VMI 2.15 The Quick and the Wed transcript
Listen to this episode at VMIpod.com/2-15
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
Like all Wallace’s special ladyfriends, Jane requires Veronica’s services: her sister Heidi went missing after her own bachelorette party! And the wedding’s in three days!
Heidi’s got a rich fiance and a past, and these things are incompatible in the Marsverse.
Meanwhile, Aaron Echolls is back, marvelling at Kendall Casablancas’s boobs, and asking her for a favour that sends her rooting around in the shower drain.
She’s also trying to get Logan to invest in Cassidy’s booming property empire. But good luck with that: Logan’s busy dating Hannah and manipulating her parents.
A warrant is issued for Terrence Cook’s arrest, but then Keith finds some evidence that may prove his innocence - but then Terrence does something that makes him look really guilty again! Will we ever escape?
JOY: It was dark, and loud, and there were condom balloons hitting my head, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And, losing a nipple, I’m Helen Zaltzman
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations, Season 2 Episode 15: The Quick and the Wed.
HZ: This episode's "Previously on Veronica Mars..." is like 20 minutes long.
JOY: It's Pride and Prejudice, the miniseries, essentially. It's like, "And then this happened, and this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then did you remember that this happened?"
HZ: Do you think the episode was running a couple of minutes short and they were like, "We can take care of this"?
JOY: But previously on Veronica Mars Investigations, it's worth mentioning that last episode we were talking about Hannah finding the coke in Dr Griffith's bathroom cabinet, like in the bandage box, and some wise listener on Twitter -
HZ: Anna.
JOY: - mentioned that they thought that perhaps Logan had planted the Coke there, and that's why it was easy to find, and Logan did use the bathroom. And I'd say that like six out of ten times that I use someone's bathroom, I'm probably planting an illicit substance somewhere in an easy to find, yet-somehow unexpected location. So I'm not ruling out that Logan planted this coke.
HZ: You go to Jenny's bathroom and you pick up what you think is the toilet roll and it just disintegrates into white crystals. You know all those memes of things that don't look like cake, but are cake? That's Jenny's bathroom items and drugs.
JOY: Yeah, I just got confused about one vowel. I got really into the meme, but I was one vowel off.
HZ: Easily done.
JOY: "This is my dog, Frank. Just kidding, let's get craaazy!"
HZ: Everyone in this episode has been watching this incredible documentary about the Echolls family, Tinseltown Diaries. I love it. It's a great doc. It's all about Aaron Echolls, who does a lot of scary, menacing pieces straight to camera about like, "I didn't kill Lilly, maybe that brother of hers did it?" There's a montage of Aaron Echolls shots over the years, including one from Clash Of The Titans, which was the real Harry Hamlin.
JOY: Yes, that rocked. I love that they were like, "A mega superstar," and then he's, like, holding the fucking Gorgon's head or whatever.
HZ: And there's also shots of the Echolls family with this booming voiceover like, "Lynn died, Trina faked a fatal illness," and I was like, to be fair, that was Veronica Mars's fault.
JOY: Also I like that they call her a ‘sometimes’ actress.
HZ: That is an ouchy. And then like, "Logan ran bumfights," yeah, he fucking did. That was only like a year and a bit ago.
JOY: Yeah, you're not wrong. "And just like his old man, he's awaiting trial for murder."
HZ: And when Aaron is like, "Duncan, he's the murderer," I just thought, oh, not this again. We cleared this.
JOY: Dude, his, quote, "history of violence." Hmm.
HZ: Hmm. What about Aaron's history of violence? With more witnesses? Logan's watching the documentary with Dick, and Dick is just like, "Dude," and saying all these things to make Logan feel even worse, whilst it looks like Logan is throwing up inside his own mouth with the stress and misery of it all.
JOY: Very Dick.
HZ: Yep. In this episode, Aaron Echolls is back. And I hadn't really thought, Aaron and Kendall, what a powerful match. I assume they knew each other from the whole rich person party scene of Neptune.
JOY: Yes, 100 percent.
HZ: She goes to visit him in prison - she and her boobs go and visit him in prison.
JOY: Oh my god, it's true, that's what happens.
AARON: So, to what do I owe the pleasure?
KENDALL: I'm here to tempt you, Aaron.
AARON: Well, mission accomplished. Or should I say, with what?
KENDALL: Huge tracts of land, more action than I can handle. I'm here to offer you a piece. AARON: So I guess Big Dick still has his fingers in a few pies, huh?
KENDALL: My husband's got quite a reach. Some are saying that he might be working abroad. Aaron, how would you like to walk out of here a richer man?
AARON: You're cash-strapped. No, I get it. I can help. But quid pro quo, Mrs C. Quid pro quo.
HZ: They're talking through the prison phones. She's so incredibly stimulating with her unleashing of the boobs and he kind of rubs his face with the phone and licks it, which is really disturbing.
JOY: The face-rubbing and licking situation is when he is doing his little Hannibal impression, right?
HZ: Well, also not sexy.
JOY: No, deeply unsexy.
HZ: Hannibal was also visited in prison with a property scheme, one which turned out to be fake.
JOY: Oh, like his room with a view?
HZ: Yeah. Plum Island."
JOY: Nobody asked for this Hannibal impression. It's not good. And this is coming from somebody who, you know, spoilers for the end of the novel Hannibal, which is the sequel to Silence Of The Lambs, but Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter run off together and I am willing to ship it by the end of that book.
HZ: Really?
JOY: And even I don't want to see anybody else do this bit or call it up. And the fact that Kendall is like, "Impressive Hannibal," is, I don't know, it just all feels very, very much like pointing the direction of Aaron Echolls is not that great at serious acting.
HZ: He's got two Oscars.
JOY: Yeah, but for what? And then Kendall's doing the thing where she's like undoing her shirt. I felt like I was doing something wrong watching the episode at that point, you know what I mean? I looked away. I averted my gaze.
HZ: Give them some privacy, argh.
JOY: Yes, exactly. She says, "They say this glass is bulletproof, but I bet I can talk you through it."
HZ: No thank you. I don't even want to think which body part she's being suggestive about.
JOY: I mean, you've already put it in all of our brains. Ew, get it out of there.
HZ: Stop it, stop it! Does he have access to all of his assets while he's in jail? I don't know. He's like, "In return, I need you to do something for me in Logan's hotel room," and she's like, "Well, it's an absolute piece of piss for me to inveigle my way in there."
JOY: Yeah. She's like, "Don't worry, like a Roomba" - when Roombas were still new - "I already completely mapped the full layout, I know every inch of the place, including every inch of Logan." Bleh.
HZ: I never thought of Kendall as a Sex Roomba, but I can buy that as imagery goes, if you force me to buy it.
JOY: I force you.
HZ: Oh, this is weird as well. So you know last episode, when Logan was like, "We can't be seen together at school, and I'm going to be a jerk about it"? This time, they're just snuggling in broad daylight.
JOY: It's all very confusing.
