VMI 1.17 Kanes and Abel's transcript
Hear this episode at VMIpod.com/1-17
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning violence, murder and mental health.
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
Veronica tracks down Abel Koontz’s daughter and hides her in a motel.
Veronica also grudgingly takes on the case of uppity student Sabrina, who is being harrassed to the detriment of her midterms.
Jake and Celeste Kane did some covering up on the night of Lilly’s death, with the help of Clarence Wiedman.
Who is all over the place spooking everybody in this episode, keeping it subtle and undercover by wearing a very noticeable hat.
And! There’s another PI in town - Vinnie Van Lowe. He has a fake moustache and no morals.
Singing Hall and Oates songs into a pen, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
And turning up at your house at 11pm ready to party, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 1, episode 17: Kanes and Abel’s.
JOY: Helen, before we get into this episode, I have to bring up a piece of a slightly older business. It's been brought to my attention via Twitter that we failed to explain to our loyal listeners what Star 69 is - or was. Did you actually have Star 69 in the UK?
HZ: No we dialed 1471. I don't know if that's still a thing, but I understand what Star 69 is, because I'm used to having to deduce what American things were in a pre-Google time. That's the thing where you you dialed that in order to find out the number that just called you, correct?
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Is there anything else that we fail to explain that we've been availed of by twitter? Well, I think failed to explain that we like this show. A lot of people are like, “Do you hate the show?” No, we wouldn't sacrifice so much of our lives to dissecting it if we hated it!
JOY: Oh my god, we're just having a laugh.
HZ: A critical conversation.
JOY: Yeah, a critical conversation. A very good time. Yeah, we certainly wouldn't be making this podcast if we didn't enjoy the show. But so sorry for any confusion that we may have given you.
HZ: People listened to the pilot, they think we don't like the pilot, the pilot is an amazing episode of TV. Fucked it, Jenny. Shame on me
JOY: Okay. So sorry to delay our entry here. Shall we?
HZ: Here we are at the Mars home, looking at the website of the Neptune Register.
JOY: And that's the local paper.
HZ: I'm going to assume.
JOY: Yes. And what does it say, Helen?
HZ: It's the Neptune Register obituary for Stella Koontz, Abel Koontz's mother, and Veronica voiceovers that Abel Koontz has a daughter as we found out the end of last episode. And now Clarence Wiedman knows that Veronica knows,
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: So then Veronica searches for Abel Koontz's daughter, Amelia DeLongpre - and so convenient, she's at college in Los Angeles, at Loyola Marymount.
JOY: What are the odds?
HZ: What if she's been at college in like Michigan and Veronica was like, "Okay, I'll jump in the car and I can be there in three hours”? Because of Neptune's teleport roads that it's got.
JOY: There's an underpublicised sort of wormhole in Neptune that just leads wherever with minimal commute.
HZ: It goes from the dog beach to wherever you want. And then some very pacy music kicks in. It reminded me at the beginning of episode nine when Veronica goes to see Abel Koontz in prison and then she's crying in her car after he's like, "Oh Veronica Mars, do you really think you're the daughter of a schlubby PI, Keith Mars?" And then she does her crying and then she does some very busy detective work for a few minutes and I was too lazy, I'm afraid, to go back to episode nine to see if they use the same busy detective music. But I enjoy it - it does make me feel like excited for what's ahead. And off she runs to Loyola Marymount, to a dorm, which has a beautiful, in shape, window, but all the panes are opaque brown.
JOY: Why is it like this?
HZ: I do think there are better ways to shoot in studios than just making all windows opaque, which this show loves to do.
JOY: Well, I guess on a budget...
HZ: Just draw the curtains! Easy solution. And Amelia LeLongpre's roommate is studying on the bed, and Clarence Wiedman turns up. And what better way to not attract notice when you are much older than the average undergrad age and striding through dorm corridors, than to wear like a long overcoat and a 1940s spyish hat and be shot from below in a very noirish way?
JOY: Yeah, and also man, this guy really fills up a doorframe, huh?
HZ: It's really well done to make him look intimidating and different to the Keith Mars style of detective, but, know your place: if everyone's wearing sweatshirts and no hats, what kind of bullshit it this?
JOY: This is not a good undercover look. We can say that for sure.
HZ: Although maybe he doesn't need to be undercover, he just needs to be threatening, in which case it works pretty well.
JOY: Well, but I just think this is what he wears every day, and he hasn’t given it another thought. I think he's just fedora overcoat guy.
HZ: It's a hard look to pull off in Southern California. He must be sweating cobs under there.
JOY: Well, you know, in Southern California when it's not summer, it's like winter in the morning, summer from like noon to 3pm, and then it like it's fall for a couple hours and it's winter, and it's night. I think it's dark out when he rolls up to the dorm, so there might be a chilly chilly breeze coming in off the dog beach.
HZ: I'll allow it. I just don't imagine him in like polos and shorts in July. Unfortunate news for Clarence though. The roommate says, "Amelia just left with a friend."
CLARENCE WIEDMAN: Could you describe this friend?
ROOMATE: Tiny, blonde, cute as a bug.
JOY: Yeah, that's how I'm always describing the friend that my roommate just like went off to get coffee with, like, what the hell? And of course Clarence Wiedman is like, “Tiny, blonde and cute as a bug? There's only one person that could be!"
HZ: Literally one. Also, presumably the roommate saw Veronica arriving five minutes ago, having to say to Amelia, "Oh hi, I'm Veronica, you don't know me, but I've got information about that murder case that your dad was convicted for." Then you see Veronica and Amelia, going not that quickly, low urgency, to Veronica's car.
JOY: Pick up the pace, pick up the pace.
VERONICA: Amelia, get in the car. If you don’t get in the car, you’re putting yourself in danger.
AMELIA: I haven’t spoken to my father in years. I don’t understand.
VERONICA: You’re a threat to the Kane family now that you know about the payoff.
AMELIA: What payoff?
VERONICA: You just told me you’re receiving millions in Kane Software stock.
AMELIA: But mom said that was an out of court settlement.
VERONICA: It’s not a settlement. It’s a payoff. For pleading guilty to the murder of Lilly Kane. Your father is innocent.
HZ: That seems like a) lot for Amelia to take in, and b) probably information that she would have had to say to get Amelia out of the building in the first place? With a bag for her overnight stuff.
JOY: Yes, but we have limited time on this episode of television, Helen, we gotta go!
HZ: I get that.
JOY: So Veronica is tucking her away in a motel that I think is in Neptune. And Amelia says, “Eh, this is fine. Exams are next week. One dank room is as good as the next." And I would like to object, respectfully, and say that no dank room is good, therefore, how can one be as good as the next?
HZ: Right? Also, is this room dank? It has some very busy wallpaper. It's got shells on some walls because of the marine theme and then floral sprigs on a pink background on another wall.
JOY: But it is called the Ocean motel. So it might just be in a high humidity ocean-adjacent zone.
HZ: Could well be a damp problem. Amelia DeLongpre has very unconvincing hair. It’s a beautiful colour but it's been heavily curling-tonged. Which seems like low priority if you're revising for exams and stuff. And also if you are in hiding in a motel, are you like, "No, I'm going to curl it right up to the scalp."
JOY: Right up to the scalp.
HZ: As someone with naturally curly hair, I call bullshit on this hair.
JOY: I respect you as an authority in this matter, I trust you.
HZ: Not an authority, but I've had 39 years of living with it.
JOY: That sounds like an authority to me.
HZ: Veronica gives her a phone so that she can call her mom and get the Kane settlement docs sent over. And just to clarify, so Kanes, ostensibly, were paying Abel Koontz off because he invented the streaming video thing and then they romped to the Fortune 500 with it, and he was cut out?
