to happen as we try to talk about this.
HZ: I can't wait to find out, Jenny.
JOY: But this is defamation. This is slander. This episode is anti-guitarist propaganda. This is very offensive representation of the guitar playing community. This guitar store - okay, if you're not watching along with us for some reason, let me just paint you a picture. Helen, they’re at a guitar store - listen, they are in the fifth circle of hell. If you're a musician and you're like, “Wow, I love being a musician but man, it is sure difficult to go to Guitar Center” because there's always like somebody playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ as loud as they possibly can poorly and then somebody across the the store plugged into a different amp playing fucking Free Bird - it's a sonic nightmare. And this guitar store takes that idea and - to nod in the general direction of Spinal Tap - turns it all the way up to 11! There's like 100 dudes around, it's basically a chug chug a circle jerk of 10 dudes standing in a circle playing <metal riff>. Why would this happen? Also! Also, there's this mural behind the register, that eventually the guitar store guy comes out and talks to them in front of, that's kind of like a D&D/fantasy/Megadeth album cover of like a sort of like Conan the Barbarian meets a Minotaur kind of thing and he's like shirtless and he has a guitar and his arms in the air and like there's probably like lightning and mountains and shit behind him. I just - Helen. Helen, Helen. Did you see it?
HZ: Jenny. Are you ok?
JOY: I'm not okay.
HZ: Do you need me to call a medic?
JOY: Usually when anything like a music related happens in a TV show that I'm watching I'm like, “I come here to relax”. But this this takes it -
HZ: This is a hate crime.
JOY: This is a hate crime! This is absolutely a hate crime against guitarists - how fuckin' dare they.
HZ: I think it's more an indictment of guitar stores, Jenny. I wanted to ask you about this, because I have spent quite a bit of time in guitar stores, albeit not as a guitarist, but as someone who has to buy audio equipment and also is married to a guitarist, and I do find them quite hostile and masculine environments. How are they for you, a female-identified musician?
JOY: On average, they're not as frustrating as they used to be. And I think that's probably a combination of different hiring practices and the staff of those environments gradually changing over time - and also I just don't give a shit if somebody at Guitar Center thinks I don't know what I'm talking about; like I don't have time anymore in my life to even be offended. I don't have time for whatever they have going on, I think is where I'm at. But they're not inviting environments for sure, especially for non cis-dudes, I think there is just like something in the atmosphere that's, like, not great. Not every guitar store, but especially the big box ones like Guitar Center or what have you.
HZ: Let's surf on this wave of your fury to break down this scene. Keith is having a tremendous time in this guitar shop. He’s having so much fun.
KEITH: “Hello Cleveland!!” Spinal Tap.
LAMB: What?
KEITH: The movie Spinal Tap. You’ve never seen Spinal Tap?
LAMB: No.
KEITH: That explains a lot.
HZ: It doesn't surprise me. I do feel like if this was being made now, the character of Lamb would only have seen films starring Mark Wahlberg. And recent films - not I Heart Huckabees.
JOY: Yeah, that seems right.
HZ: Keith and Lamb can't get served because the staff are too busy rocking out. Lamb's very impatient and Keith says about the store staff:
KEITH: He’s waiting for you to throw your panties.
HZ: Which I feel is a joke that is beneath Keith, but I suppose Lamb doesn't deserve his best material. The guitar guy, Gabe, who runs the store is kind of like if Jack Black had played his School of Rock character with zero charm.
JOY: Precisely.
HZ: He is played by Steve Monroe who's a real “Hey it's that guy!” actor - I recognised him as Paula's husband from Crazy Ex Girlfriend. He, as were two other actors at least in this episode, was in the TV series Switched at Birth.
JOY: Oh my God, in this fuckin episode that's about people being switched at birth - and also a song of mine was used in the television series Switched at Birth.
HZ: So in this episode, which is about some babies being switched at birth. We have very strong connections with the TV series Switched at Birth, because Clarence Wiedman was in it; Crystal, one of the people in the toilet office getting dirt on her parents, was in it; and Guitar Guy Gabe was in it, AKA Steve Monroe, who also I was interested to learn is a practising psychotherapist and specialises in treating entertainment professionals and others in recovery from addictions. Where does he get the time? He's a busy actor! Amazing.
JOY: Veronica doesn't even have time for her class load and her caseload. This guy's got a lot of irons in the fire.
HZ: I suppose actors do often have quite a patchy schedule. But anyway, Guitar Guy Gabe is there being a jerk. At last he stops playing and he shuts the door onto the room in which they're all going together chugga chugga chugga chugga. There's a sign for GHS strings in the background. Is that a real brand of guitar strings, Jenny?
JOY: Yes. GHS is a real guitar string brand.
HZ: Keith shows Gabe the guitar string that they retrieved from the most recent murder victim, and it's in a regular looking Ziploc bag that does not have ‘EVIDENCE’ written on it in big red letters, what the fuck?
JOY: They must have run out of the evidence ones.
HZ: “Just have my sandwich bag.”
