VMI 3.01 Welcome Wagon transcript
Listen to this episode at VMIpod.com/3-01
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning rape, murder and violence.
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
College! Veronica’s outsmarting her professors, driving a new car, and getting drunk. Conveniently, Logan, Wallace, Mac and Dick are also all at Hearst College.
Along with new roommates/friends: bland white boy Piz, who hires Veronica to find all his worldly possessions, which have been stolen by a fake welcome committee;
And Parker, who is punished for being a popular and fun-loving sexperson character by becoming the latest victim of the campus rapist who struck in season 2, and is still attacking women and shaving their heads.
HZ: Why bring back this back up and not Keithlicia?
JOY: Right??Keith, meanwhile, is picking up Cormac Fitzpatrick from prison and taking him to a desert safe house to reunite with Kendall Casablancas.
Being a Fitzpatrick, though, he’s a violent jerk, so, she’s murdered, and Keith might be. TBD.
JOY: Stapling myself to the floor, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And starting off this semester with a little bit of ridiculous fun, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 3 Episode 1: Welcome Wagon.
HZ: It's Veronica's first day of college, and she walks under a banner for a Take Back The Night rally, which reminded me of that Justin Timberlake song from 2013, ‘Take Back The Night’, where apparently he did not know that Take Back The Night was already a thing of some decades' standing.
JOY: Dude, how? There's no fucking way that that song made it through all of the cowriters, and A&R at the label, and the fucking marketing team, and nobody knew what Take Back The Night was. There is not a possibility upon this earth that was real.
HZ: Well, it is possible, if all of those people are non-feminist men.
JOY: Even non-feminist men have heard of Take Back The Night, and know what it is. You're telling me Jessica Biel has never heard of Take Back the Night?
HZ: Yeah, but I don't know whether he would pay attention if she was like, "Er, Justin, er, Just-... Oh, never mind, dear." And Veronica's first, and it turns out only, class of the day is Intro To Criminology, and there's a professor considered hot. Dr Landry.
DR. LANDRY: Welcome to college, where it's okay to skip class. Just not mine.
CATHY: Skip class? I'm gonna staple myself to the floor.
VERONICA: Rrrrrrrrrr.
JOY: Is this guy hot? I feel like I know when guys are hot, and I'm just kind of like, hmm.
HZ: I suppose by professor standards, perhaps he would be, in an unremarkable field? He's played by Patrick Fabian, who also played a professor in Saved By The Bell: The College Years. So he's got tenure in TV show professorship.
JOY: Helen, what did you think of these enormous red and yellow painted panels that they added to the regular windows to make it feel more noir-ish?
HZ: Well, I was so impressed that they had one wall that was almost entirely window and it was still incredibly dark. Later, there is a shot where the professor is perfectly framed in the middle of the light diffused through the red, yellow, and white window panes. But yes, it's absurd. Although there is a meaningful window moment later.
JOY: Mmm. You know what else is absurd? Lucky's identical twin, Timothy Foyle, happens to be the TA of this class.
HZ: Yes, isn't that strange? I know Rob Thomas loves to recast people that he's cast in other things, but Lucky died two episodes ago in quite a high profile way. It's too soon. And also the wig. That is the worst wig so far on this show.
JOY: And that is some stiff competition.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: So this wig is actually pretty stiff, and noses out every other wretched hairpiece we've seen up to this point.
HZ: Yeah. And this professor's a fun, cool professor. Right?
JOY: I feel like this does not... This has not aged well. Or, has not aged convincingly.
HZ: Well, the last time there was a fun teacher in this show, he was doing statutory rape, so...
JOY: There has been so much rape that I actually couldn't remember what you were referring to for a minute there, Helen, but yes, OK, got it. Adam Scott. Beware the fun teacher on this show.
HZ: Well, Professor Landry's fun is one of those boxed murder mystery games. Do you go in for these? I always feel zero motivation to do it.
JOY: Life is murder mystery enough. You know, real life. Why do I want to add more, except maybe to get good practise? Veronica does this thing where she just like Googles, or Planet Zowies, the answer, the solution to this thing, and then she kind of acts like, "Ah, you've been had! I've owned you, etc." I don't know, I just don't feel like she outsmarted anybody. It does feel a lot more like she cheated than anything else.