JOY: Right, that's the story that Amelia has been told. Yeah.
HZ: And Amelia is like, “Well I need to be able to call my boyfriend as well” - which is Chekhov's boyfriend call.
JOY: Chekhov's boyfriend, reporting for duty.
HZ: Oh, what Chekhov hath spawned.
JOY: And then, you know, morality can really be a slippery slope. And Veronica is on a muddy precipice. Really not doing her best work. Amelia asks how Abel is, and Veronica, in her voiceover, is like, "Well, he's about to die, but if I tell you that you're probably not going to help me," so instead, out loud, she says, “He's doing fine."
HZ: Do you think that Amelia wouldn't help, if she knows he's dying, she'd be like, “Well, what's the point of trying to get him exonerated?" Because I think I'd be like, “Well, I want to clear my dad's name while there's still time."
JOY: Well, I think what what's being posited is that if if it's revealed that Abel Koontz is being actually paid out for having confessed to the murder, and then he is cleared, the payouts will go away. So I think the figure that's that's a tossed around later is around $3 million. So $3 million, for, as Keith puts it, three months of her father's life, from whom she is estranged and so on.
HZ: I can't remember if this has been covered by the show, but I was just thinking, how did the Kanes or Clarence find someone to make a deal with to falsely confess to Lilly's murder? Now, what do you do: do you ask around your employees and enemies to find out who's got a terminal illness, and could use the money and is willing to take the fall? How does it work?
JOY: Well, Abel was seeing the same doctor as the Kanes. So maybe Jake was like, “Hey, Doc, any of my disgruntled former employees have any life threatening -” I mean.
HZ: And the doctor was like, “Well, that's against my professional code, but OK." Maybe Duncan and Abel were in the waiting room and they're like, “Hey, what are you in for buddy? Terminal cancer? Oh, I'm in for this mysterious epilepsy-mental illness combo that apparently anything can happen with."
JOY: Anything at all.
HZ: But now what happens are the titles, and then we go to school and midterms are happening, which according to Veronica, are an orgy of tension, is that what midterms are like, Jenny?
JOY: I would really strongly hesitate, if not entirely avoid using the word ‘orgy’ in the same sentence as ‘midterms’. I don't even remember them being that big of a deal. But hey, it was a long time ago.
HZ: Maybe in Neptune, because you've got all these rich kids who are aiming to go to big schools maybe - do midterms count for anything?
JOY: Yeah, I think they count for like a pretty significant portion of your GPA.
HZ: Oh, ok. We see a primly dressed student who turns out to be Sabrina kicking her locker and squeaking. That's how orgiastic the tension is. Is that not how orgies work, there's not a lot of locker kicking at a real orgy?
JOY: From what I've learned by watching Eyes Wide Shut, there's not a lot of lockers getting kicked. And from what I remember of midterms, there wasn't a lot of locker kicking either. What's happening to Sabrina and this episode is unfair and terrible. But if you wanted to fuck with somebody, I have to salute the creativity and ingenuity of photoshopping and falsifying and using the actual home number of someone for a fake sex phone ad.
HZ: The ad says, "I'm Miss Sabrina. The only thing I won't do is say ‘no’ - only $29.95 for 15 minutes." And it's a big ad, so it probably cost someone quite a lot to put it in the paper, but it seems to be ruining Sabrina's life, because she's getting phone calls all night, it’s keeping her awake. She can't turn the phone off because her dad's a doctor. The teacher, by the way, is sweater caping. They've got a beige sweater over a beige striped shirt. So it's like they're meant to be an invisible person. And I remember when we had the Jane Lynch episode, where she was memorably sweater caping, someone tweeted us to suggest - and I think this is quite a good theory - that they sweater caped on Jane Lynch because the costume was the wrong size. And maybe it is also the case for this one-scene teacher.
JOY: Wow, was it the wrong size because Jane Lynch is so tall and majestic?
HZ: Right. How many majestic sweaters can there be in the Neptune cupboard of sweaters? But Sabrina, complaining to the teacher, says she can't sit her midterm today. I guess she's also holding up everyone else's midterm by complaining, and the teacher is like, “OK, we'll sort out another time.” And another student who we only just meet is displeased by this.
HAMILTON: Oh, wait. What happened to you’re late, too bad, no exceptions.
TEACHER: Mr Cho? When someone personally attacks you, we’ll talk. Go to the library, we’ll reschedule.
SABRINA: Thanks.
HAMILTON: How about, when my mom’s elected school board president, we’ll talk?
HZ: So this is Hamilton Cho, and he's sitting behind Dick and then behind Hamilton, there's an extra, and all three of them have great hair. It's this beautiful row of great guys' hair. But file Hamilton Cho away in your mind.
JOY: Helen, I really already have, thank you - he's hot.
HZ: Well, enjoy him while he lasts, because you'll never see him after today. Sabrina is in the toilet office and more shit’s been happening to her - her pale green paisley cardigan is ruined.
JOY: Is enfilthened, as she rolls up to Veronica and says, “Veronica, I heard this was kind of like your office," and it’s like, you heard correctly, ma'am. Yeah, that is absolutely right.
HZ: 2Has she got the correct zoning for commercial use? The reason why Sabrina is thus defiled by dirt is that she had a flat tire, someone had let that the air out, and there's no Troy around anymore to help fix it.
JOY: He's the only person in Neptune who knows how to change a tire without getting really, really dirty.
HZ: She's managed to get the fronts of her upper arms really dirty, rather than the bits of your arms that I think would really be in contact with a car and its wheels and parts. I was curious about that.
JOY: I have changed a lot of tires and I really can't think of how, except maybe... but I really can't think of how she would have ended up like this without maybe just a tonne of like, guess and test, but regardless...
HZ: She's probably never have to touch her car below the belt before.
JOY: We learned that she broke up with Caz Truman, Caz Truman reappearing once, more played by Zachery Ty Bryan - and She thinks that he is fucking with her and trying to ruin her life.
HZ: Right. And she offers to pay Veronica to make him stop. She gives her $100 now, and promises $400 more once she's proven it's Caz, and it seems like a lot of cash to be carrying around at school.
JOY: It does seem like a lot of cash - but in 09er territory maybe not so much.
HZ: They'd have cards!
JOY: I have made a note that I must share with you. And that is that I looked up the name Caz with a Z just to see if there were any obvious what is this short for, and it turns out, what I discovered, was the Caz as a name for boys has its root in Slavic. And the name Caz means - are you ready? “Famous destroyer of peace."
HZ: Oh, perfect.
JOY: I would say that Sabrina's peace is being famously destroyed throughout this episode.
HZ: Do think they had that in mind when they wrote him into Episode 15, though?
JOY: Unclear. He destroys the piece of Meg's perfectly dry sweater in that episode. By spilling beer all over it.
HZ: That's true: where there’s a Caz causing trouble, there's a sweater in danger. Even if it's not his fault, as in this case. Sabrina, by the way, is played by Megan Henning, who also played Betty Draper's sister-in-law in Mad Men. So add that to your chart of people who are in Veronica Mars very briefly and also in other things. Veronica needs her money, because Amelia DeLongpre’s hotel is $70 a night. And I guess she already spent all her money on Lianne Mars's rehab, and she can't really raid the Mars Investigations budgets for this, because it is off the record.
JOY: So she confronts Caz, who immediately denies it and says, in fact, that he would like to punch the person responsible. But hey, he's got to go, because he's late for the gym.
HZ: He also says that he's so devoted to Sabrina that he would leap off the roof of the school if she asked.
JOY: And who would that serve, exactly?
HZ: It didn't seem to serve Duncan very well when he leapt off the bleachers after singing Grease.