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: This gives Gabe the opportunity to be a real twat.
GABE: This exact string? This is a triple nickel antioxidant special order string we get for just one customer. A guy we call Devil Dave.
LAMB: Do you know where we can find this Devil Dave?
GABE: Devil Daaaave?
DAVE: Huh?
GABE: Did you kill anyone this week?
DAVE: Uh-uh.
KEITH: Your basic guitar string?
GABE: [laughs like a real twat] Same as any other string! Bet you the criminals in town are shakin' in their boots knowing you're on the case. Mental note: put in a security system.
JOY: This ends with Gabe just kind of like laughing in Keith's face and telling him what a fucking idiot he is.
HZ: I'm so annoyed and bored by Gabe and his jokes and his arch maniac laugh and then it gets worse, because he says:
GABE: So ya, ya think the killer’s a guitar player? That is brilliant. I think guitar players are a little too busy nailin' women to strangle 'em. Ooooww!
HZ: Fuck you, Gabe; you've made Lamb my not least favourite person in this scene.
JOY: Incredible.
HZ: And then they're squaring off against each other and Lamb’s like:
LAMB: Strappin' on a guitar. Does it get rid of feelings of inadequacy?
GABE: Does strappin' on a gun?
HZ: Which of these jerks is going to win today?
JOY: Okay, fucking how dare they? Also in this exchange, Gabe takes the opportunity to stand in the exact same pose as the fantasy hunk mural guitarist behind him and say, “Guitar players, the heroes of our modern age.” Why? Why why why why why? I feel like the people making this show have something against musicians, based on this episode and many episodes yet to come.
HZ: I'm really sorry you have to go through this, Jenny, but let's now go to a happier place which is Mac's house, which is extremely Christmassy. They've got a big wreath, a big tree, a cone made of baubles; there’s a music box playing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. And it all makes sense with the episode being played out of order and it was supposed to be before Christmas, but also I feel like it makes sense after Christmas and Mac's parents being the kind of people that keep their decorations up until, like, April.
JOY: April feels long.
HZ: Not because they've neglected to do it, but because they love them so much. In Britain there's a tradition that you have to take them down on 6th January.
JOY: That sucks - that sounds like, as you've cited previously, England is a land with no cheer and requiring people to take down their holiday lights on January 6 is a very cheerless thing to do, in my personal opinion, no offence.
HZ: Mac's little brother runs past and fires a toy gun at them to show that the siblings have nothing in common. And so Mac shuts herself and Veronica in her room, which is very nice. It has white painted brick walls it has arty posters, it has a fireplace full of stacked books. It would score very well on Airbnb.
JOY: Yeah. We hear her talk about how this thing about how our dad just like builds her more shelves every time she runs out of books.
HZ: What an arse!
JOY: She's got a fuckin raging Rory Gilmore complex, with no emotionally stunted immature mother single mother -
HZ: - to blame. And what's the style story that they're telling with Mac? Because when she was introduced, she was specified “Oh, she's got different coloured hair streaks and she's countercultural”, but she seems very normcore in this episode. Her clothes could be Veronica's clothes. And like, they portrayed Wanda in Episode Six as a rebel, yet Mac is just like wearing Gap khakis and a cardigan.
JOY: Yeah, I think they've sort of abandoned the clothing thing for her and they're just like letting the fact that she's a vegan and she has lots of books and she still has a blue streaks in her hair do all of the characterization, you know.
HZ: Mac's mom comes in also wearing khakis and a cardigan. She smiles as widely as as physically possible; she's got a tray of snacks - what a monster! Can get why she hopes she wasn't her real mom.
JOY: Fuck you mom and dad!
HZ: Although she does ruin this nice snack moment:
NATALIE: I wasn’t sure if you were a normal eater or one of those freakball vegans, like Cindy.
HZ: Veronica was surprised to learn that Mac's real first name is Cindy, but presumably Veronica would have already turned that up on private eyez with a z.com
JOY: Right, and also I feel like Mac's characterization of the name Cindy as being on the same level as Barbie feels weird? I don't know - Cindy just feels like a name, not like a doll. It just feels more off centre, sort of trying to give us reasons to not like her parents through her eyes or something.
HZ: Do you think Mac is looking for things upon which to pin her feelings of disconnection with the family, and that's a story she's come up with about the name?
JOY: Yeah, that seems that seems believable. Yeah.
HZ: Mac nervously awaits Veronica's results. Veronica also seems very nervous about it. And she suggests that Mac forgets it and goes on with her life and doesn't get the information - like anyone is going to be able to turn down Life Changing Information.
JOY: Veronica of all people should know that that's impossible.
HZ: It's certainly not her style. And Veronica reveals that Mac was sent home with the wrong family and the other baby born the day after Mac was - cue string quartet: Madison Sinclair
JOY: Okay. Now I'm on the emotional roller coaster with Mac. This person is terrible, as we know.
HZ: Terrible but rich; Mac could have had such a rich person life.
