VMI 2.22 Not Pictured transcript

Listen to this episode at VMIpod.com/2-22

Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning violence, murder, rape, child abuse, and suicide

A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS: 

• Are you ready? Are you fucking ready?? Everyone graduates high school! Except for Weevil, who is arrested for Thumper’s murder.

• Keith tracks down Woody to a hunting lodge and gets him arrested for child abuse!

• While he’s doing that, Veronica identifies Woody’s third victim: Cassidy Casablancas…

• Who, after stealing Mac’s clothes, gets ready to kill Veronica on the Neptune Grand roof…

• But Logan saves Veronica, Veronica saves Logan, but nobody can saves Cassidy.

• Elsewhere in the building, Aaron Echolls enjoys a post-coital cigar until Clarence Wiedman shoots him in the head.

• Oh and Jackie’s not in Paris, she’s in New York City, waitressing and reuniting with the two-year-old son she’s apparently had this whole time. 

JOY: Making love, or playing Dungeons and Dragons, or both, at the same time, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: Lighting a big cigar and settling in to watch myself on TV, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
ALANNA BENNETT: And asking that you don't follow that performance with a belch, I’m Special Agent Alanna Bennett.

You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 2 Episode 22: Not Pictured.

HZ: Thank you so much for joining us, Special Agent Bennett. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I'm very excited to be here. This is one of my favourite episodes of Veronica Mars because it's just so much thrown at the wall. Just so much has happened, it's so dramatic. 

HZ: It's stressful as well. 

ALANNA BENNETT: So stressful. 

HZ: I guess most of the episodes are. 

ALANNA BENNETT: This is like peak, though. 

JOY: They really go hard on the finales. 

HZ: Yeah, the season one finale is incredible. I think this is up there, it's just got to conclude a lot more chaos. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. And a whole era, with the high school stuff. 

HZ: Right. One more "They're all dead!" in the Previously for Jenny. 

JOY: Even the Previously On for this episode, though, is stacked as hell. Exhausted before you even get through to the first seconds of the episode. 

HZ: To recap: Woody is an abuser, two of his targets were on the bus, Woody escaped, Weevil's grandmother just wants to see him graduate, but tough shit because Weevil chloroformed Thumper, then the Fitzpatricks killed him at the stadium, Veronica has chlamydia, Logan thought their story was epic but Veronica had to go, Jackie went to Paris - or did she? - Kendall's a golddigger in league with Aaron, who's been found not guilty. Is there anything else? 

ALANNA BENNETT: The chlamydia really like jumped out to me in the Previously On this time. It's one of those ones where you're just like, "OK, I'm interested to see how this circles around."

HZ: Chekhov's chlamydia. 

JOY: Yeah, well it's the whole reason, apparently, that Aaron Echolls was not convicted? Because Veronica had chlamydia, thus couldn't be trusted. 

HZ: So we start on the steps of the courthouse with Aaron Echolls triumphantly posing. Everyone's thrilled, except for the Marses, who are unthrilled. Don't know where Logan is. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Why torture yourself, Veronica? Why watch this man stroll out? Why not just go home and do something more productive? I don't know why she's got to stick around and glare. 

HZ: But what's she going to do at home that's going to be a distraction from this nightmare? 

JOY: Stare at the newspaper that Aaron's on the cover of. 

HZ: Oh, that is what happens, right. She obeys your commands, Jenny. 

ALANNA BENNETT: She's already torched her Stanford chances by skipping that test, right? So why not just like go for the extra...? 

JOY: Why? 

HZ: Because the Marses are ruled by emotions. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Because they needed her. They needed her in Neptune. 

JOY: Yeah. 

HZ: Right. Keith pep talks Veronica into not reading the paper about Aaron's trial, but then he goes into his office and reads it, and then they see that Stewart Manning's offering $20,000 for Woody's capture. And she's like, "Keith, we could use that money," and he's like, "But I can't, you're graduating." 

JOY: What is Mr Manning's interest in Woody Goodman? I mean, I know that the Mannings liked Lucky, and Lucky was a victim of Woody, but am I forgetting an important thread here? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Because the bus thing hurt Meg? That's as close as I got. 

HZ: So they were just doing their child-tormenting as a hobby? Just independently of Woody?

JOY: Yeah, if you're gonna hurt kids, you have to do it like in the name of god, and like within the confines of your own home, and any closet dungeons you've constructed for your children. Stays in the family kind of deal. Containment, confinement, notebook writing. 

ALANNA BENNETT: So creepy. That’s very Sharp Objects, I feel like - kids in a closet. 

HZ: She grows up to be Amy Adams, the youngest Manning sister. 

ALANNA BENNETT: The true origin story. We finally figured it out. 

HZ: Everyone's having a pretty shit time this episode. Even Wallace, he's so heartbroken. 

JOY: He's not even going to eat cake? 

HZ: Right, that's bad. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Come on, Wallace. 

JOY: Wallace has never turned down cake in his life. 

HZ: But Veronica's got to go to talk to someone called Johnny Ludden, who she promised free gelato for showing up. I wonder what conversation they had off screen for this arrangement. 

JOY: She's using the Onlyplace's gelato stores to lure members of Woody's Little League team to come by for like an impromptu interview. I don't know if this is her best strategy. 

HZ: I feel like luring someone to somewhere under false pretences and then being like, "Here's a picture of the Little League team in which you might have been abused as a child" is a very high risk strategy, and quite a cruel one. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Very rude. 

HZ: Right, yeah; rude, retraumatising... His vibe does change when he sees the photo. I guess we learn later that it's not him. Exciting to see Vinnie Van Lowe!

JOY: I love how they set this up, where they're sort of like shooting him super close and he's having a conversation with Keith, and then it is revealed that they are having a conversation between bars because Vinnie was caught by Lamb breaking into Woody Goodman's house. Nice. Good job, Vinnie. 

ALANNA BENNETT: One of their better visual reveals, that pullback. 

JOY: 100 percent. 

KEITH: What do you got?
VINNIE: All his records: tax, medical, corporate, the whole enchilada. We nail him, we split 60-40. I'm the 60, by the way.
KEITH: 50-50 - if the stuff you got pans out and no action until after my daughter's graduation.
VINNIE: I'm in jail! I deserve 60.

HZ: Did they agree on what proportion they're going to get? Is it going to be 50-50? 

ALANNA BENNETT: And there's the tiny violin, the last thing I remember from that scene. 

JOY: Yeah, that to me, it feels like it's getting left at 50/50, which seems fair, although I can appreciate Vinnie's argument of, "I'm in jail, I deserve more." 

HZ: Yeah, but Keith has to go and see Woody in his underwear later, and have a stag's head thrown at him. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh god, and almost die. Could very easily have died. 

HZ: There's some things in this episode that really resonate for our times, and one is this sort of contact tracing plot, because who's got chlamydia? Turns out Woody has had it, and we know Veronica's got it, so having had no intimate contact with Woody, she's got to figure out who the in-between was. So relevant for our times, figuring out who gave who a disease. 

JOY: Ugh. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Hah, yeah, a very bleak storyline, that one. There's just so much assault tying all of those things together. 

HZ: Ugh, yeah. And also when Keith is like, "Didn't see chlamydia in his campaign materials," you're like, alright, it's a pretty common STI. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Right, it's very common. It could be anybody. Just because you have it and this other person has it, doesn't mean that it's full circle. Except for it is.

HZ: Luckily for them, Woody has to take a pill every day. 

KEITH: Bingo. Heart arrhythmia.
VERONICA: So that's our strategy? Just wait for him to drop dead?
KEITH: He has to take a pill every day. There any way you can find out Gia Goodman's cell phone access code?
VERONICA: Gia's cell?
KEITH: Woody's lawyer is also an old college buddy of his. If he'd call anyone, it'd be him. If we had Gia's code and could forward her calls...
VERONICA: I guarantee you she hasn't changed it from the factory default.
KEITH: Then I have a plan.

JOY: This is just... What is this? Convenience? 

HZ: Go with it, Jenny. 

JOY: OK, I'll go with that. 

HZ: They're not having a blown-up plane for you to get obsessed with call forwarding. 

JOY: Hmm. So... OK, OK, OK, OK, OK. You're right. Look at this frickin' dream though. 

HZ: I won't. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh my god. 

HZ: I don't acknowledge dream sequences. You know this. 

JOY: Ha, yeah. 

HZ: Well, I don't acknowledge this one. Fucking Lianne Mars? I hadn't missed her, I'd forgotten all about her. 

JOY: Yeah, I kind of forgot that she ever existed. 

HZ: But she's bearing laundry, because, in this dream, she's the perfect mother - as in domestic, and just sort of smiling gently at everyone else who's more interesting. She's got a much bigger house... 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. 

HZ: ...and a pancake breakfast, and Keith's in sheriff's uniform, and Veronica body-shames herself. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, because she's still the Disney popular girl, and gullible. I like that in her head it's like, "I wish that I were still this, like, gullible little princess." 

JOY: Ha! The good old days. 

VERONICA: They gave me the wrong cap and gown.
LOGAN: How exactly can you tell?
VERONICA: It's got someone else's name on it.
DICK: Guess who's going commando?
DUNCAN: Must we?
VERONICA: Does anyone know Wallace FENnel?
DUNCAN: I do, he's in my PE class. Awesome baller. I think he works at Sac-n-Pac.
VERONICA: "Awesome baller." That doesn't really help me. Can you point him out?
DICK: You didn't hear what happened to him? Sac-n-Pac got held up when he was working. The robber forced him into the walk-in cooler, he got frostbite.
DUNCAN: Yeah, dude lost three fingers.
VERONICA: Oh my god, that's awful.
[Duncan and Dick burst into laughter]
LOGAN: Aw, sweetie, I love you, but you have to be the most gullible girl I've ever met.
VERONICA: I'm trusting, sue me.

ALANNA BENNETT: In her dream version, she still is like, "No, I don't end up with Duncan, I still end up with Logan." 

JOY: Hell yeah. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I want to know what, in her dream head, what that transition is like, because it's very dramatic in the real world so what's that? I want to see that, her fan-fiction about what happened there. 

HZ: That's a really good question. 

JOY: Yeah. 

HZ: She also could have dreamed Meg to be alive, and Meg and Duncan to be together again. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, she could have thrown Meg a bone. Come on. 

JOY: Would've been nice. 

HZ: And in this scenario, this nightmare scenario, she was never friends with Wallace. 

JOY: Unthinkable. 

HZ: She never even knew who he was. 

JOY: Duncan refers to Wallace as "an awesome baller", which is a sentence I feel like I didn't need to hear Duncan say, but alright.

