VMI 1.16 Betty and Veronica transcript
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
JOY: The school mascot, Polly the parrot, is missing!
HZ: Also missing: my ability to give a shit about this plot.
JOY: A rival school’s mascot, Billy the goat, is missing!
HZ: Also missing: my ability to give a shit about this plot.
JOY: No longer missing, though: Veronica’s mom. But she’s not in a good way.
HZ: One person’s having a good time, at least: Wallace! He’s the toast of the basketball team, he’s getting high fived wherever he goes, and someone’s leaving cookies in his locker.
JOY: Hiding in your panda bear pencil sharpener, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And crapping apples in the back of your buddy’s van, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations season 1 ep16: Betty and Veronica.
JOY: I'm so excited Helen.
HZ: Why? Tell me why, give me one reason.
JOY: There's just like two Riverdale references in this episode and they made me really happy because I for some reason love the show Riverdale, despite knowing in my mind into that it is wrong to love it.
HZ: A lot of people love Riverdale, Jenny. We did not have the Riverdale comics in Britain, so when I first saw Veronica Mars a decade or so ago, this all slid past my brain.
JOY: This meant nothing to you - you were like "Oh, Betty, sure."
HZ: Also I would have missed it in Heathers when Heathers paid tribute to Betty and Veronica. I was like, "Oh are they doing a tribute to Heathers?"
I'm just going to preface this episode by saying I found it difficult to get through, much easier to get through than episode 14 because at least this one did not have sexual crimes in it. But generally with detective shows, if there's an episode about missing animals, I really struggle with it. I also really struggle to give a shit about any sports.
JOY: Helen, Helen, let's adjust your perspective please for one moment in time. Don't think of it as a sports plot. Think of it as a plot that centres Wallace and his many gifts and his utter delightfulness; and he's excelling, he's getting popular, he is having the time of his life.
HZ: I love to see happy Wallace.
JOY: If the cost of that is watching a basketball episode, I say, “Bring it on."
HZ: I agree with you, Jenny. Anything for happy, popular Wallace
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Veronica, not so happy, though, because we start pretty much straight off after where the last episode left off when she'd found her mom, Lianne, in a bar in Barstow, California. But how the fuck did Clarence Wiedman end up there as well?
JOY: Yes, that's the question. But don't worry, in the time between the last episode and this one, Veronica had a very swift little mini interior detective moment and was like, “Well, he must have bugged to my room and heard me book the flight to Barstow," which is about two hours away.
HZ: Confusing. Barstow’s a two-hour drive from Neptune. And yet she drives to Arizona and San Quentin.
JOY: Yeah, so she's deduced that Clarence Wiedman must have her bugged and then she is ripping her room apart looking for said bug.
HZ: I assume if anyone knows where to look for a bug, it's Veronica Mars.
JOY: Yeah, she is ripping books off the shelves willy nilly. She's feeling along various pieces of moulding that run along the ceiling. She's all over the room. And then she remembers -
HZ: It's in the waterbed!
JOY: Yeah, imagine Clarence Wiedman, laying that waterbed honey pot trap for Keith. He's like,”I know what I'll do. I'll make a free water bed available with some Gordon Lightfoot LPs."
HZ: "I know what Keith Mars can't resist - it was his undoing in the Lilly Kane murder case."
JOY: But she remembers this this panda bear pencil sharpener, right?
HZ: She says "I don't remember donating to panda bear pencil sharpener charity." But I can understand why you would keep the pencil sharpener nonetheless, because it's a pretty cute pencil sharpener.
JOY: Yes. And this leads us directly into the first of many flashbacks. And these flashbacks look almost the same, colourwise, as the regular show because they haven't aged; they haven't deteriorated with time.
HZ: I quite like that there's degrees of flashback degradation as your memories decay and maybe become more or less saturated.
JOY: Yeah, I’m on board.
HZ: Nice technique. So there's a lot of this episode where she's in the bar with Lianne in the recent past. And it's rough to see, because Veronica can't really be pleased that she's finally found her mom after a year's absence, because her mom is, firstly, very drunk.
JOY: And is having a hard time answering questions in a way that's easy to understand or like, that either she's confused or that she's being intentionally obscure.
HZ: Yeah, because she's like, “Veronica, you won't understand” - and we've discussed this before. why do people think Veronica won't understand? She understands everything. Everything in the universe. Give her some credit, but Lianne says she's trying to protect Veronica, but it's just so hard. And then back in the present, Veronica is gonna smash up the bug and then thinks, “Well, maybe I want Clarence to hear some things, hmm?” And I hope she sharpens a lot of pencils really loudly.
JOY: Yeah. She's found the bug inside of the panda bear pencil sharpener, and she's about to smash the bug with another piece of strange statuary that she's just got sitting around in her room as well, which I don't know if you noticed, it's like sort of like a 1950s kind of a muscle guy in underwear or a loincloth or a bathing suit or something?
HZ: It’s probably got a bug in it as well.
JOY: Probably. Yeah. Don't you think there would be a backup?
HZ: Clarence Wiedman wouldn't just send one bug, would he?
JOY: It seems unlikely.
HZ: And then at school we lost see basketball Wallace in action. Very sweaty action.
JOY: Yeah, he's swishing the hell out of that ball, dominating, being so good at sport. And then Wallace goes for a little walk with Veronica down the hall and we see that Neptune’s star basketball player is about two inches taller than Veronica Mars who is 5’1”. You know, this guy's ripping it up at 5’3”, which I think is particularly impressive.
HZ: I think it's smart that the person that he's basketballing against in this scene is also not like 6’7”. He's also someone that I did not register, but becomes plot-important right at the end. Veronica is just sitting on the floor watching them, eating an apple. But she's like:
VERONICA: Do you need to jump back and kiss yourself? 'Cause I can wait.
HZ: Veronica is really trying to destroy Wallace a bit in this episode where he's doing well.
JOY: Oh, she's got to keep her hard exterior up so she can keep asking for favours, but deep down she's just a cookie bakin' - as he predicted in episode one!
WALLACE: Underneath that angry young women shell, there’s a slightly less angry young woman who’s just dying to bake me something.
HZ: Oh my god. Six months later it came true! But in the hallways everyone loves Wallace and Veronica sarcastically quotes Sally Fields’s Oscar speech, “They like you, they really like you," which seems more like a Logan thing to do, to me.
JOY: Oh, yeah. An ancient quote, dug up and repurposed for modern times. Wallace has had the gall to make other friends besides Veronica, and they never even ask him to do illegal stuff. So what's the allure?
HZ: What kind of friend is that?
JOY: Honestly.
HZ: Wallace seems to be doing life great and his only weakness is his inability to not do favours for Veronica, even after last week where he got the whole jockstrap sniffer problem from her.
JOY: Ah yes. Still he remains loyal!
HZ: They pass Duncan and Meg in the hallways enjoying each other's faces. Veronica's not enjoying them enjoying each other's faces, is she?
JOY: This is not the sort of canoodling I would like to see. But also Veronica, you have a hot sex cop on the line. You're better off without Duncan. Be reasonable.
HZ: Just imagine that Meg is nuzzling a tall glass of milk. It's basically about as exciting. But one thing I do like about this episode is that there are a couple of scenes of Vice Principal Clemmons and I'll tolerate the missing parrot if it means more Vice Principal Clemmons.
JOY: I love to see the world-weary VP.
HZ: I heard the actor Duane Daniels on a podcast recently, and he seemed very delightful - and he's an opera singer. Why can't they work that into the plot? Have him down at the karaoke bar singing ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’.
JOY: Please.
HZ: Cast him in Duncan's production of Grease. But he needs Veronica's help: the school mascot, Polly the Parrot, is missing, presumed stolen. He needs her to find the bird. Is it appropriate for a school to hire a student to do some PI stuff?