JOY: Who knows what Mac would be like if she was born into it? Though I guess her blood sister and her mom that we meet later on seem pretty chill.
HZ: They seem great.
JOY: It seems like they're trying to make a case for like nature over nurture, like look at how shitty Madison is, and then try to tie it to her NASCAR and nacho blood parents. But they're not assholes. There's some kind of missing connective tissue.
HZ: Yeah. And also, if you're meant to think Madison is NASCAR and nachos plus extreme economic privilege - then why is her little sister seemingly quite pleasant and low-key? Not sure about it. But it's certainly a very emotional topic that they don't get to spend all that much time on, because these episodes are only 40 minutes, and there is a serial killer plot also happening. And in the interrogation room, Keith slides a photo of one of the victims, Amy Polk, over to a bartender named Vic, who was the bartender at Body Shots. And he's like, “I can't tell them apart anymore. And by ‘them’ I mean ‘attractive female party people’.”
VIC: They all have that same sorority girl in heat look to me.
LAMB: We suspect she was there with the man who killed her and you remember him.
VIC: Gentlemen, I can’t help you. It was Friday night. Friday night’s ladies night. Two for one shots. It’s wall to wall drunk bitches.
KEITH: Do you mind toning down the language?
VIC: Ooops. Sorry.
JOY: Gross. Then when Veronica pops by the window and holds up her dad's lunch, this dude is like - no, this is exactly the wrong thing to say in front of Keith Mars:
VIC: Mmm mmm. Now that one, I would've noticed.
KEITH: That's my daughter.
VIC: Wouldn't mind havin' her call me daddy.
[Keith knocks Vic to the floor.]
KEITH: Oops! Sorry!
HZ: There's only one person Veronica calls ‘daddy’, Vic!
JOY: That's right!
HZ: And Keith in one swift movement knocks Vic's feet off the table where he has nonchalantly put them and he falls backwards onto the floor.
JOY: You know, I was thinking about this scene while I was watching it, and we hate this guy, and he's being totally gross. But also, this is not great behaviour for Keith. We don't like to see people in a position of -
HZ: - law enforcement?
JOY: - doing this kind of shit to people who are being questioned. Yeah, this is not cool.
HZ: Even when it's Keith Mars, it's inexcusable.
JOY: I don't know why he didn't just throw his hands up in the air and bark at the guy. That's seemed to work pretty well.
HZ: We've seen how good Keith is at nonviolent intervention. Just the power of imagination and performance.
JOY: I guess when you start being a perv at his daughter, that's maybe where the line is.
HZ: You know what though - the person that Keith should be worried about is outside. Because Veronica is befriending Leo - bit of flirting about star signs.
JOY: So he's a Leo who's named Leo.
HZ: It seems like a flirty interaction. Veronica has brought some food for Keith. But while Leo is off putting that away in the mini fridge, Veronica's searching around the desk, so it's very strategic flirting.
JOY: Oh Veronica.
HZ: Leo, the sweet green guy, asks her to come back and visit him.
JOY: Oh, and basically just tells her when he's there alone, and everyone else goes out to dinner and, oh Leo!
HZ: Veronica's like, “Why don’t you just leave all the doors unlocked for me?” In the interrogation room, Vic tells them to talk to someone called The Worm who films girls to sell to Girls Gone Bad - the early 2000s really sucked, didn't they, with Girls Gone Wild being a big entertainment franchise.
JOY: Can I tell you something about me?
HZ: You were on Girls Gone Wild?
JOY: I was not on Girls Gone Wild.
HZ: Did you have a song on Girls Gone Wild?
JOY: I did not have a song on Girls Gone Wild! But the mansion where the first two Girls Gone Wild films take place is a house up in the hills. And it has since changed hands once or twice and it's now owned by a guy who runs a publishing company that publishes a couple people that I write with frequently. And when I write with those people, we write in the carriage house at that property which has since been converted into a very lovely studio. So every couple of months or so I end up at the Girls Gone Wild house.
HZ: Ooh, spring break!
JOY: Spring break! And what you wouldn't expect is that there's a half life size chess board in pieces next to the pool.
HZ: Are the chess pieces all very busty?
JOY: No, they're pretty traditional, and they're about like waist high on me. It's a lovely property. A previous owner was Rick James, I believe; Rick James bought this property, lived in it and had some kind of breakdown, which culminated in him being forcibly removed from the property having at that point painted everything inside of the house black: the walls, the ceilings, the furniture, the carpet.
HZ: Um, oh gosh.
JOY: And before Rick James it was owned by Mickey Rourke. There's probably some owners in the intervening years there but um, that's what I know about the ownership of the Girls Gone Wild house. Thank you for asking.
HZ: That is a house that has seen some stuff.
JOY: It's seen some stuff. And people say Los Angeles doesn't have any history. All that aside, Aaron Paul is here because he's been filming girls.
HZ: Aaron Paul is playing the character The Worm, who films girls for Girls Gone Bad. And he is watching some sexy tapes when Keith and Lamb show up, but he does not recognise a photo of the latest missing woman even though he was filming at the bar the night she disappeared. And through the door in his apartment, they see stacks of videotapes - and!
