VMI 1.19 Hot Dogs transcript
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning violence and abusive relationships.
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
Someone called Mandy has lost her dog and wants Veronica to find him
Even though Veronica’s busy enough trying to find out why Weevil broke into Lilly Kane’s bedroom the other night.
Logan’s sister Trina has a boyfriend who is bad news.
But Mr Bad News himself Aaron Echolls is there to deal some very bad news to Trina’s boyfriend’s face.
Veronica breaks up with Deputy Leo, but they stay friends - so he can carry on doing favours for her, great, lucky him.
JOY: Hiding in a spy pen, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And not discussing parental PDA at lunch, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 1, episode 19: Hot Dogs.
JOY: Helen, Helen! Veronica is tutoring Weevil, it's the moment we've all been waiting for. And holy shit. Hold on to your hats. Francis Capra is a lefty - feels worth noting.
HZ: Is this a particular thing for you, left handery?
JOY: No, noticing things about Weevil is a particular thing for me.
HZ: Are you thinking, "Well, when we get married then will his wedding ring get in the way if it's on his dominant hand?" Is that where your mind's going?
JOY: Sure. Of course. Of course. Also, they're doing this math problem about Bob selling a house for $136,000, which really intensified my despair about the real estate market in Los Angeles.
HZ: But I also love that Weeil says:
VERONICA: If he makes 5% commission for every house he sells, how much money did Bob earn on this sale?
WEEVIL: All I know is, if your boy Bob only gets 5%, he's pushing the wrong product.
JOY: I mean, he's got a great point, and also 5% is only $6800.
HZ: So maybe Weevil’s not doing well at maths because he's solving these problems in a more business-headed way than a textbook way.
JOY: He's all about like survival and...
HZ: ...acumen?
JOY: ...thrival.
HZ: “Thrival”! We should get some “survival and thrival” t-shirts made. It's a shame “Weevil” doesn't quite rhyme - it’s so close.
JOY: Really close. Close enough for rock and roll Helen. They also have a conversation about Duncan splitting town and you know, they're talking about whether Veronica thinks Duncan killed Lilly, then who should darken the doorway but everyone's favourite dad.
HZ: Keeeeeith! And Weevil calls Keith "Sheriff." There's a definite hostile vibe between those two.
JOY: Well, it seems what's being established, even more so in this episode, is that now and in the past, Eli has been getting up to no good. We knew this, but he's so charming, it's easy to forget.
HZ: Yeah. You’d think, for Keith, he'd be his favourite crim?
JOY: And also - I guess this is where dad instincts come into play, but I would think that Keith Mars would be somebody who would be more about seeing education as something that should be available to people who may have turned to crime in the past to get by.
HZ: Absolutely. You would think Keith would be into rehabilitation.
JOY: He would probably be into it if Veronica wasn't the one doing the rehabilitating.
HZ: When Weevil leaves, Keith tells off Veronica for “tutoring the criminal element."
JOY: Tsk tsk. Keith!
HZ: This is maybe the first anti-Keith personality trait I've encountered.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then cut to a girl we learn is named Mandy, reading a book called Forever by Judy Blume. This was a new book to me, you told me that it's risqué, I want to know the details.
HZ: You were a teenage girl once, right?
JOY: I was, but when I was a teenage girl I was reading like Dungeons and Dragons, like Forgotten Realms novels, and Stephen King books and stuff.
HZ: I read Stephen King as well. Forever... My mom didn't really approve of Judy Blume books, even though I learned a lot of useful information about such things as scoliosis from them. You know, you learn about important life things from Judy Blume books. But someone leant me Forever, I was probably like 9 or 10 at the time, so maybe borderline a bit young for it. And that is a book that you have to hide from your parents, because it's basically about this couple who were 17, 18, I think, and it's her first sexual experiences with this guy so it's talking a lot about penises.
JOY: Oh my word.
HZ: The guy nicknamed his penis ‘Ralph’, which, Jenny, I’m just waiting for you to swallow your mouthful of tea, because Judy Blume's father's name was Ralph.
JOY: Noooo!!! No!!!!!! Helen no!
HZ: I'm afraid so.
JOY: Oh my god!
HZ: I don't know whether this directly contributed to the waning in popularity of the name Ralph. But it did seem to have a low few decades after that. I reread Forever, though, as an adult, and it is hard to get through because the guy is just...
JOY: The worst?
HZ: Just sucks.
JOY: Is he like a Ken Doll? A misogynist...?
HZ: A bit of a Ken Doll with misogynist rising. Not a misogynist, just sort of really smarmy and selfish. I think it's just a lot of heterosexual teen girls kind of punish themselves with mediocre men who name their penises.
JOY: Urghhurghhh.
HZ: Anyway, Mandy is reading this book and finding out about life, sitting in a very non-casual pose. There is some vigorous dog barking outside.
JOY: There is a little Jack Russell terrier just barking his head off outside.
HZ: They're very barky little dogs, Jack Russells.
JOY: And then the barking stops and Mandy runs outside and Chester - Chester Chester - is gone.
HZ: Another missing animal episode so soon after the last one. What the fuck? It's only been like - that was episode 16, and this is episode 19.
JOY: If you need to take a nap, I can just do the episode by myself.
HZ: Yeah, handle this for me please, Jenny. I'll pop up for any scenes that are about Weevil, or Keith, or Logan. At school, Logan and Veronica chat, and there is some awkwardness but also some undercover sizzle, I think.
JOY: Nothing undercover sizzles like Logan saying, "What do you think?" and Veronica saying, "Like, in general?" That's their intro into this conversation.
HZ: Logan's asking Veronica where she thinks Duncan is - Missing Duncan. Although, Duncan seems like the kind of person that might abscond and you're like, “Oh, that's weird," and then like two days later you forget you ever knew him.
JOY: Right? Right. He just fades from your… You go back through your memory and you're like, “Who is that guy?" and your brain is just like, "Image not found. Error 404."
HZ: It's like you've Eternal Sunshined Duncan, except he does that himself.
JOY: And it's also revealed that Celeste Kane has hit up Logan to see if he knows where Duncan might be. Then Logan points into the air and the bell rings and is he The Fonz? And do you know who The Fonz is?
HZ: I know who The Fonz is!
JOY: Ok ok ok.
HZ: Celeste could pay the Marses to investigate where Duncan is.
JOY: Now and why won't - we know why she won't.
HZ: The bell rings; they reluctantly -
JOY: - part without making out.
HZ: They part without making out, what's the point. Boo. Mandy is also in the hallway putting up posters about her lost dog. One is stuck to her back, and Veronica, defender of the weak, takes it off.
JOY: You’ve got to be pretty low to kick this poor girl who just lost her dog while she's down.
HZ: She is really annoying though, don't you think? She's an annoying character. Also, I think they're trying to make the actor look like she is a teenager and not an adult, so they've given her big pigtails.
JOY: That's an adult woman.
HZ: Yes, an adult woman with a very insipid vibe. And then she asks Veronica:
MANDY: You're Veronica Mars, right?
VERONICA: Sometimes.
MANDY: Do you think I could, like, hire you, or something? To help me find my dog?