HZ: And dressed in complementary shades of brown.
JOY: She's been poisoned, Helen.
HZ: No longer a pink person, she's a sludge person. I do like Hannah, but the flirting between the two just makes me feel very unwell.
LOGAN: So you want me to come over after school?
HANNAH: The words out of your mouth are "Come over," but all I hear you saying is "Let's have sex."
LOGAN: Excuse me? All I heard you say is "Let's have sex."
HZ: But then he's cockblocked by Veronica, who's hiding behind his locker door. Invisible, of course, until you close your locker.
VERONICA: Toying with a sweet little girl's heart just to screw with her dad? I get it; San Quentin isn't quite as enticing as, say, college. But damn, you've really plumbed new depths, Logan.
LOGAN: You're cute when you're jealous.
HZ: Logan boops Veronica's nose, which is cute, or a bit patronising. And she's wearing a shirt with like a seductively lounging man in silhouette.
JOY: Oh my god! I 100 percent missed that.
HZ: You know those mud flaps with like a sort of lounging girly silhouette on?
JOY: Yes, of course I do.
HZ: That's her t-shirt, but with a masculine silhouette. Why?
JOY: With a sexy lounging gentlemen... Well, because equality, Helen.
HZ: Oh, I guess.
JOY: This is what modern feminism hath wrought.
HZ: Objectify everybody in silhouette. So Logan and Hannah have got some sex-having plans this episode, but then Logan is kind of out of sorts when the sex-having comes up, and is it because he chose Easy Rider as the film to watch to get everyone in the mood?
JOY: Does something un-hot happen in Easy Rider? I've never seen Easy Rider.
HZ: I've not seen it. I can't...
JOY: Oh no, oh no, we're going to get a lot of tweets from the people who have seen Easy Rider.
HZ: Listen, having sat through the very long audiobook of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, about the 70s film scene, I'm not interested in these white male genius directors any more.
JOY: You've had your fill.
HZ: And I don't want to watch their work before I've watched the work of all of the directors of colour, and all of the female directors, and all of the people who make films that are non-violent and not based around transport, and don't feature highly problematic people. And then I'll get around to all the 1970s genius guys.
JOY: That's like two movies that you've not ruled out, it sounds like?
HZ: Right, yeah, and I don't have much time, so. Is it because of Easy Rider? Is it because, when he was browsing snacks at the convenience store earlier, he got spat at outside by two young kids, including Arturo from episode 14? Or is he just worried because Hannah says she's going to make him lose a nipple?
JOY: You know, that shouldn't be the cost of sex, in my personal opinion. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't think you should have to surrender a nipple, or any of your parts.
HZ: No, and Jenny remains complete.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: All 12 nipples still there.
JOY: What the hell? Helen! Do not give these people the wrong idea. That is slander. Libel. I'm going to get my lawyer, Lo Dodds, to serve you with some papers.
HZ: Hannah's mum, Steph, who interrupts the nipple-losing, does not approve of this relationship.
JOY: If I was Hannah's mom, I would also be alarmed.
HZ: I would be more suspicious than she is when my daughter's boyfriend that I disapproved of asked to borrow my computer to check his fantasy scores.
JOY: Yeah. Well, this was more innocent times, you know.
HZ: Even so...
JOY: People weren't getting up to as much bullshit on other people's computers.
HZ: It doesn't seem like an essential errand. While Steph's having a go at Hannah, Logan's tapping out an email to Tom from Steph's account going, "Thought you should know I found CONDOMS in Hannah's room." Condoms, Jenny!
JOY: You have to yell CONDOMS.
HZ: "I hate that our daughter is using prophylactics. I wanted her to get at least an STI, if not an unwanted pregnancy."
JOY: Yeah, well, teens aren't allowed to have sex, according to their parents, as you may know.
HZ: Well, you know, if they have sex in teen dramas then they die. Unless they're boys.
JOY: Pfft.
HZ: What do you think the purpose is of Logan sending this email? Is it to heighten Dr Tom's fears about Hannah, and therefore his willingness to abandon the whole fake witness thing? Is that all it is?
JOY: Yes. It seems that way and it seems to work.
HZ: I say ‘all’, that's quite a lot. His manipulation is so uncomfortable, isn't it? Because he's very convincingly into her when they're together, and then just super-calculating as soon as he's out the room, and that made me think, "Oh, Anna had a point about the coke-planting."
JOY: Yeah. Do you feel like any part of Logan likes Hannah? I feel like he does.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: But I also feel like he hates himself so much that he can't allow himself to think that he could deserve someone so pure and un-conniving, you know?
HZ: Do you think they deliberately cast someone who has a very pure vibe? Jessy Schram.
JOY: Yeah, that seems right.
HZ: In the kitchen Steph is telling Hannah the reasons why she shouldn't date Logan, and they convinced me.
STEPH: Honey, open your eyes. The guy's bad news.
HANNAH: You don't even know him. How can you say that?
STEPH: Bumfights?
HANNAH: Okay, that was a long time ago. God, you're so judgmental.
STEPH: I know, I'm awful. What kind of mother would prohibit her daughter from dating a boy who's awaiting trial for manslaughter?
HANNAH: Almost all parenting books eschew the use of sarcasm with adolescents so, you know.
STEPH: Fine. Here it is, stripped of the sarcasm: he's a phony. He's ugly on the inside. All he wants from you is sex and he's going to break your heart.
HANNAH: You're wrong.
JOY: Dude, imagine being an adult woman and telling your teen daughter that her boyfriend is "ugly on the inside". Jesus christ, lady. I mean, he is still a child, and you don't know.
HZ: That's some real Celeste Kane shit.
JOY: Wait until he goes home to have this conversation. Yes, this is some real Celeste Kane.
HZ: Logan, of course, is hearing all of thi,s and he returns with a lacklustre quip about a sport, a fantasy sport, and then he's like, "I'll take the trash out, it looks heavy," because that's what Steph's holding, and then takes the bag, which is the lightest bag. So is he being condescending when he's like, "It's too heavy for you, lady"? So when Logan is leaving Hannah's like, "Let's go to your place." I was wondering whether, for this purpose, Logan would have rented a place that is not the presidential suite of the Neptune Grand, because if you're trying to divert someone from the impression of you as a kind of dangerous, reckless playboy, maybe that wouldn't be the right place to convince them of that.
JOY: No, I'm sure she'd be, she would receive a strong sense of calm from all of the little Eiffel Tower statuettes and throw pillows with various international scenes.
HZ: So educational.
JOY: Yeah, wholesome.
HZ: Sure. I've noticed when they film Logan's Suite at the Neptune Grand there's a shot they really love, which is through the neck of a glass vase, so that whoever stands behind it looks very narrow.
JOY: Hah! Wow, I missed this.
HZ: Look out for that. Bit of a treat. Kendall is here for several nefarious purposes. One, to pitch Cassidy's properties to Logan, unsuccessfully, and they're interrupted by a knock on the door. So she's like, "Can I freshen up?" Fucks off to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Tom Griffith comes in...