HZ: What are you going to learn about criminology from those things? They’re not exactly the most realistic.
JOY: Yeah, it's kind of goofy. She definitely hasn't earned, like, gloating rights by using her computer.
HZ: No. Lucky the bewigged TA was the previous record holder, having solved it in 16 minutes. Veronica doesn't even bother talking to any of the suspects or any of the people involved. She just sits there reading Popular Photography & Imaging Magazine.
JOY: Yes, yes; so many long lenses.
HZ: And solves it in six minutes.
DR. LANDRY: So, how did you figure it out?
VERONICA: Murder on the Riverboat Queen was a murder mystery in a box game made by Wigwam Toys in the late 1980s. Fans of the games set up message boards on line that gave away details. I just ignored all the spoiler alerts, which I know is kind of douchebaggy, but -
TIMOTHY: The game is set in the 1890s. You can't use the internet.
VERONICA: Was that a rule?
DR. LANDRY: It wasn't a rule.
TIMOTHY: And there are two possible killers in the box. I mean, you just took a fifty-fifty stab, didn't you?
VERONICA: Sorry, no. The other killer is Countess McGee. Dr. Landry just asked me who I was going to send away for the rest of “his” natural born days. That kind of sold me on blind Rutherford. There is one thing I can't figure out though: what did you do for the extra ten minutes.
HZ: But he's very condescending to her, so we now that, under the wig, he's a real jerk. So I was a bit satisfied to see Veronica make this bad man feel small.
JOY: Yeah. It feels like there are actually no winners in the scene?
HZ: True.
JOY: Everybody kind of sucks. Let's go to the next scene, except the next scene is the new credits, and you're like, "Get me out of here."
HZ: With the slow theme tune that you and Charlie Harding enjoyed so much.
JOY: Oh no.
JOY: Bleep, bloop, bleep, blop, blip, blip, bloop, bloop...
HZ: We should have slowed down our theme.
JOY: Yeah. Boo.
HZ: And given us a new sepia-toned logo.
JOY: Oh, no thank you. And then Veronica's doing a Clint Eastwood impression?
VERONICA: You a bounty hunter, boy?
LOGAN: I really shouldn't have pushed for the Clint Eastwood marathon. Now I've ruined you. I didn't think it was possible to make you more butch.
JOY: What do you think about that?
HZ: Well, these people don't have that much imagination.
JOY: Yeah, they don't have a very broad spectrum in mind, I suppose.
HZ: She's got a lot of the toxic masculinity running through her veins.
JOY: Mmm.
HZ: Logan's hair is different. It's got more volume.
JOY: Yeah. It's like sort of like longer and floofier, but also still wet-looking at the same time. I wouldn't say it's an improvement, but we'll see how it develops.
HZ: He's searching for his hair self. It takes us a long time, some of us. Necklace is the same, palette of browns is the same. He has been surprised to see Dick Casablancas on campus because he thought Dick was staying with his dad in the Caymans, and Veronica mentions that Logan and Dick struggled to get into Hearst - which surprised me, because I would have thought Logan seems quite academically capable. He has quite a sharp brain, and also he seems like he'd be good at exams: lazy during the semester, but then pull it out at the end.
JOY: Right. Do you think that being accused of murder, or like having a murder trial, is any kind of like...
HZ: It'd be distracting in your final year, for sure. But Dick got in because his mum remarried Schwarzenegger's business manager.
JOY: I... Yeah. I just...
HZ: Amazing.
JOY: I... OK.
HZ: Do you remember the fake Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo in the season finale of season one? Where they're like having a party, and you can hear this Arnie voice going, "The crab puffs are fantastic."
JOY: Ha!
HZ: Logan makes a jokey reference to Cassidy's death.
LOGAN: People are saying Dick's a mess, you know, on account of his brother Greg Louganising off of my roof.
HZ: Which seems inappropriate - but also just unlikely that he would refer to Greg Louganis. His Olympic career was, like, 1976 to 1988? Logan was born in 1988. And I grew up with a lot of sport in the house and a lot of sporting references, and I still probably wouldn't refer to the athletic achievements of someone who had done those achievements before I was alive. I think if Logan knew about him, it'd probably be through things he had done during Logan's lifetime, right? Like advertising deals, and other TV appearances. Or dog agility, Greg Louganis does dog agility now.