VERONICA: That depends. Was he cheating on you?
HZ: Brilliant. Then Wallace runs up breathless with excitement. Very excited.
JOY: He can hardly believe that he knows something before Veronica does, and he's so excited to tell her what it is.
WALLACE: Breaking news. Record this date in history. First time Wallace Fennel got the 4-1-1 before the little birdie got it to you.
VERONICA: Do I have to tip you over or are you gonna spill it on your own?
WALLACE: Clemmons just got a call. Weevil broke into the Kane house last night. Neighbourhood security patrol caught him in Lilly Kane’s bedroom.
HZ: And then there's a big sweepy overhead shot of what looks like a very fancy building, but I think it's supposed to be the sheriff's office, because that's where we next go, so it's not some kind of enchanted castle.
JOY: No, no.
HZ: Well, Leo's in it, so...
JOY: ...that's enchanted enough for me.
HZ: Leo and Veronica do a bit of flirting about tools of restraint and cuffing. But she's not here for that. She's here to see Weevil. Because they do each other favours. Right?
JOY: They do each other favours, and if I'm Leo in this situation, well, I might just be used to it. There's no pinning Veronica down or really being certain of anything with her.
HZ: You were never going to be the alpha in that relationship.
JOY: Right, right. Right.
LEO: What is it about bad boys?
VERONICA: Tattoos, leather, parole violations - total good-girl bait.
LEO: I'm doomed.
VERONICA: Hey, you were here when Weevil was brought in, right? What did they find on him?
LEO: The bad-ass standards: seventeen cents, a couple of condoms, a pen.
HZ: File that away in your mind. Sounds dulls, sounds like nothing, but it's the show seeding some clues for you.
JOY: Chekhov's pen.
HZ: Yeah, but not Chekhov's condoms.
JOY: Unfortunately.
HZ: She finds Weevil lying in a cell.
WEEVIL: Do you have that nail file and the J-Lo poster I asked for?
JOY: And after some poking and prodding she gets Weevil to say that he was in Lilly's room looking for a diamond ring.
HZ: Yeah, his grandmother's engagement ring which he had given to Lilly - why break in to get it back like 18 months after she died? And is he over 18 now? Like he would get tried as an adult.
JOY: It is it is confirmed that he's over 18. So yeah, he would.
HZ: So this story smells of bullshit. Because it's bullshit. But for now we sit with that. Veronica at the Mars office helps Mandy make better posters, tells her to check with the dog pound. Do people hire private detectives to tell them very obvious steps that they could do themselves?
JOY: Listen. This girl seems like she needs all the help she can get.
HZ: She's not good at life. She's just learned about sexual intercourse from Forever.
JOY: From Judy Blume!
HZ: It's been a very traumatic week.
JOY: We also find out that she was at an 09er residence when this happened, which is part of like the greater arc of what's going on.
HZ: She was book-sitting, or something?
JOY: She was babysitting for the McDaid child.
HZ: Oh, maybe she borrowed the book from the McDaid child.
JOY: Oh my god, maybe. And it's important to note this, because I feel like as we are about to learn, the other dogs that have been disappearing seem to have been all taken from the 09er neighbourhood.
HZ: She had taken Chester with her but tied him up outside.
JOY: That just seems cruel. You’ve got a enormo house and you have somebody coming over to babysit and you make her tie up her dog outside. I don't know what kind of dog person you are?
HZ: I'm a dog person, but we used to leave our dogs at home for circumstances like that, they'd have a nicer time than chained up a stranger's house. Also, when we left them, they would just sleep for eight hours and do nothing.
JOY: It doesn't seem like she made the best choice for Chester in a lot of ways.
HZ: Maybe she wanted the company of Chester there and back.
JOY: I mean, Chester seems great. I'd like his company.
HZ: He’s a bit yappy, I don't know. Not my fave dog in this episode.
JOY: Well, he was barking at a kidnapper, a dognapper oncoming.
HZ: A Jack Russell would bark at Santa Claus bringing it a present.
JOY: Unless that Jack Russell was busy wearing a little Sherlock Holmes outfit and holding up a magnifying glass. Now if this dog was a little bit more like Wishbone, it’d fit right in at the Mars agency.
HZ: Wishbone?
JOY: Wishbone! The dog that's always wearing fucking detective clothes.
HZ: Where? What? In the Mars universe?
JOY: Definitely not in the Mars universe.
HZ: You're making me hallucinate.
JOY: Helen. Helen, be reasonable. Let me blow your mind right now. Wishbone is a half hour live action children's TV show that was produced beginning in 1995. And Wishbone is always wearing fun little outfits. Here's Sherlock Wishbone.
HZ: Whoa.
JOY: And then, Robin Hood Wishbone:
HZ: Good grief.
JOY: You liked Sherlock Wishbone a lot better?
HZ: I feel like the dog had more freedom in the Sherlock cape.
JOY: WishShakespeare:
HZ: That is very restrictive garments. Even though I had dogs, we were not really allowed to put garments on them. It was considered cruel in our house to dress the dogs.
JOY: Here's Robin Hood Wishbone shooting a bow and arrow...
HZ: It was seen as cruel in the Zaltzman house to make dogs do archery.
JOY: But maybe dogs in general have just been waiting this whole time to have the opportunity to do some archery.
HZ: To have hobbies and sports, sure.
JOY: Anyway, unfortunately Chester doesn't seem to have any anthropomorphic inclinations; he's just a dog.
HZ: Right. And we're not going to see all that much of him, so don't get too attached. We go to the Echolls house. They have leopard print sofa with a lot of furry leopardy drapes.
JOY: I thought too, but it's actually a blanket, thank God.
HZ: It's a throw, but there are leopardy cushions and furry cushions. And Aaron Echolls is on it, reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, the 1920s novel about a spiritual journey during the time of Buddha. So I suppose that's an obvious signal that Aaron is working on himself.
JOY: Or trying, yeah. Or acting.
HZ: Exactly, he's supposed to be an actor. Trina's there - Aaron's daughter, Logan's sister/half sister.
JOY: And she's suggesting that Aaron try to option Siddhartha.
HZ: And so when he's like, “I'm done acting," she says:
TRINA: What if something so great came along?
AARON: There is nothing greater than living in the moment, being here for the ones I love. That’s my job now. Lynn’s death was my wake up call.
HZ: I don't want to be unsympathetic to a widower, but it is Aaron Echolls. So I can only be unsympathetic to him, really.
JOY: It's tough to get on board. It's tough to believe him. It feels like he's just stepping into the role of Widower Aaron Echolls. And which is emphasised by Logan, who interjects with:
LOGAN: Push in on our hero. Natural light frames his handsome, weathered face as he passes sage advice to his doting daughter. The music swells. Important your family is. Hm!
HZ: And then he does a Yoda as well. That's a rare late 20th century reference for Logan to use.
JOY: Logan is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
HZ: Yeah, although you do assume that the chocolates will be brownish green and a bit out of date. What what? But still delicious. Delicious, but bad for you.
JOY: What an honour to be the person who sets these things up so that you can knock them the fuck down.
HZ: Oh Jenny! Oh no!