JOY: And! a guitar - what, everybody who has a guitar is a criminal now? Is that what this episode is saying?
HZ: Sorry, Jenny, you're all bad people, arrest you all.
JOY: Okay, I had a sneaking suspicion anyway
HZ: The Worm manages to the shut the door on them and Lamb is way over excited about the guitar; he's shouting about it right outside the suspect’s door. How the hell did he get to be Sheriff? He's such a useless basic.
JOY: He's a useless basic. He's a bull in a china shop. He's a fucking idiot. Like, he doesn't think about anything, he does not care about who actually committed a crime. I just wish that we saw a little bit more of Lamb that made us, I don't know, aware of any of his potentially redeeming qualities;e he's just an antagonist with no positives, there's nothing you can get invested in about him.
HZ: I'm so invested in his habit of stealing refreshments from children's parties.
JOY: Okay, that's fun. Sure.
HZ: Keith is like, we can't storm into this guy's apartment. We don't have a warrant. He might destroy the tapes. This guy's already too freaked out. But it's interesting to see these different approaches to law enforcement playing out because I'd imagine Lamb is going to be more of a jerk because Keith is there and he's got his own shit to prove in front of Keith, right? Lamb's an insecure mediocre man.
JOY: Yeah, and an insecure mediocre man standing next to Keith Mars is inevitably going to have some issues.
HZ: Meanwhile, Mac, Wallace and Veronica have gone to crash Madison Sinclair's birthday so that Mac can see how the other half live. Although it's not the other half, it's like the 0.01%, isn't it? Or as Veronica calls them, the upper upper bougie class. And Madison answers the door; she does not seem super pleased to see them. But what it does is allow Wallace the chance to fuck with her.
MADISON: What are you doing here?
WALLACE: I came to celebrate your birth, but these two just wanna hook up.
MADISON: I mean, who invited you?
WALLACE: That would be Seth Russell, from History?
VERONICA: No, it was Adam Bunting.
MAC: Adam Bunting. Isn't that the guy who looks like Fievel?
VERONICA: No, no, that's Adam Hamilton. Nobody talks to him, he's poor!
HZ: Wallace is in great form.
JOY: Yeah, this is a great episode, although we don't see nearly enough of him, he is extra charming.
HZ: He's also wearing a jacket that is way too big for him. I supposed to balance out Veronica's habit of tiny, tiny jackets.
JOY: Sure, sure. Maybe that's what really the core of their friendship is all about.
HZ: I do think if Madison really doesn't want randoms at the party, don't give out flyers. That's a very public kind of invitation.
JOY: Yeah, this seems to be a thing that 09ers do without thinking about it. But was her flyer even coded? Probably not.
HZ: Because she was telling people to come to her party. Maybe she thinks that the poors can't read or hear. Also why was she inviting people the week of? Like in Episode Four, they were inviting people to the party the day of. What the shit? But Madison backs away - their tactics work. Wallace does his party trick of distracting her while Veronica and Mac go roving. Mac excuses herself and looks wistfully at framed photos of legendary tourist attractions. That's the life she could have had.
JOY: Yeah, this is tough. It's tough. And even worse is when she gets to the library and sees the handsome beautiful built-in bookshelves, dark wood...
HZ: ...warm lighting...
JOY: It’s really lovely and surprise! There is one person in the library, and it's a tiny young girl who kind of looks a bit like Mac, who's reading The Westing Game.
HZ: She's called Lauren. I gather the plot of The Westing Game revolves around a teenage girl solving a complicated mystery with large number of possible suspects.
JOY: Holy shit. Oh my god, maybe eventually this girl is going to team up with Veronica.
HZ: This is a very nice, poignant scene, and yet Madison interrupts, as does Veronica. And Veronica grabs Mac before she blabs the secret, and they leave. So Veronica is still trying to protect Madison even though everyone knows Madison sucks.
JOY: Yeah, but it seems like really if she's protecting anybody, she's protecting Mac, because Mac's just acting emotionally and not thinking about really anything beyond just desperately trying to process this information that she suddenly got and all of the implications, so rough.
HZ: What is the right way to behave when you found that you've been switched at birth? There's not much of a rule book.
JOY: No, very little existing precedent.
HZ: On the way home, Mac is wondering why the parents didn't just switch the babies back because she was so young, she wouldn't have known basically.
MAC: At two, I was spitting out corndogs and retuning the radio to NPR.
JOY: But once four years have gone by - once four months had gone by, I feel like it might have been like, oh fuck!
HZ: Maybe the families could have got houses next door to each other and done a gradual changeover, And she also asks Veronica if she's figured out what happened to the $1 million, which is a very good question.
JOY: Where's that million dollars?
HZ: Well, probably in the Christmas decorations.
JOY: Oh, true. We have a quick little drive-by here where Leo tells Sheriff Lamb and Keith that Eddie's guitar string matches the strangler string.