JOY: Dog agility - like, trains dogs?
HZ: I think competes.
JOY: Wild. I mean, I think we just have to throw this in the bin with Logan is a strange, anachronistic young man who is really interested in...
HZ: The past?
JOY: ...unlikely things, yes.
HZ: But I think making a playful reference to someone falling to their death, particularly in the circumstances in which Cassidy did that, seems like not the move.
JOY: No.
HZ: At Mars HQ, Keith is cleaning his gun.
JOY: I was going to ask if that's what's going on. I've never cleaned a gun myself, Helen, so I'm not totally sure what it looks like, but it is all a part, so I guess why else would you do that? Unless you were practicing for a speed assembly kind of thing?
HZ: Oh, well that's possible. Vinnie shows up with the usual physical panache of his performance. Always a joy.
JOY: Love to see Vinnie. His hair has gotten more voluminous as well.
HZ: Like a lovely mattress up there.
KEITH: Vinnie. What brings you to the good part of the wrong side of the tracks?
VINNIE: Dollar signs, mi amigo! The almighty buck. I got a case that requires a little double detective duty. Lucky Pierre owns a jewellery store and suspects that he's got an embezzler. What do you say? Huh? Wonder Twin powers activate!
KEITH: Can't, Vinnie. Got my own case and it's taking me out of town.
VINNIE: A hit? I understand there's good money in that. How does one break in? Is there a union of some kind? Put in a good word for me, would ya?
JOY: Then he futzes with Keith's briefcase and even I, decidedly not Keith Marsian in my investigative acuity, I'm like, "Dude, the guy who is always putting bugged items in people's bags is fucking with your bag, why are you not checking that before you leave the house, or the office, whatever?" But he doesn't, and it comes back.
HZ: That was very surprising, given that he was looking in Keith's bag by almost putting his head in it. It wasn't exactly unobtrusive or subtle. He could have just slipped the pen in with Keith's bag on the desk rather than going, "I'm interested in a briefcase," shoves his head in it.
JOY: Yeah, he investigates that briefcase the way that my dog investigates things, where it's like, "How much of my body can I actually get inside this while I'm huffing it deeply?"
HZ: Actually, that does make sense for Vinnie.
JOY: Yeah, OK, retracted.
HZ: I think it's quite generous, though, that Vinnie wants to share cases with Keith.
JOY: I would rather watch Keith and Vinnie teamed up than either one of them alone.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: I think they've got like a strong odd couple kind of chemistry.
HZ: Well, Vinnie, whilst being a bonehead, seems to be quite good at his job.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Gets it done. At the Mars home, Veronica has received, from the hotel in New York that she stayed in during the season break, the flash card containing the Mars vacation pics, which evidently she left there. And that's why we get to see them rather than them being browsed over in the season break.
JOY: Yep.
HZ: Massive envelope for a flash card. Were they bigger in 2006? Like, A5?
VERONICA: A maid from our hotel in New York found the flashcard with all our vacation pictures on it. Look!
KEITH: Hot dog!
VERONICA: Hot dog?
KEITH: It's an expression of excitement and enthusiasm. Joe and Frank Hardy and I used to say "Hot dog" all the time while we were waiting for the car hop to bring up our malteds at the drive-in.
HZ: Joe and Frank Hardy, the Hardy Boys. Other the famous teen detectives of the past.
JOY: Oh yeah.
HZ: We also get a recap of their New York trip, to which Keith showed up three days late, but they still got to go to Spamalot. They still went to the Magnolia Bakery, and the Empire State Building. Or the Chrysler Building. Some dispute.
JOY: None of those are the places that I remember any Marses listing as their intended destinations in New York.
HZ: What happened to MoMA, or the Yankee Stadium?
JOY: Yeah. Or maybe Madison Square Garden.
HZ: Maybe they did those separately.
JOY: Maybe. Maybe.
HZ: Keith pretends he's off for a few days after a bail jumper, so Veronica doesn't know about the Kendall case.
JOY: Right, right, right. Then, saints be praised, Helen! Let the heavenly clouds part and the godlight shine down upon a sight for sore eyes: it's Wallace in a beanbag chair.
HZ: Aw.
JOY: Yeah! Yes.
HZ: That wasn't the godlight, Jenny, that was the light coming through the weird glass brick things that go into the corridors in this dorm.