JOY: What no, I'm being serious. It takes two - great partnerships require two, at least two, active participants doing their best at what they do.
HZ: But Trina's interest in Aaron's acting is not entirely altruistic. She wants Aaron to reconsider and be in her boyfriend's movie.
JOY: What everyone is hoping for, I'm sure, when they're in retirement: “My wife just died. Could I be in your boyfriend's movie?"
HZ: Luckily, the lawyer has come to interrupt. Well, not really to interrupt: to read Lynn's will so it's not like he's interrupting, bringing the fun. Lynn had changed her will a few weeks before her death: Aaron was cut out, which probably barely matters to him because the implication has been previously in the show that Lynn was kind of dependent upon him.
JOY: Right right. It seems like he was making the lion's share of the family money.
HZ: Logan's getting the art collection, Lynn's personal effects in the house, and the balance in an investment account at JP Morgan totalling $115,000. That's just pocket change to Logan, isn't it?
JOY: Think of how many Nissan Xterras he could buy with that. Like, two?
HZ: Think of how many sales rack hoodies he could buy with that.
JOY: So many!
HZ: Probably 115,000.
JOY: Enough to build an really big nest.
HZ: That would keep him safe from this harsh environment that he's been born into.
JOY: And Trina is not in the will, and boy is she pissed. She was never in the will.
HZ: That is cold.
JOY: And this girl needs some money, is what's going on.
HZ: That's a theme of the episode. We go to the pound, Mandy and Veronica are told that there's no sign of Chester. But then another pound worker comes in, and he's like, “Veronica Mars! Oh my god. Such a fan. Whoa!"
HANS: Veronica Mars? J-Dub, this is the coolest girl in Neptune High. She was gonna get expelled for planting a spy cam in the teacher’s lounge, but she had so much dirt, they just let her off.
JOY: Now, this is interesting, since obviously we're going to get there eventually: we know that these guys are fucking around, stealing people's dogs and making reward money off of them. But if you are carrying on a scheme like that, and Veronica Mars strolled into your pound sniffing around, would you be like, "Oh my god! Veronica!" Would you make yourself memorable? Or would you be like, “Oh shit, the girl who like set up a camera in the teachers’ lounge this year”?
HZ: “A month before she found that missing parrot and that missing goat?”
JOY: Yeah, exactly.
HZ: She's even got a track record with missing animals. And this guy. It's funny to me though, that this guy's like, "School legend Veronica Mars," because Veronica's just always been on about how unpopular she is, and I've always held that I don't understand why she would be unpopular because she has a lot of qualities that people would find compelling, such as these that he's talking about. So I feel like, again, she is the one who isolates herself largely.
JOY: Maybe maybe though it's like game recognises game. She's only appreciated by other people working schemes.
HZ: Yes, right. She's the queen of the grifters.
JOY: Speaking of grifters, Trina was wondering if she could borrow $10,000 from Logan - just a taste, just a little something to take the edge off, just something to get her through. She borrowed it from her boyfriend, and now he's "bothering” her for it.
TRINA: Good morning, bro. Pop tart?
LOGAN: Hmm, a tart from a tart.
TRINA: He of the sickle wit. Can I ask you something?
LOGAN: Hm. Will you look at that? There was a string attached to my pop tart.
TRINA: Yeah, well, I'm in a little bit of a jam. I could use a loan.
LOGAN: Twelve hours to hit me up for my dead mother's money. Hm, I wonder who had that in the pool?
HZ: This is quite the impressive turn from her offering a pop tart to it getting very bleak very fast.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: At school the next day Mandy is wearing a dog T-shirt because she's a dog person, right, remember dogs - dogs - she’s missing her dog! She's got a side ponytail because remember, she's a teen, she's not well into her 20s!
JOY: What's a teen like you doing in a place like this?
HZ: Someone prank calls her about the dog, there's some guys in the hallway barking and mocking. I bet Mandy gets this a lot generally. She seems like someone who is, unfortunately, accustomed to being victimised.
JOY: Yeah, and you know, maybe somebody could have told her that it might not be the best idea to hang a picture of a boy that you actively go to school with in your locker where people can see it because you have a crush on him. That seems just like a misstep that could, I guess, be made by somebody learning about - like having their sexual awakening while reading Forever by Judy Blume at the age of 17, or whatever she is.
HZ: You've got to learn sometime.
JOY: You’ve got to learn sometime.
HZ: It's a very heterosexual book. So you wouldn't necessarily have to learn what's in that.
JOY: Right. I doubt it would have been useful to me. But Veronica, again, defender of the weak, goes all in on Lenny Sofer, who identifies himself as the person making this prank call.
HZ: Oh, Lenny Sofer's picture is definitely not up in Veronica's locker.
JOY: No, she calls him the world's biggest cockroach, and says a bunch of other stuff that would not work - would not put a high school boy in his place, I don't think.
HZ: No, but she is really angry. And that is quite intimidating from Veronica Mars.
VERONICA: Did you prank-call Mandy?
LENNY: What if I did?
VERONICA: Well, I want to congratulate you. Shake your hand. Congratulations! You've been named the world's biggest cockroach. This award is given in recognition of your unparalleled lack of decency and humanity. Bravo! You're gonna die friendless and alone.
LENNY: Hey, everybody knows you're the biggest -
VERONICA: Shut up! If I want you to speak, I'll wave a Snausage over your nose. If you use Mandy again to try to convince yourself that you're not a loser, I will ruin your life, got it? You got it?
HZ: She seems like she's just really had it a lot of times in this episode. Which is understandable, because she must be so tired, and that does make me irritable, when I'm tired and overworked. Also, Jenny, we don't have Snausage.
JOY: Oh, would you like to know what they are?
HZ: I can kind of guess that a Snausage might be a snack for a dog.
JOY: They are a snack for a dog. But if you're a child, they might look at least worth investigating. I have eaten a Snausage in my young life and it was moister than a milk bone, but still not good.
HZ: But anyway, Veronica vents her stress on this guy and it's very effective. I think he's like, “Oh shit, not today," they probably go off and they're like, “Wow, she's really PMSing." It seems like those kind of guys.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. Yep. And she also as soon as she's done giving this guy, Lenny, a piece of her mind, she turns around, like she whips around and lays into Mandy and -
HZ: Fair enough. Mandy is really annoying.
JOY: But come on!
HZ: But she's got a point.
MANDY: I can’t believe you did that.
VERONICA: I can’t believe that you didn’t. You want people to leave you alone, Mandy, or better yet, treat you with respect? Demand it. Make them.
JOY: She's got a point, you have to stand up for yourself, of course, but maybe now is not the best time for Mandy to learn that lesson. She's just lost her best friend, Chester.
HZ: But Mandy, she just reeks weakness.. There's other people that cope with lost animals better.
JOY: “Kick them while they're down," says Helen. Helen's official policy on lost animals.
HZ: No!
JOY: “Fuck you, you baby."
HZ: No, I'm just saying that I can understand why she's working Veronica's last nerve.
JOY: No, totally. She is a lot.
HZ: At the Mars house, Veronica comes in; she plays with Backup.
JOY: Yay, Backup!