ALANNA BENNETT: No. I don't know if Teddy pulls that off there. 

HZ: Don't you think it's arrogant of Veronica's subconscious to think that Wallace would be unpopular were it not for her friendship? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, he would be very popular. 

HZ: He would, in fact, probably be more popular because he wouldn't have her negging him all the time. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. 

HZ: Or demanding favours. 

ALANNA BENNETT: He'd have more time for the popularity. 

JOY: Exactly. 

HZ: He'd have much more time. 

JOY: Instead, he has tiny, tiny glasses, during the era that was like peak tiny glasses. These are the smallest ones I've ever seen. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Why does his not being friends with Veronica mean that his vision fails? 

JOY: Oh my god. Have we never seen... He doesn't wear glasses ever in the rest of it? 

ALANNA BENNETT: I don't think so. 

JOY: Ah! 

ALANNA BENNETT: Maybe it's just that being friends with Veronica means he wears contacts more for some reason. 

HZ: Maybe so that he can put on glasses for disguises when he's having to do errands for her undercover. So he can change up the glasses rather than have to be prescription-dependent. I'm happy to add that to the headcanon. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Ha, yes!

WALLACE: Looking forward to getting out of here?
VERONICA: I guess. I don't know. High school was a blast. Right?
WALLACE: Oh, you're one of those.
VERONICA: What's that supposed to mean?
WALLACE: Nothing. Have a good life. 

HZ: This is the worst timeline, clearly. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I like that she's trying to be fair, she's weighing the pros and cons. She's like, "On the pro side, I'm not sad all the time. I enjoyed high school. On the con side, I wasn't best friends with my best friend, and I do feel like that's the deciding factor. Aside from Lilly being alive - that would be great, to get her alive."

JOY: Oh, yeah. There's that, too. 

HZ: Veronica spots Lilly over by the Lilly Kane Memorial Fountain. It's great to see Lilly again. 

VERONICA: Tell me about everything! Tell me about this new guy, tell me about Vassar...
LILLY: The guy is gone. We had a little screaming over fooling around with his ex.
VERONICA: That bastard.
LILLY: Oh no, no. It was, um, it was me. I kinda fooled around with his ex. I mean, you'd think that guys would dig that, right? What? It's COLLEGE.

JOY: The first non-dire, non-terrible, doesn't end in death - well, I guess it's in a dream, and this person is technically dead in the real world - but it's the first reference to any kind of queer activity on the show that doesn't involve an albatross of sadness being around someone's neck, which is nice. I'm glad it's Lilly. I fucking... Please. 

ALANNA BENNETT: You get it; the second she says it you're like, yeah, that's what would have happened. 

JOY: Of course. 

HZ: I just don't think she'd be friends with Veronica, because she knows that Veronica really struggles to acknowledge sexuality of any kind, but particularly something that's not strictly hetero. 

JOY: Veronica does have a momentary questionable look on her face while receiving this news. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, some judgement is there. 

HZ: Do you think basically flashback and dream sequence Veronica is a George W. Bush-era Republican Veronica? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. Especially because Rob Thomas has talked about how he has pictured Veronica as like a Republican, which is a ridiculous thing of him to say in general, but like there are versions of her where you see where that thinking comes through. 

HZ: Yeah. I can see her as libertarian. Or like a Bernie Bro. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

HZ: I think in the flashback she seems... 

JOY: ...like she's ready for pearls and sweater sets? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. 

HZ: Oh yeah, it's extraordinary she's not wearing argyle in this dream. 

ALANNA BENNETT: For once. 

HZ: Is Lilly wearing The Wig in this dream? 

JOY: She is, I think. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, very much a wig. I want to know what movie she was shooting in real life that her hair was not Lilly Kane enough, because it's the future. She doesn't have to have the exact same hair we've seen her in. 

HZ: True. 

ALANNA BENNETT: She's gone to college. So what was it like? 

HZ: Also, does Amanda Seyfried ever have different hair in any of her films? It's always long and blonde, right? 

ALANNA BENNETT: It's, exactly, yeah, like, what was that different? 

HZ: And then Lilly's bemused to see that there's a memorial fountain for her. And then asks Veronica if she can smell bacon... bacon... bacon... bacon - Awakey time! Keith's making breakfast, but not for long, because then he's got to go out and do some surveillance on a man called Mr Lee in a suit and briefcase going into an office building, whereupon his secretary asks him to call Gia back, and he does, which means we get to see Veronica playing Gia. 

BILL LEE: Gia? Bill Lee.
VERONICA AS GIA: Hey, so, I'm trying to get a message to Dad, but he didn't leave us a forwarding...it's just, we got a call from Dr Hoover and I guess his heart pills are fifty mil-something this time instead of a hundred, so he has to take two. It's really important.
BILL LEE: Got it, Gia. 

JOY: Thank god Gia has a very specific way of speaking that Veronica... Veronica never has to pretend to be someone on the phone who has just sort of like an unremarkable voice, or like speech pattern. She only ever has to deal with people like Gia and that one lady who like [gruff NYC accent] talks like this, that she had to imitate a while ago. 

HZ: Lady Catherine de Bourgh? 

JOY: Yeah, exactly. And this works. 

HZ: How much would a lawyer charge to forward a message from your daughter? $500 probably.

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, is that like a full hour? 

HZ: I mean, he calls back right away, which I was impressed by. Were you pleased that Woody has checked into this place called Quail Creek Lodge not under the name "Mr Goodwood"? 

JOY: Ugh. 

HZ: Just "Mr Underhill". 

JOY: Yeah. That is definitely better than the whole "Goodwood" thing, bleh. And, aside from the fact that game is getting hunted here, I have to say these little cabins and this little nature zone seems very nice. He's got a landing strip and everything. 

HZ: Love log cabins. 20 minutes outside of Reno. Very beautiful around there. It's a stocked hunting ranch, so presumably they're like just putting animals in there to get shot by rich people. 

JOY: Yeah, that was the part I was saying I didn't like, just to be clear. 

HZ: Not there for the animal Westworld?

JOY: Ha! 

HZ: Keith's flying there an hour after graduation. We see Weevil's family, grandma looking very proud. 

JOY: Oh my god, she's adjusting his graduation cap. Helen, I can't possibly... 

HZ: All these people who are graduating are the names of different people on the production team and writing staff. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. 

JOY: Oh, that's nice. 

HZ: You know how they've portrayed Mac as a smart person? And yet she keeps asking Veronica for sex advice, which we all know is a terrible plan. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Doesn't have any more worldly friends? What struck me is like there's a person sitting between them. I'm like, who is this person? It's like, "OK, they're talking over me about sex advice. I guess I should just let them?" 

HZ: Who's between Mars and Mackenzie in the alphabet? But yeah, Cassidy's got Mac a room at the Neptune Grand that night, and it's not even Veronica that ruins it this time. And then... I mean, a lot of shit things happen this episode, and here's the first really shit one. 

ALANNA BENNETT: It's very bad. 

JOY: Especially you're going to show me this right after you showed me a rare glimpse of Alicia Fennel? So excited to see her for one second. When Wallace goes across the stage, you get a nice applause shot. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Love an applause shot. I do constantly tear up at every graduation applause shot. That's like the easiest way to get me like, aw, they're so proud. 

JOY: They're all so proud. The students are proud of each other, they're proud of their friends. The parents are proud of their kids. It's a lot. And then you show me this trash? This flaming trash? Lamb, chewing his shitty gum like a real fucking jackass, arrests Weevil at the worst possible moment. 

HZ: Couldn't have been yesterday? 

JOY: Or tomorrow? Or 20 minutes from now? 

ALANNA BENNETT: 20 minutes later? 

HZ: Two minutes later even. 

ALANNA BENNETT: It's like the cruelty was the point in that. It's just specifically to humiliate him in front of his classmates at the worst possible time. You know this guy isn't going to, like, shoot up the school on his graduation moment. He's not a threat right now. You can wait. 

HZ: That's not how Lamb rolls. Got to be maximum wanker. 

ALANNA BENNETT: They cut to his grandma, and she's just clutching her grandkids. It's so upsetting. Every single time I watch it, it's just so deeply upsetting. Leave Weevil alone! 

JOY: Yes. Let Weevil thrive. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Come on. 

JOY: It was just a little chloroform, come on. 

HZ: He eyes Veronica on the way out, beseechingly. Big cheers for Veronica as she graduates. She seems stunned by this. Is it just because she's investigated some shit for pretty much everyone in the room? 

JOY: She's solved everybody's problems. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, she thinks that she's like the problem child, everyone hates her, but most people in that school, she's helped a lot of them. I'm sure she's also fucked a lot of them over, but, yeah, such a nice moment. She's like, "Oh, I'm not as hated as I thought."

HZ: Outside, Keith scrambles through the crowd and gives Veronica an envelope full of running jokes. 

VERONICA: A pony?
[Veronica opens the envelope and finds plane tickets]
VERONICA: New York?
KEITH: We leave Tuesday.
VERONICA: Broadway? Soho? The MoMA?
KEITH: Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Madison Square Garden...

JOY: Alanna, you used to live in New York too, right? 

ALANNA BENNETT: I did, yes. 

JOY: OK, let us, as former New Yorkers, rank these things as attractions. Broadway, which is where plays happen; Soho, which is just sort of like a shopping and restaurant neighbourhood; MoMA, which is an art museum; and then two baseball stadiums and Madison Square Garden, which hosts hockey, basketball, and concerts. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Saw Harry Styles there. 

JOY: Nice! 

HZ: Maybe that's why Keith wants to go to Madison Square Garden, to see Harry Styles. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, that's exactly why. 

HZ: Who at the time was probably like 10 years old. 

JOY: Would you have anticipated that Veronica would be excited about musicals on Broadway? 

HZ: No. 

JOY: Or modern art at MoMA? 

ALANNA BENNETT: No, she would hate these. 

HZ: Oh, maybe Brigadoon's on at Broadway, and Logan got her into it. 

JOY: Brigadoon, the only musical that exists in the Marsverse, could be playing, it's true. 

HZ: Every hundred years. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Maybe it's her old preppy days coming back. 

JOY: Oh, true. 

ALANNA BENNETT: You know? Maybe it's like her childhood or something, but like I do feel like she hardened. 

HZ: MoMA, I have never seen Veronica be that interested in art, but I suppose that would have been by the by, plot-wise, maybe. 

ALANNA BENNETT: What time does she have for that? 

JOY: No time. Zero time. 

HZ: Dick runs by and slaps her on the arse, and he's wearing a Trust Me, I'm Rich T-shirt. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh dear. 