JOY: And he's all, "This stops now. Condoms!?"
HZ: "You win. Condoms beat me." Meanwhile, Kendall goes through Duncan's room, which is a shrine to Duncvonica, still these framed photos. For some reason, keeps the lights off the whole time, goes to the shower drain and picks around in it, and then saunters out, arousing Tom's suspicions even more that Logan is up to no good, because on her way out she kisses her fingers and touches Logan's lips, and is like, "Think about my offer."
JOY: Ye gods.
HZ: But then Tom leaves and Logan looks truly haunted. I think Jason Dohring's facial muscles do some really good work this episode.
JOY: Mm-hmm.
HZ: I appreciate he's got to save himself from this manslaughter charge.
JOY: Yeah, relatable content.
HZ: Because by the terms of the plea bargain that Cliff has hammered out for him, he's facing only two years in prison, but he still doesn't want those.
JOY: He didn't do it. He's being falsely accused.
HZ: Cliff says, "Jurors love convicting smug rich boys," even though we saw a jury in One Angry Veronica...
JOY: ...and they really didn't want to convict those smug rich boys.
HZ: No! They spent all of Christmas and New Year trying not to convict smug rich boys. Maybe that really changed the whole jury system of Neptune. The other thing Kendall's up to this episode is Cassidy got her involved in his property scheme, because he's under 18, so they're in an elevator off to pitch. She's wearing this weirdly infantilizing red shirt, it's sort of shrunken, but then it's got these two miniature pockets which are outlined in black, right on the boobs. So I feel like that's meant to be another kind of boobular emphasis.
JOY: I just wish they would cool it a little bit. You know what I mean?
HZ: It just means it's not special anymore.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: She's got so much else to give.
JOY: Yeah! Yeah, I feel like we're really not focussing on Kendall's many other skills and virtues.
HZ: I want her to insult someone.
JOY: Yeah, she's so good at insulting people.
HZ: That's the seduction, for me. Cassidy, he's like, "Well I've already bought six bargain beachfront properties, but I've used up all my capital," and she's like, "Well, the Kane house is for sale," not thinking, "but he just said it used up all the capital." But he's like, "Nah, it's the wrong side of town," which seems like a boring detail.
JOY: Until...
HZ: Well, it is a boring detail. It's a boring detail.
JOY: Yeah, it's boring, but it's attached to something.
KENDALL: I think we should buy it.
BEAVER: What have I told you about thinking?
KENDALL: That it makes my breasts smaller? Have you ever considered that maybe I'm the clever one? That this delightful packaging is a means to outwitting my adversary?
BEAVER: Consider it? I'm banking on it.
KENDALL: But have you considered that you're my adversary?
HZ: While they're talking, she strokes his chest in this way that is quite gross, and he looks so sweaty and uncomfortable, and fucking I agree with him because he's her 16-year-old stepson.
JOY: Kyle Gallner is so good at looking sweaty and uncomfortable, have you ever noticed that?
HZ: Yes, strong agree.
JOY: He's one of the best.
HZ: And also, can she not relate to anyone without seduction attempts? They actually seem to have quite a good business associate frenemy thing happening. Why ruin that?
JOY: I don't know.
HZ: The great thing about Cassidy's property scheme, whatever it is, is that we get to see Mr Pope again. Yay, sweater vest!
JOY: I knew you'd be so excited.
HZ: Sweater vest!
JOY: Delighted to see Mr Pope.
HZ: Dressed like Santa in the off-season.
JOY: Here we see Mr Pope explaining more about incorporation. Helen promptly falls asleep.
HZ: No, I really appreciated him getting children to explain incorporation to me. That's what I can handle.
JOY: So he goes through the Palo Alto example:
MR POPE: Before the whole dotcom craze began, Palo Alto was a diverse community, not unlike our Neptune. When they incorporated, they effectively put up a wall between the economic classes. And what resulted after a very short time was an ultra rich centre, surrounded by the crime capital of America. Those who were smart dumped their unincorporated property to suckers before the bottom fell out. Property values in the city skyrocketed, while land outside the incorporation became worthless.
JOY: Kind of outlines what we're seeing Cassidy setting up. He's buying up land on the other side of town, not in 09erville, right? Because he wants to inflate the property value, like the incoming incorporation will inflate the property value, he'll be able to dump it, sweep up a bunch of cash, and then GTFO before everything kind of crashes, except for what's already in the rich part of town.
HZ: So incorporation is that thread running through this whole season.
JOY: Nobody asked for it.
HZ: I'm sure it will amount to something in time. That's what a lot of them are up to. Keith is still investigating Terrence this episode. We don't see Terrence, I guess, to save money. We see a lot of Lamb, and it's bad Jenny, I've said it before this season though, I kind of enjoy seeing Lamb now, even though he's an absolute douche.
JOY: Yeah, he's a real... He's like number one jackass.
HZ: Keith is telling Lamb about the detonators, and you would think Lamb would be delighted because he wants to put Terrence away for reasons. Lamb is just like an incredulous jerk.
KEITH: Explosives. They're in the hangar where Terrence keeps his cars.
LAMB: Your Terrence? The same Terrence who had nothing to do with the bus crash, who couldn't possibly have made the call that detonated the bomb?
KEITH: Veronica saw them first hand.
LAMB: Oh, well, if Veronica saw them. I mean that's like Moses bringing tablets down the mountain to me.
JOY: I was curious because he was like, "The explosives were marked C4." I was like, is this normal? Do explosive say exactly what kind of explosive they are? They do, apparently!
HZ: Really?
JOY: A cursory Google image search yields many photos of different plastic explosives labelled C4. So how about that?
HZ: I suppose it makes sense, because if they look similar to each other, you don't want to mistake your C4 for the other ones, whose names I don't know.
JOY: Your C5, your B9, vitamin B12. You need the right tools for the job, Helen.
HZ: Then there is a big search of the hangar. There's a plane just standing around. Keith strides across the scene in a brown zip-up leather jacket that I don't like very much. Maybe he's like, "Well, I'm getting into my flying gear for a transport-based mission."
JOY: Aviator Mars.
HZ: But Lamb just wankers at him, and also addresses a crowd that is not there. And I don't know whether he's doing that to kind of piss Keith off in some way, or whether he just really has hallucinated a crowd for his own self-glorification.
JOY: Good thing Keith is here to catch sight of Magic Touch Custom Auto Detailing rolling up and then driving away when he realises, "Oh, there's no there's no way for me to clean all these cars right now."
HZ: Keith tracks that guy down. He's really chatty, which is so useful. He's like, "Yeah, I detail all of Terrence's cars once a month. It used to be 40, but now he's on hard times, just eight." So that's cleared up some of our speculation. "And I was supposed to do them yesterday, that's why I went to the hangar. No, there weren't explosives in the cupboard, that's where I keep my special chamois, for the good cars. Not explosives. Fancy leather.”