HZ: It’s sweet, she asks him if he wants to go out, but then Hans from the pound calls - the one who was like “Yay Veronica Mars," and tells her Mandy's dog has been run over on the highway and is dead. Presumably this is to stop Veronica sniffing around at the pound. Right?
JOY: Right. And they also give Mandy Chester's collar, so a little piece of solidifying evidence like, “Yes, we have come into contact with your dog and you can trust us."
HZ: Matthew Carey, the actor who plays Hans, was not only acting in a lot of stuff, he's also costumier for such things as Brooklyn 99 and Booksmart.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: And The Good Place.
JOY: Oh, hell yeah.
HZ: At the dog beach, the urgent music plays so you know that Veronica has got her investigation head on. It’s full power. She finds a lot of lost dog posters at a place where there used to just be flyers for other things. It's just dogs now. She calls up a bunch of those dog owners and deduces that only the ones who offer big rewards get their dogs back.
JOY: I hate it. I hate what's happening in Neptune right now.
HZ: Nasty scam! But then Neptune is a toxic place, Veronica has said from the beginning.
JOY: So she's decided to boost the rewards significantly on a dog who has not yet been found and returned, but she runs out of Sharpie ink at the worst possible time, goes rifling through Keith's desk looking for a backup Sharpie, and who should appear? It's Celeste Kane. Do you have Carmen Sandiego in the United Kingdom?
HZ: No, I'm only familiar with Carmen Sandiego from hearing Americans reference Carmen Sandiego, so I have seen pictures - she needs the hat!
JOY: I'm gonna make you look at one more picture.
HZ: No hat, no Carmen Sandiego. But Celeste does have this white coat I think she's worn before to look -
JOY: Look at this boldly coloured lady trench. I know there's no hat.
HZ: She's wearing it very charismatically, whereas Celeste, I wouldn't say charisma is one of her things.
JOY: No, but she does have pearls. Which is your other option, I guess.
HZ: Well, you know that what that signals to me: the wearers of pearls in this show tend not to be nice. Except for Lynn Echolls, but she was wearing kind of showy pearls rather than rich person pearls.
JOY: I didn't even know there was a differentiation.
HZ: The kind that Karl Lagerfeld would just like pile them on people and they'd be like gigantic pearls and quite deliberately trashy-looking, versus a neat little string of pearls just to show to everyone that you're a pearls person.
JOY: Right.
HZ: Like Sabrina wore in episode 17 to show that she's kind of prim and annoying. Veronica is still kind of snappy in this scene, but absolutely justified because Celeste is mean as fuck.
CELESTE: What did you say to Duncan? Where is he?
VERONICA: Excuse me?
CELESTE: I think you know why he left. In fact, you’re probably the reason he left. What did you say to him, Veronica?
VERONICA: Let's start with what I didn't tell him. I didn't tell him that his mother threatened to kill me. I didn't tell him that his mother drove my mother out of town.
CELESTE: I know you think I hate you, but I don’t. I just can’t stand to look at you. Every time I see you, I see everything that’s wrong in my life, in my family. I see my husband’s infidelity, your mother in his office, in his hotel room. I see your father trying to destroy us.
JOY: Dude, this is out of control. "I don't hate you. I just can't stand to look at you. Every time I see you I see everything that's wrong in my life and my family."
HZ: How do you say that to a child?
JOY: How do you say that to a child? I don't know. Maybe you are a billionaire who has lost all touch with reality. And then Keith is entering the fucking office in the other room and Celeste doesn't know, while she's saying, "I see my husband's infidelity, your mother in his office, and in his hotel room; I see your father trying to destroy us." And Keith is like, "What are you doing here?"
CELESTE: I needed to ask your daughter a few questions.
KEITH: You don’t need to ask her anything. You just leave her alone.
CELESTE: You don't scare me, Keith. If you were such a great detective, you would have seen what was going on right underneath your nose.
HZ: Which does not follow at all. But then Veronica is kind of conciliatory, and she suggests to Celeste she might know where Duncan's gone - even though she doesn't. Why does she say that?
JOY: Because she wants them to drop the charges against Weevil.
HZ: Also, why don't why don't they put up a missing poster, with all the dog posters, for Duncan, and offer a reward? Maybe he's been taken by the guys at the pound.
JOY: Oh yeah, he's in a kennel cage. In the back room.
HZ: In a way, he's having a more peaceful time just surrounded by dogs and not having to deal with bad people.
JOY: Honestly, that sounds pretty good.
HZ: Yeah. Although a bit barky. It's the Echolls home and it's night, and I always feel a bit nervous when we're shown the Echolls home at night, because bad things happen.
JOY: The worst things seemed to happen there.
HZ: Yeah: stabby carols, Aaron doing some violence. But just Trina and Logan are there at the moment.
TRINA: Is Dad still at dinner?
LOGAN: Yeah. But he's not far. I'm sure if you really tried you could blow smoke up his ass from here. Hey Trin, if you take your top off before you get on the mechanical bull, you won't fall off.
HZ: They really don't get on, this show keeps demonstrating they're not siblings that get on, like they understand each other but they do not get on. And then Logan grabs Trina's sunglasses off her face revealing she has a black eye, which, it also turns out, is accompanied by a limp.
JOY: Yeah, she's not doing so great and it's sorted out pretty quickly that this is courtesy of her boyfriend, Dylan. And Logan's like, “I love punching dudes in the face."
HZ: “Bring him to me."
JOY: Yes. “Allow me to return the favour."
HZ: “I need to keep my punching hand in form." At school, Wallace complains he caught his mom sitting on Keith's lap last night.
JOY: Better Wallace's mom than a bucket of popcorn with a hole in the bottom.
HZ: She's playing the popcorn in this scenario.
JOY: Wallace, was she wearing an outfit that was sort of like white and red vertical stripes?
HZ: Was she covered in salt?
JOY: And butter?
HZ: Veronica's like, "No discussing parental PDA at lunch. It's your rule."
JOY: It seems like a good rule that everyone should be adhering to.
HZ: Then Veronica receives a call for “Bridget." And she's offering a reward of $1,000, presumably for a lost dog, and will send her 'brother’ to meet them at the dog beach at 3pm. Thus this conversation occurs.
WALLACE: So I’m your brother?
VERONICA: I didn't mean brother like, brother. I meant brother like... You know.
WALLACE: Yeah, I know. And where are you gonna get a thousand bucks? If you rollin' like that, you really been holding out on a brutha.
HZ: Wallace, I think, does not berate Veronica as much as would be fair for her brother thing.
JOY: Yeah, I think that he would be well within his rights to go in harder on this.
HZ: Yeah. Or just leave and set up his own detective agency and have a better time.
JOY: But he's too sweet and too kind.
HZ: He's not even getting paid for these investigations. Actually, Mandy is not one of the rich people because she's an 02er; how is she affording the Mars fees?
JOY: It seems like Veronica is either going to give her an 02er rate, or maybe is just helping out.
HZ: At the dog beach, some guy meets Wallace, he's got a little dog, he claims not speak English, takes the envelope of money. Wallace goes off and then Backup runs up and knocks the guy over and then he just seems to stand on him smiling, but the man acts like he's being savaged and he writhes around shouting. No one helps. No one at this reasonably busy place helps.