JOY: You know, a younger, more naive me might have said “This would never happen." But that's what I said about an episode - or a series of episodes - of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Alyson Hannigan's character Willow just takes over for a teacher who becomes unable to continue teaching a class. Willow just takes over teaching this computer class for this absent teacher and I was like, “Absolutely no way - they're going to like get a child to do labour and and trust this child to like carry out the curriculum and all that stuff?” And we had a lot of listener feedback, other teachers at various schools who said, yeah, this actually does happen sometimes. We even heard from people who were students and who took over. And actually now that I'm thinking about it, even my dad did this when he was in high school. He loves to tell this story about how he was entrusted with the running of a class when a teacher was gone.
HZ: I do seem to remember, also, because it was the late 90s various students did more computer stuff than teachers because they knew more about it. They didn't really have IT teachers in my school at that point, or at least not competent ones.
JOY: So Veronica is going to charge not dollars, but goods and services. She wants a personal letter of recommendation written by herself and signed by the vice principal. She wants a change of locker - we assume to get away from Duncan and Meg sucking on each other's faces. And what starts as a demand for her own personal parking space, and gets eventually reduced to two excused absences from PE.
HZ: I like that Clemmons, who's been presented up to this point as kind of an adversary for Veronica, seems to also have quite a lot of respect for her.
JOY: Yes, and he's an opportunist, isn't he?
HZ: Sure! Exactly! He knows what's good. And somehow he knows that the parrot thief is the rival school Pan High, Keeping it in the ancient Greek and Roman gods.
JOY: Pan was like the trickster God, right?
HZ: Bit of a prick. Yeah.
JOY: So who better to steal a parrot?
HZ: So yeah, how does how does Clemmons know that it's Pan High? It seems to be a big problem.
JOY: It's just a great rivalry.
HZ: He says if it's not resolved quickly, or discreetly, things could get ugly. Just like, how?
JOY: Things get uglier as the episode goes on, what with the retaliatory kidnapping of the goat, and then the meat grinding and yeah, there's there's a lot of bad vibes that that build as this episode goes on.
HZ: Wallace is taking the disappearance of Polly quite badly, because he and Polly are buddies - because everyone's buddies with Wallace as it turns out, but also when Wallace was idle in his school office job when he didn't have to steal files for Veronica, he and Polly bonded. I didn't know that the parrot would live in the school office, but okay.
JOY: You know what you don't want in an office of any kind is a fucking parrot. They're loud.
HZ: They are loud. Maybe that is what they want, though, just to remind themselves that they're alive. Veronica's new locker is next to Wallace's - prime real estate.
JOY: That's where I'd move my locker, given the option.
HZ: And in Wallace's locker, there's a gift - an offering!
JOY: A spirit box! Do you guys have spirit boxes in the UK?
HZ: Of course not, sports players are privileged enough.
JOY: Do you guys have spirit of any kind in the UK?
HZ: We have spirits, as in the booze kind.
JOY: Ah yes, now that's a box I'd like to receive in my locker.
HZ: It’d probably get you into trouble, Jenny. This box is is green with yellow frills and it's got a big green frog in it and “Go Wallace, we love you, you rock” somewhere involved. And in it there's a load of snickerdoodles. Which is not a cookie we have in Britain either. Is it worth bothering with?
JOY: I mean, I love a snickerdoodle - I'm an equal opportunity employer of cookies.
HZ: That's very thoughtful.
JOY: So if you have any requirements, if you need chocolate in a cookie for it to be worth your time, then a snickerdoodle is not for you.
HZ: Okay, I'll stay away. Don't put them in my spirit box, thank you.
JOY: Noted.
HZ: Veronica drops a Skee-Lo reference.
JOY: She really does.
VERONICA: Wow. A snack and an ego stroke. I wish I was a baller.
HZ: My husband still references Skee-Lo pretty regularly.
JOY: Wow. The gift that keeps on giving.
HZ: That one hit in the mid 90s sure has a long tail.
HZ: Veronica just keeps on knocking Wallace during the scene, like when he comments something about the streets, Veronica's like "but you live on the corner of Pleasant Valley and Marigold." It's just like she needs him not to be too happy, because maybe his happiness is uncomfortable for her because she needs to be kind of snide about the whole school situation and assume that anyone who's her friend would hate it as much as she hates it.
JOY: Or maybe the bedrock of their relationship is this sort of subtly sweet antagonism where they're constantly poking each other. It's the Neptune way, isn't it? Just nonstop negging, and that's how they show they care.
HZ: Duncan and Meg are around holding hands until Meg kind of registers that maybe this is uncomfortable for Veronica, and she disentangles, because Meg's a very good friend and a very good person.
JOY: Yeah, but also - man, Veronica. That's like some really intense staring at the held hands. Like, you know they're dating. But she just stares at the hands and then stares at Meg and stares at the hands and stares at Meg.
HZ: She didn't mind when Duncan was dating Shelly Pomroy.
JOY: It probably feels worse because she likes Meg as a person and they had a pre existing friendship. But hey, who knew Duncan was keeping such close track of all these sportings scores?
HZ: Right, Duncan seems to be into Wallace. I can’t remember whether we've ever seen them being friendly, but he does one of those kind of bro-hug-handshake-back-claps with him. Is there a quicker term for that?
JOY: No, I think you’ve got to say the whole thing.
HZ: Some jocks jog past and they're like, “Hey, Wallace come and jock with us," and Wallace is like, “Veronica, you can join the jocking if you want," and she's like, “Mmm no." And she always acts like her social isolation is external, but she does enforce it herself too.
JOY: She does, but on this particular day, she actually has something else that she has to do at lunchtime, which is drive over to Pan High, change into her all pink outfit, including a pink mini backpack.
HZ: Yeah, she's got her honeytrapping outfits on, because her hair's curled, pink miniskirt, just like episode four.
JOY: Yes - can she plug that hair curler into her car’s cigarette lighters or something, what the hell?
HZ: Well you know that the Marses have got a lot of gadgets; there's probably a hair curler that is also a telescope. And she's like:
VERONICA VOICEOVER: Pan High, the Un-Neptune. Just 15 miles away but when those miles are heading inland, there are no yacht clubs and no five million dollar homes with coastal views. The parking lot is full of American-made cars from the 1990s and the vending machines don’t carry Orangina. People here hate Neptune as much as I do.
HZ: Happy for her.
JOY: Yeah, maybe she could transfer.
HZ: Right? She strolls into the cafeteria and some goths look askance at her. But it doesn't matter because some jocks invite her over. So that was easy. All it takes is pink and being small and blonde and cute and thus unquestioned. What do you think about this thing Veronica's voiceover says?
VERONICA VOICEOVER: Whoever said it’s a man’s world had no idea how easy it is sometimes to be a girl.
JOY: Hhhurrrgghgh.... That's what I think about it.
HZ: First day, though, and she's already at the cool table, and as she's introducing herself to them, there's this massive, unconvincing pause before she says that her name is Betty. And I was surprised that she hadn't thought of that and practised it on the drive over. Veronica's doing that cool girl thing where she's like “I love the sports. I love the sports. But I'm so girly, can you help me with the sports?"
VERONICA: I love basketball. I’m kind of a freak when it comes to sports. I totally get into it.
RICHIE: Are we talking face paint?
VERONICA: Face painting, hair streaked the colour of the school. At my old school, I was Horny. We were the Rhinos. I was the mascot.
RICHIE: And what school was that?
VERONICA: Riverdale.
HZ: The jocks are very much enjoying the fact that Polly the Parrot has been stolen because Neptune High sucks.