JOY: So basically, as it was, somebody who had knowledge of this guy detailing Terrence's cars on the same day every month or whatever, set it up so that the explosives would be found, by the mechanic, in the special chamois closet.
HZ: Might've been a good interview to do before they issued a warrant for Terrence's arrest, which they've already done, although he's not actually arrested thus far. It's the sort of same situation I felt last week, despite the absence of Terrence, where you're just like, "OK, this is useful evidence, so how are they going to swat away the progress this time?" And, it is thus. Later, when Keith goes to the Sheriff's Department to tell Lamb about the detailer, he's like, "Sure, I'll talk to Terrence when he gets out of surgery, having been shot by Ms Dumas's father for breaking into his house in the Bay Area."
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: Terrence, stop doing things that make you look so guilty, you fucking idiot.
JOY: Yeah, phew. He seems like a smart man. What is he doing all the time?
HZ: It's hard to be smart when you're that stressed about multiple murder charges.
JOY: Fair.
HZ: But it is also the timing. Like, he's had eight months to break into Ms Dumas's dad's house, if he must - probably time when there was less suspicion on him - if he's got to extract something incriminating...
JOY: What the hell?
HZ: Terrence! Well, seven episodes to go of this season, and therefore, sit tight. It's going to be one step forward, one step back for a little while longer, Jenny.
JOY: Yep.
HZ: I must say, though, I found the mystery of the week pretty fun this episode. Yes, I still find this show fun. I know it may sound sometimes like I do not, but I thought this was a real hoot.
JOY: For some reason, I thought you would be really turned off by a plot that hinges so directly on like a bachelorette party. But maybe the scavenger hunt aspect of it appeals to you, so it balances out? Also, we didn't have to see any of the penis photo-framing.
HZ: Disappointing.
JOY: Or anyone wearing sashes with, like, penises all over them, or anything like that, so I guess, if there was going to be a bachelorette party, this is the one for Helen.
HZ: Well, I think what made this plot for me is that it's all about Heidi, who is the sister of Jane, Wallace's new girlfriend. And Heidi is really fucking fun.
JOY: Yeah. Heidi is here for a good time, possibly not for a long time.
HZ: Even though she's starting her bachelorette party at the Neptune Onlyplace, and they're having a tray of coffee served by Veronica, she seems absolutely loaded already, and she is giving the karaoke performance, the best this series has ever seen, I'd say.
JOY: It's incredible.
HEIDI sings ‘I Want You To Want Me’ by Cheap Trick.
JANE: My sister Heidi.
VERONICA: The bride to be?
MAGGIE: More like the bride to beat! She's only marrying Paul Mann. The Manns are like the oldest money in Neptune.
VERONICA: You mean like from the 1980s?
HZ: Lot of pelvic moves.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: She's wearing this tiny bra top, but with enormous sleeves, so there's like a lot of clothing drama, and it's a theatrical and committed performance and I'm so into it. And the person who follows her in the karaoke sings ‘I am the Model of a Modern Major General’ from Pirates Of Penzance.
JOY: Oh god, Helen, no.
HZ: What the fuck is the karaoke catalogue of this place? Because they have that and ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.
JOY: Yeah, they've got everything.
HZ: It's the weirdest options.
JOY: I was totally into this karaoke performance. Totally the opposite of into one of the bachelorette party being like, "She's marrying the oldest money in Neptune."
HZ: Ew, Maggie.
JOY: Gross. But that I was really into the bachelorette person doing a little Gollum impression that was like, "Me wants it, the ring!" I can't... Excuse me, that was not an appropriate Gollum impression, that was poor.
HZ: You can have another go, Jenny. Everyone will appreciate it. We'll see the journey. Because the point is, Heidi has a massive rock because she's marrying the oldest money in Neptune, as the bridesmaid is thoughtfully supplied. Go on, Gollum it.
JOY: Yes. "Mmm. Me wants it. The ring." Helen, this is...
HZ: No, no. You need to go more gutteral.
JOY: I just try to think about - you know, I like to subvert expectations. My impressions are not about an imitation of reality. They're about seeking the source within of my subjects.
HZ: OK. Fuck it, I'm going to Abel Koonz it. "Mmm, we wants the ring, Veronica Marssss, and give it to the prom queeeen." How about that?
JOY: Ha!
HZ: Why the fuck not?
JOY: Thank you, Helen.
HZ: Let us sport us while we may. Veronica looks very askance at this bachelorette party, one of whom has got a pink glitter hip flask to spike the coffees. This is just the beginning of their bachelorette bacchanalia, they've got a full scavenger hunt.
JOY: I love this for them.
HZ: Have you ever experienced a bachelorette bacchanalia?
JOY: What have I experienced…?
HZ: Did you have one?
JOY: I did. I would say the most ludicrous thing is that one of our friends rented like a Hummer limo, but the auto rental place was out of Hummer limos when it was time to send it out, so instead we got a party bus with a stripper pole.
HZ: OK, a party bus is way better than Hummer limo. Stripper pole could be an absolute liability, particularly in motion. You need some skills to really use the pole appropriately.
JOY: I think I just appreciated that we had the option, and there were a lot of really intense party lights, and there were coolers built-in in between the seats, so you could put all of your booze just within arm's reach, wherever you were sitting on the party bus.
HZ: And do you go anywhere in a party bus, or is the point to exist in the party bus? Is it the destination and the journey?
JOY: It picked us up from Brooklyn, took us into Manhattan for dinner, and then brought us back from Manhattan to Brooklyn to go to some bars. So I think it was just about not taking the subway or a cab. There are poles on the subway.
HZ: That is true.
JOY: There are no poles in a cab, and the subway, it just doesn't feel very in the spirit of bachelorette partying.
HZ: Not festive.
JOY: Did you have a hen party, Helen?
HZ: I did, but I'm not much of a drinker, and it was on a Sunday because I had a Saturday job at the time. And it was very fun, part of it was a tour of part of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, which has a lot of good stuff in it, and the tour guide was a very strange woman, and she was showing us some jewellery, and she just kept saying about everything, in a very sibilant way, "Thisss is the esssssence of lovelinesssss."
JOY: Was your tour guide Gollum? Oh my god!
HZ: She did hang around with a lot of fancy jewellery, so maybe?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Then she showed us some of their collection of rock costumes, such as “David Bowie, Mick Jagger - and Brian Eno, of all things!" I was like, "What is going on in your head?" Very compelling to me.
JOY: Helen. Sibilant speech. Spends a lot of time around jewellery, which she addresses covetously. You hung out with Gollum at your hen party. Like, deal with that. Metabolise that in your mind.
HZ: She did seem unhappy, like Gollum.
JOY: Aw.
HZ: But Jenny, on your bachelorette, did you extract a gigantic pair of boxers from a man because that was on your scavenger hunt list, and that man was Michael Ausiello of tvguide.com, as a little fan cameo?