JOY: Also given how exasperated Sabrina generally seems to be with Caz in this episode, it's kind of surprising that she hasn't already asked him to.
HZ: Just for a bit of peace. It's not the kind of romantic statement that I would find a particularly alluring or positive one, personally.
JOY: No, but it does sound like something a high school boy would say.
HZ: That's true. That's true. Without questioning why would someone want you to do that. I like that Veronica says in voiceover, "Why is it that the Cazes of the world are forever in transit between romantic failure and the gym?” Which might not be true, but sounds true.
JOY: Sounds so true.
HZ: And then, over to Mars HQ where there's a real visual treat awaiting.
JOY: Helen! Helen!! Veronica - Veronica cracks open her… was this the laptop that she specifically only uses for her personal Lilly Kane murder investigation, with her Lilly Kane murder investigation desktop wallpaper?
HZ: That would explain why she uses the school computers for things that really should be done in private rather than a busy classroom. There's big yellow letters across the top of the screen that say “Lilly Kane murder investigation." Which, you would think she would call it something else.
JOY: Yeah, taxes, you know, what do people call porn folders on their computer? Something that will make someone who sees it over your shoulder be like, “Oh, boring. Gotta go." But no, it's ‘Lilly Kane murder investigation’, and then there are folders all over the desktop, clearly labelled each of the Kanes, Eli ‘Weevil' Navarro, etc, etc. I was watching this episode, and I had to screenshot this desktop situation. And I sent it to Helen, who immediately responded - because the photo is from prom, that fateful, almost Skinny Dip night when Lilly was really stoked about going braless - and Helen said, “I too like to remember my dead loved ones at their most busty."
HZ: It's what they would have wanted.
JOY: It's definitely what Lilly would have wanted. And then you followed up by saying, “Also like Veronica would label a folder, Eli 'Weevil' Navarro." Like why?
HZ: Meanwhile, Keith is in a meeting with a woman who is wearing a Chanel tweedish jacket and pearls so you can tell she's rich and terrible. There’s a lot of pearls this episode, lot of pearl wearers, and she wants Keith to honeytrap her husband with a sex worker so that her prenup is nullified. And I love that Keith says:
KEITH: Look, I don’t know if you were looking for pimp in the phonebook and just stopped at PI-
JOY: Yeah, good enough.
HZ: This is such a 1930s divorce scheme. “I need my spouse to get caught with someone at a hotel so that we can get a divorce." And Keith won't do it, because this, by law, is entrapment. And the client was like, “Well, I can take my business elsewhere, to Vinnie Van Lowe who doesn't care about laws."
JOY: No, no, no and Keith says “You'll probably get the Vinnie classic if you go to him,” which is where - I love this - where Vinnie gets the proof that your husband is cheating, but then goes to your husband and says “Double her money, and I'll tell her you've been very well-behaved."
HZ: "I'll tell the wife you're a choir boy." So Mrs Drake pisses off, and Logan is there. He's just turned up - do they not make you buzz in to Mars Investigations? The door's just open, you can just stroll in, take all Veronica's pencils, look at her laptop which is what Logan's doing?
JOY: Read every single file folder of her Lilly Kane murder investigation laptop.
HZ: Although from this, we learn that Logan had a cast iron alibi. He was out of the country, and there were two eyewitnesses, so you can dismiss him from your concerns that next the suspicion beam will be cast upon him.
JOY: Yeah, and Veronica is definitely stressed out that Logan was looking through her business. And he says, “What do you think Lilly would think of you investigating all the people who loved her?" and Veronica says, “I loved Lilly. And why would I be doing this If I didn't?" You know, if she didn't, maybe she could let it go. But no, Helen, she can't.
HZ: I also feel like Lilly would want Veronica to investigate her mother, just to piss off her mother.
JOY: That's a great point.
HZ: Logan's here to drop off a check for Veronica for looking for Lynn. And Veronica says Lynn had always be nice to her, and then she tears up the check, even though we know she needs the money.
JOY: I love this. I love this because we saw it we've seen like Lynn and Keith have pretty nice interactions, and also seeing Veronica say like, “Lynn was nice to me," and not taking the money, is really nice.
HZ: I think also because Logan's money doesn't talk here, a true friendship can develop.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, that's true. Because he was kind of like framing their whole interaction, which actually got pretty kind of like intense, and they kind of got closer over the course of that case. It was transactional, but Veronica's saying like, let's not make it transactional, I do favours for friends. Right?
HZ: But also, I guess it means he can trust her, because she's only doing stuff to do the stuff for him, and not in order to get some of the Echolls squillions out of him.
JOY: “Squillions”!
HZ: Now, we don't see Aaron Echolls this episode, but there is a little Harry Hamlin tribute because Emilia DeLongpre, in her hotel, is watching Clash of the Titans on TV. So, do you think that in the world of Veronica Mars, Aaron Echolls and Harry Hamlin are the same, in that Aaron Echolls was in Clash of the Titans, or was it more just a funny joke?
JOY: They have the same filmography? I'm gonna I'm gonna go “funny joke." That's where I'm putting my $20 down.
HZ: I like it. Either way, I like it. Other entertainments happening in the room: Veronica is explaining the mystery of Lilly Kane’s shoe evidence to Amelia.
JOY: Oh God, and haven't we seen these shoes enough? Haven't we looked upon these hand-decorated Keds enough times? Helen, when will it be enough?
HZ: I don't know, maybe in the season finale? She mentioned that all three Kanes falsified their alibis - did Duncan?
JOY: I think that Duncan was was blacked out, allegedly, so I think his parents falsified his alibi for him.
HZ: And Amelia recalls that a long time ago, Abel Koontz used to be a normal dad, but then he changed when Jake Kane screwed him out of the streaming video patent. He started locking himself away. He was trying to create a program to put Kanes out of business, but failed, and eventually when her mom bought him a cup of coffee and spilled it, he hit her mom, so Amelia and her mom left, and that was that - bit of background Koontz-wise.
JOY: Woman about town Veronica pops over to Sabrina's house - from the motel to the mansion - where Sabrina is studying and speaking Italian. Italian? With her mother?
HZ: Yeah, her mother is Jessica who was heading up the hearing for Mr. Rooks in Episode 14.
JOY: I liked her a lot better in that episode and now she sucks.
HZ: She's wearing an Argyle cardigan over a pastel coloured polo shirt. And I'm just telling you this because these two have a lot of cardigans over polo shirts game this episode, but she is more informal than her daughter, which is weird. And what's rude is, Veronica turns up to help Sabrina, and on her way in she sees a pale yellow pickup truck cruise by, and Sabrina says to her mom that Veronica is here to be tutored, and Jessica’s is like, “Well, don't forget about your own studies," and then she says in Italian, “Don't worry, if she stays too long, I will lock her in the cellar."
JOY: Oh my God! That's what's going on?
HZ: Then Jessica says, as a retort to Sabrina saying she'll lock Veronica in the cellar, "But she could open the good wine - it had better be the attic." These pricks, what a terrible family!
JOY: Wow that really... you've just galaxy-brained me Helen, these people are even shittier than I thought they were.
HZ: Shitty in two languages, Jenny. And then Jessica says, “Lynn is sleeping, so keep it down." And I assume Lynn is a baby because there's a pram? But Lynn is not really a 2005-era baby name. And I do get that people in the world have the same names as each other, but, in a series where there's a character of that name, who has either recently died by suicide, or deliberately vanished, this seems like a weird choice to me.
JOY: Very weird choice - also, what's up with that pram? It's a weird-ass, Tim Burton-ass pram.