JOY: Neptune High sucks. But apparently the new guy on the basketball team, Wallace Fennel, is amazing. And Veronica's like,"He is?" and we're all like, “Yes Veronica - Wallace is amazing, obviously." Come now.
HZ: You know, Skee-Lo complained that he was too short to be a baller, but Wallace has found a way.
JOY: Yeah, Skee-Lo could have figured it out.
HZ: But then mayhem as someone rushes in, because someone's stolen Pan High's goat mascot. Where do you keep a goat in school premises? Who's looking after that?
JOY: Well, some schools that I've been to have like a livestocky on-campus farm situation. But they are not the type of school Veronica describes Pan High as being right. They are private, high tuition high schools nestled deep in the Vermont countryside. So I don't know where they're keeping this goat.
HZ: But also what do they do with these living creature mascots, because unlike someone in a foam suit, they can't really go out on the pitch and dance around. Like, a parrot can just fly away.
JOY: Yeah, and I'm hoping they don't actually - I guess we see them at the game later, but a game seems like a place that's way too loud for a parrot or a goat.
HZ: I suppose that the Neptune parrot-pirate connection is why they've got that.
JOY: Yes. Oh and Pan had the hooves the hindquarters of a goat.
HZ: Oh yeah! So it would make a lot more sense for there to be a person in half a goat suit rather than there to be an actual goat. Veronica describes herself as human Google.
VERONICA VOICEOVER: A day in the life of a human google. Always in search mode. One moment tracking down the absurd, parrots and goats, metaphors for a school pride I don’t possess, and an hour or two later, going after the appalling, the murderer of a teenage girl. Sheriff Lamb takes an annual marlin fishing expedition. I can’t let the opportunity go to waste.
HZ: And then over the sheriff's station Veronica's wearing the same pink hoodie, but she's changed into jeans. Because she's being herself now.
JOY: So many outfits.
HZ: Maybe that's why everyone thinks her car's shit, because there's just so many outfits leaking from every doorway.
JOY: Yeah, it’s just filled to the brim with various outfits. And you know what I like to do at my local Sheriff's Department? I like to go there and just settle in for a nice little flashback.
HZ: Yes, well, it's cosy and safe. So back to the bar with Lianne, and they're having this really awkward kind of small talk, because it feels like they're trying to remember how it works to chat with each other, but something’s broken. And then Veronica said she knows about Lianne and Jake Kane.
LIANNE: You remember that time you wanted to shave your hair like Cyndi Lauper?
VERONICA: I know about you and Jake Kane. I wanna know what was between the two of you. Were you so adamant that dad not go after Jake for Lilly’s murder because you still had feelings for him?
LIANNE: Oh Veronica.
VERONICA: Tell me.
LIANNE: Jake was innocent.
VERONICA: How do you know that?
LIANNE: I just know that.
VERONICA: Like in your heart, because you love him?
LIANNE: No. Because I was with him at the time of the murder. We were in a hotel room at the Neptune Grand.
JOY: But hey, should we just draw attention to the fact that since whatever info Lianne had was around, Veronica has proven that the time of the murder is actually way later, right?
HZ: This is all a mess but it's weird that she doesn't refer back to that. She's like, were you still with Jake Kane three hours after that?
JOY: Yeah, yeah. And we know that she wasn't, because later we find out that Celeste rolled up and Lianne headed out.
HZ: Also when Lianne says, “We were in a hotel room at the Neptune Grand," she sounds too pleased about it.
JOY: She does.
HZ: You know. Since you're telling your daughter that you were in a hotel room with her ex-boyfriend's dad.
JOY: Yeah. But hey, back to the present back to something I'd much rather spend time seeing or hearing and thinking about, well who is it, but Leo?
HZ: Yes, he smugs up behind Veronica. But it's a real relief to see him. And surprise surprise, she needs a favour. Watch out Leo, it's a big one! The small ones are bad enough to wreck your career.
JOY: But yeah, but hey, could you just get me the interrogation tapes from Lilly Kane's murder investigation?
HZ: Do you think Leo goes through this with everyone he dates, just a lot of tests?
JOY: Maybe, maybe there's something about like, something he's putting out into the world that attracts a certain type of favour-requiring young woman?
HZ: At the Mars offices, Keith tells Veronica she got a weird call yesterday from the bank. She's overdrawn, despite having squirrelled away all of her money for college.
JOY: Yeah, she alleges It must be a mistake. Or maybe she blew it all on dames and horses. We've all been there.
HZ: Flashback again. Good lord!
JOY: It's whiplash.
HZ: It's just so rough to see Veronica have to go through this with her mom. And we haven't spent enough time with Lianne to feel particularly sorry for her in her hungover emotional distress.
JOY: Yeah, we really haven't seen much of Lianne at all. And yeah, this is kind of the only thing we're getting. So we have very little context for, as you said, the way it was before.
HZ: So our sympathies, I think, have to remain with Veronica.
VERONICA: Guess you couldn’t tell Dad you were in a hotel with your ex.
LIANNE: It wasn’t like that.
VERONICA: It doesn’t matter what it was like, Mom.
LIANNE: I just went there to talk to him.
VERONICA: On the one day all the Starbucks were closed?
HZ: Fair point.
JOY: Yes. And eventually Leanne just kind of caves and says that one day she came home and heard Celeste leaving Veronica a voice message, saying she had important info about Lianne and Jake, and Celeste really didn't want Veronica and Duncan seeing each other.
HZ: So Lianne says that's why she met Jake so she could ask him to tell Celeste to back off.
JOY: Right. Yes.
HZ: Pan High again. And isn't Veronica missing regular school by having to drive 15 miles each way to go and have lunch at Pan High? Does she do anything else there? Does she go to class?
JOY: Does she go to class? I'm sure that Veronica, whatever she's got worked out with Clemmons, will get her out of classes, if she doesn't already have some other way of getting out of classes. And it's established that there is a hot, bald bookie at rest stop 15 taking bets on the Pan High vs Neptune High game.
HZ: The Pan team manager Zeke has even bet $200 on Neptune. I gleaned this. I really struggled to give a shit about what the jocks are saying. So it was just coming through to me as, "Jock jock jock, jock jock jock jock jock."
JOY: Sure. I can help.
HZ: Rest stop 15, that I took in. People go there to make out and buy car stereos. It's basically like Craigslist, but a real place.
JOY: You see, kids, rest stop 15 is like if Craigslist was a location...
HZ: ...with a lovely view. Then the lunchroom breaks out into applause for a young kid called Wilson; everyone's like, “Yeah you stole the parrot, what a fucking legend, we give far too many shits about this, yeah yeah yeah, we are basics, woooo,” clap clap clap - but their joy is short-lived.
JOY: This is the most disturbing thing in the whole episode. Whoever went this extra mile is not okay. Becauseit's a huge gift box - now who the hell what kind of delivery service delivers a falling apart box, like, you can’t bump the lid or it'll just fall totally open, and delivers it on a little handcart to a cafeteria specifically?
HZ: And nobody has to sign for it.
JOY: And nobody has to sign for it, and the delivery guy just disappears.
HZ: Unless it is the people who done the prank, or there's a specialist delivery firm like FedEx for pranks.
JOY: FedEx for meat.
HZ: It says, “To Pan High, Bon Appetit. Love Neptune." And it is a pile of butchered meat and a cowbell.
JOY: Goat meat, 100% goat meat.
HZ: It doesn't look like goat meat to me.
JOY: There's stickers on all the packages that say “100% goat meat." Which is just part of the bit, I’m sure.
HZ: When you look at the mince in the burger patties, it looks like there's too much fat really - goat is quite a lean meat. That's my take. And it might be a bit too red. I like you can hear someone in the background going, "That smells nasty."