HZ: A very common guitar string matches a guitar? Golly.
JOY: Yeah. Not really...
HZ: Lamb also manages to use the word "tatas".
LAMB: Pervert's recorded 40 tapes-worth of girls flashing their ta-tas.
JOY: I blocked it out, Helen, I don't remember. Okay, now, now it's time for perhaps all the best things about the episode crammed into one tiny scene. It's Leo. Veronica's like, “How did you get into police work?” And he's like, “Oh, you know, classic tale as old as time. I was working for a company and got sent as a strippergram for Inga. There was an armed robbery call and I figured what the hell, I'm already wearing the uniform,” amazing. Leo's doing so great. He's so fucking adorable and such a charmer.
HZ: Leo doesn't realise he's being entrapped by pizza and Veronica. Conniving is happening.
JOY: And then who should roll up but Weevil, here to create a diversion. Then we get to watch Weevil and Leo talk to each other, which if you're me is the best minute or two minutes of this episode.
HZ: I was thinking about you when watching it and just feeling so happy picturing your happiness, because this is like best Weevil. It's short, but it is magnificent. He does really good indignant old neighbour act.
JOY: Yeah, he's doing truly beautiful work.
WEEVIL: Hello? Is anyone back there?
LEO: Hi.
WEEVIL. Hi. I need to talk to someone about the noise level in my neighbourhood which is truly out of control! I mean, you got motorcycle gangs, gunshots, heavy metal music? It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even sleep at night. I’ll bet that if my zip code ended in 0909, you’d have a patrol car swinging by the house every 10 minutes. "Good evening Mr. Weevil. Is there anything we can do for you?” That kind of service. But no, it’s the barrio. So you figure, hey, they’ll sort it out themselves. And don’t get me started on what this is doing to the property values in my neighbourhood! I have a good mind to run for the city council and if I win, I promise you this. Heads will roll.
LEO: We could send a patrol car by.
WEEVIL: I'm wondering if I'm better off speaking with your supervisor.
HZ: I also love that he refers to himself as “Mr. Weevil”.
JOY: Dude, Mr. Weevil and then later Eli Navarro, Esquire.
HZ: And it's also him and Veronica having that friendship where they do favours for each other.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, they help each other do fucking underhanded shit basically.
And Veronica's digging around for the keys to the evidence room, gets her way into that evidence locker and then steals the Lilly Kane Crimestoppers hotline CD and and then just sneaks back, returns the keys, pockets the CD and is back to eating pizza and flirting with Leo. And we find out she's 17. And he's 20.
LEO: Seventeen? You’re seventeen?
VERONICA: I don't see how my age is relevant to this discussion.
LEO: Well then, you're not reading my mind.
HZ: Ick ick ick! He's 20, so it's not that bad, but she is in high school, so you have that imbalance of authority. But she's already on the sex offenders register. So...
JOY: There's that - there's the fact that most people can exert no authority over Veronica Mars. I guess I it's hard for me to imagine her like not being in the position of power with like a young, naive, rookie police officer or someone similar.
HZ: By the way, like Jason Dohring, Max Greenfield also has a daughter called Lilly with a double L.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: I do think of all the guys Veronica is paired with in the whole series, she has the best chemistry with Leo and they seem like the most well-balanced pairing.
JOY: Yeah, and he seems like a very good guy, and he's adorable.
HZ: He's in a band. Jenny, have you ever tried Leo's pickup line, “My band's playing this weekend, if you want to come down I'll put you on the guest list”?
JOY: I guess I can't rule it out. I don't have a specific memory. Well…
HZ: I'm taking that as a yes.
JOY: Okay.
HZ: Does it work?
JOY: It has worked.
HZ: Congrats!
JOY: I should really get going. I just remembered that I should get going.
HZ: Veronica gets going; back at home, she listens to the Crime Stoppers calls and there's a montage of boredom where it's like prank calls or people being like, “There was someone looking a bit shifty by my car, mew.” And then just as she looks really like just going to fall asleep, there's one where the voice is disguised:
DISGUISED VOICE: I know who killed the Kane girl. His name is Abel Koontz. He lives in a houseboat on the marina.
HZ: Now, would you trust that call if you were investigating?
JOY: Maybe, maybe not. But what I definitely would have done if I subsequently went to Abel Koontz's houseboat and found Lilly Kane's shoes is I would have done what Veronica does. Surely if Mac can enhance or de-enhance this audio recording to reveal the actual voice, then the police would have access to the same technology, and I have to imagine that they would do that, just for the sake of checking out all of their evidence and sources; it seems wild that they wouldn't have done that.
HZ: Well, they did mismanage the case. Keith has been watching one of The Worm’s videotapes, and he has spotted Amy Polk, one of the murder victims, on it. And so he rushes to the sheriff's department and he's like, “Let's bring this guy in.” And Lamb is like, “As always a day late and $1 short,” because he's just got to seize every opportunity to be a douche. And he's already got Aaron Paul in an interrogation room, sweating.
JOY: So sweaty.