HZ: It's an old pram. Veronica sees the truck pass again. And the phone rings - it's someone answering that Miss Sabrina sex chat ad - and Veronica answers, we know she's got great fucking with people on the phone game. That was an unfortunate choice of verb for the sex chat. We know that she has game in tricking around - Oh God, none of the words, you can't use any of them.
JOY: She's good at giving it to people… yeah, this isn’t going great.
HZ: But while she's while she's doing the sex chatline thing, she also private eyez with a Z the person who's calling.
VERONICA: Hello? Yes, this is Miss Sabrina. Bad boy? Well… Nestor Greeley of Encinitas. Twenty grand on credit cards, two divorces and a repo-ed Sebring? You have been a bad boy. Miss Sabrina commands you: put your pants back on and get a job.
HZ: It's not always people's fault if they don't have a job, Veronica.
JOY: That is true, but he should put his pants back on. Then Veronica has had enough of seeing this, this truck, go back and forth. So she's like, “Hey, can I borrow that ancient pram, is that yours?” First of all, it's in your house.
HZ: It's sitting in the study, ready to go.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. And she lets it roll out into the street at just the right moment so the truck comes to a screeching halt. She runs up and flashes a flashlight into the driver's face and it's Caz Truman and she says in a referential tone that I was not expecting, "Hello, Truman." Do you recognise this reference, Helen? She says it the exact same way that Jerry Seinfeld is always saying “Hello Newman.”
HZ: Caz maintains that he is innocent. Even though Veronica's like, "Caz, you were lurking. The innocent rarely lurk." And he's like, “Well, I wanted to catch the harasser. I was watching the house and then I could be the hero and get Sabrina back," and mentions jumping off the roof again.
JOY: It's like - dude, enough, we get it.
HZ: And Sabrina's like “What was the with the junky old truck?" which he borrowed off the gardener. The truck looks plenty good to me. Again, I don't speak the car language of these people.
JOY: Yeah, there's this strange car hierarchy that we cannot even pretend to understand in this town. But hey, knock, knock, there's somebody at the door. Helen, who is it?
HZ: It's a bunch of party people ready to party! They've got glowsticks.
JOY: They've come from a rave, they've clearly come from a rave. They were told in fairly explicit shorthand that there would be ecstasy at this house, so here they are. They got a flyer at a nearby rave perhaps. So they're rave hopping, that seems to be the thing.
HZ: Yeah, on a school night? Also I liked that they opened the door and immediately pumping music starts, so they brought it with them, but they only press play when the doors open and stop it when the door shuts? And they turn up right on time at 11pm.
JOY: The raving hour, as I've always understood it to be.
HZ: So, another another prank played on Sabrina. These are all very kind of 90s japes - the sex chatline, the rave prank.
JOY: All very very effective and disturbing, in the literal non-psychological sense, but also I guess cumulatively it may becoming psychologically disturbing, but it is an actual disturbance, in an ongoing way - she just can't get a minute to study.
HZ: Yeah, and also I assume that more ravers might turn up through the night so her sleep will be fragmented again. Not good conditions for academic excellence. Veronica turns up at the motel with bags of groceries for Amelia, and her voiceover says that the inquiry she made at Sultans of Acid, the other rave place, were a dead end, so don't even bother thinking about who sent the ravers over in that way.
JOY: Yeah, it's none of your business.
HZ: And Amelia wants Veronica to arrange a visitation with Abel Koontz - for the first time she can remember, she really wants to talk to him.
JOY: This is really sad. It's just sucking, it's just making Veronica's choices seem worse and worse, in my opinion.
HZ: But sweet news is that joy is about to arrive in the form of Vinnie Van Lowe, played by Ken Marino, who is so fun.
VINNIE: I hope you’re not thinking of dying that hair because when you come work for me, you’ll find that straying husbands are most likely to chase skinny blondes. No, I’m kidding, of course. They’ll chase anything. But seriously, don’t dye that hair.
HZ: And I love Vinnie, because he's delightfully cheesy, but also he's kind of a relaxing character because nothing too bad really seems to happen when he's around.
JOY: Right? It's not like your best friend is going to get murdered, it's like, this guy is such a fucking goon!
VINNIE: Actually, Keith, I was just coming by to say thanks. You know, once you set up shop here, I got a little nervous: a former detective, sheriff, law enforcement machine, hitting the Neptune PI scene, working the whole B-movie, back alley vibe. Clients love that. I thought I was toast but here we are sending each other referrals.
KEITH: Referrals? Did I send you a -
VINNIE: Redhead, with the husband problem.
KEITH: Ah, right. I wasn’t actually referring so much as warning.
VINNIE: I was thinking, uh, we might work together, you know, juggle some cases, maximise the market.
KEITH: Actually, Vinnie, we’re not -
VINNIE: Ah, you’re on the fence, okay, okay, okay but I have ten cases, $500 a day, I can’t handle them all. I’ll farm them to you for $300, and I’m talking no-brainers, free of major ethical issues. Easy money. Win-win. Just saying. Think it over.
HZ: “Free of major ethical issues."
JOY: What about minor ones?
HZ: Keith's always committing minor crimes.
JOY: That is very true. That's very true. But somehow.. yes, he has some kind of moral line in his own personal sand, and Vinnie Van Lowe lives on the other side of that line. So, hey, there's a dinner at the Kanes. There's a scholastic excellence dinner for the top juniors and seniors. And do we have any reason to be prepared for the fact that Veronica would be one of the top five juniors, scholastically speaking?
HZ: No, I would have thought given all of her time commitments, she could probably bump along in the middle not attracting too much attention either way. Although we also know that she has an amazing, brilliant brain, so it's possible.
JOY: I think it's weirdly selective for them to pick about five kids from each class. The seniors, it makes sense, because they're like in a race right now; but they bring in five juniors to be like, “Hey you guys have the best GPAs now" - a lot could happen in another year.
HZ: “Here are the people you'll be competing with for the next year of your life."
JOY: But also the Kanes open the door and act like they didn't know Veronica was on the list, on their ten-person-long scholastic excellence dinner guest list. They just somehow didn't see her name, the name they least want to see.
HZ: What I found curious is that Jake Kane and Celeste Kane answer the door together, even though they've got people in, so usually you would just send one of you or the help in their case, also weird - they've got their best party smiles on and then when they open the door and see Veronica those smiles, fall even though the door is made out of glass so they could already see her! The fuck! The Kane House looks like a hotel lobby, because it's got these huge expanses of space, got a lot of glass. It seems to have a living wall. It's got the acoustics of expensive house, I think because of the marble floors. Good bit of sound design there. Duncan's around - not because he's top five, because he's one of the Kane's top two children, He's chatting to Sabrina, Hamilton from class is there, Veronica watches Celeste and Jake bickering: “Why do we have to have these boring dinner parties with a load of children, Jake, why?"
JOY: Then Veronica has the first of what will be a number of sort of like Veronica murder visions, in which she imagines how Celeste could have accidentally killed Lilly, how that could have played out.
HZ: Yeah, they're like speculative flashbacks.
JOY: Right. Right. And thus they have a speculative flashback filter.
HZ: Scenario the first: Celeste overreacted when Lilly gave her some chat. When Celeste said, "Lilly, she" - meaning Veronica - “cannot come back here forever."
LILLY: Chill out, Mommie dearest. That’s no way to treat your stepdaughter. I think Duncan might have already slipped Veronica a bit too much of the old Kane hospitality.
JOY: Gross! And then they exchange slaps and then it escalates when Celeste grabs some heavy thing.
HZ: Looks like an ashtray, like a fancy ashtray.
JOY: Yeah, something like that.
HZ: Smashes her around the head, which seemed - it is quite hard slapping, but that still seemed like way too much of an escalation. And back to the present, and Jake is outlining the terms of this scholarship and starting this year, the valedictorian will receive a full time scholarship to university lucky enough to have him - massive pause... or her. Jake!