JOY: Ha. That that did not happen. But what did happen was that, once I realised there was... Like I just anticipated that my friends would have respected me enough to hire a male stripper of some kind, a strippergram or something, and once I made it clear that I was expecting that there was a great hustle and bustle in which they all attempted to right this grievous wrong. But it's hard to get a strippergram on super short notice, so plan ahead.
HZ: Really??
JOY: You would think, because I mean, "-gram", we're all used to "grams" being very instant, as it were. Nowadays. But, in the strippergram-verse, you have to plan ahead, at least a little bit, I guess.
HZ: That's good to know.
JOY: I didn't get a stripper. I didn't trick anyone out of their underwear. Alas. There's always next time, Helen. I can tell you that much.
HZ: Frontload the scavenger hunt with those things that you really want to achieve.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: At your bachelorette, did you go missing, Jenny? And not even tell your sister that you were going missing, and so she has to hire Veronica Mars to find you? She does it herself, the request not even coming through Wallace.
JOY: I didn't go missing, Helen. So none of this happened to me, and I couldn't be prepared for the events of this episode, least of all Jane eating a lunch of what is just a huge box of honeydew and cantaloupe.
HZ: Ugh, the worst kind of fruit salad.
JOY: She's existing purely on melon. Another strike against Jane in my book. Jane is standing between Wallace and Jackie; Jane is eating lunch of honeydew and cantaloupe. That's not a complete lunch. It's not balanced.
HZ: Well, maybe she's already finished her other lunch. The savoury course.
JOY: I don't know, Helen.
HZ: Do you think she's just grown up in an environment that is extremely body-shaming? That's how I interpreted it.
JOY: Oh, really? I interpreted it as she's just got some kind of melon addiction or something.
HZ: Jane usefully explains what happened:
JANE: Heidi's friends dropped her off at, like, two in the morning. She missed her final dress fitting at ten. We figured she was hungover, but we went by her place. Called everyone. No one's seen her; no one's heard from her. Her cell phone goes right to voicemail.
VERONICA: Did you check the hospitals?
JANE: My mom did. Here's the thing, my sister's great, but she's -
WALLACE: She's kind of a dingbat sometimes. What? The last time we all went to the beach, Heidi almost drowned herself, trying to swim with the dolphins.
JANE: I'm just afraid she's having a ‘Heidi moment’ and she's gonna mess up her life. We have to find her before the wedding. Paul and his family cannot find out she's gone.
HZ: Everything about Heidi sounds great so far. So much fun.
JOY: Loving Heidi. Heidi got dropped off at home at 2am, and missed her 10am dress fitting. So what has happened in the intervening eight hours?
HZ: And the wedding's in three days, they've got to get her back! There are 500 people at the reception! That's a conference.
JOY: This seems like a disproportionate amount of panic for how many days it still is away, for an adult woman to be gone for eight hours.
HZ: I suppose they need to really provide a kind of temporal framework for this episode, Jenny, and a deadline.
JOY: Mm-hmm.
HZ: I guess nice for Veronica to have a case that's going to be done quickly. She goes to the Neptune Onlyplace, but off duty, which is confusing, and questions the bachelorettes, or expositionettes. Maggie, Jen, and Kim.
JOY: "Expositionettes" is a great name for this bunch. Here's some stuff that we find out that I don't care about: she had her ex-boyfriend's name tattooed on her ass after two weeks, then she got it removed, which took six weeks, so that the guy that she's getting married to would never see it, and also one of them lost her cellphone last night, and there was a guy creeping around them at the Happy Horseshoe. Here is what we find out that I do care about: they went to an all-male revue called "Packaged Meat".
HZ: Ew.
JOY: Ha! Helen! Get on my level. This is so great. This is wonderful news.
HZ: I suppose, any of the genders in revue, I'm a little uncomfortable with them.
JOY: Well, I guess this is where you and I, our paths diverge, and I take the winding road into the strippergram forest, searching for elusive woodland hunks to pop out, being granted modesty by strategically-placed fig leaves and branches, and that's just not what you're after.
HZ: It's quite the bucolic scene of male nudity and moss and branches and things.
JOY: Come on!
HZ: Is Veronica wearing this male silhouette t-shirt to fit in with the bachelorettes? She's like, "I've seen them be raucous in objectifying men, so I'm going to signal that I can do that. But I'm gonna wear it all day at school first."
JOY: Yeah. Maybe she just got in the mood for the shirt because she saw the bachelorette party the night before?
HZ: Yeah, maybe. And also she doesn't really have a bunch of female friends. She's not a female friends kind of person for the most part.
JOY: That's true.
HZ: At the bachelorette, they were taking pictures with a disposable camera that prints penises on the borders, which is a highly specific make of disposable camera.
JOY: Good lord.
HZ: But Heidi has it. The inconvenience! So she goes to Heidi's place, Jane lets her in, and it's a fucking mess, even though there is a violin on the wall.
JOY: Dude, yeah. That seems incongruous. How many times have you seen in a TV show or movie somebody enter like a messy room and like someone's like, "Oh no, they broke in," only to find out that, no, this person just lives a messy lifestyle?
HZ: I have often thought that about my own habitations.
JOY: You come home from a night out and you're like, "Oh no, someone broke in."
HZ: "I've broke in myself over a period of months." And amongst the mess are two wine glasses. Two! Evidence of two wine glasses! Well, that must mean things. But then Veronica is out with Wallace - we see a little bit of Wallace this episode, but presumably they're still saving money on Percy Daggs III - he's helping Veronica go from place to place where Heidi went that night, trying to find where she took out cash, and then Wallace spots her abandoned car, because I know exactly what my partner's sibling's cars look like.
JOY: Sure, definitely.
HZ: It's a boring car as well. It's not even Corny's cool car.
JOY: The Gremlin!
HZ: Gremlin, that's what it is. Thank you, Twitter, for telling us. Veronica is like, "No problem," breaks into that shit. There's a lip print on the window. Heidi! And voila: the disposable camera.
JOY: How convenient.
HZ: Rather boringly, Veronica managed to get the photos printed without the penis border.
JOY: Boo, hiss.
HZ: Jane leafs through them, then finds a picture of... A guy?
JOY: The guy who got kicked out for fucking lurking at the Happy Horseshoe or whatever the fuck it was called.
HZ: But just a chin-down photo. Luckily, he's wearing a distinctive shirt.
JOY: Yeah, a team bowling shirt. Now, this team is the One-Eyed Ducks. Is that supposed to be a saucy reference to something?
HZ: Oh, say it isn't so.
JOY: Well, it can't be confirmed or denied. Veronica decides to give me what - I didn't realise, I had no way of knowing that I needed this. She's going to a bowling alley. I love this for some reason.
HZ: Because Veronica's a cool girl, I imagine she does bowl.
JOY: Right, right, right, right, right. She locates the One-Eyed Ducks, and it's like a real Goldilocks situation. This one's too tall, tis one's too small, this one's a woman - and this one's just right, and it's Vinnie van Lowe! What are the odds?
HZ: And he just got a strike!
JOY: Oh my god, his strike dance is extreme.