JOY: Yeah, well, raw meat meat isn't really known for its good smell, right?
HZ: Maybe this is their first time with raw meat. Veronica is on the case: she runs up the hallway, which is an exterior - and I remember Lo saying, but possibly not on the pod, that Neptune High is unrealistic having all the lockers in an interior hallway, because most southern Californian schools just open out into the open air like this one. And she flirts with the parrot thief, who is a shrimpy young kid. She eyes his locker combination while asking admiringly about his parrot theft:
VERONICA: How’d you get your hands on it?
WILSON: I just walked into the school, like I was a student there and nobody even asked me anything.
HZ: Which is a very Veronica move.
JOY: Yeah, she's like, “Wow, can't believe that worked. I just hit that half an hour ago." Huh.
HZ: She invites him to be her tour guide at rest stop 15 later. And because, maybe it's the first time he's talked to a girl, he agrees.
JOY: Yeah, hell yeah. And then he scurries away. And she breaks into his locker which she just clocked the combo of whilst in the middle of flattering him. She pulls out his phone, calls Weevil, and is like, “I'm about to send you a picture." And then she's like, “You wish," implying heavily that Weevil was like, “Oh, what's the picture off?" And then asked him if he's ever heard of rest stop 15. And then his response makes her say, “Oh, why am I not surprised?” So Weevil’s on the hook. Favours abound. Everybody's doing favours in this episode.
HZ: Yeah, it's not really clear to me why Weevil agreed to do this favour. Maybe he's just headed up there anyway to collect some bets from kids, which turns out is his business at rest stop 15. Rest stop 15 looks quite fun. There's a view, there's some chit chat.
JOY: It's really chaotic - some people have their trunks open and are selling stereos out of them, but some people have their trunks open and are sitting kind of in the trunks to make out. I don’t know if you noticed that? That's not a common American tradition. Just in case you were confused.
HZ: I feel very misled. And there's people chucking a ball around because ball sports! Everyone loves those. The young kid from before, Wilson, gets out of his car to look for Veronica. Disappointly for him - but wouldn't be for other people - he's grabbed by Weevil.
JOY: Mmm, yeah, sounds terrible.
HZ: Weevil’s in a great form:
WEEVIL: Hey there, buddy. Looking for love in all the wrong places?
WILSON: Who, me? I’m a no one.
WEEVIL: Where’s the bird, Wilson? I’m nearly bursting with Pirate pride here. Weevil wanna punch a cracker.
WILSON: What bird?
WEEVIL: You want to think about that answer, man?
WILSON: All right. Look, I know what you’re talking about but I didn’t take the parrot, I swear to god.
WEEVIL: Someone’s going to H-E-double hockey sticks.
HZ: Thank you, Weevil, for redeeming this whole plot with your euphemisms
JOY: So beautiful.
HZ: Love it.
JOY: The info that he gets out of Wilson is that Wilson went to a pet store and took a photo with a parrot so that people would think he was cool.
WEEVIL: Wait a minute. You went to a pet store and took a picture of yourself with a parrot so people would think you were cool? That’s this close to taking a hot cousin to your prom. Go home.
HZ: Cutting, but true. And then Veronica turns up and Weevil's like:
WEEVIL: No more favours for you. Now I gotta feel bad for this kid.
VERONICA: If it’s any consolation, I hate myself.
HZ: And then someone from Pan wants to place a $100 bet on Neptune. So Weevil's got to go and do some business and Veronica is dismissed.
JOY: But not before the the Pan High guy says, “Hi Betty," in front of Weevil!
HZ: Weevil immediately cottons on to what's happening there. He's a good ally.
JOY: I love him.
HZ: I know.
JOY: Sorry. I know that's not - I know this podcast is not about me loving Weevil.
HZ: No, it's the subtext. Logan's not in this episode, is he?
JOY: He is missing. I miss him. Veronica strolls into Mars Investigations. And you know how in days of yore they used to have things called fainting couches. Well, the Mars investigation offices have updated to include a throwbacky flashback couch where Veronica lays down and flashes back.
HZ: Do you think there's a special store devoted to flashback furniture? It’s next to the store that sells office supplies with bugs in.
JOY: Yes. 100%.
HZ: Lianne is not doing so well at the bar. She needs a little drinky, and yeah, it's just it's just all grim, isn’t it?
JOY: Yeah, it’s just really tough to watch.
HZ: And she says, “I told Jake that if Celeste tried to contact you again I'd have a paternity test done and take him for millions."
JOY: Yeah. And then Lianne reveals that she does not know for sure if Keith or Jake is Veronica's dad.
HZ: It's confusing to me that, you know, how long did Veronica and Duncan date? It was at least a year right? If not two years.
JOY: I think a year?
HZ: And the parents didn't move right at the beginning to split them up in case they were blood siblings?
JOY: Yeah, maybe they just figured like oh, this will play out... but then the longer it went on the more stressed out Celeste got, or maybe Celeste found out about Jake's indiscretions mid-relationship? But Jake could have known the whole time that it was a possibility.
HZ: I guess.
JOY: Ugh.
HZ: Something to cheer Veronica though in the present - Leo again. And he's got a gift box full of interrogation tapes. And they're still using cassettes when they did this interrogation in, I guess, late 2003?
JOY: Yeah, well, the Neptune Sheriff's Department doesn't look like the most state of the art facility. So what were your recording options at that point? They would have either had to have like an early Pro Tools rig with an interface and a computer that could run Pro Tools, or -
HZ: Minidiscs?
JOY: Yeah, Minidiscs.
HZ: There were digital audio recorders then. Maybe it was more safe to have a hard copy, and more safe on a cassette because they were less destructable than a CD?
JOY: Yeah. That seems right.
HZ: Leo rather charmingly asks Veronica for a dinner date.
LEO: I hate to bribe you but I’m fairly certain that aiding and abetting qualifies me for a dinner date.
VERONICA: Actually, it qualifies you for dinner and a movie but you undershot, so…
LEO: Damn.
HZ: He's much better at this than Troy was.
JOY: He's so dreamy.
HZ: He's a real relief in this episode.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: He doesn't seem to have much damage except for not being able to resist Veronica's bullshit.
JOY: But hey - who can? In this universe, at least.
HZ: That is very true. And then Veronica get some useful explanation from him about how sports betting works and suggests that maybe these bookies taking these big bets know something that the people placing the bets do not - i.e. are these matches fixed?
JOY: I thought this was really interesting. I mean, I guess I've always known, like... I've always had like a general sort of foggy concept in my mind of when you bet on such and so there's like, you know, two to one odds are four to one odds depending on like, how everyone is favoured or whatever, but the fact that the bookie is kind of like trying to figure out exactly where that line is, so no matter what happens, they come out with their commission and they're not losing. So it's like not just the people who are betting, but also the bookie who all have to be thinking about that. I thought that was interesting. I know, perhaps, that you did not think it was interesting.
HZ: It's just that more the betting system I think works a bit differently in the UK. Not that if there's the likelihood of one team winning that they're going to offer good odds on it, but it's more that it's much easier to put bets on things. So we have a lot of bookie shops. There's a lot of legal betting options. And they'll also take bets on all sorts of shit. So you could bet on the outcome of a reality TV show, for instance. My brother places a lot of bets for cricket because not many other people do, and he knows more about cricket than any bookie. And he also places consolation bets on things like results of elections, so that if the person he doesn't want to win wins, at least he gets some money.
JOY: Wow. Well that's what Zeke is doing, right, when he says he bet on Neptune? He's like, “Well, if we win, I'm happy, and if Neptune wins, I'm happy.”