JOY: Yeah, this is pretty strange. And also, man - Backup is so well trained.
HZ: He's a good boy.
JOY: He's such a good boy. From so far away, Veronica is like, "Backup," she whispers into his tightly cropped little ears, “That guy in the jacket, run up to him at top speed, jump on him and keep him on the ground, but just sort of like stand on his chest; don't bite him or be mean, or like bark or anything. Just be still."
HZ: “And then take off his shoe." She’s trained him to remove shoes?
JOY: “Backup, play that game we love to play - the get a shoe game."
HZ: Because then Veronica runs up and is like, “Oh, terribly sorry." But then she places a tracker in the shoe, is it? She's trained Backup to take the shoe off and put a tracker in it!
JOY: He's a very good boy.
HZ: She follows the guy that she's tracking, and finds herself surrounded by men in hats expressing miscellaneous indignation in Spanish.
JOY: So many hats.
HZ: And the upshot is, this guy needs the money from the envelope to pay the other guy that sent him to return the dog.
JOY: Right. So there's a system in place here. How do we get to the top of the system?
VERONICA VOICEOVER: So there's a dog man who hires these guys to return dogs. He drives a white van, or maybe a white horse, and he likes to spank busty women. Basically, that's any male living in Neptune.
JOY: So there's some pantomiming going on, because there It seems like the guy that she's talking to is unable to totally find the words for exactly how he can identify the guy who drives the white van. One of the guys does a, a sort of gesture that would indicate big boobs. And then the guy who backup tackled does a sort of like cowboy rodeo mechanical bull holding on with one hand and slapping the flank with your other hand kind of a motion.
HZ: The international language, yeah.
JOY: I've been like doing this gesture at Helen for so long and she has kept her eyes fixed upon her laptop screen the whole time, which is probably the right choice.
HZ: Well, I was reading the translations for the Spanish dialogue. I'm so sorry for not appreciating your physical performance.
JOY: I really think you made the right call.
HZ: It was very lyrical gestures. Very elegant, if you were doing these vulgar mimes, Jenny.
=JOY: Thank you. So this is the intel that Veronica has gathered. She doesn't know what to make of the boobs and the possible mechanical bull situation. But across town, Wallace is returning Louie to his mysterious owner and he's like, “Please, please, please let this owner be hot, single and grateful."
HZ: Wallace never catches a break -
JOY: He never does.
HZ: - when he's doing Veronica favours, except for episode four, but that was short-lived. Now it's a lady who is beside herself to see the dog, but isn't really Wallace's type.
JOY: Yes, but at least she's reunited with Louie.
HZ: Veronica, having just received this information about the white van, and the guy who drives it likes the ladies with the boobs, at school sees a white van with mud flaps with the silhouette of ladies on - bingo!
JOY: Ta-da! And a country radio sticker of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco.
HZ: Seriously? And who should get into the van but Hans - startled because who is also in the van? Veronica Mars.
JOY: Is there anything more alarming than getting into your van, looking over your shoulder and seeing fucking Veronica Mars back there?
HZ: You're in trouble now, boyo.
JOY: Yeah. Especially intimidating for this guy who has clearly heard the tales and knows what Veronica is capable of.
HZ: Right, because he thinks she's the coolest girl capable of surveilling teachers.
JOY: Yes, yes. And she's out with the accusations. She's like, “Hans, you're doing this, Hans, You're doing that." He's like, deny till you die.
HANS: What the?
VERONICA: You kill dogs?
HANS: What are you doing in my van?
VERONICA: I know what you're doing. You're kidnapping 09er dogs, holding them at the pound and waiting for an offer of a big reward.
HANS: You break into my van and you’re accusing me of stealing.
VERONICA: So I guess when Mandy and I came looking for Chester, you realised you screwed up, dognapped from a poor girl. So you just cut your losses and threw him to the side of the road.
HANS: Actually, I rounded up a hundred and one of them. Some crazy lady’s making a coat. Now get out of my van, you lunatic.
VERONICA: How old are you, anyway, Hans?
HANS: Eighteen. Why?
VERONICA: Community soap.
JOY: He also manages to get a 101 Dalmatians reference in. Could you imagine a dog giving birth to 101 puppies in one night?
HZ: Sounds like a goddamn nightmare. How would you be pregnant with that many puppies without dying?
JOY: I really can't imagine.
HZ: Because what's the biggest litter of dogs that's ever been born? According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest litter of puppies is 24.
JOY: Damn, that's a lot.
HZ: That is plenty puppies.
JOY: Yeah. And that is not even a quarter of 101!
HZ: Correct.
JOY: I'm so good at math.
HZ: You really are. It's funny how the cartoon doesn't really elaborate upon this problem.
JOY: Yeah. Well, the miracle of life.
HZ: Veronica gets out of the van and immediately runs into Weevil, and they stand right behind the van even though Hans could back into them.
JOY: Yeah, that's a terrible place to carry on a conversation after you've just alarmed someone driving that van. I'd like to point out that Weevil is wearing a henley, and it's not the regular one. It's one with proper buttons instead of snaps. He wears the snaps one later in the episode, don't worry.
HZ: It's a two-henley episode!
JOY: That's right.
HZ: Happy early birthday to Jenny.
JOY: My kinda episode.
HZ: Left handed; he's got minimum two henleys.
JOY: So hey, Logan wants some help.
LOGAN: Hey, I need your help.
VERONICA: Would it be weird for me to start my own drinking game? Like I have to do a shot every time someone asks for my help?
JOY: Veronica, we already started a drinking game for you. And also in addition to having to do a shot every time someone asks you for help, you should have do a shot - you should have to do two shots every time you ask someone else for a favour, madam!
HZ: Yeah, well, she would be dead. Logan wants Veronica to find Trina's boyfriend so that Logan can beat him up. It's healthy stuff, isn't it, over the at the Echollses.
JOY: It is super healthy.
HZ: At the Echolls home, Trina tells Aaron that she's having boyfriend trouble and she'd got his hopes up that Aaron would be in the movie, but now the financing's falling through and Dylan is not taking it well. And then she tries to flip it around as if it's like a generous thing for Aaron: he'll have a career revival like Travolta in Pulp Fiction. And Aaron's like, “Okay, invite Dylan over later," even though it's a trap, Aaron's not thinking of himself, for once.
JOY: Yeah. Which is nice to see, in spite of where this is headed.
HZ: The motivation to protect Trina is at least nice. The way in which it is done - very hard to see. The way that Veronica tracks down Dylan seems very easy. Logan's got his script, and she just calls someone up who's on the cover and asks who's producing the script. She's pretending to be an agent from CAA. And then when she gets the name she runs it through private eyez with a Z and discovers that Dylan has a bit of a rap sheet. Two different women have filed restraining orders against him in the last five years.
JOY: Woof. Logan, in turn, calls the house to give Trina a heads up, but he gets Aaron instead. And Aaron kinda hangs up on him.
HZ: Aaron's got a plan.
JOY: Aaron's got a plan.
HZ: I suppose both Echolls guys want to punch Dylan. They have something in common.