HZ: More sweat than we've seen since Episode Five. And so they do some good cop bad cop stuff. I'm sure you can guess which one is which.
JOY: Yeah, Lamb's bad cop is predictively pretty gross.
HZ: He gives he gives The Worm a pad of paper to write a confessional and Keith beckons him out and says they only have circumstantial evidence, a judge is not going to allow a confession as evidence. And The Worm doesn't have any space in his apartment to keep captives for days, which is the MO of this murderer. And he says, “I don't think we can eliminate the possibility that it was someone else.” and Lamb goes, “Ooh like who, Jake Kane?" He just cannot pass up the opportunity. Not appropriate,
JOY: Dude. Not appropriate and not productive.
HZ: And he's like “You're off the case!” Back to the interrogation room, The Worm’s confession is just the words "I want a lawyer" so that went well, good one Lamb,
JOY: Yeah, well played.
HZ: Veronica calls Mac and asks her for some help in de-disguising the voice and also says that the $1 million was spent on a car dealership but then her dad went bankrupt.
JOY: Objection, Helen. It's actually a store that sells jet skis and four wheelers, which are two vehicles. I can't hold this against you, because those are two vehicles I have to imagine do not exist in England. Surely.
HZ: We have cars with four wheels, what are you saying?
JOY: But but but but but but but the little like -
HZ: Like a quad bike?
JOY: Yes like a quad bike.
HZ: We only hear of those in Britain when a celebrity has gone for a ride on one and falls off and then is in a coma for several months like Ozzy Osbourne or Rik Mayall.
JOY: You're cautious people, you don't have time for jet skis and four wheelers.
HZ: After Brexit there will be no jet skis. And Mac's like “Yeah, yeah, I'll help”, but right now she is at Madison's house and mom is in, and she has a face of either confusion or recognition or both. I think the mom does some really important emotional work in her very brief appearances on camera.
JOY: Even when she's not talking. Good face work.
HZ: Mac's like, "I'm so sorry, I left my purse at the party, can I look for it?" and the mom looks like she's swallowed a balloon. It's like she instantly recognises who this really is. So she sends off Lauren to look for the purse.
JOY: When they come face to face, they did an incredible job with the casting. I feel like they look like mother and daughter.
HZ: Mom sends off Lauren to look for the purse and unfortunately, her tentative chat with Mac is interrupted by Madison. the mom offers snacks in a very desperate voice, which Madison does not want. So you know that Madison is a bad seed.
JOY: Yeah, good seeds snack.
HZ: But Lauren quickly comes back with the purse, which I had assumed was a bullshit cover story; and Mac, having said she does want a snack, now says she doesn't and leaves. So I wonder whether it's just all too much emotionally. I'm very invested in this story and particularly the parental feelings that must be encoded in it.
JOY: Yeah, I feel like there's a different kind of emotional weight than we usually see.
HZ: It's one of these things that they throw into the show where you kind of sense that this is a moment in a lifetime of dealing with something. At the sheriff's department a distraught women runs in asking for help - her daughter Kelly went out last night with a group of friends and didn't come home. And she's like, "I know the Strangler’s got her. And if you don't find her, I will hold all of you responsible." And I get she's upset, but that is not helpful.
JOY: No no no. And is whatshisbucket still in custody? Is that what we're to assume, for this to be as clear line that like, “Oh, I guess it wasn't Eddie after all”?
HZ: How would he when we've got Aaron Paul in a room? Keith gives Lamb a very stony glance, and then the door fills with officers. It's like a dance trio with Sachs at the front and then two backing dancers. And he's like, “We've put together the number that was on the previous victim’s palm, and it belongs to Vic the bartender at Body Shots,” the one that Keith smacked to the ground. Action music! Keith calls Veronica frantically from the station. And then from his car where he's tracking Veronica, and he gets out of the car leaving the door open and the lights on even though his battery might go flat, and he hammers on a garage door and then smashes open a side door to find a band practising - very incriminating, Jenny, because there are guitarists! It's Leo's band.
JOY: Guitarists everywhere - but Leo's playing the drums!
HZ: Well then he can't be the murderer, because he's playing the drums.
JOY: Yeah, it's not the drumstick strangler, for sure. He looks great behind a kit. Love to see it. Adorable.
HZ: Veronica is there, loving to see it.
JOY: Dude, never would have pegged Veronica as a girl who goes and hangs out at band practice, but I love it, especially because she can't get into the club.
HZ: I totally would have her pegged, because she went and hung out at the mooncalf collective. And she had a very high tolerance for Troy and his totally uncharming lines.
JOY: Okay, very fair. Yeah, I guess her tolerance, her like threshold is pretty high for stuff.
HZ: Keith is like, "Wait, how do you two know each other?" But he's not going to get into that now. He's also admiring the soundproofing in the band's room.
JOY: He’s checking out these moving blankets that have been hung on the wall thinking, hey, these moving blankets sure would dampen the noise of a woman who's being held captive were she to scream, and asks Leo if he's got his piece. Leo does. They ride off together - love this, this Keith-Leo action!