HZ: Sure. But something is up with this bookie's scheme. At Neptune High there's a table of jocks with Veronica and Wallace involved in it. And the jocks are speculating this is their year to beat Pan which they haven't done for the past four years.
JOY: Yes, that speculation flies into the air, and then immediately afterwards, Wallace is like, "I gotta go do a thing really quick." Totally chill. Nothing weird about that. Veronica of course follows him, having having noticed that he was carrying an apple, potato chips, and raisins.
HZ: She sees a van. And she says, "Please tell me that's not filled with Polish hookers." Veronica! Always going for the untasteful sexual shaming references. What is in the van though? A beautiful, destructive goat.
JOY: That is a beautiful goat. I was not expecting such a beautiful goat.
HZ: Amazing horns. The van has got very like hippie-looking styling.
JOY: What are they thinking with that?
HZ: I've been to Glastonbury - it looks like a van at Glastonbury. Right down to the goat in the back. And for some reason, Wallace, who obviously knows that the van is full of goat, looks absolutely shocked once he's opened the doors to reveal the goat. Is it because he's like, “Oh, I forgot there was a goat in here”? Or is it just because the goat has messed up the van a bit? Which is to be expected, given that you're a large goat in a small van.
JOY: Yeah, that's just the cost of doing business with a goat, I think.
HZ: The goat is wearing a bell, which is not the best way to avoid being discovered.
JOY: It does lend a little support to the meat box that was delivered to the cafeteria because it did have a bell on top of the meat packets. So aha, Billy is known for wearing this bell, which you think would be a bad thing for him to have in his hidey hole of a van.
HZ: Wallace says, “This is just what high school is about, isn't it? Having fun, messing around.” Wallace is really doing high school well, he's having a time.
JOY: Yeah, I think this might be Wallace's peak high school episode.
HZ: I'm really happy for him. Honestly.
JOY: He says that it was Jack's idea. It was Jack's idea to steal the goat.
HZ: Jack is the guy that he was basketballingwith in the first basketball scene and again I just had not registered at all who or what Jack was, and Jack is disproportionately important right at the end of the episode.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. Also the goat briefly lived in the guest house formerly occupied by that shitty tenant.
HZ: It was probably a better tenant than that guy.
JOY: Well, it ate the rug and the sofa, so I don't know.
HZ: It ate the PJ Harvey poster... In the media room, we've got a new Duncan, Editor Duncan. Because we know that, from episode 2, Duncan works on the school paper, but it was just doing like reporting, right? But now he seems to be in charge of things, unconvincingly. Like when he was Glitter Duncan last episode, he's got a clipboard and he's just wandering around shouting things off the clipboard. In this case it's people's comments about the parrot situation. Oh, Duncan.
JOY: Wow, Duncan is kind of the parrot of this show.
HZ: Duncan is is the box of goat meat in a blue sweater.
JOY: Ah, well, communicationally he seems to just sort of like absorb the styles of the people around him again and then regurgitate them.
HZ: It's not my favourite Duncan, because obviously my favourite Duncan is Socialist Duncan.
JOY: Well, yeah, Socialist Duncan is at the top and then Glitter Duncan is right underneath.
HZ: Yeah, Glitter Duncan and then Fake Drunk Singing Duncan.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Then someone called Arianna comes in and just hands them a printout and leaves. And it's a letter.
VERONICA: “Maybe the people who think that the person who took Polly is so awful should stop and think about the person who ripped Polly from her natural habitat and forced her to live in a cage. I only hope whoever took that beautiful bird had the decency to set her free. And if Polly really loves them, she’ll fly back to them.”
DUNCAN: I think she’s one of those SAAC girls.
VERONICA: Yeah, that’s gonna need a little further explanation.
DUNCAN: Students Against Animal Cruelty? They threw the bucket of blood on the homecoming queen a couple of years ago for wearing fur.
VERONICA: Bucket of blood? Have we learned nothing from Carrie?
HZ: Now, there's surely no way that Veronica would not have known about the bucket of blood, especially a couple of years ago when she was still in the homecoming queen kind of crowd.
JOY: Yeah, this feels like an oversight. Also, when Duncan says "I think she's one of those SAAC girls," it's worth it to go back and check out his line delivery paired with the face that he's making. It’s a ham sandwich.
HZ: Do you like ham sandwiches or not, Jenny? Just so I can get a read on that analysis.
JOY: I'm not a ham sandwich person. But also I just mean, it looks like the hammiest thing we've ever seen Teddy Dunn do. He’s just like “Ma ma, ma ma ma ma ma.”
HZ: And like Duncan would know who SAAC were, more than Veronica would - like Duncan would know more about anything.
JOY: Hey, he's the student body president. Sometimes he is Socialist Duncan.
HZ: It's true, but Veronica knows everything about everyone in this school.
JOY: She knows everything about everyone's personal lives, and some gossipy stuff, but way less about like how they function in the school ecosystem. You know?
HZ: I feel like this wouldn't be the first evidence of SAAC.
JOY: Duncan is in touch with his constituency and I admire that in a leader.
HZ: Home, Veronica is baking cookies and listening to the interrogation tapes which send her right into a flashback. And this is - it's a thrillingly awkward scene because it's Keith Mars, still Sheriff then, interrogating Jake Kane, pretending that he'd been at the Neptune grand making love with Celeste Kane. And Keith's like, "How long for? How long did you last for?”
JOY: Yeah, Keith says ‘making love’ like 55 times in this. And I could do with about 55 times less - fewer.
HZ: What would you prefer him to say?
JOY: Just like no. Just just really lean into the sort of like, just be like "What were you doing?” and then waggle his eyebrows. I would just like to see him waggle his eyebrows every time.
HZ: It wouldn't pick up on the interrogation tape though, would it?
JOY: That's true. You need a very sensitive microphone to pick up eyebrow waggling.
HZ: He's like, "Why were you at a hotel?" and they were like, "Well, kids, you know we've done it loads of times," and Keith like, “Do you have receipts for the loads of times? How long were you doing it? You're in there for two and a half hours, were you doing it the whole time? Did you watch TV? What was on the TV?” and Jake's like, “We just put it on for background noise." Jake can only do it with the weather channel in the background. I've added that part.
JOY: Yikes! Also, they’re billionaires who live in a mansion, are you telling me that you can't get time away from your two teen children who like have their own shit going on?
HZ: Especially as Lilly's probably having a much livelier sex life than they are.
JOY: Oh my god - true.
HZ: In the present, Veronica pulls a batch of cookies out the oven, and Wallace arrives.
JOY: And catches her snickerdoodle... snickerdoodle handedly. Wait, hang on one second. Let me think about this... snickerdoodle-handed...
HZ: Catches her right in the snickerdoodles. I like that Wallace can't even pick up the cookies - they’re too hot - and yet still manages to eat one. And he's not even upset that he discovers that Veronica is the one baking his spirit cookie boxes because he's got all the cookies to distract him.
JOY: Not even upset. I think he's stoked. I think it deepens their friendship.
HZ: Well it's really sweet, isn't it because he says:
WALLACE: You’re the one who’s been making my spirit boxes?
VERONICA: I used to be on pep squad, remember?
WALLACE: But you think all this stuff is stupid.
VERONICA: You don’t.
HZ: And it actually seems sincere because she's been quite snarky with him this episode.
JOY: But maybe she's just buttering him up because she needs to ask him for a little favour, if you don’t mind.
HZ: Here's weird though, and she's making dozens of cookies here and there are only a few in each box. Is she doing spirit boxes for other people that she's running, but we just don't see those cases? Also, Wallace through a mouthful of hot cookie goes:
WALLACE: Mm-mm-mmm, the girl can bake.
VERONICA: That she can.