HZ: Vinnie is a total treat this episode. And also, good at his job. He doesn't let on anything to Veronica. She does do a Big Lebowski reference, we know she loves that film.
VINNIE: Come on, have a beer. We'll let you roll a frame.
VERONICA: Vinnie, this is not ’Nam. This is bowling. There are rules. What can you tell me about -
VINNIE: Nothing.
VERONICA: Of course, your Pavlovian response. Her name was Heidi Kuhne.
VINNIE: Doesn't ring a bell.
VERONICA: Let me jog your memory: you were thrown out of the Happy Horseshoe the other night for stalking her.
VINNIE: If I had a dime for every time I was thrown out of H squared for stalking.
VERONICA: What was it? A little prenup background check?
VINNIE: Well, if you already know…
VERONICA: She's missing.
VINNIE: Are you suggesting I kidnapped her? Because I believe that's your racket.
HZ: Despite Vinnie not divulging a thing, Veronica theorises that Heidi's fiancé's family ran a background check before the wedding. Now, wouldn't you do that more than a week before? Surely?
JOY: I don't know.
HZ: Because if you're organising a wedding for 500, that takes some planning. It's not like they got engaged a month before the wedding. What's wrong with these people? Just get it done early.
JOY: Or not at all. How about not at all? Maybe they got a tip from somebody, pretty recently?
HZ: This episode is sort of like Veronica just going from thing to thing. It's like a trail of clues, not really required too much deductive reasoning. But she has made a realisation that Heidi got two calls, at 2:55am and 2:57am, and then went to get cash, from a number that is no longer in service. Goes back to Heidi's flat and finds a fax machine under some clothes.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: Because those two phone calls late in the night of the bachelorette were fax attempts!
JOY: Yep, yep, yep, and Veronica puts a bunch of shit together and is like, "I've got to put this back in fax mode and let's see what didn't come through," and it's a frickin' little flyer of tour dates for a band called XLR8.
HZ: Best print quality of any fax ever faxed. Very intense ink. Very crisp.
JOY: Tour dates, and a little note that says "I need to see you".
HZ: From the ex, Nick.
JOY: She trots this fax to the venue that is closest to Neptune, I guess?
HZ: She just goes to the place where the band is that day, and it's San Luis Obispo. Veronica remarks about getting the train back from San Luis Obispo, but San Luis Obispo, depending on traffic, is like a four- to five-hour drive from when Neptune is. It is so much longer on the train, and you have to change at LA Union Station, there'll be a bit of a break in services to go south of LA, so why would she not drive that? Especially very good road trip potential, because you can stop off at the Madonna Inn just south of San Luis Obispo; you go to Avila Beach, see some sea otters eating crabs; you could go to Solvang, see some windmills, eat a smorgasbord...
JOY: You could do all those things!
HZ: Why would you fly to Barstow and get the train to San Luis Obispo when you've got a car?
JOY: It's all very unknown to me, Helen. I can't say for sure. What I can say is that I know every time I've taken a little fax to the bouncer at a club and been like, "The guy from the band faxed me these dates and said, 'I need to see you,' where is he?" and then the bouncer has, without fail, always pointed to the tour bus. I've always tried it over there, knocked on the door, someone's always answered, that's definitely going to happen, and then I've been like, "Do you have a Heidi onboard?" and they've been like, "Come on to the bus, little girl." And I'll tell you what's always going on on fucking tour buses: oeople gently strumming guitars. That's how you know you're on a tour bus... Nobody is doing that! Everyone's like, "If I see another fucking guitar at any time of day that isn't soundcheck or showtime, I WILL BREAK IT." Nobody wants to hang out on their tour bus playing guitar.
HZ: Not when it's stationary.
JOY: No, no, no, no.
HZ: Not when there's a building.
JOY: No, no, no.
HZ: Not when there's functional lavatories, indoors.
JOY: Mmm, yes.
HZ: But anyway, Heidi is there, sitting tucked-in behind the guitar neck being played by Nick, who looks a lot like Kevin from the Backstreet Boys, they've really gone for that look for him.
JOY: Oh yeah, true.
HZ: This is the only scene I don't like Heidi in, because she does not acknowledge the Veronica Mars detective powers - and I don't like everything about Veronica, but I respect the hell out of much of her detective work, particulary at her age.
JOY: Credit where credit is due.
HEIDI: My family hired you to track me down?
VERONICA: Actually, Jane did.
HEIDI: You're twelve.
VERONICA: I'm eighteen.
HEIDI: You're a barista.
VERONICA: I'm a... Fine, I'm a barista.
HZ: You can be a detective and a barista, come on, Heidi. But Heidi has a lot of explanation. She's like, "I didn't abandon my car, I parked it near a bus station, fucking idiot detective; I didn't pour two glasses of wine, one for me and one for a guy. I broke the first glass and I poured myself a second, god dammit. The wedding's off, because my rich fiancé ran back to his old flame, and then I ran up here to Nick in the band because his mum's unwell." But he's still on tour, so can't be that bad. Couldn't you have mentioned any of these things to your little sister rather than just fucking off as if you'd been kidnapped, though? Just, like, a text?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Although she did leave her charger at home, maybe that was an issue.
JOY: Yeah. And together, the group gets it that the text about Paul leaving his ex's house in the wee hours of the morning came from the phone of the woman who lost her phone, and Nick didn't actually send the fax. This was all orchestrated by someone else. Who?
HZ: Who??? And the wedding's only 12 hours away, so we cut immediately to that, and it's a small gathering because the ceremony's small, the reception's big, so they don't have to hire 500 extras. There's a very hefty gazebo with really thick columns.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Or a really stout chuppah. But Heidi's late. The minister is like, "I've got another wedding at four," but up she turns, and for a spectacular showdown that I enjoyed immensely.
JOY: Yes!
HEIDI: Let's do this thing. Lay it on me, preacher man.
PAUL: No! I demand to know what you've been up to.
HEIDI: I didn't ask you what you were doing for your bachelor party. And after finding whipped cream in your underwear, I think I was entitled.
PAUL: You were entitled? You. The one who sexed up every wannabe rock star in southern California? You know, if I wanted to marry Tawny Kitaen, I would have got a nipple pierced.
HEIDI: How could you say that to me? Like I would ever sex up a drummer. Lead singers, yes; maybe the occasional guitar player. The important thing is that we love each other.
PAUL: How can you expect me to love a used-up groupie like you?
HEIDI: Wow. Ouch, honey, kind of harsh.
JOY: How dare she have a past? How dare she have had sex, ever?
HZ: She should be freshly hatched into marriage.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We also get a rundown of the hierarchy of fuckable band members. Singer is always at number one. Nice! Guitarists in the second slot. Nice! I've got control of the top half of the board, Helen.
HZ: Well done, Jenny.
JOY: I'm doing great. They don't even mention bassists, and they just deem drummers unfuckable, so...
HZ:He's horrible. If someone called you a "used-up groupie" do not marry them.
JOY: This sucks. Please don't.