JOY: Where does he get these? I know the whole thing is that Dick is like intentionally douchebaggy rich kid, but I just feel like even the douchebaggiest rich kids I could ever possibly conceive of wouldn't wear a shirt that said "Trust Me, I'm Rich". Am I wrong? Was it different in 2006? 

ALANNA BENNETT: It's like a Halloween costume for a rich kid. 

JOY: Yes. 

HZ: I think he would have been wearing Ed Hardy. 

JOY: Yes! 

HZ: He also - do you remember, I think it's episode 2 of the whole thing, where Duncan and Troy are in a car about to go to a party and they have the most, like, un-cool, cringeworthy conversation? 

TROY: What do you say? Do you want to get this party started? You ready to burn this mother down? Up jump the boogie? 
DUNCAN: My plan? And I haven’t worked this out entirely yet so bear with me, was to... Raise the roof.

HZ: And Dick, I thought, was cooler than them, but this Sugarhill Gang quoting proves not at all. 

DICK: Put on your dancing shoes, Mars, 'cause tonight, we're gonna upchuck the boogie to rhythm of the boogie the beat.
VERONICA: Up - chuck?
DICK: You heard me.

HZ: Isn't Dick like Vinnie, but with no skills? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. 

JOY: Oh, yeah. 

HZ: Veronica dumps her gown into her car, but is interrupted by Alicia! My heart! It's been so long. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I know, she just wants to celebrate her son's graduation day. Plot twist!

ALICIA: Veronica! Do you know about this?
VERONICA: I don't. What's wrong?
ALICIA: Wallace left this note for me on my windshield. He's booked himself a flight to Paris, he's gonna try to track down Jackie.

HZ: This is a very weird way to tell your mum that you're going to Paris, by leaving a note on her windshield minutes after you were just in the same room with her. 

JOY: Wallace has been saving up, huh? 

ALANNA BENNETT: I know. Did he steal her credit card? Like, what happened here? 

HZ: Jackie's not in Paris, because she's in Brooklyn! With a small boy in a cafe. The boy is calling not-Jackie "mommy". I wonder if this hurts for Jackie to see, given that we later find out this boy is her son. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Surprise!

HZ: But he's running towards a waitress named Kim, who's Jackie's mom. 

[Phone rings]
KIM: Brooklyn Dan's. Yeah. Hold on.
[She holds the phone out to Jackie]
KIM: It's for you.
JACKIE: Hello?
VERONICA: What? No bonjour?
JACKIE: Veronica? How did you know?
VERONICA: Well, first, 3.1 GPA doesn't scream Sorbonne. And the Java job. You're a mighty good service industry worker for the daughter of a model living on the Upper West Side who never held a job before. I've known for a while.

ALANNA BENNETT: That feels like a stretch of a deduction. 

JOY: So very circumstantial. 

ALANNA BENNETT: "You didn't suck at this, and you're rich, so I expected you to suck," is a wild line of thought. 

HZ: Yeah, "You're stupid, and you didn't suck at a poor person's job." Jesus christ. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. When did she figure this out? When did she deduce this and just not tell anybody? You didn't tell Wallace? 

JOY: Well, I think it's actually growth that she figured it out but didn't tell Wallace, because half a season ago Veronica would jump at the opportunity to drive a wedge between them. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. She's like, "Let's let them be happy for a moment." Like, she's very rarely OK with deceit, and here she's like, "Whatever, it's fine, until it's not fine." 

HZ: Another surprise in this episode, a rare exterior shot of the Neptune Grand looking a bit like a parking lot. Aaron Echolls is wearing a Logan Echolls-style leather moto jacket, but in cream instead of orange or sludge colour. 

JOY: I hate to see him, or hear him, or anything. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, every scene of him in this episode is like blech, get him away! Get him away! 

JOY: Yeah. I just wanna, like, spray him with a can of Raid or something. 

AARON: Hello, Logan.
LOGAN: What are you doing here?
AARON: Well, I need a place to stay. How are the suites?
LOGAN: Well, probably an improvement over your previous digs. It might be a little weird though, I don't think any of the other guests killed anyone.

HZ: And also, I hadn't thought about this, but now that he has been exonerated of murder he's got control of the Echolls finances back, which means Logan is dependent on him, which is now a big fucking yikes. 

JOY: Oh no. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Very bad. Very, very bad. 

HZ: And now they both live in the same hotel, I guess. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Blech. 

JOY: Ew, "How are the suites here?" Blech. 

HZ: Now we go to another hotel thing, but with more game. Is the Quail Creek Lodge the same place that they filmed the Mooncalf Collective? Because I thought I spotted a very similar bench made out of half a cartwheel. How many poinsettias are on the premises? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, on the show I write for we're always like, "Are they going to recognise this is the same stretch of desert from over the past three seasons?"

HZ: Which is worse? Seeing Aaron, or seeing Woody in his underwear? 

JOY: Why? I thought we had already seen Woody in the least amount of clothing we would have to see Woody in. But no. 

ALANNA BENNETT: This show is so - it's so heavy on abusers. Like, this episode, stacked. 

HZ: Oh god. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Terrible, terrible people. 

HZ: Yeah. It's just relentless. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Every scene. 

HZ: He's watching The Dukes of Hazzard in his massive underpants in a, luckily, very dimly lit log cabin. But then he goes to pee, and his attention is drawn by the open window, and turns around and Keith Mars is in the shower cubicle. Why did Keith leave the window open? 

JOY: Was all this necessary? 

HZ: Did you notice there's a log-burning stove in the bathroom? 

JOY: My kind of bathroom. 

HZ: This is a tricked-out hunting lodge. And a huge stag's head or moose's head above the toilet. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Seems like a scary place for that. 

JOY: Oh true. 

ALANNA BENNETT: In California? With earthquakes? I'd move that when I'd want to pee. 

HZ: Woody grabs it and throws it at Keith, but I think, because of the antlers, it can't get into the shower cubicle. And then he tries to scramble out the window, then Keith tases him in the back. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh, they love a taser in the Mars family. 

JOY: It's in their family crest. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes! 

HZ: This episode is tasey. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, oh yes, it really comes all around back to the taser. 

JOY: It is a huge bummer to have to endure watching Woody defend his heinous actions, but I guess the reason it's here is so that we have a reason to believe that what he says about the bus crash must be true, because why deny it if you're not going to deny abusing the children on your Little League team? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

KEITH: So you used me. Someone blackmails you and you use me to set up the whole girl in a motel thing. Incorporation dies and your special secrets stay hidden.
WOODY: Keith, I know how this must look.
KEITH: If you're about to insist this is all some big misunderstanding, Woody, I kinda think you don't.
WOODY: I didn't crash the bus. I could never have hurt all those kids.
KEITH: I don't know, Woody; the welfare of children doesn't seem to have been terribly high on your list.
WOODY: That's not how it was. It wasn't that way at all. Those boys - if you knew their fathers, how they ignored them, mistreated them, they needed someone. I listened to them, I cared about them.
KEITH: Woody. Just stop.

HZ: This episode is packed with things that are nauseating, but watching Woody justifying his child abuse is pretty difficult. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. It's real rough. 

HZ: But as this is the last we see of Woody, do you think they've put this in so that... Because, you know, this is a huge plot, but we don't see him again, so is it just to make you not want to see him again, even for the closure? Because you're like, "Well, if that's what he's gonna do, no fucking thanks."

ALANNA BENNETT: That makes sense. I also feel like there's always like a push with writers' rooms to have like the one humanising moment of the villain. Not that this humanises him, but that it was his personal excuse. 

HZ: Also, confirmation, I was wondering how his unconscious woman plot from a couple of episodes ago fit in, and whether it was just meant to make Woody seem like sexually evil; but it is a setup, which was Lo Dodds's theory. And she was right. 

JOY: The setup of the mayor, and Keith, and the woman in the motel room, essentially worked against incorporation passing. I know you love talking about incorporation so much, Helen. 

HZ: Was it worth it? 

JOY: Ha! I'm going to miss the incorporation plotline so much. 

HZ: Imagine building this season's long plot arcs - because they knew about Cassidy being the bus murderer from the point they introduced him towards the end of Season 1 - imagine knowing that and imagine, imagine knowing how much of this plot hinges on fucking incorporation. Imagine inventing - what diseased imagination, to come up with incorporation as the plot pivot for this huge child abuse and murder. Argh. Excuse me for a moment. 

JOY: Great, yes. 

HZ: Veronica's at home studying the Little League photo with the names written on it by the guy who was duped for gelato. While Keith calls, Veronica knows why instantly and looks really happy. 

VERONICA: You caught him.
KEITH: Loading him onto his own plane as we speak. As soon as the pilot gets here, we'll be homeward bound.
VERONICA: Did he confess to the crash?
KEITH: Unfortunately, he insists that he didn't do it, so we're gonna need a lot more evidence to nail him.
VERONICA: I'm still trying to find that third kid from the tape. I've got everyone on the team identified except one guy. I think I know where to find him though.
KEITH: Pilot just got here. I'll be in late, so don't wait up. See you in the morning, honey.

HZ: ...and we see him get onto the plane. Have we been to Woody's Burgers before? We've heard about it. 

JOY: We have not. We've heard about the finger in the ribwich I think, but we have not seen a Woody's Burgers. 

HZ: We still don't see a finger in the ribwich, because Veronica goes in and just ignores the counter, doesn't order food, she just goes straight to the display of sports memorabilia, finds the Little League photo, identifies the otherwise-unidentified kid as Derek Applegate. Don't get attached to that, that's irrelevant: because then she sees the caption "Not pictured: Cassidy Casablancas". 

JOY: Ah! 

HZ: Extreme contrazoom! Whoa! It's thrown us right back out the front door. 

ALANNA BENNETT: First of all, it seems like that type of clue - of course she's active in going to find this other guy who's not in the photo, but then she just stumbles across that Cassidy is... In their season-ending clues, this is not one of their strongest, although the moment... This is the first time I noticed that it wasn't that strong of an investigative beat, because every time that happens, I'm like, "Oh!" And because it does take me back, not just to this season, but to like a lot of stuff last season too. 

HZ: Just all these things falling into place in her mind in this moment. Because later, when she's monologuing about all of the things that have fallen into place, you're like, "That's a lot of information that is kind of guesswork."

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, you get a lot in that two seconds it takes her to see his name and be like, "[Gasp]." 

HZ: Well, it's a very long contrazoom, so on that journey, maybe she had the time. She looks very nauseous in the bathroom mirror, and rushes out and calls Mac, but she's with Cassidy at the loud party and it goes to voicemail. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh no. I'm very stressed for Mac all the time. 