HZ: Which is surprising because a running joke through the series is how shit the Marses are in the kitchen. And a few episodes ago she made Keith Mars a birthday cake that looked like a goat had shat it out. When did she have time to learn to bake in the months between that episode and now?
JOY: Wow, just because the cake looks bad doesn't mean a cake tastes bad.
HZ: True. But these these cookies look good.
JOY: They do.
HZ: Veronica needs a favour.
JOY: Yeah, “Could you just drop a plant off at Clarence Wiedman's office and don't ask why? Thanks!”
HZ: “Yes, just when you're visiting your mom at work as you do. Just pretend it's a secret admirer to Clarence's assistant." She needs him to plant a plant.
JOY: Oh my God.
HZ: And then Veronica puts on makeup whilst rocking out to those tapes. Back to the flashbacks and Keith is interrogating Celeste Kane now, who confirms they spent two and a half hours in the hotel. But then the stories diverge.
JOY: “Trust me Keith, we weren't watching TV.” Now there's a tasteful way to imply it without saying ‘making love’ 80 times.
HZ: Yeah, well done, Celeste. I feel like this would be so hard for Celeste because she's having to lie to protect her husband who was in a hotel room with another woman - poor Celeste.
JOY: But Veronica's listening is interrupted, because hey, it's Keith.
HZ: Doing his Bogart impression, love it.
KEITH: Grab your lip gloss and your pepper spray, sweetheart. Your date’s here.
JOY: Which is what I say when anyone has a date.
HZ: You know, ready for anything. Is this date more or less uncomfortable for Keith because he knows Leo? So does that make Leo better than Troy, or even more of a concern?
JOY: I think it makes Leo better because Leo has been brave and has saved Keith's life right?
HZ: Yeah, he seems like he's a decent guy, except for those crimes he commits for Veronica.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: But he also is an adult, so maybe Keith would have that concern that he's that bit older than Veronica. But maybe Keith’s like, “Well he's hot, so…"
JOY: Nice - very nice Helen.
HZ: And they go to the only place in Neptune, the one with the glass blob walls. No one's karaoking tonight though, because it plays a Chinese restaurant tonight. And what do you know? Who's there but Jake Kane, Celeste Kane, Duncan and Meg, on the worst date ever, poor Meg. When does Meg ever have a good time, really? She's always trying to make other people have a better time.
JOY: Yeah, I want more for her. You think she's a Hufflepuff?
HZ: Oh, I think she might be Hufflepuff-Gryffindor.
JOY: Yeah, that seems right.
HZ: She's very pure of heart.
JOY: Huffledor.
HZ: Gryffinpuff. And she's trying to be conciliatory with Veronica. It's not ideal. Veronica gets seated at a table where she's got a good side eye view of Celeste Kane so they can just stare daggers at each other.
JOY: Yeah, terrible.
HZ: The tables at this restaurant are covered in large blocky lamps. Where do they put the food? Unless the food is the lamps.
JOY: Eat the lamp or eat nothing.
HZ: They've also put Veronica in a flashback seat.
JOY: Oh my god. Yeah, she falls right through that seat directly into a flashback pit. So she's getting more intel from Lianne. She finds out that Celeste burst into the hotel while Lianne was with Jake. Lianne left but she went to the bathroom and when she came out of the bathroom she saw Celeste storming out. So Veronica thinks like, “Was it a paternity issue? Was it an alibi issue? Was it both?"
HZ: I noticed in the restaurant there is a four piece jazzy guitar band as well.
JOY: One of the few inoffensive musical things that have happened on the show so far.
HZ: I'm slightly offended by the inoffensiveness. Bit of fun for Veronica now at school, as she goes up against the SAAC animal rights activists. A lot of people in the room are dressed in pink. And there's a group of four girls who are sitting or standing around together, and their body language is very still and casual, totally at odds with what one of them is saying:
ARIANNA: I don’t want to hear about your protein deficiency, Marsha. You eat eggs, you might as well eat baby.
JOY: Yikes!
HZ: Now Veronica's wearing her fur-edged gilet.
JOY: She only wears it when she's dealing with vegans and commune members. Really poor planning.
HZ: She takes it off pointedly when talking to Arianna who's the person who brought the letter to her and Duncan.
VERONICA: Arianna? Hi. I just wanted to let you know, I really liked your letter.
ARIANNA: Really?
VERONICA: Yeah, really.
ARIANNA: I’m sorry. I have a hard time believing someone who let a cow die so she could wear butch boots cares about a parrot.
VERONICA: My boots aren’t butch.
ARIANNA: But they are leather.
JOY: I think they never show the boots. Like once this line happened. I was like on high alert, like how butch are these boots? I don't think we ever see them.
HZ: You do quite often get boot level shots of Veronica. So I think they're her trademark boots - I think they're Fluevog boots, aren't they? And so they're quite chunky, they make a look a bit like a cartoon character.
JOY: Right.
HZ: And to be fair to Veronica in 2004-5, it wasn't that easy to get vegan boots.
JOY: Yeah, they've become significantly more accessible now and they're still definitely the minority.
HZ: Whilst Arianna muses that Polly the Parrot is better off free, her eyes flick to some activity happening behind Veronica, giving Veronica the clue that the animal rights activists are going to slice Veronica's gilet in the classroom guillotine - as if Veronica's jackets could be any smaller. They're really splitting the atom here.
JOY: Ha! Yeah. And it's fucking fake fur you losers!
HZ: Yeah, although wasn't there a scandal where like some cheap clothing retailer was using real fur that they said was fake fur? Maybe that was in Britain.
JOY: I missed that.
HZ: Also, you could argue that wearing fake fur helps stimulate the market for real fur blah blah blah. It's not all degradable fabric, yappity yap. Hi, I'm a member of the SAAC.
JOY: I knew you were one of those SAAC girls <Duncan face>.
HZ: Then everyone's attention is diverted.
JOY: Yeah, because there's a dude in all black and a black hood cutting in on Meg's Neptune High news report.
HZ: We know it's never good when you see the news report.
JOY: Yeah, nothing good happens! So this guy cuts into the broadcast and he's got Polly the Parrot.
DISGUISED GUY ON TV: Bwha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Greetings from your masters at Pan High. If Wallace Fennel plays in tomorrow night’s game, Polly the parrot will die. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programme.
JOY: And we're all like, “!!! Wallace!"
HZ: And I maintain everyone gives too many fucks about all this. Something very upsetting is happening outside: Weevil is wearing all denim. No leather jacket, and no henley.
JOY: Yeah, it doesn't look good. It's not my fave - I mean, he's still Weevil and I'm glad to see him.
HZ: He's got a very baggy denim shirt on.
JOY: Not his best look.
HZ: Not his best look, but it doesn't matter because there is this quite sizzling scene between him and Veronica like there's quite hot chemistry between them as she tries to elicit whether or not he stole the parrot.
VERONICA: How’s our feathered friend?
WEEVIL: Excuse me?
VERONICA: You took the parrot, didn’t you? You’re taking even money bets on a team everyone thinks will win. Why would you do that unless you knew that Wallace, our best player, wouldn’t play?
WEEVIL: You know, I always knew you had a thing for me but I never thought you wanted me for my brain.
VERONICA: I’m gagging on the inside.
WEEVIL: Come on, Veronica. Do I look that smart? I’m just a simple bookie. I got both sides of the line covered. And ask yourself this: why would I help you find the parrot if stealing the parrot was my secret plan, huh?
JOY: Yes, yes, yes. Yes. I love his assertion that Veronica's always had a thing for him, but he never thought she wanted him for his brain. Nice.
HZ: Do you want him for his brain, Jenny? Or just the henley?
JOY: The henley, the jacket, a ride on that -
HZ: - Big old hog?