JOY: Sure, sure, and why not?
HZ: It was nice to see Wallace at leisure, just on his beanbag chair, playing mini basketball.
JOY: Relaxing, for once.
HZ: Very rarely happens. Been such a busy Wallace hitherto. And his roommate arrives. Stosh Piznarski, named after Mark Piznarski, the writer of the pilot. But call him Piz, Jenny. Call him Piz.
JOY: I don't want to call anybody Piz...
HZ: Tough.
JOY: ...and I wish they would stop asking me.
HZ: No, it's essential. And apparently they created Piz in order to give Veronica a male friend who's not upper class. The Wallace erasure!
JOY: What the hell?
HZ: Maybe they mean a white boy that's not that upper class -
JOY: Great.
HZ: Because Weevil, also, not upper class.
JOY: Yeah, I don't know if I would necessarily call them friends, exactly. They're something.
HZ: Do you have friends where you think, "I would trust them with my life, but nothing less than that"? That's the kind of friends they are, Weevil and Veronica.
JOY: Well, do you think there's a hollowness in their friendship? Like, below the trust-them-with-my-life line? Like, there's not enough sort of on the lower rungs of their relationship?
HZ: Yes. I have friends who I would trust with my life, but I cannot trust them to, like, turn up on time or remember things that matter to me.
JOY: Right. Right, right, right, right, right.
HZ: Piz and Wallace seem to get on pretty well straight away, so that's a relief.
PIZ: Sorry, there must be some mistake. On my roommate request form, I specifically said I didn't want a roommate who was...uh, you know.
WALLACE: What?
PIZ: Better looking than me. I made it very clear.
WALLACE: Sorry, man. The fairest of them all right here. Took this side. I hope that's cool.
PIZ: Yeah, no sweat. I rarely wear clothes indoors. I hope that's cool.
JOY: I love this chemistry. Absolutely.
HZ: I don't remember liking Piz very much on my first watch of this season back in 2009, but now we've seen Chris Lowell in GLOW...
JOY: It changes things.
HZ: It does.
JOY: I also love seeing Wallace have a friend besides Veronica.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: Say what you will about their shared activity later in this episode, but at least Wallace has someone he's connecting to who isn't just asking him for favours.
HZ: Well, I enjoyed it when Wallace and Logan had that egg challenge they were working on.
JOY: That is true. That was the start of something.
HZ: I hope so. Wallace offers to help Piz get all of his stuff out of his very dirty green car - but it's empty! What the fuck? Good thing Wallace knows someone who can get it back.
JOY: Ah, how convenient. If you're going to get all your stuff robbed on the first day of college, definitely you want to be roommates with Wallace.
HZ: Veronica turns up and Piz seems very uncomfortable because, of course, he's a bland white boy, he has to fall in love with Veronica instantly.
JOY: Of course, of course. He really just does not know what to do with his hands. At all.
HZ: Because, Jenny, the thieves have stolen his guitar, and that's what his hands would usually be doing, strumming that thing.
JOY: So here's something: Piz has lost a 1967 Gretsch Astro-Jet. I don't know if I've ever heard anybody call it the "holy grail of guitars". I don't know if I've ever even heard of this guitar outside of this show.
HZ: Gretsches are my favourite guitars, as someone who has to hang around a lot, passively, in guitar shops, just looking at the ones I find aesthetically pleasing.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: But this is the ugliest fucking Gretsch I've ever seen.
JOY: It's the worst Gretsch. There might be like one worse that I could think of that I won't make you look at right now.
HZ: Thanks.
JOY: But somebody also says later in the episode that you couldn't find one under $5,000, and that was back in 2005-6, and I want you to know that I found one for significantly less than that at a moment's Google. So I feel like they're really just hyping this guitar up.
HZ: I saw them listed at about $3,000, currently. And guitars usually appreciate in value, don't they? So...
JOY: Generally, yes. Do you think Rob Thomas needed to sell a 1967 Gretsch Astro-Jet about, like, a week after this episode was going to come out, so he just really fucking went for it?
HZ: Or he was like, "It'd be great if the the props department bought me my dream guitar."
JOY: Yo, Piz, we discover that Piz didn't lock his car doors, and Veronica says, "Where are you from? Brigadoon?"