HZ: Heidi seems like a very open person, so there is no way that Paul wouldn't have known about her past until this background check.
JOY: But she also, you know, spent six weeks getting a tattoo removed before she would have sex with him so that he wouldn't see it, so not 100 percent open.
HZ: I think that's a bit different to just not talking to someone about your life prior to them. Unless she was doing The Rules, and just acting like a totally different person until to marriage.
JOY: He loses his temper and he says it's fucking off! He says it's off, and his parents try to stop him, but it's too late, he's already said it.
HZ: Oh, that's like a verbal contract of some sort that we want to not violate, argh.
JOY: It's, let's like... I mean, this guy sucks, but like, why is there a rule where if you buy someone an engagement ring -
HZ: /give them a family heirloom.
JOY: - and then you break off the engagement... It's just weird, and I imagine this rule just exists as a sort of like extension of women or property, and give up a piece of property to stake a claim on said property until you can officially, legally bind that property to yourself. It's just it all comes from a bad place, I guess, is what I'm saying.
HZ: It's collateral for a woman who is otherwise powerless in a marriage.
JOY: Ah, yes.
HZ: God, isn't that bleak? And Heidi then is a pretty class act, because she's like, "You could have just said it was over, and I'd have given the ring back. But I'm keeping it now as payment for the two years I wasted on you, trying to convince you I was worthy."
JOY: Yes! Heidi!
HZ: I feel like these two never should have got engaged, actually, because they don't seem to like each other, or be on the same page. Maybe it was a sex thing, and, you know, if they've only been together two years, it could still be very much like lust-based.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: She's putting on this great performance of getting what she wants whilst making them seem like the douchebags because they put her in this situation, but also like she might burst into tears as soon as she goes off. So she and Jane go off arm in arm, and she says, very deliberately, "Are pawn shops open on Saturdays?"
JOY: Oh my god. I don't know if a pawn shop is going to give you the best price, lady.
HZ: One more sighting of Vinnie, gazing at cakes at the Neptune Onlyplace. I don't think there's a huge amount of purpose to this scene, because he's just returning the cellphone that he nicked off one of the bachelorettes. Is it just so that they can mutually respect each other's work?
JOY: Yeah, I think it's definitely that.
HZ: It's a pleasure to see them.
JOY: A nice moment between the two of them who are usually so...
HZ: Adversarial? Except for when they helped Duncan escape to Mexico with his baby.
JOY: Oh, right. Yeah. Maybe they really bonded over that adventure.
HZ: Wallace and Jane are also there, sitting in front of a display of really shiny plates and things. She gives them the retrieved phone and they show her this very grainy photo of Nick and Heidi. She's sold the ring in order to follow Nick's band around. Heidi, no.
JOY: Out of the frying pan, into the tour bus.
HZ: Bad rebound. Presumably you have a job? If not: try a job and some independent living.
JOY: See what it's like. Get to know you.
HZ: Yes, exactly. You're really fun.
JOY: It is stated that you never know when true love's gonna come looking for you. Veronica says, "If it comes looking for me, I'll be over by the espresso machine." She walks towards the espresso machine - and here's Logan, of course!
HZ: And all the LoVe shippers just...
JOY: Exactly. The Vegans and the Loganicas fucking stand up in the stadium stands and do the wave all the way around, and he says, "Veronica, I've done something horrible." Why are you telling Veronica? She's not your girlfriend. You've already gotten a bunch of freebie PI work off of her. Like, enough.
HZ: You and Weevil are friends now.
JOY: Oh, yeah.
HZ: We don't see Weevil this episode though.
JOY: Alas.
HZ: He turns to Veronica when shit is bad, because ultimately she's the person he trusts most in the world, but it is a weird cliff-hanger. And is he just talking about, "I manipulated Hannah and now I like her, but I have to not see her because otherwise I'll be sent to jail for involuntary manslaughter"? Is that the horrible thing, or is it another thing?
JOY: I feel like that's where it's going, right? It feels like that's the thing.
HZ: It seems like enough things.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Well, shall we consider what crimes and misdemeanours have been committed in the course of this episode and repair to the tourbus that contains our southern Californian marshmallow and lawyer, Lo Dodds, for today's LoDown? That was a long question.
JOY: Indeed we shall.
THE LODOWN
JOY: What's up with his plea deal that they're dangling in front of Logan as though it were a new surfboard or a big yellow SUV?
HZ: Or a fresh puka shell necklace? Straight off the beach.
JOY: Mmm, fresh. Fresh caught.
LO DODDS: A brand spanking new green jacket. Yeah, this is pretty typical. So prosecutors usually charge murder with manslaughter, and they do that because if they think that they maybe can't make the murder charge stick, because for murder, you need to prove malice, and manslaughter is your typical more heat of the moment, passion type of crime. So if they think they can't get it, they will charge manslaughter as well and then offer to remove the murder charge if they plead to the manslaughter crime. And the sentencings guidelines that Cliff states are correct: 11 years is the maximum you can get for manslaughter, whereas obviously, you get convicted of murder, you might end up in prison for the rest of your life. But, if I were the prosecutor, I'd be trying to get a plea deal too, because it doesn't make a lot of sense. He was obviously beaten up. They can't prove the knife is his life. Their case is not looking great, and he's probably got a pretty solid self-defence defence.
HZ: So it's a plausible deal that he's being offered.
LO DODDS: Yeah.
HZ: Do you think he's right to say no?
LO DODDS: Yes. They have to prove he did it, and this doesn't make any sense. He's got no relation to Felix other than perhaps someone that tried to beat him up and kill him, so I agree with Logan here.
HZ: In this episode, Dr Tom Griffith is saying, "I'll make my testimony go away." Is that something he can actually do? Or would the police assume that someone who got to him and had pressured him to do that?
LO DODDS: Yes. I mean, they can assume it. So, forcing people to testify, we have a mechanism that allows the prosecution to subpoena you, so they can make you show up in court, and they can hold you in contempt if you don't, but they can't force you to say what they want to say. So if Griffith gets up there and says, "I did it for the attention," or, "I was lying, I made it up," you know, there's not much you can do to get the testimony you want from him. What they could do is, if Lamb had taken his statement when he came into the police station on election night, you know, to say that he was the one who made the call, if Lamb had had him make a statement under oath, what you'd normally do in the situation is once he's on the stand, you'd say, "Hey, you came in and made this statement, why are you changing it now?" But he's a prosecution witness, so the thing is, if he goes to the prosecution and says, "I'm not going to be a good witness, I'm going to say I forgot, they're going to bring up my issues with the Fitzpatricks, I'm addicted to drugs," like, you know, he's not going to be a good witness, so the prosecution is not going to call him because it just raises reasonable doubt about why he's saying he was the one who made the call. And they're not going to be able to prove that he was the one that made the call because, as we saw before, it would be very easy to prove he wasn't on the bridge at that time. So the prosecution are probably just going to not call him. Yes, he could face some charges for perjury or lying to the police, but maybe they won't charge him if he does say, "I was pressured to do this for an entirely different reason, not because I'm scared of Logan Echolls."