JOY: Yeah. How about that massive pause? The person in the number one slot is currently female, sir.
HZ: I can understand why Veronica is going into the speculative flashbacks just because it's so dull in the present. So this time, she sees Jake catching Lilly canoodling with Weevil, pulls her off of him, throws her down, and she hits her head on the table. And even though you would think a father in the heat of the moment accidentally killing his daughter would be like, "Oh, shit, oh no, terrible," he doesn't flicker. He just says like, “Weevil, say a word, and I will make you take the fall."
JOY: Holding Weevil by the ear. Also - even in Veronica's murder visions, Weevil is hilarious. Jake's like, “You're having sex with my daughter?" And Weevil's like, “Well, not right now. Not at this exact moment, sir, as you can see."
HZ: Weevil's not wearing a henley in this scene, Jenny. He's not wearing a jacket.
JOY: No, he is topless. Please, sir. put on a henley and a motorcycle jacket and get on a big hog and ride away. Thank you.
HZ: And then in the present, but a supernatural present, the dead and very gory Lilly lures Veronica out by the pool and lies on her lounger and is like, "Ugh, worst party ever. Nerd fest."
JOY: Yeah, yeah, and this is really a thing. What do you think the ghost of Lilly Kane is? Do you think it's Veronica's subconscious?
HZ: I think it is a plot hastening device? That's a good question because we have seen this before when it's not being a flashback to Lilly, it's been a supernatural Lilly. And with Duncan as well, when she's like, "Wake up donut," or something like that.
JOY: Yeah. Is it the same Lilly? Is it a projection? Is it individual projections from Veronica and Duncan? What's happening? Is it the Gargoyle King?
HZ: Is it just a particularly charismatic representation of their internal monologue or dialogue? I suppose the utility of it in this case is Lilly saying her parents aren't murderers, Veronica's imagination is overactive. She's interrupted by real Duncan - not Dreamscape Duncan - asking who she's hiding from. Good question. And I do think this is a good iteration of Duncan that we get.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. That he's like out here saying like, "Hey, I like to come out here too and like, think about her and I like asked my parents to sell the house right after it happened. But like now I'm glad that like, we're still here and I can like come out here." That's nice. Good brother Duncan.
HZ: Back to school, and Sabrina is crying, and not because she's wearing a sickly pale pink polo underneath an orange Argyle cardigan with a pearl necklace and a big Pirates button.
JOY: Everyone stop wearing pearls!
HZ: And the Argyle cardigan/polo shirt combination runs in the family. What's Sabrina so upset about?
JOY: She's been bumped out of her 100th of a point lead in the valedictorian race and now, Hamilton Cho is in the top slot. Hot.
HZ: It's not a hotness league, though. Jenny. Does she need the scholarship as much as he does?
JOY: Gee whiz, I wonder, how could we ever figure that out?
HZ: So then we go to visit Hamilton himself at Cho's Pizza - “Since 1967" the sign says.
JOY: “Home of the Peking duck pizza."
HZ: I've had one of those in the past. And it's... okay. The restaurant serves pizza, wonton soup, and sake, so that's representing many nations.
JOY: Hell yeah, everything you want under one convenient roof.
HZ: Veronica chats with Hamilton. She's never been to Cho's Pizza before, which surprises me, given the Mars eating habits.
JOY: Seriously.
HZ: And thus we learn that Hamilton got into Oxford but needs a billion dollars in order to go.
JOY: So that's $250 million a year - like $125 million per semester.
HZ: Rents there are high, it's a small town, low housing stock.
JOY: The conversion rate is a nightmare. He seems like a really nice boy.
HZ: Lovely hair.
JOY: Great hair, great attitude. He works twenty hours a week. He doesn't have any tutors. Also, y'all, in this reality is the Kane scholarship the only scholarship available to anyone? You have to imagine that somebody with grades like Hamilton's would be a candidate for other scholarships - they are around.
HZ: He also gets Veronica, because when he's talking about how he doesn't have that much sympathy for Sabrina because she's so privileged, whereas he's working really hard and doesn't have the benefits of wealth or connection, he says to Veronica, “You know what I'm talking about." ’Course she does.
JOY: Yes. Class alliance.
HZ: He doesn't know that she's putting a tracker on his car.
JOY: But she's got to do her job. Because rich people pay her bills, apparently.
HZ: Something odd is happening at the Mars home.
JOY: What is this? The only thing more conspicuous than traipsing around campus with your enormous broad-shouldered frame and your fedora and your long flapping trench coat is breaking into a house where, you've got to imagine, Keith's car is outside. What is he doing?
HZ: Right, OK, so Keith, in his bathrobe, sees the handle of the front door wiggling and goes and opens it, and it's Clarence Wiedmann, in his 1940s-looking outfit, looking very, very tall, Keith puts on his "I'll be fucking with you soon” face.
JOY: And his "I'll be fucking with you soon” robe.
HZ: Keith invites Clarence in for coffee because Keith is a very civilised chap, and, you know, doesn't show anger. Clarence explains that he's looking for someone, shows Keith Amilia DeLongpre's headshot, and Keith's like "Well, if you want me to find her, I'm $250 a day." Always be hustling.
JOY: But Clarence was thinking maybe, maybe more that Amelia DeLongpre might be like, stashed in a coat closet at the Mars residence, or maybe in the back of a cupboard, or under a bed or in the crawl space.
HZ: Or in a musical box?
JOY: Yes. Just about anywhere. Have you seen one of these around, Keith?
HZ: Keith has not seen an Amelia DeLongpre around in his two room apartment, and then shows Clarence Wiedman out - and I love Quiet Power Keith.
JOY: Quiet Power Keith is great.
HZ: He doesn't really have the upper hand here, but he's very much in charge. Later Veronica gets in with Backup.
JOY: Backup! Who's a good boy? Who is a good boy? Who's a good boy?
HZ: Keith knew about Abel Koontz's terminal stomach cancer, and I'm not sure how.
JOY: He has his ways.
HZ: He also realises that Amelia DeLongpre does not know.
JOY: Yeah, this is - hm.
HZ: Dangerous game
JOY: Dangerous game. Keith is very worried for Veronica's safety. And we get this information from from Keith that Jake called Clarence five minutes before he arrived home. Then the timeline went to pieces. Then Keith started to realise that the core body temp data wasn't matching up with the timeline, and Keith thinks Jake called Clarence after Lilly's body was discovered. And Veronica's like <Veronica Mars murder vision> and sees Clarence Wiedmann in her mind's eye arriving with ice to bring Lily's body temp down and then thus making it seem like she's been dead for longer, I guess?
HZ: Add that to the Gantt-Feynman chart of everyone's alibis on the day of Lilly Kane's murder.
JOY: And now I must ask you, Helen, I'm so sorry, what is a Gantt-Feynman chart?
HZ: I learned what they were from my husband who used to be in data visualisation. But he used to draw one of these when we were cooking Christmas dinner. So you would have a line for when the turkey needs to be in the oven and then a line for when the potatoes needed to be in. And so the lines would be different lengths for the cooking time. And you could see what the overlap was, stuff like that. Are you visualising?
JOY: Yes. I'm visualising and also my mouth is watering.
HZ: For charts.
JOY: Charts and Christmas dinner.
HZ: Veronica is on a stakeout outside Cho's Pizza with Backup, and she's thinking about how Clarence Wiedman is ex Army Intelligence, ex FBI, ex God knows what else, probably a good man in a bad situation. Is he good though? He seems not that good because he really seems to deliberately play up to an evil image.