HZ: What time is it? Because it's sunlight where Veronica is, but the party's already going strong and seems night-ish. She gets into her car and calls to ask for a listing for Hart Hanson, to do some off-screen puzzle-piecing. Hart was the kid who briefly popped up last episode who was like, "Veronica, I didn't tell anyone about season 1 episode 14, where I had that tape of Lynn Echolls falling off the bridge."

JOY: Ha! 

HZ: Hart Hanson was also a writer and co-executive producer on Rob Thomas's previous show Cupid. 

ALANNA BENNETT: And then he created Bones, didn't he? 

JOY: Whoa. 

HZ: Wow. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I like that Rob Thomas just names all of the characters after just people in the room. 

HZ: Either people in the writers' room or people in the Television Without Pity forums. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, amazing. 

HZ: You'd think it would be pretty exciting to see your name come out a character's mouth in a show that you loved, wouldn't it? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

HZ: Or revenge, if a show you hate. Party!! Dick and other people are making Cassidy chug beer and toxic masculinity. Glug, glug, glug, ideas about being a man, glug. 

JOY: Yeah. 

DICK: Oh, that's what I'm talking about. It feels good to be a man from time to time, huh?
BEAVER: Yes.
DICK: Enbom, get over here.
MAC: All I ask is that you don't follow that performance with a belch.
BEAVER: Do you want to go check out the room?
MAC: It's liquid. It's courage. It's liquid courage.
BEAVER: Yeah, well, there's nothing up there that I'm afraid of.

JOY: Cassidy and Mac decide it's time to go upstairs to the suite. 

HZ: Isn't it heartbreaking to see Mac getting to do some things apart from being smart and computery? And feeling desired? For the show to just slap it all out of her hands. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

JOY: Can't have nice things. 

ALANNA BENNETT: The show does love to punish women for having any semblance of sexuality. 

HZ: On Mac and Beaver's way up to the room, Corny catches them in the lobby to excitedly tell them that Veronica's dad caught the mayor, "And that sleazoid's gonna fry," and then he enacts a sleazoid frying. And that's the last we ever see of Corny. 

JOY: Aw. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Corny! 

HZ: What a send-off. What do you think he ends up doing? Either nothing, or Silicon Valley billionaire. 

JOY: Yeah, somewhere on one of those two poles. 

HZ: And in the bedroom, we just see the bedclothes pulsate as Mac's phone buzzes. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh yeah. That was disturbing. I didn't like that. I didn't like that, no way, knowing where things are going. Don't want to see that. 

HZ: But also, it's probably not those actors, is it? They probably save money by just like... 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, it's like, "Hey, PAs, just make it wave. Don't take off your clothes or touch each other, just make the bed wave." 

HZ: Veronica's at the party now, and frantically asks Logan if he's seen Cassidy and Mac, and is interrupted by Dick, who matches the party decor - which is yellow and green, as is his T-shirt - and he calls Mac "Ghost World". 

VERONICA: Where's your brother?
DICK: I think he took Ghost World up to his room. They're probably up there making love. Or playing Dungeons and Dragons. Or both, at the same time. They're both, like, twelfth level dorks. I'm just saying.

HZ: This is a great, funny line, if you didn't know what's about to happen. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. 

HZ: And when you do, these jokes just hurt even more. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Everything's sad. Veronica shows a little bit of restraint here, she doesn't just immediately tell Dick that his brother is the big bad, which I feel like in other times she might have. 

HZ: Maybe she's just like, "Dick doesn't have the emotional intelligence to absorb this."

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. It's not time yet. 

HZ: To the bedroom. 

JOY: Yeah, it's not going great. 

HZ: Kyle Gallner is really good at a face where it looks like he's trying not to cry too much. And trying not to puke at the same time. 

JOY: Mac is very nice and very supportive. 

HZ: So considerate. 

JOY: And she goes to hop in the shower, at which point Veronica texts her and Mac receives texts in the Comic Sans font. Has this ever happened to you? 

HZ: And Mac's phone's not locked? Mac is a tech person in 2006. Wouldn't her phone be locked so Cassidy couldn't see a fullscreen text from Veronica Mars saying, "Get away from Beaver now, he's a killer, I'm in the lobby"? 

ALANNA BENNETT: She's got serious stuff on there. She's probably hacking big places. This reminds me of the music video where Kelly Rowland, I think, looks at her phone, and it's a text, but it's in an Excel spreadsheet instead of a text message. 

JOY: Hell yes! 

HZ: ‘Dilemma’! Now, does Cassidy just take a gun everywhere because he's evil? Because presumably he didn't come to this hotel and this party intending for the climax of his multiple murders to be played out. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, what did he think was gonna happen? Because he thinks that he's got a plan for Woody, that he's not going to get figured out... Yeah, does he just carry it with him everywhere? That seems risky. You think Mac's not going to be like, "Oh, I want some gum," and go into your bag, and just a little gun there? 

HZ: I just thought as well, he must have put the bomb on Woody's plane before Woody flew to Reno. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Right. 

HZ: Why not detonate it on the way? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Ha! 

JOY: Lots to think about. 

HZ: There's two murderers at this hotel. Well, minimum two. Two featured murderers. 

ALANNA BENNETT: It's realistic. 

JOY: Veronica gets onto an elevator and makes the classic mistake of not checking before she steps in to make sure that the homicidal murderer of her best friend, and attempted murderer of her, is not hiding in the corner of the elevator. And he is! 

HZ: Mistakes we all make when we're looking at texts summoning us to the roof. And we all go to the roof as well when someone asks, right?

JOY: Well... 

HZ: Safest place. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Right, yeah, like why can't we meet in the lobby? 

JOY: Yes. The populated, well-lit lobby. 

HZ: Aaron's got a bottle and two brandy balloons. He's having a great night. 

AARON: Freedom. It's pretty damn sweet. I like it.
VERONICA: So did Lilly. Bummer you murdered her.
AARON: You know, I can see why the two of you were such good friends. You're so much alike. You're not afraid to speak your minds. You know, that just might be the best part about the day I smashed her head in with an ashtray, knowing that once and for all, she would finally shut the hell up.

JOY: This is chilling. This is so upsetting to watch. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I hate this scene. I mean, it's like well-written and it's like a necessary show-off between characters, but every time I'm like [pained noise]. And an elevator specifically, like trapped for a specific amount of time, and the way that he kind of, I don't know, hits on her... It feels slimy, I mean, in so many different ways. 

HZ: I do think Harry Hamlin plays Aaron really well. 

ALANNA BENNETT: He does, yeah, because he you get the charm and you get why people believe him, and then you you see, like, the underbelly of it. 

HZ: Yeah. He mentions killing Lilly with the ashtray, so this confirms that the ashtray was the real weapon, and it puts paid to theories from our listeners that the Oscar was the true weapon and it had been hidden in the garden for all this time. But if you thought that was bad, get ready for more bad! The roof! There's no Mac up there, it's Cassidy pointing a gun at Veronica. And remember, in episode 2 of the season, we went to the shooting range with all the Casablancases and Logan, suggesting that Cassidy is probably capable of shooting Veronica if he tries. Then he insinuates that Mac is dead. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. Ugh, just starts out rude. I know that we didn't think he was going to start out polite, but he just throws it out there. 

HZ: He makes Veronica throw over her bag and then tosses it aside, and waves Mac's phone around. And after Veronica explains the molestation, we get a flashback to a really, really dark classroom. Is it lit only by computer screens? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Like, glowing blue. 

HZ: Cassidy's learning French from a computer programme while Peter and Marcos speak very urgently to him, and the computer's recording it because it's part of the French learning programme. 

JOY: Ah. 

HZ: So that answers my question for how this recording of them discussing the molestation was obtained. I have logistics questions about it, but now is not the time, I suppose. We have a flashback to the bus driving along the coastal road with the limo behind, and a couple of unknown girls are giggling as Dick tells Duncan how much happier he is in the limo. 

DICK: Admit it, man. You're way happier in the limo than sitting on a bus getting eye daggers in the back from Meg.
DUNCAN: I'd have been happier if you hadn't had that chilli dog.

HZ: Cassidy's not happy in the limo, and he presses a button on his phone to blow up the bus. 

JOY: OK, cool. So this is also where we find out the connection between Hart, Cassidy, Curly Moran... 

HZ: Veronica's galaxy brain has just like, schwoomp: all these things together. 

JOY: Those mystery headlights that turned on while the PCHers were kicking the crap out of Curly Moran are identified as Cassidy's headlights. Then we see Cassidy kill Curly, finish him off with a little vehicular manslaughter. 

HZ: I'd say that's murder. It's not accidental. 

JOY: Murder in the first degree? 

HZ: While Curly is lying dead on Cassidy's car, he writes "VERONICA MARS" on his hand just for... Reasons? What the fuck? 

ALANNA BENNETT: To reroute the investigation, to point it in a direction? Couldn't they look at your handwriting? Couldn't they look at, I don't know... I have questions.

HZ: I call absolute bullshit on it because I thought, when Curly's body washed up with "VERONICA MARS" written on the palm, someone must have written it after he'd washed up on the beach. Because the writing was very clear and he'd been in the sea. Whereas this: it happens, then Cassidy drives to the cliff, breaks sharply so that Curly falls off the cliff into the sea. No fence at the cliff or anything, by the way. I live next to a cliff and there's a fucking fence, and I just don't think that writing will be unsmeared, unless he's got a magic pen, which I doubt. And then this connection:

VERONICA: Curly told Weevil that he knew who blew up the bus. He figured it out, didn't he? That's why you needed him gone. You know Cervando's been bragging about hustling Liam Fitzpatrick, so you convince the PCHers that Curly blew up the bus.

HZ: Why would Curly have told Weevil? Is it just Cars Guys talk? What? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what that is. 

HZ: There's no time. There's no time, Alanna. There's no time. 

VERONICA: You didn't hire me to catch Kendall cheating on your dad, did you? You knew what he was up to and you wanted to punish him for the way he treated you. You used me to do it.
BEAVER: And you were marvellous.

JOY: Wait. What is the Kendall tie-in? 

HZ: Well, that's like so early in the season I can barely remember, and it doesn't seem hugely relevant to this rather critical moment. 

JOY: Yeah. 

HZ: And also, why hasn't Cassidy just shot her already? Why is he letting her just explain stuff that he already knows? 

ALANNA BENNETT: You've gotta villain monologue. 

HZ: Except Veronica's doing the monologue. 