JOY: For once!
HZ: Dylan arrives and Aaron is barbecuing, and he offers Dylan a taste of something which is on the point of an unnecessarily enormous knife. I do a lot of cooking. I don't have any scimitars like this because you don't need them.
JOY: Listen. If I had an outdoor grill - a sprawling outdoor grill set up like this, you better believe I would...
HZ: ...have a sprawling knife.
JOY: Absolutely - you got to get all the way to the back of your grill grate.
HZ: Not with a knife!
JOY: Hell yeah, with a knife. Helen get on board. Knife party.
HZ: No, I won't, I don't want to go!
JOY: More for me!
HZ: Oh god! I think what it does do though is establish Aaron quickly as the boss of this scene, and as a menacing chap, because Dylan, I guess, doesn't know this yet. And he pitches the film, like a wanker, and Aaron will be playing a kind of strung out hitman character who's on drugs to deal with the inner pain.
JOY: And Aaron goes off on a tear from this about how this character sounds like my dad.
AARON: You know, it sounds a lot like my old man. He used to beat me and my mom and then try to drink the demons away.
DYLAN: Yeah, yeah. It’s a lot like that. You could definitely draw from that.
AARON: He used to beat my mom till she passed out. Then she’d cake makeup all over her face, wear dark glasses around the house, but, you know, I could always recognise the signs. Then, finally, I got the courage up to try and stop him, but, man, I’m just a scrawny little kid, he’s built like a wall. He put a cigarette out on my hand. Said, “Nice try, kid.”
JOY: And we learn a few things. We learn a few things that like, are important in this little monologue. First of all, that even though his mom would cake on the makeup and wear dark glasses around the house, he learned to tell at an early age when she had been beat up. And now we're thinking back to when Aaron was talking to Trina and saying, “Oh yeah, invite this man over for dinner." Clearly getting the plan in motion. We also hear that Aaron's dad put cigarettes out on his hand, which we know that that's something Aaron has done to Logan, which really sucks.
HZ: Aaron couldn't break the cycle. Or didn't break the cycle.
JOY: Aaron didn't break the cycle.
HZ: Aaron tells Dylan to look at his hand. Dylan can't see Aaron's, like, “Look, it's right there. It's right there." And then Dylan is getting it in all sorts of ways from Aaron. This is a really brutal scene. I sort of dread watching this episode because I know that this scene’s in it. There's kicking, he smashes Dylan into a column, he whacks in with one of those like -
JOY: The tiki torch.
HZ: Tiki torch, right. Then he empties a trashcan over him, which is kind of an anticlimax after he's whacked him with the tiki torch, throws a wicker chair at him, and then he gets his belt out. We've seen that happen before. And all of this is soundtracked to ‘That's Amore’, what?
JOY: What a choice.
HZ: I assume it's deliberate in that Reservoir Dogs way or something.
JOY: It feels kind of like the only reasonable choice they could have made as far as music, to take something so over the top positive and kind of fanciful. It's not just the juxtaposition against what's actually going on. It's also like I think Aaron is in a way less he's like, pleased with what's going on. You know what I mean?
HZ: Well, it's an out and out win for Aaron, really.
JOY: Right.
HZ: Dylan is not fighting back. And also Aaron does have this massive knife if he needs it. But then Logan and Veronica interrupt the scene and Aaron's like, “Oh, hey, son, how was school?” And then declines Dylan's offer of film, asks Logan to see him to his car. Somehow Dylan manages to drive off. I'm surprised he's conscious.
JOY: I guess your adrenaline does what it does. I thought it was pretty interesting to watch this next to you, because we were having kind of different gut reactions. Like it's terrible to watch. But I think what I was thinking about while it was happening and you were kind of like, “Urgh, urgh, urgh" and my reflex response was to be like, “Yeah." Not like that I'm enjoying the violence, but that somebody this character Dylan, who's been physically abusive to Trina, a character who seems to be, at least in the physical sense, kind of like powerless to defend herself against his attacks.
HZ: They haven't specified with Trina whether she has been on the receiving end of Aaron's violence, but she seems to be the only family member that he's kind of protective of or indulgent of or nice to. But it didn't give me satisfaction to see a violent person being violented as revenge.
JOY: Yeah, I mean, it definitely sucks. Wouldn't it be cool, wouldn't the ideal situation of no violence taking place be awesome?
HZ: But also it's in this scene learning that Aaron was subjected to violence in childhood, but then has enacted that upon his own son. And just the bleakness of that intergenerational violence happening.
JOY: I grew up with a violent step-parent for a handful of years. And that - like I'm wondering if that experience and living in that world and having this fear and uncertainty be a natural part of life and also being totally powerless in that situation impacts the way that I experience watching a scene like this where I'm like, “Oh, yes, the shitty person is being punished in a way that the shitty person in my life was never really punished." Not that punishment is the answer, but like, in the same way that it's sort of being generationally passed down through the Echolls men, violence as a solution, when you're a powerless kid, that's what your brain goes to, like, how do you deal with somebody who is like that or doing the things that they're doing? How do you stop a bulldozer?
HZ: Yeah, well, if you consider the power dynamic in those situations, where Aaron would have been the person not in power when he was a child, but then exerts his own power over Logan, I suppose to stop himself ever being the powerless one in a situation, and that's the only way he seems to know how to do it. But maybe the thing you find satisfying in the case of Dylan is that Dylan's power is being destroyed; and it happens to be through violence in this situation, but is that part of the appeal, that this person who has made Trina powerless is now powerless himself?
JOY: Yeah, I mean even ‘appeal’ is like too strong a word. My experience of watching the scene is I experienced the scales of justice evening for like a moment in time and then going out of balance in the other direction and it instantly like feels bad again. But it feels like some kind of like - what's the adjective for when something is like a pendulum, would it be...
HZ: Pendulous.
JOY: Pendulous!
HZ: Although it feels a bit wrong.
JOY: Usually used to describe breasts in literature.
HZ: 1If you've read Judy Blume's Forever, Ralph and his pendulous friends, Peter and Brian - no, I don't think they have names.
JOY: Even the boobs have boy names?
HZ: I was going for something more testicular.
JOY: Oh, those guys. Pendulous testicles.
HZ: I think the show and Harry Hamlin do a good job of enacting the violence in a way where it feels like properly brutal and uncompromising and frightening.
JOY: Yeah, it's super frightening.
HZ: Anyway, Aaron declines to be in Dylan's film, asks Logan to see Dylan to his car, Dylan somehow manages to drive off rather than passing out from the injuries, and this gives Logan and Veronica a moment alone. Even though I guess they were alone right before they came into the scene. And he asks if Lilly was in love with Weevil, and Veronica said she hadn't mentioned it.
JOY: She hadn't mentioned Weevil at all, actually.
HZ: Right. Exactly. And then Logan says he no longer feels guilty about moving on. And kisses Veronica.
JOY: Wooooooohoohoohoooooo!!!
HZ: Veronica wants to keep the relationship on the downlow at the moment because of course she's still seeing Hot Leo.
VERONICA: We need to talk about this.
LOGAN: I know.
VERONICA: Maybe we should just keep it to ourselves for a while and see what happens.