HZ: Much better pairing than Keith and Lamb.
JOY: Beautiful. And then they swing by Evermore Guitars again and they learn that they're closed Saturday and Sunday which lines up with what Keith has noticed about when the women tend to disappear and then are found.
HZ: Does that line up with how shops behave?
JOY: No, that doesn't make any sense for a guitar store to be closed on the weekends. But whatever.
HZ: Keith finds a Body Shots wristband on the ground, he gets a crowbar out of his car and breaks in, and there's this fun effect, I don't know what this is called, where they kind of cut a few frames of Keith entering the guitar store and coming up into the soundproof room where they were all playing earlier, so it's very dramatic. But then Keith trips over a drum kit, which is a bit comedy, but it isn't also, because it elicits cries for help from a woman who's trapped in the room, in a safe or cupboard?
JOY: Or a mini fridge or something - what is she in, exactly?
HZ: In a flight case, she's In a flight case with a padlock on. And whilst Keith busts this open, we see behind him a slow approaching person with some kind of weapon. There's a lot of tension. Keith rescues the woman but she sees over his shoulder that Keith is about to be hit by Guitar Wanker Gabe. We knew he was a bad one.
JOY: Hashtag not all guitarists.
HZ: But before any harm befalls our precious Keith Mars, he is tackled by Leo, the brave lion.
JOY: Hell yeah! Woo!
HZ: But he somehow gains advantage and starts to choke him until Keith cocks a gun at his head. And then, very relieved to cut to the safety of the Sheriff's department.
JOY: Thank God.
HZ: Veronica talks to Leo while he's packing up his desk.
JOY: He's been suspended for a week.
VERONICA: Is everything okay?
LEO: Not really. Sheriff just came and told me I’ve been suspended for a week seeing as that the evidence room was left unlocked during my shift the other night. Somebody must have snuck off with the key when I wasn’t looking. Know anything about that? Can’t say I wasn’t warned.
VERONICA VOICEOVER: Same old story. Girl uses boy. Girl falls for boy. Boy saves girl's dad's life. Girl gets what she deserves.
JOY: Oh, Veronica!
HZ: Over a ‘fast world, slow Veronica’ shot, Veronica's phone rings. It's Mac: she has decoded the message, invites Veronica over early tomorrow before she has to go on a family camping trip. And she plays her the voice recording. Firstly too low, and then too high, and then pitch shifted just right. Veronica knows whose voice this is. And I have questions - it's Clarence Wiedman's voice, and Veronica, when has she heard that? Just on the voicemail at Kane Software? And she's managed to imprint his voice and recognise it from all of the possible voices in the world?
JOY: I guess so. Hmm.
HZ: Anyway, the Mac parents pack the RV to leave - her parents are so wholesome. So adorably wholesome.
JOY: Yeah. So sweet and supportive and nice and they're going on a big family vacation, how lovely.
HZ: But across the street is Mac's bio mom watching tearily. Ah, this does things to my heart as Mac goes up, and they don't speak, but they touch hands either side of the car window.
JOY: Yeah, even though the hands on the car window is a little much, it's really intense.
HZ: But then all too soon, she's off. And Mac arranges her face into “Oh good, off camping” face, and she goes off with her parents.
JOY: Meanwhile, across town, Clarence Wiedman is receiving a package. And it's some fuckin’ surveillance photos that Veronica Mars took of him.
HZ: Yeah, with one of her many long lenses.
JOY: One of her many, many long lenses. It's Clarence with his kid. It's Clarence with Jake Kane.
HZ: That's a weird photo. It looks like Clarence is blowing on Jake Kane's cheek.
JOY: Yeah, it's a very strange photo. And she caught them in the blowing on his cheek act!
HZ: Yeah. How do you like it when it's you, Clarence Wiedman?
JOY: Yeah. I don't think he likes it at all. Don't think he likes it one bit.
HZ: But then I guess he would have taken these photos of Veronica with the target on over a year ago so maybe he can't remember - he probably does a lot of surveillance of a lot of different people.
JOY: Now he's like, "Who of the many people I have surveilled and subsequently threatened could this message be from?"
HZ: Well, let's see what crimes have been committed in the course of this episode and check in with our resident legal expert and Southern Californian marshmallow Lo Dodds for today's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
HZ: Lo, what kind of crime is it to distract a law enforcement officer steal his keys and rifle through the evidence room?
LO DODDS: Well, Veronica is going to probably get charged with obstruction of justice. But the real problem that Veronica has created by doing that is not so much a criminal one, because when you are charged with obstruction of justice, there has to be an ongoing case, and Abel Koontz has been convicted, is being sentenced to die. So I don't know if that would stick. But what she has done is compromised Abel Koontz’s ability to appeal, and even though we know that Abel Koontz is not trying to appeal, compromising the evidence would probably not work in her favour if she's trying to show that Abel Koontz didn't commit the crime or that there's someone else out there, it would compromise that case going forward.