ALANNA BENNETT: You gotta let her do the monologue, I guess. 

HZ: And now, maybe the worst part. Do you remember how you felt when you first saw this episode? I'm struggling because it was 11 years ago, but for them to bring back Veronica's season 1 rape... 

ALANNA BENNETT: When I first saw it I was just so tied up in the emotions of it, and I think at that point I hadn't even realised how - and I was like in high school - I don't think I realised how bad the first season handled all of this stuff, so I didn't even realise it was a retcon, and so I was just like, "Oh, they're like finally answering the question," and now I'm like, "I don't know." I can't tell if I hate it or like it more, because the first season kind of throws her experience away, that having an answer now, I think I might think that it feels more more right to have an answer with an actual villain than to just be like, "Actually it was all maybe incest." So I think, like, it's so tricky because it is like the writers' room did something bad, and then seems to have realised that they did something bad and then decided to retcon it. So it's tied up in so many different things. 

HZ: I found it disrespectful when they were like, "Psych!! You've been unraped because it was just Duncan." 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

HZ: Plus, they knew Cassidy was the bus murderer from when they first started writing him, but they didn't think, "Oh, maybe he also raped Veronica" until a month after they'd finalised the script of - it was episode 21 of season one when it went into all of that. And Kyle Gallner didn't know a thing until this episode. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh, god. 

HZ: Also, the toxic masculinity and internalised homophobia of this show... Like, someone would rather be a rapist and a mass murderer than be insinuated to be not man enough, or to have any kind of sexual contact with another male person, even if non-consensual. 

JOY: Or he'd rather be a mass murderer than be a victim, like a public victim. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Which is interesting with centering Veronica being a sexual assault survivor, and this other person being so deeply ashamed of it that they do all of this. This is not to say that anybody would be excused for doing any of this to cover up being a sexual assault survivor, but there is so much stigma and stuff that there is an interesting part to that story as a motivator. But also there's just so much darkness in terms of how this show approaches this dark subject. 

HZ: Yeah, it's interesting in the plot this season where it's the university induction and Troy is accused of rape, and at the end of the episode you don't get any kind of help for the rape survivor to find the perpetrator. The point of the episode is to exonerate Troy and not to get justice for the person who went through it. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

HZ: That's the priority, though. Troy's the priority. There's more bad to come; this episode, you think, "Well, that's probably the bad thing." 

JOY: Yeah. “The worst is probably behind us now.” But no! 

VERONICA: That's what this was all about, isn't it? Keeping your secret? Well, it's over, it's out, I know.
BEAVER: Yeah, but I've a pretty good feeling that you won't be telling anybody.
VERONICA: I already did. I told my dad. He knows.
BEAVER: That's too bad. He's on Woody's plane with him, right now on his way back. See, because I have no more use for Woody. You heard about the bomb in Woody's car, right? Yeah, 'cause there's one on his plane. And all I have to do is dial. You wanna call your dad? Say goodbye before I press send? I'll give you a minute.
VERONICA: Cassidy. No, you're not serious.
BEAVER: Fifty-six, fifty-five, tick-tock.
[Veronica dials.]
VERONICA: Pick up. Please pick up. Daddy!

ALANNA BENNETT: Kristen Bell's performance in this scene, it's what makes the narrative feel tied together to me even though I know that there are so many holes and messy bits. She really sells it so much, like every little bit you feel her thrust back to. She thought that sexual assault story was wrapped up, and now she's freshly a victim again; her father is supposedly dead in that plane up there; she thinks Mac is dead. Her performance in this is so gutting. Every step of the way you're like, "Of course Veronica can't fight back in this moment, every bad thing possible just happened to her."

HZ: Cassidy presses send to a number, and there's a big flash in the sky behind Veronica's head. 

JOY: What are the fucking odds that the plane would be right there, right when he did it? 

HZ: If things had gone better with Mac then he might have missed it. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Right, like it never landed, it was right there. 

HZ: Yeah. He's evidently got like a pretty good track of the flight time to have got it just before it lands. 

JOY: Good lord. 

HZ: Is this the right time for them to make a callback to the whole favours situation in this show? 

CASSIDY: I know this might be a real bad time to ask for a favour. How would you feel, now that you've got nothing left to live for, about just rolling yourself off? I just, I really don't want your DNA all over my shirt.

HZ: But while he's evilling into her left ear, she's doing something on the phone on the other side, and she's forwarding the roof message to Logan, who's not at the party anymore; he's in his quiet room looking in the fridge. Cassidy's just in full villain mode now. He starts tasing Veronica. Then they bring up the whole pirates theme again, ah bloody hell! They're really into the nautical shit aren't they? 

BEAVER: You know what I was just thinking? We're Neptune Pirates, right? And this is like I'm making you walk the plank except instead of jabbing you with a sword, I'm sending three hundred thousand volts through you. 

JOY: I don't want Cassidy to be tasing Veronica, but I do think that if you are going to tase people all willy-nilly it's just responsible to know what it is that you're doing to people. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Right, for her to know what it feels like? 

JOY: Cassidy asserts that he feels like he could probably get Aaron Echolls convicted for Veronica's murder. I just... I'm having a hard time buying Cassidy, even though I guess it was just outlined for us, like all of the stuff that he has done to manoeuver things the way that he wants them to go. I know he's good at real estate and he's smart and stuff, but this just feels like an overreach. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. That villain monologue we got from Woody, I feel like we needed more of one from Cassidy because we did have, oh, like a season and a half of him as just this kid who was kind of goofing around, and overlooked, and then he pivots to this. I mean, obviously, they knew the whole time that this is who he was, but I just want a little bit more of the juicy motivator, and what is keeping him going, and what is clicking in his head of like, "I had to put a bomb on that plane." What's clicking in his head, of all of this stuff? In the moment I get a lot of it, but I just wanted a little bit more of the... We don't need the humanising moment for Woody, I think we need even more for Cassidy just to understand more as he's doing the mastermind stuff. 

HZ: Are you suggesting that they could have saved some time on the dream sequence about breakfast, and given it to Cassidy's psychological wounds? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Like, 30 seconds. 

HZ: I agree this deserved more complexity - but tough shit, because action instead. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I do feel like the actors really sell it here. I do feel that Kyle Gallner really leaned in here, like every bit of this scene he played villain really well, but also you can see the moments where I think, in the next bit, where what he's done is repeated back to him and you can see it on his face. That leads to the next big decision, and his end, basically. You can see that all on his face. That pivot seems really hard, to go from like "mastermind and in charge" to not just, "I'm fucked, so I have to make a big swing," but also, "OK, can I live with this?" 

HZ: Yeah. And also the season 1 big bad was Aaron, and he's a very unambiguous villain; there's no reason to have sympathy for him. Whereas Cassidy, he has been subjected to sexual abuse, and also just in his family he's being bullied the whole time. Which is not saying it's justification for murder... 

ALANNA BENNETT: No. 

HZ: ...but you do feel sorry for him. 

ALANNA BENNETT: You've always felt that Cassidy is a bummer. Now, it's been magnified about a thousand times. 

JOY: Yeah. 

HZ: But Logan interrupts! Cassidy fires at him and misses! A lot of bullets dinging off a bit of metal very near to a person. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Are there not cameras up there? This seems like a very fancy hotel, are there are not cameras and security guards watching this?

HZ: There's only one camera in the hotel, and Clarence Wiedman has put a piece of tape on it. So, sorry, that's the whole security system. Logan dives for cover, Cassidy fires again and narrowly misses but Veronica tackles him to the ground! 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes! 

HZ: But he pushes her off, he's tackled by Logan! They're a classic team by this point, Veronica and Logan are used to taking down villains. He loses the gun. He tases Logan a bit. Veronica fires into the sky and then points the gun at Cassidy, but Cassidy's basically forgotten in this moment - isn't this typical as well? Even at his own denouement, Cassidy is sidelined.

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. It's a Logan and Veronica moment, it's not a Cassidy moment.

VERONICA: Logan, move away from him.
LOGAN: Veronica, don't.
VERONICA: He killed my father!
LOGAN: Now give me the gun, Veronica.
VERONICA: He killed everyone on the bus! He raped me!
LOGAN: Look, you are not a killer, Veronica. Give me the gun. You're not a killer, Veronica. Give me the gun.

HZ: Is Cassidy so upset at the sight of tenderness, knowing that he will never have it? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, he can't achieve it. He could have had it with Mac. Ruined it. Ruined it. 

JOY: Very considerate of Logan to talk Veronica down from... 

ALANNA BENNETT: Some murder?

JOY: Yeah. Thank you, Logan. Good job. 

ALANNA BENNETT: It would be understandable, but also you don't want to see Veronica kill somebody. 

JOY: No, especially when she later finds out Keith is alive. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, that would be awkward. Oh, she could have gotten self-defence. He was gonna kill her. 

JOY: Charges aside, Logan saves Veronica from the rest of her life knowing that she snuffed out someone else's. 

HZ: Yeah. And also, Logan just spent several months in the legal system on murder charges, so he's probably like, "You're not going to like it." 

ALANNA BENNETT: "I cannot recommend."

JOY: Oh, man. 

HZ: While Logan and Veronica are hugging, Cassidy climbs to the edge of the roof.

LOGAN: Beaver, don't!
BEAVER: My name is Cassidy!
LOGAN: Cassidy, don't.
BEAVER: Why not? [Long silence.] That's what I thought.

ALANNA BENNETT: The acting in this whole roof sequence, when Cassidy asks, "Why not?" and Logan's face, he really wants to give him an answer, but after everything in his episode, he just can't. 

HZ: Just this terrible pause where neither of them can supply an answer, and he steps backwards off the roof. And there's this quiet sound of impact, but then car horns to confirm it. Veronica steps back into Logan's arms, but then remembers Mac. 

JOY: Oh my god. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Mac, no. 

HZ: They must very efficiently get a hotel employee to let them into the room. Which is surprising because earlier Veronica couldn't get the receptionist to tell her which room they were in. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Right. 

HZ: And what is happening? The mattress is bare. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, the mattress is bare. She's sitting with a sheet around her. I don't want to have ever seen the scene of Cassidy leaving, but it makes me curious. Where did he put her clothes? 

HZ: Where did he put the pillows? And why? 

ALANNA BENNETT: And why? The why is also a big thing. It wasn't just to stop her from following? Is that why? Because I don't think she would have known where to follow, if he took her phone she wouldn't know where to follow him. I don't know. 

HZ: She's wrapped in the shower curtain. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh, a shower curtain. 