JOY: Yeah, questionable at best. Also, how old is this guy? How could he have this kind of a resume? Like think about the stuff that would have to come before you are an Army Intelligence Officer, before you're in the FBI, you've got to do - like there are other requirements that you have to to do before you get into those positions, right?
HZ: Unless she's speculating. Maybe she's like, "Maybe this, or maybe that,” rather than “This and also that." Possibly? I don't know, maybe he's just like very young-looking. And so she has another speculative flashback of Jake tearily calling Clarence, who turns up with a trunk full of ice, and tells Celeste and Jake to decide who found Lilly. But then Sabrina interrupts this reverie: she calls, a car alarm has been going off for two hours. But Veronica can see that it can't be Hamilton, because he's at work, she can see him. So Veronica tella Sabrina to go and get the car that's going off's licence plate number, and she says it's been going off for two hours, ao she could have done that earlier.
JOY: At any point. Before she can do any investigating of that licence plate, though, she's gotta ask Logan when he's gonna tell everyone about her really subtle Lilly Kane murder investigation laptop.
HZ: Yeah, they're in the media room, which was the scene of another sensitive moment between them back in episode four when Logan was editing that tribute video to Lilly. So maybe this is their place.
VERONICA: I’d like to know when you plan on telling Duncan and everyone how I’m psycho or, at least, unhealthily obsessed. I’d like to be prepared.
HZ: What Logan does want to know about is Duncan's mental health and epilepsy, because he didn't know about it and he’s like, “I've known Duncan since kindergarten." Although, in episode four, it was established that Logan didn't move to Neptune until he was 12.
JOY: Detective Helen Zaltzman reporting for duty. So Veronica tells Logan that Duncan's symptoms can include fits, crying, laughing bouts of rage, pretty much - was there anything else?
HZ: So I have some issues with what is happening in these few lines of dialogue. So firstly, Logan says, “I've known him since kindergarten. Why didn't he ever mention it to me?" I went to school with kids with epilepsy. And we knew that they had it, so that if they had a fit, we knew what was happening and how to get help. And then Veronica says, “I don't think he and his parents wanted anyone to know. I think they still want him to be president someday," shamingly implying that you couldn't have a president who has epilepsy or mental health stuff to deal with. And then, thirdly, when you've got Logan saying, “Does he have like fits or something?" and Veronica's like, “Well, possibly that, or possibly hysterical laughter, uncontrollable crying, or blind rage," never heard of these manifestations of epilepsy, have you? I'm not an expert, but...
JOY: I thought they were, when they said that stuff, they were referring to whatever else he has going on besides epilepsy.
HZ: His mystery mental health thing.
JOY: His very mysterious mental health issue.
HZ: Because you know, mental health issues mean anything can happen.
JOY: Anything goes, Helen; it's like an advent calendar but instead of chocolate, just depending on the day, the sky's the limit - anything could be behind that tiny little door!
HZ: Mental health makes any plot go with a bang. But Logan has seen an alarming Duncan event in the past.
JOY: Right. He tells Veronica about one time when he heard some wild noises and ran into find Duncan with his hands around Jake's throat, just like going to town. And then eventually Duncan went limp, and he was just like normal Duncan again, alleged that he didn't remember anything afterwards. And it was the week Duncan and Veronica broke up.
HZ: Hmmmmmm.
JOY: Yeah, lot of hmmmm.
HZ: Motivation, plus mental health and epilepsy -
JOY: - equals -
HZ: - bullshit.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Good news, though. At least there's some better news though. Sabrina's got the car licence plates. Via private eyez with the z.com Veronica discovers they are registered to one Debra Villareal, who, according to Veronica's voiceover, is touring Europe in Disney on Ice. But according to the screen she's looking at, she's in Omaha. Either way though, Debra can't have been there in Sabrina's street herself, but, Veronica also discovers she used to be married to... Vinnie Van Lowe.
JOY: What are the odds? It's time to go to Vinnie Van Lowe's headquarters, Veronica decides, and she shows up with some cookies and a spirit pin, sells the cookies and gives the pin to Vinnie secretary who is also his mom.
HZ: You’re racing through this - there's so much glory, Jenny. This office is all white, red, white and black, Veronica's voiceover is like:
VERONICA VOICEOVER: I’m not an expert on the male mind so maybe someday someone can tell me what it is about chrome, glass and fake black leather that are supposed to represent masculinity.
HZ: But someone had a lot of fun dressing this set because there's a framed photo of Bill Clinton behind the door, plus someone who is probably important that I don't recognise, and then on top of the cabinet in pride of place, a photo of a casually dressed George and Barbara Bush and across it in big capital letters is written, “Vinnie, we love you." No signature. And then behind that, there's a vase full of those champagne glasses which have stalks but no bases, so you have to hold them all the time, suggesting he does a lot of celebrating with impractical glassware. But Vinnie’s mom seems really delighted by the spirit pin that Veronica sells her. I love that Vinnie employees his mom, it's another family detective business.
JOY: You know what? They're not so different, those Van Lowes and those Marses. Not so different at all.
HZ: This is Veronica's future in 20 years, she could be in an office with framed photos of past presidents, wearing a fake moustache.
JOY: Having a mayonnaise crisis.
HZ: She's ostensibly there to tell Vinnie that Keith doesn't want to take the cases, but in spirit of mutual cooperation does want to give Vinnie this Mars Investigations pen. Wow. And Vinnie is much less dismissive of the pen than I would have been. Then Veronica asks who hired him to harass Sabrina.
VINNIE: Sabrina Fuller. Doesn’t ring a bell. I don’t believe I know such a person.
VERONICA: See, I think that you do. Either that or your ex-wife really hates academic achievers.
VINNIE: My ex-wife, Brenda?
VERONICA: No.
VINNIE: Masako!
VERONICA: Debra.
HZ: Veronica interrupts - she should have just left him to list every ex-wife.
JOY: But much like Clarence Wiedman, when did he have the time to get married and divorced so many times? He's still a young guy.
HZ: He seems pretty mellow. So maybe he just doesn't sweat it.
JOY: Just like he doesn't sweat Veronica asking about Sabrina Fuller. He's just “Deny, deny, deny till you die," sends Veronica on her way, but not before she rips his moustache off his face.
HZ: He says, “I'm in the middle of a job," and holds up a sandwich, which I also love. He really doesn't give a shit.
JOY: I feel you! Vinnie! Relatable content!
HZ: Sabrina is waiting outside in the car; she is sweater caping and wearing pearls, so you can tell how hard she sucks. She's more formally dressed than Barbara Bush. They listen to the bug, which of course is in the pen. Vinnie's onto it very quickly and does a magnificent performance of Hall and Oates' ‘Private Eyes’ out of the window, complete with pelvic thrusts and butt slapping.
VINNIE: Yeah, uh-huh, cute. Hey, ma, who’s that band I like? Yeah, Hall and Oates. John Hall and Daryl Oates. That one song.
“Private Eyes, are watching you
And they see your every move.
Yeahhh, Veronica Mars, I’m watching you, Private Eyes.
I’m watching you.”
Hall and Oates, Veronica. They wrote the song and now you’re living it. How’s it feel?
“Private Eyes, watching you, watching your every move, baby.”
Private eyes, Veronica Mars. Oops! [Drops pen.]
HZ: He does say “John Hall and Daryl Oates," instead of Daryl Hall and John Oates.
JOY: I'm sure that had to be like intentional on the writers' part.
HZ: Oh yes, quality bit of detail.
JOY: Incredible.
HZ: But of course who's cleverer, Vinnie or Veronica?
JOY: Well, it's Veronica of course, because that pen was like a decoy so that he would have something to throw out the window. The frickin spirit pin has a video camera in it!
HZ: And lucky for her Vinnie’s mom puts on the massive spirit pin rather than just throwing it away.