JOY: - Motorcycle. I was gonna say big old hog but I didn't want anybody to get confused about what I actually want which is just a ride on the motorcycle. The literal motor - non euphemistic motorcycle.
HZ: Honestly if he offered pig rides I'd at least be interested. Poor old Wallace is sad now, he's like, "It sucks I can't play." The coach and all the guys want him to play!
JOY: But he cares about Polly - they bonded, it's not worth Polly's life, can't take that chance.
HZ: In the media room, Veronica needs help from Meg, she needs to find out why Meg's newscast was interrupted and it turns out - pre-record - someone cut in that tape overnight.
JOY: “When there's not breaking news we tape the night before” - so these students are coming in like every night after school hours to record the morning news. What? How do you know if there's going to be breaking news until the next day?
HZ: Is it a 24/7 newsroom? And Meg is so nice to Veronica in the scene.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: She's like, "You take a deep breath like you're preparing for battle - and I just want everything to be okay between us." And it's weird because Veronica is like, "It's okay. We just run in different circles. I can't stop being friends with people who've ignored and mocked me for a year” - but that's not Meg. That's a separate issue. That's other people.
JOY: The main person that Meg seems to be around all the time is Duncan, and Veronica talks to Duncan all the time.
HZ: So it just seems to be mixing Veronica's feelings of alienation from the popular crowd at Neptune high with her feelings of "Urgh, Duncan with someone else." And our feelings of “Urgh, Duncan."
JOY: Yeah, Meg's like, “Maybe we could have our own circle without them," and Veronica's like, "Maybe - after you do me a favour. Pull up that footage and enhance, enhance, enhance."
HZ: Right! Where's Mac to do the enhance-enhance-enhancements?
JOY: Oh seriously, where is Mac?
HZ: It's good that a Meg has the same skills, so they sit there, and they do look quite chummy after a little bit as they look at frames of that weird video from the basketball court.
JOY: Yes, yes. And they manage to discover a tiny little marking on a shoe. It's a number 13. Well, well, well.
HZ: What the fuck? And this directly leads to the return of the mascots in the busy school hallway. Veronica walks in - with quite some difficulty, because in one hand, she's holding a huge parrot cage, and in the other hand she's leading a goat, and she's got an envelope in her mouth. Iconic.
JOY: This looks beautiful. Love to see Kristen Bell leading a goat and carrying a parrot.
HZ: Wearing a vile pink hoodie over a clashing equally vile pink T-shirt.
JOY: It can't be helped Helen.
HZ: Veronica gets applause; the Pan team parades in whooping; and she goes up and does a weird monologue at Richie from the Pan team, who's the guy who first beckoned her over to join them for lunch. Such a weird monologue.
VERONICA: Richie, you are a really great guy and if the popular kids at this school were half as nice as you are, I’d wanna be popular. I know that sounds weird but it’s a huge compliment. So good luck tonight. You’re gonna need it. Wallace Fennel has a killer crossover. But it’s really his sweetness and purity of spirit that makes him unbeatable.
PAN HIGH JOCK: What did she just say to you?
RICHIE: Beats the hell out of me.
JOY: Why does she need some rando guy from another school who she's never gonna see or talk to again, for her to be able to acknowledge that Wallace is highly skilled, very sweet and has a pure spirit? Why she can't admit that to someone else, like Wallace, for example?
HZ: Also, she's like, “Richie, you're really great guy. And really nice." He's not that nice, he's a boring jock, who invited her to the lunch table and then did boring jock stuff and celebrated the theft of the parrot way too much for an emotionally well-rounded human.
JOY: Yeah, he was unmemorable.
HZ: Veronica goes over to Wallace tells him to warm up because he's playing and then she drops the denouement. Poirot moment! But a very unsatisfying one.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Remember that guy, Jack - Chekhov’s Jack - from the first basketball scene and Jack's goat plan? And we don't really know Jack? It was all him.
JOY: It was all him, and he needed to be a starter, so that he as the point guard could essentially control the score and make sure that Neptune would lose, thus making him win a whole heap of money.
HZ: Yeah, he's kept throwing games - so how come he keeps getting on the team when he keeps biffing crucial moments in games over the last few years?
JOY: That's a really good - well, I guess that's why he's not starting anymore and why Wallace is.
HZ: But also, Veronica has done a lot of the investigating of Jack off screen at his house where she went to get the parrot back. And I find this a very unsatisfactory solution to a mystery that I didn't give a fuck about. But it's just it feels a bit badly done to me because you haven't been seeded the clues very effectively.
JOY: Yeah, not not at all.
HZ: And also it's very tenuous plot, isn't it? "I'll steal the parrot to sabotage Wallace, but I'll only introduce the aspect of Wallace can't play after days of parrot kidnap, rather than straight away” - like what the fuck kind of scheme is that?
JOY: Hey, but who has time to dwell on the weaker points of this episode's plot when Veronica is busy winking at Wallace - and does Wallace have like tearaway pants? Because they cut away from him for like two seconds, and he goes from being in a full tracksuit to just his playing uniform, which like I could see him like whipping off the jacket, but those pants had to be tearaway. That's my thesis and I'm sticking to it.
HZ: Well, that's an exciting thesis. It's a shame that happened off camera as well.
JOY: A true pity. One of the great crimes of the show.
HZ: And then, at the Mars home, thank goodness, something I care about: we find out what happened to Veronica's money because she's saved every penny she's earned since she started working for Keith Mars.
JOY: This is a lot.
HZ: She's fucked her own college fund in order to take Lianne to rehab. And Lianne's like, "Don't don't don't, I can cure myself I don't…." And it's just heartbreaking.
JOY: Veronica’s like, “I want you to come home." And then there's some serious-ass Friday Night Lights music rising in the background just like very reverberous delayed electric guitar in a clean town.
VERONICA: [tearfully] I miss you.
HZ: Back in the present, she calls Keith in and asks him to answer something, honestly.
JOY: That's right. She says, "Dad, why would a person agree to confess to a murder he didn't commit?” Keith says “Money? And if you're not around to spend that money yourself money for someone you care about to take care of them?" Yeah, and then just she picks up the bug after she leaves the room and says directly into it. “Wait, Dad? I think I know who is collecting the money." And then thunks down the piece of the pencil sharpener. Well, that sensitive little bug, you know, they're hearing on the other end "D-dunk." You know, careful, Veronica!
HZ: But luckily, the rubber plant has made it to Clarence Wiedman's office, so she can hear Clarence Wiedman immediately ask his assistant to call someone called Amelia DeLongpre, and Veronica searches for their name and spells it correctly first time.
JOY: Well, there is a DeLongpre street or Boulevard or Avenue or something in Los Angeles. Which might be why the writers put it in there - carry on.
HZ: Maybe. Anyway, she discovers that Amelia DeLongpre is: Abel Koontz's daughter,
JOY: <dramatic music sound> Daughter of Gossip Girl. End of Episode!
HZ: I noticed in the credits someone I noticed in the credits, someone played a character named Panting Sophomore.
JOY: Hey, we've all played Panting Sophomore from time to time in our lives.
HZ: When Weevil's around, what what? Let's check in with the laws broken in this episode with our legal expert and Southern Californian marshmallow Lo Dodds for today's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
HZ: Lo. Can you just go to another school that you don't attend and pretend to attend it?
LO DODDS: I feel like she probably wasn't breaking any laws there.
JOY: For once!
LO DODDS: Yeah, for once for once because it feels like based on what we saw in that episode that she just goes there for lunch.
HZ: So she's probably committing fewer crimes then than she does at her regular school.
LO DODDS: Ordinarily, other than, you know, breaking into that guy's locker and getting his phone out, but again, she didn't steal the phone. So she's on the straight and narrow,
JOY: Relatively, on the Veronica spectrum.