HZ: Though this is a very posh hotel; would they have shower curtains? What we've seen of Duncan and Logan's bathrooms is that they have a walk-in. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. It's a heartbreaking shot of her coming in and seeing her friend just crumpled, and not understanding what's happening. Kind of the worst part is then Veronica has to explain everything, but she thought that she was just having her first love. She was having like a wonderful night with him, and there was a little bit of a hiccup, and she goes to take a shower and this is what she comes out to. 

HZ: And then it gets worse, though, because then she'll offscreen find out who that person is that she's upset over.

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. Like, what does Veronica start with? How do you phrase this in a way that is gentle to your friend who was with this person, of like, "This is who Cassidy really is, this is what just happened to him, also he killed my dad"? Just like... A lot of stuff. 

HZ: There's not a gentle way. But two people in this hotel are having a great time: that is Aaron and Kendall. They are finishing up sexpeopling on the couch. 

[Sex grunts]
AARON: Ohhhh. Have I told you how much I love freedom?
KENDALL: I like it too. And any more freedoming tonight, and I'm gonna need a wheelchair.

HZ: As Kendall goes off to shower, Aaron lights a huge cigar like a cliché. Then turns on the TV and channel hops until he finds a movie starring himself. 

JOY: Well, who's that handsome fellow? 

HZ: It's Harry Hamlin in the 1981 film King Of The Mountain, and he's riding a motorbike. 

JOY: I mean, he looks great. 

HZ: My last moment of joy of the show borrowing from Harry Hamlin's real filmography. And Aaron looks truly happy in what are to prove his final moments. 

JOY: Yeah, because Clarence Wiedman kills the shit out of him. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Very efficiently. 

JOY: Yeah, he's an efficient guy. 

HZ: No fucking around. Gets the job done. Blood splatters the onscreen Aaron. I did think this scene was kind of perfect. It's a perfect send off for Aaron Echolls. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, it is. It is. It's exactly encapsulating who this person is. 

HZ: And also Clarence Wiedman: for season one, he's scary and also fucks things up for people. This season we don't see much of him but he's kind of great in an illegal way. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Scary and hot. 

HZ: And then we go to the beach, and do you think they set this in Australia because that's where Teddy Dunn was born? Or just because it's far? And people are like, "Yeah, I know Australia's far, so Duncan's probably safe there"?

ALANNA BENNETT: That's interesting. 

HZ: They've characterised Australia with a Australian flag on a sandcastle that Duncan is building, and he is there with his baby - but the baby's in a baby carrier and is not participating, so he's just enjoying himself building a fucking sandcastle. Sandy Duncan! 

JOY: Sandy Duncan. PacSun Duncan. 

HZ: Well, he's changed, because he's wearing yellow. He's not in blue anymore. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Growth. 

HZ: I learned a Teddy Dunn fact. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Ooh. 

HZ: Teddy Dunn had a guest appearance on Gilmore Girls. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, he plays a shitty college kid. 

HZ: And he was supposed to become Rory's love interest in the fifth season, but because he was no longer available, because Veronica Mars got picked up, they recast him with Matt Czuchry as Logan. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh my god, that's wild. He was supposed to be Logan! 

HZ: And he was supposed to be Logan in this!

ALANNA BENNETT: We got the better deal. No offence to Teddy Dunn, I feel like we got the better deal of a Logan. 

HZ: Well, Teddy Dunn got the better deal, because now he's a lawyer. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh, he's a lawyer? 

HZ: As of this year, he's Assistant United States Attorney at the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Wow, Teddy. That's great. 

HZ: I also love his final line. 

DUNCAN: CW?
CLARENCE WIEDMAN: It's a done deal.

HZ: Apparently, the fans went wild to see this, because they were worried about the show not getting renewed as UPN and The WB had announced they were merging into one, The CW, and when they saw this, they were like, "The show's going to live for season three on The CW!"

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh, interesting. 

JOY: This was a renewal confirmation Easter egg? 

HZ: Yeah, it's nothing to do with the murder, it's just about Veronica Mars season three. 

JOY: Ha! 

HZ: Clarence hangs up and then neatly removes a piece of tape from the hotel security cameras. 

JOY: Oh my god. 

HZ: That's how I know there are no other ones, because otherwise they would have been able to see him coming in and going. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Also, when you're removing the tape from the security cameras, would they see your face? 

JOY: Ha, yes. 

HZ: He knows his angles, he's Clarence fucking Wiedman. 

ALANNA BENNETT: He does, he does know his angles. 

HZ: Duncan on the beach looks maybe relieved, but quite solemn, and then he's diverted by the baby being cute. 

ALANNA BENNETT: You gotta think for like a second about the fact that you just had somebody killed, and then you just got to hang out with your baby. 

HZ: Maybe he was expecting it to feel different? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

HZ: Maybe it was all for nothing. 

ALANNA BENNETT: No, there's no real resolution. Like, you can kill the guy who killed Lilly but it doesn't... 

JOY: ...bring Lilly back. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

HELEN’S DUNCAN SONG REPRISE:
You left us with one final Duncan,
Taking revenge from the beach.

HZ: At the airport, Wallace is checking the screens and he turns and Jackie's there. He doesn't seem that surprised. 

ALANNA BENNETT: It's like, "Oh, sure." I like that she dressed up for this, like, "I'm going to see Wallace, I'm going to put on my little lace shirt."

HZ: Now, I know that they portray Jackie as quite unpleasant early on in this season, but to not be at all concerned about her child would make her sociopathic. To just be like, "I can put this behind me, just by him not being on this coast."

ALANNA BENNETT: Right. It's clear they didn't plan this from the beginning because you would have seen more moments of contemplation of this character throughout, of like, "She has a secret." This show does not like to not play that somebody has a secret, so clearly she did not have one. 

HZ: I think they've done Jackie wrong this whole season, and Tessa Thompson deserved better. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, this is and the Aaron scene are very clearly like, "OK, we have to write these two characters out. Aaron because we don't want him in control of Logan's finances, we don't want to have to deal with him next season because he's just a bummer to us now." And I don't know what the politics and reasons were for Tessa leaving, if she was leaving for something or if it was just a creative writing out of the character, but it makes me sad anyway. There's more potential there, as we know from her breakout career. 

HZ: Right. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Could've done a lot with Tessa Thompson, show. 

HZ: Yeah. Especially when we've got these glimpses of Detective Jackie, and you're like, "She's got a real talent for this."

JOY: There could have been more of that. 

ALANNA BENNETT: College Jackie would've been amazing. College Jackie would have really floored it.

HZ: Oh my god. 

ALANNA BENNETT: That's spinoff material, come on. 

HZ: And it's plausible she would have ended up at Hearst College as well. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

JOY: Because of her 3.1 GPA. 

HZ: And also, Wallace would be the perfect boyfriend to tell if you had a two-year-old son that you needed to take care of. 

ALANNA BENNETT: He would be perfect. 

JOY: His eyes, he's like surprised, but he als - there is this really strong glimmer in his eyes in that moment of him wanting to dad out. He would be so amazing. 

HZ: He's a very responsible person. 

JOY: Yeah, he's all about responsibility. And then he could teach the kid to play basketball, it would be a whole thing. 

HZ: Aw! 

ALANNA BENNETT: Now I wish that this had happened. 

JOY: Surely there's a fanfic somewhere. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

HZ: I wonder what happens next, because presumably he's not going to carry on and go to Paris and just walk around on his own. 

ALANNA BENNETT: He'll just go and hang out in Paris for a night, and then wing back. 

HZ: Go and hang out in Brooklyn with Jackie. 

JOY: Right? Could do that. 

HZ: Back at the Mars home, you remember episode one of this season there was this pietà pose where giant long Logan was lying on tiny little Veronica? And now it's the inverse because Veronica is passed out on Logan's lap, and she looks very uncomfortable, which suggests either they did it to replicate the Michelangelo painting or she just was so exhausted she completely crashed. And another dream, but I will restore some of the points I deducted for the earlier dream sequence, because it's of Keith doing sock puppetry for four-year-old Veronica. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Aw, it's just pure. It's just nice. 

JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

HZ: Why does Veronica need an alarm clock when she's woken by bacon every time? So she wakes up and shouts, "Dad?" Runs into the kitchen, but it's Logan cooking. Has he ever cooked before? 

JOY: No! 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh yeah, that man does not know. He's burning that bacon. 

HZ: To wake her up! Because it's Logan, not Keith, and she just has to start grieving for Keith again. But not for long! 

JOY: Because here's Keith! Hooray! 

HZ: He's also woken by bacon. He didn't get blown up in the plane; didn't even know about the plane. Could have texted on his way. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Right, be like, "Hey, see you soon," right? 

HZ: What did you think about Logan letting himself out quietly as the Marses reunite? 

JOY: Classic Logan. 

HZ: Did you think he was like, "Veronica's only got room for one man she loves"?

ALANNA BENNETT: It felt like a sadness thing on first watch for me, and now I'm like, he just wanted to them to have a nice little moment together. He didn't want to get in the way, considering what happens next. 

HZ: I suppose he doesn't know yet that he has no dad, but he's already not on hugging terms with his dad. We see daylight for the first time in a while, and it's that lawyer, Lee, who helpfully called Woody from Fake Gia earlier, telling Kendall that she's not going to get any insurance because Cassidy's death had been ruled a suicide. 

JOY: What? The Phoenix Land Trust has fucking generated $8 million in profits? 

HZ: Because incorporation!

ALANNA BENNETT: It all comes back. 

JOY: And then this lawyer says, "Wow, betting against incorporation, ballsy move." It feels like a Richard Casablancas move to me, which, were Cassidy alive to hear this sort of like validation of him stepping into his father's shoes and doing a good job a little bit, and having one of his father's close associates give it the thumbs up or like a nod of approval, would have meant something to him. 

HZ: Either that or Richard has been communicating with him to do his business. 

JOY: Oh, you mean Richard was talking to Cassidy, telling him what to do? 

HZ: Yeah, yeah, using him as an instrument. 

JOY: Yeah, I don't remember. 

HZ: Do you think, given the whole toxic masc thing, and the fact that the family's quite bullying towards Cassidy, that if they had found out that he had raped someone and killed a lot of people, they would've been like, "Oh, mass murder? Not such a soft boi after all."

ALANNA BENNETT: Ugh, god.

JOY: Oh god, Helen. 

HZ: And that's the danger. The danger of this show. 

ALANNA BENNETT: That is curious. Like, if Cassidy hadn't died, what would Dick's reaction to all of this be? I'd be very curious, because as it is, it's just sad. It's just deep, complicated sadness. But what would it have become if this guy had lived and we had another Aaron Echolls-type trial? 