JOY: Or put it on the desk, like a normal person would.
HZ: And Vinnie is immediately on the case
VINNIE: Did you bring the mints? We need to get rid of that K-car. Call Gary and have him tow it. Get Jim on the horn.
MRS VAN LOWE: You wanna pizza? You just ate.
VINNIE: Ma, it’s business.
SABRINA: What?
VERONICA: Sabrina, I know who did it.
JOY: Cut to Mr. Cho at the Kane household along with Hamilton, Veronica, Sabrina. What's that mom's name, Vanessa?
HZ: Jessica.
JOY: Of course.
HZ: im Cho had hired Vinnie to harass Sabrina. He says, “My son never had a fair chance, I didn't give him the same advantages the kids had to compete with." To be fair, it's not about him not giving them to him. It's just like he couldn't afford them, because he doesn't have otherworldly wealth. That's not something to blame yourself for. So the Chos are both wearing dark blue. Jake and Celeste Kane are both wearing shades of stone that match their home decor. And Sabrina and her mom are both wearing pink. Jessica is in a pink argyle cardigan over a pink polo. And this didn't ring true to me, because it's very sugary Madison Sinclair style, and I feel like Jessica is quite an authoritative person and I feel like she'd be dressing more for stern power in this scenario.
JOY: Hey, but pink can be a power colour.
HZ: Yeah, but in this case with the whole argyle/polo shirt thing, it isn't; it's an informal like, golf outfit.
JOY: Maybe she's like, "This situation isn't worth my power outfits."
HZ: Or maybe, “My black Argyle cardigan was in the wash." And Jake is quite conciliatory. I think he kind of gets that it's not Hamilton or Sabrina's faults and offers to split the scholarship and Jessica is like, “Fuck no."
JOY: Yeah, this sucks. This sucks so bad also, I mean, what would um, if you think about a billionaire and you think about, I don't know, tuition, even to an Ivy League school, would it really make that much of a dent for Jake to just pay two scholarships? Come on, Jake. Just do it. Hamilton's a good guy.
HZ: You own a Fortune 500 company.
JOY: Don't punish him for his father's crimes.
HZ: Jessica says if Hamilton removes him from the valedictorian race, they won't press charges - but it's not Hamilton's fault.
JOY: Yeah, fuck that. Fuck Jessica.
HZ: Hamilton is very cool about it. Hamilton is like, "Sure, I'll do it. Sure."
JOY: Because he loves his dad! Aaah! Hamilton!
HZ: Yeah, it's sweet when Veronica is like, “What are you going to do now?" afterwards when they're all leaving.
HAMILTON: You know, work two jobs, take out loans. State school. Twenty years from now, she’ll be working for me.
JOY: I hope not.
HZ: His backup option is him going to UCLA, which sounds like a pretty good backup.
JOY: Yeah, right.
HZ: It's also where Leonard Wu, the actor who plays Hamilton Cho, did study.
JOY: Wow.
HZ: Veronica does a voiceover about unfairness. And I'm not sure that it works, but I guess they needed a segue to the Amelia DeLongpre plot.
VERONICA VOICEOVER: Life is fundamentally unfair. It takes real talent to make unfair seem cool. Hamilton Cho. Proof that kids love their dads, no matter how badly they screw up. It’s the exact kind of love I’m banking on from Amelia DeLongpre.
HZ: At the Loyola Marymount campus at night, Clarence, still in his very obvious hat, asks a passing student for a cell phone to call AAA.
JOY: Yes, and he's carefully staked out a particular student - who turns out to be Amelia's boyfriend.
HZ: No accidents here.
JOY: No.
HZ: Veronica calls Amelia who is reading books in the dark.
JOY: “One dank dark room is the same as the next."
HZ: That's true. And Amelia gets a call that appears to be from her boyfriend but it's Clarence. And he says, "That tiny blonde, cute as a bug person isn't who she says she is."
JOY: It's like interesting because I feel like she hasn't necessarily lied about who she is, right?
HZ: I suppose she's lied about her motivations. Or has she? Because she does want to get Abel Koontz exonerated, but she just hasn't told her that her father's dying. So, Veronica and Keith rush off to Amelia's to get the settlement papers that her mom has sent and they knock on the hotel room door, but - only Clarence is still there.
VERONICA: Where is she?
WIEDMAN: Gone.
VERONICA: You took her?
WIEDMAN: She took herself. Miss DeLongpre was particularly upset with you, Miss Mars, for failing to mention her father’s declining health.
KEITH: Let’s go, honey, come on.
VERONICA: Where?
WIEDMAN: Where would you go if you had your own Swiss bank account? Thank you for bringing Amelia to Neptune, Miss Mars. She just finalised her father’s settlement with Kane Software.
HZ: Veronica is pretty miserable at this point. And she's sitting on the floor by the Mars safe, disconsolate. The fish tank is merrily bubbling away. It's quite loud sound in the background.
JOY: Yeah. A perfect soundtrack by which to discover that your father has been using the numbers from his honeymoon flights for his safe accommodation.
HZ: I don't remember the numbers of my honeymoon flights. Does that make me a bad spouse?
JOY: I don't remember the number of any flight ever.
HZ: Right, even when I'm still on the plane.
JOY: Flight numbers are best forgotten. Yeah, right.
HZ: And it's time for the Marses to really join forces on this case and Keith opens the safe and puts the huge murder file in front of Veronica. Happy Birthday! And Veronica wants to know why Keith thought the Kanes had covered up something with Lilly's death.
JOY: Oh ho!
HZ: Flashback - real flashback this time. Flashback hands.
JOY: Thank you Helen.
HZ: Jake is crying, describing finding Lilly - that seems like the kind of emotion that he would have. Duncan is visible in the background, rocking back and forth, as we've seen him in previous flashbacks to this night. Celeste said that Duncan had been in the shower. And then we hear the buzzing of a washing machine, even though, in the main part of the Kane house, do you think you'd be anywhere within earshot of a domestic appliance?
JOY: Probably not, but they also have marble floors. So that sound probably carries.
HZ: Yeah, no walls, just big open spaces. Maybe. Also, do the Kanes even know how to work their own washing appliances?
JOY: Right? With two full time housekeepers, when was the last time they had to work one of those machines for themselves?
HZ: Well Keith also wonders why the Kanes, with these two full time housekeepers were doing laundry that night and he found a soccer uniform in the dryer.
JOY: Oh my god! Duncan played soccer.
HZ: Veronica's voiceover considers Duncan's ability to kill Lilly and it seems implausible to me, you know, you spin the Wheel of Duncan, and do you land on Ashtray Murderer Duncan? I don't.
JOY: Yeah, it doesn't really feel right.
HZ: Especially as you also know that with five episodes still to go in the season, it's not going to be Duncan.
JOY: Right - and also Helen Helen Helen, Helen, as a Veronica Mars Murder Vision Duncan deals that blow to his sister, there is some distorted - distinct - distorted guitar pick slide noise further establishing this show’s obvious anti-guitarist position, I just want to call attention to this. I continue to be shocked and appalled. How dare they? How dare they?
HZ: I am so sorry.
JOY: Electric guitar is not the sound of murder - I object.
HZ: I'm so sorry.
JOY: Thank you.
HZ: I read an interview with Teddy Dunn saying that he had to play Duncan kind of deliberately blank so as to not give away this plotline earlier in the season. And he also said that when he was told that Duncan was bipolar, he did some research, and read that the drugs used to treat bipolar often leave the person emotionally distant, and so decided to play Duncan that way. Which I'm not sure fully reads in his performance. But I suppose it is an interesting problem for an actor to have where you have to not give away lots of different twists and turns.