HZ: How long do they keep evidence? Because this is evidence from a case which, as you said, has effectively been completed.
LO DODDS: Evidence in a murder case doesn't get destroyed, it has to be kept indefinitely. It definitely needs to be kept because the appeals process can take a very long time, especially in capital murder cases.
HZ: And Leo gets suspended for a week for compromising the security of the evidence locker. Is that a realistic punishment?
LO DODDS: Yeah, I asked my dad about this and after he blustered about how an evidence locker would never be just an unmonitored storage closet that anyone could just walk into -
HZ: He's never had to deal with Veronica Mars!
JOY: Is it legal for Leo to be that adorable and charming while on duty?
LO DODDS: I think Leo's hotness is totally a crime. But I remember watching this and thinking he is so young, but Orange County sheriffs really only have to be 20 years old and have a high school diploma. So it's completely feasible that Leo is a sheriff at 20 years old and hitting on a 17 year old.
HZ: Then we've got the murder plot. There is a lot going on in this episode. And obviously abducting and murdering people is a crime. Is Keith breaching any laws himself by pursuing this lead?
LO DODDS: It’s convenient for him that he found a an actual victim in there. I suppose if he just broke it in and found a bunch of guitars, Keith would be looking at, himself, breaking and entering or trespassing. There are ways you can get into a building without without needing a warrant. Keith is not a cop. You need probable cause, you need a warrant. Keith doesn't need those things because he's PI. But police cannot rely on evidence, and prosecution can't rely on evidence, that they would otherwise have needed a warrant to get. And they also have a problem with all the evidence that might be gathered after that. It's called ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’: if you have evidence that's collected improperly, all the evidence that snowballs from there is a problem. The whole probable cause for Keith breaking into the guitar place that made no sense, how he suddenly discovered that this guy, just based on the fact that he was kind of a dick and owned a guitar shop and had a soundproof room, that he was obviously the killer. I mean, in that case, Jenny is also under suspicion because I'm assuming she has some soundproofing, she plays the guitar; she may also be a serial killer.
JOY: I want to speak to my lawyer.
HZ: Jenny, how does this episode rate for you, in the mysteriousness of mystery? So many mysteries, because you have Veronica and the call footage, you have the guitar murders, you have Mac's parentage - so much going on.
JOY: There is a lot going on. And a lot of it is like interesting and satisfying. And then some of it is not and there's a lot of anti-guitarist propaganda. So I'm going to give this - averaging all of that together, I'm going to give this two and a half out of five guitarists, the heroes of our modern age. What about you?
HZ: I find this quite a thrilling episode. There's a lot of great moments: there's power Keith. There's Keith and Lamb having to cooperate, which is a very tricky dynamic. There's Keith's blood running cold when he thinks Veronica might have been abducted. I'm a bit confused as to Aaron Paul's involvement - we don't see him after the interrogation room. So I do think Keith's reasons for dismissing him as a suspect seem like a wrap-up, but it is quite a big red herring, that character. I did also think this plot would have gone very differently if Keith and Lamb had gone to another local guitar store to ask about the guitar string.
JOY: Thank god they went to that one.
HZ: Do you think it's too on the nose for guitar Gabe to use a guitar string in his murders? Isn't that a bit like, “Catch me, catch me!”?
JOY: Yeah. I don't know why you would do that. If you're that guy, I don't know why the hell you would do that.
HZ: Maybe it is roughly his level. So I think overall though, because I enjoyed it a lot, and because there are several different mysteries to be interested in, I will give it four out of five embarrassing string quartets. Did you have any favourite lines Jenny, or are we just both awarding it to Weevil's speech at the sheriff's counter?
JOY: Wow, Weevil's speech is really really great. But also I love Wallace, when they roll up to Madison Sinclair's birthday party, Wallace saying, "I'm here to celebrate your birth, but these two just want to hook up."
HZ: I also love Wallace saying, "Apparently you've never spent time in a black woman's house. Be glad you're still walking."
JOY: Truly.
HZ: Well, Jenny that seems to me to be another episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: Case freaking closed.
That was Season 1, episode 11: Silence of the Lamb.
Watch season 1 episode 12 and join us in a week to investigate it.
Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
The website, where the show lives heavily soundproofed so it doesn’t disturb the neighbours, is vmipod.com.
HZ: I'm Helen Zaltzman; you can hear more of my podcasts on The Allusionist and Answer Me This and you can see the Allusionist live show across North America in the next few weeks. Check out theallusionist.org/events.
JOY: And I’m Jenny Owen Youngs; you can hear more of my speaking voice on my other podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer and you can hear loads of my singing voice at jennyowenyoungs.com, on Spotify and iTunes. I have a bunch of new music out, a bunch of new songs and you can hear them and my old songs right now.
This episode was edited and mixed by Zach McNees, with music from Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
Distributed by PRX.
JOY: Until next time, who’s your daddy?
HZ: Who’s your daddy?
JOY: You know, I didn’t know this until today, but I’m thinking it might be that rich guy across town. I’m hoping.