HZ: That's complicated, because both he and Veronica had chlamydia, so which side do you go against? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Hah, yeah, the mass murderer or the woman who had sex?

JOY: Uh-huh, uh-huh, tough call. 

HZ: When both accuser and defendant have chlamydia, hung jury, trial's gonna get thrown out. At Mars HQ, Veronica's studying a brochure and Keith's got a party shirt on. You know New York, you put on your party shirts before flying overnight to go there.

KEITH: I can feel it already. The little town blues are melting away. You all packed?
VERONICA: Vagabond shoes and all. And pepper spray, for if we run into that Trump character.

JOY: That line of dialogue casts a long shadow. 

ALANNA BENNETT: You could drop that joke into right now, just for DC instead. 

HZ: For reasons, the Marses are travelling separately to the airport. Reason one is so that Logan can turn up, pick up Veronica's luggage, make her swoon, and then on their way out he grabs her and they rotato-kiss just like the old days. 

JOY: Yes! 

ALANNA BENNETT: I love a rotato-kiss. 

HZ: They're interrupted by Kendall. And Kendall, Veronica, and Logan are all great at quips. What a joy to see these three quip titans exchange. 

KENDALL: Aw, young love. No, no, hold that position. Norman Rockwell wants to come in and paint you two. Did he pin on his pin or was he too shy?
VERONICA: Why are you here?
LOGAN: Yeah, I didn't know you could come out during daylight hours.
KENDALL: I have a business proposition for your father.
VERONICA: Okay, but I'm warning you, he doesn't carry much cash.

HZ: Do people keep briefcases in their homes just in case they have a dramatic briefcase reveal to perform? 

JOY: You never know when you've got to go convince somebody to blow off their child's graduation trip to New York with something intriguing that we don't get to see. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I'm wondering what would I have around my home to conceal something to do a dramatic reveal. I'm like, do I do my Target duffel bag? What do I whip something out of? 

HZ: A lunch pail, if you've got one? 

JOY: A beverage cooler? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Just a trash bag? 

JOY: Ooh, yes! 

ALANNA BENNETT: "Hey Keith, can you bring it in a trash bag?"

HZ: Or what about one of those silver domes like they have in old posh restaurants? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh yes! 

JOY: Now that's a reveal. 

HZ: Do you think that Kendall grieves for Cassidy, or feels any kind of ick from presumably discovering Aaron's body in a room covered in blood splatter? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Oh, yes. She walked immediately out from her shower, right? And saw a dead body, and then she learns that her stepson is dead. She's had a night, but she's just completely steady, as if nothing happened. 

HZ: Maybe she doesn't give a shit. 

ALANNA BENNETT: She doesn't care about either of them. 

HZ: Maybe she's keeping herself busy as a distraction. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, yeah. 

HZ: This is a strange note to end the season on, because it's something we don't know or care about. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yes. 

HZ: Because last season they had Felix's murder happening at the end, but with this, you're just like, "Yeah, I suppose I can raise my head off the pillow next season to see what this is about." At the airport, Veronica's at the gate and she frowns because there is no Keith. She also has no cell reception. Even though Keith had cell reception at this hunting lodge in a remote place, she does not have it. And also, there are no pay phones. In 2006, I think people did still use pay phones for precisely this. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Of their season cliffhangers, this was not, I believe, their strongest. This 18-year-old is in New York alone, and her dad will meet her later. 

HZ: She could meet up with Wallace there. 

JOY: Oh, yeah! 

ALANNA BENNETT: Is he still there? 

HZ: They could console each other, and he'd probably be into the same stadiums that Keith wanted to go to, so they can have the same arguments. 

ALANNA BENNETT: He'd take her to a Broadway show. 

JOY: Aw, yeah he would. 

HZ: He'd want to go full tourist, and I admire that. 

ALANNA BENNETT: They'd have fun. Now I want that to be what happens. 

HZ: And they spend some time with Jackie and her child, before saying goodbye forever. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah, they all bond with the baby. 

JOY: Yes! 

HZ: But that's it. And shall we pay one last visit of the season to our resident legal expert and Southern California marshmallow, Lo Dodds, for the LoDown? 

JOY: Indeed. 

THE LODOWN

HZ: Is there any good reason to arrest Weevil at graduation rather than at home just before, where it would have been a lot easier to pick through a crowd to find him? Or maybe on his way out? If you're with law enforcement, are there guidelines as to when it is optimal to arrest somebody, and is theatricality an important part of those guidelines? 

LO DODDS: I don't think that academy guidelines suggest that you arrest someone when it will be most dramatic and traumatising to them. I also think it is very poor choice for them to arrest a murderer in a school when that person may, you don't know, turn violent in a classroom full of kids and their families. Like, I think that would have been a very poor choice. That was just Lamb being Lamb. 

JOY: What about offering a reward for information, or tracking a person down or whatever, Mr Manning offers this reward for somebody to track down Woody. Can anybody do this? And how do you make it official? And is it legally binding? And if I wanted to offer a reward of $10,000 for the person who tweets the nicest compliment at Helen, how do I go about getting the word out? And what happens if I don't pay up? 

HZ: Are you saying, for someone to pay me a compliment, they would need to be paid $10,000? That is a very backhanded compliment, Jenny. 

JOY: No, no, I'm trying to inspire people... Whoa, this, this really went the wrong way. I'm trying to inspire people to really reach for the stars and also reach down deep within them to find the absolute best and most suited to you compliment. A compliment worthy of you, which is no easy task Helen. 

HZ: That's a different sort of scenario to the Mannings offering $20,000 for the person they think drove their daughter into the sea. 

JOY: Well... 

LO DODDS: But what you're doing is making an offer that can be legally binding, if it turns into a contract. So we've talked about police rewards before, when the police offers money for information leading to the arrest, and there are terms that are attached to that, like your tip or whatever has to pan out, has to lead to the arrest, and yes, maybe it can get cloudy if there's multiple people, but normally that's not really too much of an issue. When you offer somebody anything, there are three elements to a contract: it's offer, acceptance, and consideration. So you offered $10,000 to anyone who can provide information on the whereabouts of Woody Goodman, or who assists the police - because I'm thinking at this point there was an arrest warrant out for Woody, so Meg's dad is trying to assist with that by putting up his own money, "I'm offering it, here's the terms of my offer." Someone says, "OK, I accept your offer. I'm going to go out there and put a bunch of work into this." And then the consideration is whatever they've done to catch Woody. So let's say they go out, they do a bunch of work. Somebody does a bunch of work. They track down Woody. They alone help the police arrest Woody, and he tries to renege on the deal. They can sue him for breach of contract. 

HZ: In this case Keith is, you know, going after the money, he's clearly the person that detains Woody and enables a local sheriff to arrest Woody. I think he'd have a very good claim that if Mr Manning failed to pay up, he could sue him. 

HZ: So it's not a contract that they have to sign for it to be breached?

LO DODDS: There's only certain contracts have to be signed. In civil law, there's a rule about which contracts have to be signed and which are OK just not to be signed, they just have to have those three elements. 

HZ: And what if you accidentally found that person: is intent applicable here, as it is in so many of the laws you tell us about? But, if someone had tripped over Woody and he toppled into a police officer who had recognised that he was wanted, would the person who accidentally tripped him over get the reward? 

LO DODDS: Yes, in theory. It depends on what the Mannings' terms were. If it's just you are a civilian or you are some person that assists the police in helping to find this person, then yeah, I think you could make the case that if it weren't for you Woody would still be running around in some sort of wood lodge. 

HZ: Woody presumably would be charged with many offences. 

LO DODDS: He hadn't been arrested. So right now, at this point, there's a warrant out for his arrest. So he might not have been charged yet. I'm trying to think of the timeline here, because, honestly, I got really confused when Woody disappeared and Lamb was like, "Woody's on his private plane," and you're like, well, are you going after them? Is there a warrant? What's going on? Are you still just looking for him? Is he still just a person of interest? Have the police actually decided, like, "OK, Woody's our guy, he's the guy who blew up the bus"? That was really confusing. I'm just assuming that there was a warrant out for his arrest and he's evading the police on that warrant. 

JOY: If you're - excuse me - if I'm bounty hunting... 

LO DODDS: OK, as you do. 

JOY: Yes. Is it - and I just want to make sure I'm crossing all my T's and dotting all my I's - can I legally crawl through a bathroom window and then hide in a shower to surprise someone? Does having a warrant out for your arrest dissolve your right to not have someone break and enter into wherever you reside? And also, while I'm out there bounty hunting, can I just fucking tase somebody while I'm making a citizen's arrest or whatever? 

HZ: What if they throw a stag's head at you? Isn't that self-defence tasing? 

JOY: Mmm. 

LO DODDS: In theory, yeah, yeah. Funnily enough, it doesn't dissolve all of your rights, and bounty hunters have different rules in different states. So depending on where he was, and I am now failing to remember - was he in Nevada at that time? 

HZ: 20 minutes outside of Reno, so he could be on the border. 

LO DODDS: OK, so in California bounty hunters are not licenced. They're basically like everyday citizens. They have some extra hoops they go through to be bail bondsmen. There are notice requirements, they have to take some classes, but they're not really licenced. In other states, they're licenced, they have like a whole other level of enforcement. But in California, essentially you're making a citizen's arrest with a little bit more - well, arguably no additional authority, but you can say, "Hey, I'm a bail bondsman." So just like a citizen's arrest, you generally would have to say why you're arresting someone, and you have to tell them that they're being arrested, and you can use reasonable force. Whether or not breaking into Woody's hotel room or whatever that was, hiding in the shower, waiting for him to go the bathroom, and then tasing him as he tried to escape out the window, I'm sure they'll probably fine with it. But honestly, once Keith found out where Woody was, he probably just could have called the police and said, "Hey, he's in room eight." That seems like a more reasonable thing to do. 

JOY: But bad TV. 

HZ: Could Keith have whispered that while Woody was peeing and didn't fully know Keith was in the room? Would that have counted? If he was like, "I arrest thee" three times, but the rustling of the curtains obscured the statement?

LO DODDS: Yes. 

JOY: "I arrest thee" is the incantation you have to mutter. 

LO DODDS: That's all that has to happen. It's like Beetlejuice. 

HZ: What are the rules? Do you have to make physical contact with the person you are arresting and then say the "I'm arresting you" stuff? 