JOY: Sheriff Lamb holding a press conference to announce the exact nature of evidence discovered in connection with Terrence Cook, in a space that Terrence Cook had access to. Is this smart? Would a smart sheriff do this before something has gone to trial? Don't you want to keep all the details about a case that hasn't been settled yet kind of like contained?
LO DODDS: Or don't you want to taint the jury pool, so everybody already thinks Terrence is guilty to begin with?
JOY: Oh, OK, that's what's going on? I see.
LO DODDS: I actually asked my dad about this and he said that they would do this in certain circumstances, if there was - this is a high profile case, and they want to make sure that it doesn't look like they're railroading this guy, that they do have probable cause, and announcing this, when you do have a case like this where there's gonna be potentially more scrutiny of the police, is something they might do. So it's realistic in this circumstance when you're a famous baseball player, and all the dead kids.
HZ: Why are they like, "Oh, well, there's explosives in the hangar that Terrence parked his cars in. We will only pin it on him, and not question any of the people that own the hangar or accessed the hangar to check whether it was theirs"?
LO DODDS: I think from the police's, Lamb's perspective, at least, is that he has now means, motive, and opportunity. So all the puzzle pieces are falling into place for him. He's got explosives. He's got a motive. He was there. He is becoming the Occam's Razor type of defendant. Right now, they're not looking at anyone else because they're not digging too deep. That's not their job.
HZ: You would think Lamb would have learned from Sheriff Keith Mars versus Jake Kane that it's not great to pursue one suspect despite shaky evidence.
LO DODDS: It's, I mean, at the end of the day you want to think the police are collecting evidence and they're going to arrest someone that they have probable cause, and probable cause for the police, it's not beyond reasonable doubt, it's probable cause, so they've got enough to arrest him, and then they're going to give their evidence to the prosecution. It's really the prosecution that decides, "Hey, do I have enough to make this stick? Is this sufficient to put this person in jail for the rest of their life?"
HZ: Seems more possible cause than probable cause, to me.
LO DODDS: I suppose it would depend on what the explosives that they actually found, like if they really found a smoking gun, can definitely tie it to the exact same explosives they found on the bus, etc, etc, you'd be looking at Terrence with different eyes at that point.
HZ: And then the mystery of the week culminates in what seems like an unwritten ring contract. Are there rules about keeping engagement rings if you are dumped at the altar versus not showing up at the altar?
LO DODDS: Yes. Yeah, there are.
HZ: Really?
LO DODDS: And in fact, it's not just it's not just common law. It's statutory law. California actually has a specific civil code provision on this that says that if the donee calls off the wedding, because the ring is a conditional gift, so it's conditioned on the wedding happening, so if the donee calls off the wedding, then the donor is entitled to get the ring back. And in California, it's a no-fault state. It's very much a, "We don't care who cheated on who, just go our separate ways, etc," so I think that this is not always true, this doesn't always pan out in the actual cases regarding this, but there is a case from the 50s where it said, yes, it's the donee. If the donee is standing there, ready to marry someone, the ring-haver, whoever that is, is ready to marry the person, and the donor calls off the wedding, then they should get to keep the ring, because like all contracts, if you're ready and willing to perform and it's the other person's fault, then, you know, you should get the benefit. But I mean, in this case, I would think that if you tried to sue her, the fact that he went to such lengths to essentially defraud her out of performing the contract, she would end up with that ring. And I'm glad she does, because what horrible people.
HZ: Terrible.
JOY: Indeed.
LO DODDS: Vinnie, always the hand of the horrible people.
JOY: Well, Vinnie's not a discerning... you know, he's an equal opportunity hand.
LO DODDS: He's willing to help the good and the bad as long as they pay.
HZ: Jenny.
JOY: Helen.
HZ: Were there any lines you enjoyed this episode? An episode which did contain both Vinnie and Kendall, reliable providers of good lines.
JOY: That they are, but my line comes from the shapely mouth and the sonorous voice of Cliff, when he says, talking to Logan about the upcoming trial, "If it helps you decide on your wardrobe, I'll be wearing an 'I'm with stupid' t-shirt." Nice one, Cliff.
HZ: I was surprised that Logan is persisting with keeping Cliff as his lawyer. I thought that was just to piss off Aaron earlier in the season.
JOY: Yeah, I was surprised to see Cliff still working for him, too, but here we are.
HZ: Maybe he spent all of his easily-available money on destroying the evidence against Aaron. I'm going to give Hannah my best line, and it's when she's arguing with her mother and she says, "Almost all parenting books eschew the use of sarcasm with adolescents," which I thought was a super putdown from an adolescent to her parent.
JOY: Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty good.
HZ: And how was this episode for you overall, Jenny?
JOY: Helen! It was fun. I had a good time. Various things got moved along in various columns. I'm happy to give this episode 4.25 one rings to rule them all. A lot of ruling. How about you?
HZ: Yeah, I thought it was fun as well. And I'll just go with the feeling of fun, and the kind of energy of it, so, yeah, I'm going to give this 4.1 licked prison phones.
JOY: Bleh. I guess, would you say that this episode of Veronica Mars is investigated?
HZ: I will, and I'll follow it with case closed!
HZ: That was Veronica Mars Investigations Season Two Episode 15: The Quick And The Wed.
JOY: Watch season 2 episode 16, and join us next time to investigate it.
HZ: Also, find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
JOY: And the website, where the show hides behind an enormous diamond, is VMIpod.com.
HZ: Amongst the things you can find on there: Jenny Owen Youngs's magnificent card collection to help distinguish the residents of Neptune, and also episode transcripts, so if you want to read the show rather than listen to it that is absolutely an option.
JOY: Another thing you can find on our website is a link to our online store, with our little bits and bobs. Our Gay for Weevil pins, our Not Milk paraphernalia, our little VMI camera logo pin...
HZ: Does the camera print out pictures with penises all around the edges?
JOY: We're going to get that added.
HZ: Nice. Deluxe edition.
JOY: New feature, coming soon.
HZ: I am Helen Zaltzman, and I make other podcasts, including Answer Me This and the Allusionist, available at the podcast listening places.
JOY: I'm Jenny Owen Youngs, and I make another podcast about a petite blonde protagonist called Buffering the Vampire Slayer. You can find that in the pod places, and you can also find more about me and the music that I make, which is my main frickin' deal, at jennyowenyoungs.com.
HZ: Indeed, some of the music in this show is by Jenny Owen Youngs, and the rest is by Martin Austwick.
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman. No one can stop her, and no one should try.
HZ: Please, though, you could. You could so easily stop me. 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 your daddy?
HZ: He's the guy who got a private investigator to investigate my fiancé to try and derail our wedding.
JOY: Successful, or no?
HZ: Well, I just picked up the baton, and I derailed our wedding for reasons of my own.
JOY: Nice.
HZ: You know how I roll.
JOY: Modern women can have it all, Helen.