LO DODDS: We’ve got a lot of crimes this episode, a lot more than usual, or at least a lot more people are committing crimes than just Veronica.
HZ: Makes a change, keeps things fresh.
LO DODDS: We've got some bugging going on, some more people getting busted for wiretapping, Clarence Wiedman. We’ve got illegal bribing, illegal betting, a little taking bets. Those are all wobblers though. And Leo - Leo's getting busted again to, potentially, for obstruction of justice for stealing the interrogation tapes. But again, we don't really know whether Abel Koontz's case is ongoing since he is sentenced to die and not appealing it. But he is again compromising the evidence to the point that it could hurt any appeal or potential exoneration of Abel Koontz. And again, since he's already been suspended once for negligently letting Veronica into the evidence locker, I think he's probably going to get fired. He really really has to stop doing things for her.
JOY: Oh! Oh!
HZ: Jenny Owen Youngs?
JOY: Okay, what about intimidating or threatening a sports star, even if they're just a high school sports star, from playing in a particular sporting event with like a specific motive getting in this case?
LO DODDS: Yeah, I think we're back to extortion. And I think he could get something for harassment. He'ss also violating some gambling laws that we have in California; in California, it's illegal to take bets. And it's illegal to hold bets for other people, which is what he was doing for your buddy Weevil; and it's illegal to bribe someone to not try their best in a sporting event. So I feel like evil 13 is going down on a lot of things. I feel like he's also going to out Weevil, which I don't think they talked about - this whole idea that he gets busted for the gambling for taking the bets, and he's covering Weevil for you know all the money that we will is going to lose and we will definitely going to come after him but if Weevil comes after him he's gonna turn around and name names. He's gonna turn state's evidence.
JOY: I have some proposals. I have some hard data I'd like to have on your desk by Monday morning, and this is Monday morning, nd I would like for you to tell me how good of a job I'm doing.
LO DODDS: Oh my gosh, did you get a Westlaw subscription?
JOY: Well, since I don't know what that is, I'm gonna have to say probably not. So I'm sorry to disappoint. But Ok. Ok. So animals have been abducted: one parrot; one goat. Ostensibly these are both public schools which I would assume makes those animals government property which in my mind - wait! Don't shoot me down yet, don't do it - which in my mind makes that theft worse than just regular old stealing from private citizen. And that it's gonna go from a misdemeanour up to a felony, I get a gold star. And then also, when that package of ground, in quotes 100% goat meat which is a sticker I'm always putting on meat, arrives at the rival school, would that be maybe some kind of like intent to cause emotional distress? Perhaps?
LO DODDS: Intentional infliction of emotional distress. I'm gonna give it to you. I'm gonna give it to you.
JOY: I'm basically a lawyer! I'm taking over the LoDown. The JOYdown.
LO DODDS: I think you should go to court tomorrow.
JOY: Well, I'll just show up and see who needs help
LO DODDS: I think that you could sue. The people of Pan High could probably sue the person who sent that for intentional infliction of emotional distress. There you go. Yeah, that's a civil case there for you.
HZ: Who's going to take that case and not be like, "Yeah, I don't give a fuck about that, sorry"?
JOY: Jenny Owen Youngs, Esquire.
HZ: Ready for all of your meat-based emotional distress cases.
JOY: Hell yeah.
LO DODDS: The animals I think you're still looking at petty theft though, which is still not gonna get you into the felony range.
JOY: Pet-y theft? Helen, I'm really sorry.
HZ: No, I'm proud of you, Jenny, grudgingly proud.
LO DODDS: Those puns really get my goat.
HZ: I'm hanging up.
JOY: You know they actually say “They got our goat” in the episode? Did you notice that? Now that's criminal.
HZ: Well, I think I have made my feelings clear about this episode, Jenny, but please tell me all about your feelings.
JOY: Well, I liked the goat.
HZ: Goat was great.
JOY: I liked the parrot. I liked seeing Wallace fucking crushing it. And I liked getting some long-needed detail about what's going on with Lianne Mars and Jake Kane. Oh, and we got to see Weevil do a bunch of cool Weevil stuff. And despite the fact that there really was no way to anticipate or deduce who was responsible for the stolen parrot, I'm still willing to give this episode three out of five panting sophomores.
HZ: I think that's very decent of you. I think you're right there's a lot of good in this episode. I think the progress made with the Kanes and Lianne is interesting; there's a lot of emotions in it. Love to see Wallace do well, love to see Weevil weeviling.
JOY: “Weeviling”!
HZ: Just Weeviling around.
JOY: <sings> "Weevil woman..." Oh my god.
HZ: Bit of ELO there - Weev-L-O. I think I will score it three out of five green and yellow snickerdoodle boxes.
JOY: Nice.
HZ: And then were there any lines, Jenny, that you're going to be writing on your wall in a Sharpie?
JOY: My favourite line is when Keith Mars finally stopped saying "making love” - and you?
HZ: Oh, I like it when Weevil says to Veronica, "I always knew you had a thing for me but I never thought you wanted me for my brain," and Veronica says, "I'm gagging on the inside," and it's all very flirty, but also really horrible.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Well, bravo, Jenny. That's another episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: Case frickin closed, Helen!
That was Season 1, episode 16: Betty and Veronica.
Watch season 1 episode 17 and join us in a week to investigate it.
Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
The website, where our podcast is making love for 2.5 hours with the TV on, is vmipod.com.
JOY: Noooo! I'm Jenny Owen Youngs and you can hear more of my speaking voice on my other podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer and you can hear it my singing voice by going to jennyowenyoungs.com to learn more about all of the music that I have historically made and will make in the future, including a new EP called Night Shift that just came out November 15.
HZ: It's beautiful.
JOY: Hey thanks, Helen. And also! My frickin brand new sad original Christmas song that just came out on the 6th, it's called ‘Maybe Next Year’ and you could find it on Spotify Apple Music wherever you stream music it is available digitally. And I'll tell you one more freaking thing: I'll tell you one more freakin thing. And that is that I will be engaging in some very festive music performance. I will be playing my annual Tidings of Comfort and J.O.Y. streaming shows on Saturday the 14th at noon, and 3pm Pacific and you can find details about those shows also on my website or via my socials. So please join me if you feel like it.
HZ: Can't wait. Can’t wait!
JOY: Helen will maybe be at one of them.
HZ: Yeah, I hope so. Just peering at you like a creep.
JOY: I love it.
HZ: I'm Helen Zaltzman and you can hear my other podcasts Answer Me This and The Allusionist, they are on the pod places and answermethispodcast.com and theallusionist.org. There's a number of very solid Christmas episodes of both that I recommend if you're looking for a festive stuff to listen to.
JOY: Oh, hey, don't you have a live show in Los Angeles that your cohost Jenny Owen Youngs will be hanging out at?
HZ: Good point. Yeah, if you hear this on or before the 15th of December 2019, then you still have time to come to the last Allusionist live show of 2019 at the Bootleg Theatre in Los Angeles, and Jenny Owen Youngs will be there too.
JOY: That's hardly the highlight.
HZ: Jenny Owen Youngs will be playing me in the show.
JOY: Yes, I'll be like, “Pip pip, guv’nor, scone, language, I'm very smart and here's why. And I will prove it to you instead of just saying it directly like that, blah blah blah.”
HZ: Very reductive, Jenny. Anyway, you can find information about it at theallusionist.org/events.
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Zach McNees.
HZ: The music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
JOY: The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
HZ: Distributed by PRX.
JOY: Until next time, who’s your daddy?
HZ: Who’s your daddy?
JOY: Whoever he is, I hope he isn’t hanging out at the Neptune Grand making love for two and a half hours.