LOGAN: Meet in mop closets? Pass each other secret notes in the hallway?
HZ: And apparently, this is a reference to a meeting in a mop closet in the 1999 film Drive Me Crazy, in which Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier live next door to each other but are worlds apart, according to the Wikipedia summary; however, they plot a scheme to date each other in order to attract the interest and jealousy of their respective romantic prey.
JOY: Romantic prey!
HZ: But! The one they wanted was closer than they ever thought. And this film was written by Rob Thomas.
JOY: No. Wow. Jesus.
HZ: Veronica's already taken over the school toilet, if she's got the mop closet as well as her...
JOY: Where can anyone else go?
HZ: Right? Nowhere's safe. Why can't they get her a trailer or a shed on the premises and just she can use it for multiple purposes. Logan offers to give Veronica a ride home. And she takes a ride to the past in a flashback, when she and Lilly were in what I assume is Logan's car, and Lilly's excited because she got a spy pen in a cereal box, which sounds extremely implausible. You can hide messages in it. Even though you can hide messages in lots of regular pens, like a fountain pen has got a lot of space around the ink cartridge.
JOY: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like by 2004 there wasn't stuff in cereal boxes anymore.
HZ: Yeah, didn't they have to stop doing that because you weren't supposed to bait kids with things like that to eat more sugary foods? Something like that.
JOY: Wow. I didn't realise there was some kind of like authority based mandate.
HZ: I researched it once for Answer Me This but it was like 2007 so I can't remember.
JOY: I would. I've recently been lamenting about the fact that there are no toys to be had in cereal boxes anymore. I would like a breakfast treat, if you want to, Helen, come over while I'm sleeping?
HZ: Sneak stuff into your cereal? And you're like, “God I've choked on a Lego." And Lilly's going to use the pen to pass messages to her lovers. She says ‘lovahs’. Do you ever call people ‘lovahs’, Jenny?
JOY: No!
HZ: Same.
JOY: But if anybody can get away with it, it's Lilly.
HZ: That's true. Veronica says, “It's going to be very busy pen." But I suppose you can only give it to one lovah at a time and then rely on them to give it back.
JOY: Maybe she just needs to buy some more boxes of cereal.
HZ: Or some more pens.
JOY: Then it's going to be very complicated to keep track...
HZ: What if Duncan had got that bowl of cereal? Because in my household you had to be strategic so that you optimised your chances.
JOY: To make sure you were the one who got it out, yeah.
HZ: Yeah, if Duncan had got it, imagine the secret messages. Just like, “Help let me out. Get me out of my contract." Veronica goes to the library to ask Mandy to come to the pound with her that night to bust those guys - that is a job that could have been done by text message. And then she goes to the sheriff's department to do another job that at least she's not doing by text message, because she's breaking up with Leo. Noooo….
VERONICA: Leo, you are the sweetest -
LEO: Please. Don’t tell me how sweet I am.
VERONICA: Well, you’re also seriously hot, so you’ll be single for about three and a half seconds.
LEO: See, now that’s more helpful.
JOY: You know when you swing by your boyfriend's work to break up with him while he's at work and then immediately asked him for a fairly significant favour?
HZ: It's really amazing.
VERONICA: You could tell me that you understand.
LEO: And that we can still be friends?
VERONICA: That would be cool because I need to follow this confession by asking for a favour.
HZ: But it does mean that Leo gets to have a bit of triumph: at the pound he gets to do some sheriffing, and the guard is sort of forced to let him in and he doesn't even ask Leo to explain why he's got two high school girls with him.
JOY: Yeah, and Wallace.
HZ: Everyone's pleased to see Wallace.
JOY: That's true.
HZ: Wallace probably knows the guy at the pound because Wallace is probably pals with everyone.
JOY: Wallace is basically the Mayor of Neptune.
HZ: And there's a room full of dogs. Several of them match the missing dogs poster.
JOY: There’s Bucko, Rufus, Shakes, Lola - but no Chester.
HZ: No Chester. Leo arrests the guard, which is bit rude, I think. Bit of a leap. But outside, there's some commotion.
JOY: Oh my god, Mandy is tasing the shit out of Hans.
HZ: In the neck! In the neck!
JOY: No, Mandy! But I guess this is what Veronica was encouraging her to do all along and she's finally standing up for herself - with a Taser. Maybe a bit too far?
HZ: Maybe she should have practised demanding respect on more small scale ways first. She's on Hans shouting, “You killed my dog!” but he didn't! Chester's alive!
JOY: Chester's alive. Chester has been sold. So Veronica gets confirmation from Leo that the pen that Weevil had when he was arrested was a like a pink plasticky spy pen.
HZ: Well, Leo doesn't know it's a spy pen, he just thinks it's a girly pen and therefore Weevil's not a bad boy.
JOY: I don’t know, I think Weevil would be a bad bad boy no matter how many plastic pink pens he had.
HZ: Do you think that he had to change henleys in the episode because the pen leaked ink onto it?
JOY: That seems like the most reasonable explanation I could think of, Helen.
HZ: I’m just trying to do my investigations, Jenny.
JOY: Speaking of investigations, Keith is sneakily plucking hairs out of Veronica's hairbrush. He's going to do his own DNA test, and maybe when the results come, he'll actually read them and we'll get to answer the age old question, “Veronica, who's your daddy?"
HZ: I think I'm more stressed about it even than she is.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen?
HZ: Veronica arrives home very late or very early. And asks Keith how he knew that Weevil wasn't Lilly's murderer. And Keith's like, “He has an airtight alibi." Keith goes to his closet and gets a huge box out.
JOY: A huge box marked ‘Playboys’ of course. The easiest way to throw your teen daughter off the scent of your murder investigation materials.
HZ: Do you think Keith was saving it for Veronica's birthday? He was going to put a bow on it and be like, “Here, you're ready now"?
JOY: Yeah. You think there's any copies of Taut Blondes magazine in the box?
HZ: I pray not. Keith says, “The Kanes covered up Lilly's murder. You think they do that all for someone like Weevil?" even though we know they're doing it because they think Duncan murdered Lilly so that that thought doesn't necessarily follow, does it? At some house, Mandy is finally reunited with Chester, hooray, we don't see her again.
JOY: And then back at school Veronica confronts Weevil, who's back to wearing his regular henley.
HZ: Which is your favourite, buttons or snaps?
JOY: They're both really good. Don't make me choose, Helen.
HZ: Okay, you can enjoy both equally.
JOY: He gives her the pen and he also gives her a pretty clear indication that he was snagging it to get a message out that he'd sent to Lilly in the pen - ahh! What could it be? 🎶 A long time ago...
HZ: Well, I maintain that wouldn't he have broken in a significant time earlier?
JOY: Well no, because, I think, Abel Koontz has been in prison this whole time. But now that he knows - he found out the beginning of this episode that Veronica doesn't believe Abel Koontz did it, and she's hot on the trail. She's got a big old magnifying glass out, she's pointing her long lens camera in every direction. So Weevil's like, “I better cover my Weevilian tracks."
HZ: Jenny, I really appreciate you investigating that for me and clearing that up. You're a very good detective.