LO DODDS: You have to say, you have to tell them what you're doing. So it's like you don't want to be arrested yourself as the PI, or the bail bondsman, or the bounty hunter, or whatever you wanna call it. You do not want to be arrested yourself for kidnapping, or false imprisonment, or assault and battery, or any of those things. So if you want to protect yourself, you are going to say, "Stop, I'm arresting you, and I'm arresting you for this thing," which is supposed to have happened in your presence. This is another thing that is kind of an issue here, but not really because we're going on the theory that he's running after him as a bail bondsman, and not just like if you saw someone steal something in a store or you saw someone try to do a hit-and-run, like you could say, "Hey, I'm arresting you, I'm arresting you because you've just stolen that," or, "You've just hurt that person," and then at that point if that person tries to get away, you can use reasonable force to detain them. 

HZ: Now, I'm imagining that if Cassidy had stayed alive he would be charged with many crimes. 

LO DODDS: Oh my god. He's going to be charged with, yes, quite a lot of things: possession of incendiary devices, murder, attempted murder. Multiple, multiple counts of all of these things. Rape. 

HZ: Would he get extra crimes for trying to implicate Veronica or Weevil in Curly's death? 

LO DODDS: He's going to be charged with obstruction of justice, witness tampering, evidence tampering. 

HZ: Is his business scheme legal? I realise that's small beans. 

LO DODDS: It sounds like that was legal? From what I'm thinking, he just bet against incorporation. He just invested heavily on the fact that the vote would not go with his way. 

HZ: But then he sort of manipulated the vote by making Woody "kill incorporation or else". 

LO DODDS: Ah, yeah, well, then he's getting charged with extortion for blackmailing Woody into killing incorporation so that his REIT would make more money. He's in a lot of trouble, if he weren't already dead. 

HZ: Do you think Woody would not have been convicted of child abuse because two of his victims have been killed by Cassidy? And had Cassidy been alive, he would've not testified? 

LO DODDS: Yeah, I don't know how you'd prove it. I mean, if there's no one to testify... And also, I'm not sure on what the statute of limitations would be, because I know that was a problem, a real problem with, you know, the church cases. And, yeah, there's no one to prove it. So I'm not sure how easy that would be for a prosecutor. Like, I'm trying to think... They had the tapes, but you'd have to figure out how to verify those tapes, how to verify the people on them who were speaking, who they were. 

HZ: The tape's been tampered with as well. The Marses figured that out. 

LO DODDS: Right, yeah. 

HZ: So that would not look good evidence. 

LO DODDS: But also you've got to think, like, Woody has done it to these three, he's probably done it to others, so the prosecutors might try to build a case with saying, "Hey, we know this happened. If this happened to you, come forward." Certain violations of the penal code related to child molestation don't have a statute of limitations. So possibly if they had kids from the other Little League team, like the guy that Veronica didn't find, and they came forward and were willing to testify against Woody if he hadn't been blown up, they might have been able to build a case against him. 

HZ: If you were to order Clarence Wiedman to do a murder for you, so you are not actually performing the murder yourself, would you still be charged with murder? Or conspiracy to murder? And would Clarence be charged with a lesser offence because he was hired to do it, so his intent was just to do his job?

LO DODDS: Clarence is not going to get a lesser sentence because he was a hitman. Whether or not you commit the murder because you are gratified from it or whether it is because you are getting paid, you are still committing premeditated murder. And Duncan would be charged with conspiracy to commit murder for ordering the hit. 

HZ: What's a conspiracy to commit murder sentence like? 

LO DODDS: It's probably the same as murder. 

HZ: Oh, wow. 

LO DODDS: If you were in the conspiracy, right? This is the whole thing with Charles Manson. That whole thing was like, you don't pull the trigger, but you create this entire group that ended up killing all these people. So, yes, I think Clarence and Duncan would be going away for a while. You'll notice that Aaron Echolls sort of confesses to the murder of Lilly Kane to Veronica in the elevator. Just because he confesses, you can't try Aaron again for the same crime because he's been acquitted and double jeopardy attaches. 

HZ: Can you, if new evidence comes to light? 

LO DODDS: No. He's been acquitted. There are certain circumstances where he could be tried again, and so if people really wanted to go after him... In this case, I don't think they would because, again, it's Veronica's testimony, which apparently isn't worth anything. And there's presumably no recording in the elevator, so it would be just her word against his. There are certain things you can be tried for again. If, say, you commit a state crime that's also a federal crime, you could be tried in state and federal court, and you could also be tried in civil court. So if you got acquitted... There's a famous case about that, where someone was acquitted in a criminal case and they went to civil court and were found liable for damages in that case. 

HZ: Not that the Kane family really needs the money. 

LO DODDS: I think he would still sue, because the finding of liability in the civil case is probably something that would at least give you some semblance of justice if you couldn't get criminal liability. 

JOY: I know I'm always harping on tasers, and please forgive me, but, question, if you accidentally kill someone because maybe they have a pacemaker and you tase them and there's a bad reaction, do you get charged with manslaughter? It's a whoopsy-daisy?

LO DODDS: Yeah. 

JOY: OK. 

LO DODDS: You do, you get charged with whoopsy-daisy involuntary manslaughter, and you get charged with that if you're committing a crime and you accidentally kill someone, or you are doing something lawful that normally wouldn't result in death, but you accidentally kill someone. Involuntary manslaughter is what you would get charged with. But, fun fact, they've actually tested that on pigs, and your taser should not interfere with your pacemaker. 

HZ: Were the pigs like, "Yeah, I was fine with it?"

LO DODDS: Ha.

HZ: What did you all make of this episode? 

ALANNA BENNETT: So dramatic. So much going on. 

JOY: So intense. 

ALANNA BENNETT: It's so intense. It's so dark. I was genuinely scared for a lot of this episode. Even even watching it again, you're just like, "Oh my god, this guy is scary, what's going to happen?"

HZ: I think this show is very good at being really frightening when it wants to be. 

JOY: Yeah. 

HZ: Also, they got out of the way the bullshit of Aaron's trial last episode, so this episode could just be all full of emotionally devastating stuff. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. From the very beginning, like literally from the beginning of Veronica being like, "There's no goodness in the world, all the bad people win," to, "My dad is dead, and I found out I was actually raped after all."

HZ: The amount of trauma this 18-year-old has suffered... 

ALANNA BENNETT: Just give her a break. 

HZ: Were there any lines that you particularly enjoyed? 

ALANNA BENNETT: My favourite was the zoom-in, and the classic, "I know what happened." That was a good one. As always, every time that happens, I'm like, "Ah, she knows what happened, we're going to get it, it's time." 

JOY: I loved when Aaron Echolls and Kendall Casablancas were in a post-coital haze... 

HZ: Ugh. 

JOY: ...and Aaron was like, "Mmm, I love freedom," and Kendall says, "Any more freedom-ing tonight and I'm gonna need a wheelchair." Just the sexpeopliest line that's maybe ever been said on the show at this point. 

HZ: I just don't want to think of Aaron Echolls inflicting wreckage upon her physique, in that way.  

JOY: Pelvic wreckage. 

ALANNA BENNETT: No. 

JOY: Sorry. Sorry, everyone. What do you like, Helen? 

HZ: What a choice, Jenny. I really enjoyed the lines from all three of Kendall, Veronica, and Logan in their little hallway scene. Whom shall I choose? OK, I'll go for Kendall saying, "I have a business proposition for your father," and Veronica says, "But I'm warning you, he doesn't carry much cash." Way harsh, but the timing, very nice. And then, Alanna, how do you rate this episode out of five? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Five out of five of Mac's comic sans phones is what I would give it. 

JOY: Hell yes. 

HZ: Let's hope five of those phones were not manufactured. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. So I give it a five out of five specifically for the acting. It is what you show people when you're like, "No, Kristen Bell's amazing."

HZ: Emmy reel crying. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Hah, yeah, that was peak crying. It is one of my favourite episodes of the show, just because of the emotions it takes you to. The way, problematic though it may be, it brings the first two seasons together. 

JOY: I'm so on board with this episode, and the drama, and all of this stuff, and so many things getting tied up, and, you know, a couple of doors left open. Very exciting, and great acting, and phew, lots to consider. But I'm going to deduct like 0.05 points just for being generally disturbed by the horrific content of the plot, in a lot of spots. But happy to give it 4.95 Clemmons's passwords taped up under the bottom of his stapler. 

HZ: Aw. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Clemmons! 

HZ: It was nice that they gave us a sort of farewell tour of a lot of people. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Yeah. 

JOY: Yeah, nice roundup. 

HZ: Because I found the beginning a bit slow, with the graduation and stuff, but we did get to see Alicia, we got to see Lilly, got to see Corny, Vinnie. 

ALANNA BENNETT: I missed some Alyson Hannigan, like at graduation making snarky comments, or trying to get her dad's money again. 

HZ: She is Logan's only relative now. 

ALANNA BENNETT: That would have hit the spot. 

HZ: I'm going to deduct some points for dream sequence, and Underpants Woody, but I'll give it 4.7 flying stag's heads. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Ooh. 

HZ: A tour de force. 

JOY: A tour de force. That is this episode of Veronica Mars investigated. 

ALANNA BENNETT: Case closed. 

---

JOY: That was Veronica Mars Investigations season 2 episode 22: Not Pictured. 

HZ: Next episode will be Season 2 Investigations Investigations, so if you have any lingering questions about season two, any cases that are unclosed, then tell us about them via VMIpod.com/investigations. 

JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod. 

HZ: The website, where the show hangs out on the beach with Sandcastle Duncan, is vmipod.com.

JOY: Alanna Bennett, where can the beautiful people listening to this podcast find more you?

ALANNA BENNETT: They can find more me @AlannaBennett on Twitter. I have a limited series podcast about a simple favour called A Simple Pod. And then there is also a short film that I am co-writing called Not Far From Here that is on Kickstarter. Right now we have approximately $15,000 more dollars to raise in the next week by next Friday. So go to NotFarFromHereFilm.com if you would like to help with that. 

JOY: I am Jenny Owen Youngs and you can listen to me talk at length about another petite blonde protagonist over on the podcast, Buffering the Vampire Slayer. You can also hear the gems that I make and learn more about the musical side of my life at :jennyowenyoungs.com. 

HZ: I am Helen Zaltzman and you can hear my other podcasts Answer Me This and the Allusionist on the pod apps. 

JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Ian Steadman for the transcript. 

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's your daddy? 

HZ: Who's your daddy? 

ALANNA BENNETT: Who is my daddy? 

JOY: Did he narrowly avoid an exploding plane? 

ALANNA BENNETT: I would have to ask some people.

HZ: Is he building a sandcastle? 

ALANNA BENNETT: I'm sure he built many sandcastles.