JOY: Yeah, perhaps not, as you say, not fully realised or communicated to the audience, necessarily. I don't know. It's, it's a little bit of a mixed bag, I think, from Duncan, from Teddy Dunn.
HZ: He's a successful lawyer now, so it's worked out.
JOY: That’s so great. Hey, speaking of lawyers, I know a lawyer. You know a lawyer too - her name is Lo Dodds, and she is our trusted correspondent on all things legal and Southern Californian. Let's talk to her now for today's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
JOY: So, Jessica What's-Her-Bucket says that if Hamilton Cho removes himself from the valedictorian race, they won't press charges. Can you tell us what kind of charges they could press and what kind of sentencing Mr. Cho would be in danger of facing, please?
LO DODDS: Yes. She's probably going to try to press charges for harassment, or for stalking, or for making annoying phone calls. But the problem with all of those things is that Mr. Cho didn't actually do them. Vinnie was the one who committed those crimes. So he's more likely looking at aiding and abetting or conspiracy. And Vinnie is probably looking at the same charges for conspiracy as well, because the he didn't actually make the calls. The annoying phone calls came from other people seeing that ad in the paper. Right. So it's still it's still pretty loose, and I actually don't think they could probably make it stick. Veronica figured it out. But figuring it out and proving all of that and a court of law is like a completely different thing. And like for stalking, you need to have some sort of credible threat; she needed to be in fear of her life. And even Sabrina knew that she wasn't in fear for her life; she knew it was to fuck up her grades. So she wasn't actually afraid. If I were Hamilton though, I'd still probably take the deal because Jessica seems like the kind of person that if he doesn't get like a release from her in writing, Sabrina could still not get the scholarship she could get beat by some other student potentially. And if she doesn't, Jessica's definitely going to come back and sue them. And she might not win but it would deplete the Chos' already kind of minimal resources. So yeah, I'd take the deal. If I were Hamilton, I'm sure there's another scholarship if he's got such awesome grades, and I really hope he does not take out loans to go to UCLA and study first. That's a bad idea.
HZ: So Vinnie is kind of more culpable than the person who is hiring Vinnie?
LO DODDS: Well, they've probably both get charged with the same stuff, but they'd be charged with conspiracy. But again, Mr. Cho isn't the one actually committing the acts and we don't know what deal they had. It's gonna be hard to prove. I don't think it would stick.
HZ: And then would Abel Koontz face any charges for confessing falsely and accepting a payou?
LO DODDS: Yeah, so he's going to get charged with offering false evidence and offering a false confession. That's a felony. They'll get charged with obstruction but honestly, Abel has been in prison now for a while. So considering that he's not going to be there for the crime he did commit, he probably just gets sentenced to time served and just released. And obviously he doesn't care, because he's dying.
JOY: Yes.
LO DODDS: Jake Kane, on the other hand, is fucked. It's lucky that he has tons of money and super high price attorneys, because he's getting charged with obstruction, with conspiracy, with bribing a witness, with tampering, with evidence, extortion...
HZ: And Clarence Wiedman as well would be facing a bunch of charges for that.
LO DODDS: Yes, he would. But he's gonna testify against Jake Kane and get himself a sweeter deal. That's probably how that works out.
HZ: And then would Clarence Wiedman be facing everything for trying to go into the Mars home?
LO DODDS: Only criminal stupidity. Like I don't understand - why would you try to break into a house in the middle of the day when Keith well it like morning time when Keith and Veronica's cars are clearly there? And he like rattles the doorknob. He was a shit thief like I mean, he makes it completely obvious that he's trying to break in but he doesn't actually break in; Keith lets them in. So technically he hasn't committed a crime.
HZ: Like a vampire, invited in.
LO DODDS: That's true, and offered coffee, which he doesn't drink, which is rude.
JOY: I'm six and a half seasons through Gilmore Girls right now.
HZ: Oh I'm sorry, the darkest hour is upon you.
JOY: And the the main lesson that I'm learning from this show is that no one drinks the coffee they've ordered or eats the food they've ordered, which might be a TV wide epidemic, which is why I bring it up here, in the case of Clarence Wiedman and the unconsumed coffee.
HZ: Well, you know that when Keith offers coffee, usually he's wooing,
JOY: True and Clarence was just not -
HZ: He's like, "I don't see it that way. I think of you more as an enemy."
HZ: Jenny, were there any lines that particularly stood out to you in this episode?
JOY: What really worked for me was, "Why is it that the Cazes of the world are forever in transit between romantic failure and the gym?" which, as you noted, is not necessarily true. But it is funny.
HZ: It's a nice image. And also isn't exercise supposed to be helpful when you're in emotional turmoil?
JOY: Yes.
HZ: I don't think it's something for Caz to be ashamed of. Plenty other things. But not this thing.
JOY: Yeah, don't waste your time on this, Caz. What did you like?
HZ: I'm just going to go for the whole of Vinnie singing ‘Private Eyes’ with modifications.
JOY: HA!
HZ: It's a wonderful performance. I bet Vinnie really does well at the Neptune karaoke.
JOY: Oh my god. Oh my god. I want to see that.
HZ: There's got to be some like blooper reels or bonus DVD extras. And how did this episode sit for you overall?
JOY: You know, a lot happened. I like Hamilton. I feel like it was a blast to watch and the addition of Vinnie Van Lowe is a big positive in my general experience of the show. I'm going to give this episode four out of five tuna sandwiches with extra mayo.
HZ: Yeah. So much happens. It's a lot to keep track of, because you've got so much of this Lilly Kane plot advancement, but you also have the side plot of the Abel Koontz stuff and then you have the Sabrina stuff, which, I don't really care about the scholarship stuff, but I did quite like awful Sabrina, and Hamilton with his beautiful hair. There are a lot of argyle things. There's possibly slightly too much going on. So some of it may be a bit rushed. That's a thing that happens quite a lot with the show; they're doing a lot per episode in a short time.
JOY: Yeah, yeah.
HZ: I loved the Clarence Wiedman vs. Keith Mars coffee scene. Love that. Love Vinnie and his mom. So yeah, I guess actually I did like it and I'll give it 3.9 out of five prams.
JOY: Ha, ha, excellent.
HZ: This is the last episode of Veronica Mars investigations for 2019, but we will be back in the new year, 7th January I believe, to investigate the final straight of season one.
JOY: Yeah, so please in our absence, sing some holiday songs festively into a pen. Think of us as we'll be thinking of you have wonderful holiday if you are celebrating any kind of holiday this month, please.
HZ: And enjoy the absence of holiday celebration if you're not. So that's another episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: Case closed.
That was Season 1, episode 17: Kanes and Abel’s
Watch season 1 episode 18 and join us next time to investigate it.
Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
The website, where the show hides behind a fake moustache, is vmipod.com.
HZ: I’m Helen Zaltzman and you can hear my other podcasts The Allusionist at theallusionist.org and Answer Me This at answermethispodcast.com.
JOY: 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 my singing voice by visiting jennyowenyoungs.com and exploring my many recorded musical works there, including my new EP Night Shift which just came out in November and my brand new sad bummer Xmas song ‘Maybe Next Year’ which just came out December 6.
HZ: I love sad bummer Xmas songs!
JOY: I'm here to help Helen, here to help you.
HZ: Appreciate it. This episode was edited and mixed by Zach McNees.
JOY: The music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
JOY: The show is distributed by PRX.
HZ: Until next time, who’s your daddy?
JOY: Who’s actually your daddy?
HZ: I'm pretty sure he does not my how to launder my clothes if he was worried that they would be taken as murder evidence. He'd be like, “Sorry, you’re on your own, I've never known what this machine does. I got married in 1970, that's what she's for.”