JOY: Thanks, Helen. You're also a very good detective.
HZ: No, I'm just missing clues right in front of my face. Shall we see what crimes have been committed in the course of this episode?
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Let us check in with our resident legal expert and Southern Californian marshmallow Lo Dodds for this week's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
HZ: We’ve got like three strands of proper criming this episode, right? Because we’ve got the dog crimes, we've got the Weevil crimes, and then we've got the violent Echolls-related crimes. What shall we do first - dog crimes?
LO DODDS: Dog crimes.
HZ: What do you get for them dog crimes?
LO DODDS: So in California, it's petty theft, because unless your dog is worth over $950 - not emotional value, the actual value, because in California, your dogs are considered personal property. So it could be a misdemeanour. It could be a felony. Here in Virginia, in a humane state, it's basically always a felony and you can be sent to prison for 10 years.
HZ: Okay, so if you're gonna steal dogs, do it in California, not Virginia.
LO DODDS: Exactly. Exactly.
JOY: But maybe just don't steal dogs.
LO DODDS: Don’t steal dogs.
HZ: Mandy tasers one of them in the neck. Is she going to get in trouble for that?
LO DODDS: Yeah, that's assault and battery. I would think that if you're her defence attorney, you're going to make a case that she was in emotional distress; she's gonna have some kind of defence to that. But yeah, they probably would charge her with that.
HZ: What would it feel like for that guy getting tasered?
LO DODDS: I actually don't know why you think I would know what it's like to be tased.
HZ: You've lived a life.
JOY: You've lived life, and you've had access, we assume.
LO DODDS: To Tasers?
HZ: Have you not tried to taser yourself occasionally?
LO DODDS: I've never tried to taser myself. But I did ask my dad and he has been tasered, and he said it feels like your entire body is cramping up. But the minute it stops, it stops. But it can cause lasting damage. If you have heart condition, it can cause cardiac arrest. It's not, in any way, I think, fun.
HZ: It doesn't seem fun.
LO DODDS: Also I was gonna say - Leo didn't get a warrant, which is a real problem for going into that building and searching the building without a warrant. Like Leo could have just screwed up that entire case from a criminal standpoint. From the civil point, I don't think they're gonna care. But yeah, that's a real problem.
HZ: How do you get a warrant?
LO DODDS: You have to get it from a judge. The judge has to sign off it.
HZ: Oh. That sounds slow!
LO DODDS: Well. Yeah. That's why they're always complaining that they have to go wake up a judge. But yes, there are judges available to give you warrants and you can prove to the judge that you have probable cause to do something, to enter a building, to search some place. But yeah, they don't want you just willy nilly walking into places searching for evidence.
HZ: But if it's an emergency where, if I don't search it now, then they'll have cleared all the evidence out by the time the judge's woken up, then what you do?
LO DODDS: If you have a reasonable suspicion that the evidence is going to be destroyed or somebody is in danger, there are exigent circumstances that can apply to that; but none of those things existed, unless they truly thought that they were killing the dogs off - maybe.
HZ: Maybe that’s Leo’s revenge: fucking up Veronica’s case.
JOY: Well she doesn't have to see it through! That's what I mean, man: they all get their dogs back; Veronica's life appears to be very repercussion-free.
JOY: That must be nice.
LO DODDS: That must be nice.
HZ: And then over to the, as usual, bleak scenes at the Echolls house. It's really hard here because you have a shit character pounding the tripes out of another shit character. I don't know if we're supposed to be pleased or not. But surely getting beaten up by Aaron Echolls is a) illegal and b) something that the terrible boyfriend Dylan could sell to a tabloid or something.
LO DODDS: He's going to sell it to a tabloid but he's probably - if you're him, and you want to continue to work in the movie business, I think that's going to factor into your decision, which means you may not sell it to a tabloid before you go to Aaron's lawyers and ask for a payoff. And if you ask for a payoff, the lawyers are definitely going to make you sign a nondisclosure agreement so that you can't go sell it to the tabloids. That's what I would do if I was him.
HZ: What happens if you break the NDA? Do you have to give the money back?
LO DODDS: Yeah, it depends on what your NDA says. A lot of NDAs, basically: if you're talking about confidential information or information people would find damaging, there might be some sort of liquidated damages; there can be injunctive relief, which means you can go and talk to anybody else. But it's kind of hard to unring that bell, so hopefully you get some really nice agreement in place and yeah, he'd have to give back the money or whatever creative thing Aaron's lawyers come up with.
JOY: Many things were said in this episode.
HZ: Yeah, so many.
JOY: Do you have any favourites?
HZ: I find it funny when Mandy asks if she can hire Veronica to find the dog and Veronica says, “That depends. Was he cheating on you?” I bet that joke just didn't land with Mandy at all. Would have been right over her head.
JOY: I loved when Leo said that he hadn't heard from Veronica in a couple days and was about to show up at her place with his tools of restraint. Veronica says, “I wouldn't recommend it. Dad usually likes to have a guy to dinner at least once before he cuffs me" - nice!
HZ: Very provocative!
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: Also presumably Leo's cuffs would be real and not the kind with a safety escape hatch like most sexual-use cuffs would be sold with. And what did you make of this episode overall? Because do you think it's got a lost dog plot just to contrast with the gravity of what is happening with the murder case and with Aaron and Trina and Dylan?
JOY: Yeah, to lighten the mood a little bit?
HZ: Even though someone thinking their dog is dead -
JOY: - is also pretty bleak. Yeah, this was just tough to watch, in general in a lot of ways.
HZ: Despite the presence of two henleys.
JOY: Two henleys, one Weevil and a Leo in his uniform. I choose to give this episode two and a half of 5% of the wrong product.
HZ: Very complicated. Well done.
JOY: I like maths, Helen.
HZ: You can say ‘math’, I'm in your country right now. Yeah, it is hard to watch. I find violence hard to watch, but I do think that is also the most compelling plot of the episode.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Lilly's spy pen seems like a bit of MacGuffin to me, and this missing message, whatever it was. But then you've got Veronica and Logan, you've got a bit of Keith Mars, you got Keith Mars doing this DNA test, teeing something up. You've got horrible Celeste Kane; that is grim.
JOY: Lady. Unclench.
HZ: Yeah, but ultimately, it's not super satisfying episode. I give it 2.65 spy pens.
JOY: Really getting into the decimals.
HZ: Well, my feelings weren't integers today. I'm sure you're relieved, Jenny, to hear me say that's another episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: Case mercifully closed.
JOY: That was Season 1, episode 19: Hot Dogs
HZ: Watch season 1 episode 20 and join us next time to investigate it.
JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
HZ: The website, where the show waves a snausage under your nose, is vmipod.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 checking out my hot hot jams.
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: 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: The show is distributed by PRX.
JOY: Until next time, who is your daddy?
HZ: Who is your daddy? Tell you what, my daddy is not a daddy who barbecues.
JOY: And thank God.
HZ: Yeah, but everyone is like, “Well my dad never cooked except for grilling stuff.” My dad never cooked full stop.
JOY: Period. Way to commit, Mr Zaltzman.
HZ: Absolutely.