HZ: Yes!
JOY: Brigadoon! She's been watching Clint Eastwood marathons, and also, of course, Logan's favourite movie, Brigadoon, over the summer.
HZ: They've been dating for, I guess, a few months at this point, so of course he's going to get the Brigadoon out.
JOY: Naturally, naturally.
HZ: Loved it. Love to see the Brigadoon reference.
JOY: Mmm.
HZ: He's not from Brigadoon. He's from Beaverton, just outside Portland, "Where there's a minivan in every driveway and a chicken in every pot." Is there?
JOY: A chicken in every pot...
HZ: Beaverton locals, can you confirm?
JOY: Do let us know about the chickens in your pots and the minivans in your driveways.
HZ: Sweet, innocent Piz had not locked his car because a girl from the Welcome Wagon team said she would watch it for him.
JOY: Yes, she did, but apparently she didn't because everything's gone.
HZ: Wallace points out that in the dirt on the car, someone has written the word "Unwashed", and there's a rather distinctive arrow down from the H and another one up from the D.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: It's a very exacting piece of work that they've managed to do in - what, the ten minutes? Less? - that he was gone?
JOY: Yeah, yes.
HZ: Plus, clear the car. Everyone is so down on Hearst College locally, do you think Piz would have really gone out of state for it?
JOY: Great question. But people do all kinds of shit.
HZ: It's true.
JOY: Sometimes people just want to get out of where they are, or to a specific place, and they don't really care as much what the specifics are, you know? Like, of how they get there.
HZ: Isn't it a lot more expensive to go out of state, though?
JOY: That's true. Well, it's definitely... Like, state schools in general are cheaper, but they're even cheaper if you are from that state.
HZ: Right. Right. I'll stop thinking about it. I'll just accept it.
JOY: Yes, just accept it, Helen.
HZ: So off they go to talk to Piz's RA, who is called Moe.
JOY: Yeah. Moe has been watching some Battlestar Galactica. We know this because he's saying "frack", he tells us that he is trying not to swear so much, but it's like, if you're using a word that is a swear in the context where it originates, then are you really not swearing?
HZ: No. And also, words become a swear if you use them in that way. Like, euphemisms become swears, Moe. That's not how language works.
JOY: Yeah. Why don't you go Moe yourself?
HZ: He's probably not a linguistics student.
JOY: Probably not.
HZ: But he says, "There was no Welcome Wagon committee," and he offers them some oolong, which is nice of him.
JOY: And then - man, I feel like this episode hops from thing to thing faster than most.
HZ: There's more big geographical spread as well, compared to usual.
JOY: We scoot from the quick RA scene to Keith picking up Cormac Fitzpatrick from prison.
HZ: Yeah, he's got a real sense of urgency doing it as well. I suppose there's a long drive ahead of them. And Cormac Fitzpatrick is the one that Kendall was in love with, and she went to prison to spare a Fitzpatrick from the three strikes rule.
JOY: Really impossible to imagine Charisma Carpenter doing time, you know?
HZ: She's a good actor. I'm sure that she could sell it if cast.
JOY: Yes. Yes.
HZ: At college, the Take Back The Night rally is happening, there are a few dozen people there. We don't see Alia Shawkat's character. I think they had planned to bring her back, but couldn't book her or something.
JOY: Alas.
HZ: But someone called Nancy has a megaphone, and she has very short hair, and I feel like the show did her wrong in the way that they did the covering up her own hair.
JOY: Dude, much like Alia Shawkat before her, like, this shaved head cap thing they have going on is not good.
HZ: No. This one looks like they have pasted on some hair, a bit like they ran out of hair of the right colour and then around the forehead they put on some completely different hair.
JOY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It's bad. And man, this whole scene, Helen, this whole business. This woman has been raped and had her head shaved, right? And she's talking about her organisation, the demands that they're trying to push her from the administration to help prevent this from happening to other women. Women are cheering, and men are booing. I know it was 15 years ago, but I just have a hard time suspending my disbelief that dudes would be out publicly booing at the idea that women should not get raped.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: It feels a little extreme. And then, insult to injury, Veronica fucking pulls up behind Mac and is like, "Women! Bitch, bitch, bitch." What are we doing here? What are we doing?
HZ: I couldn't work it out, because I assumed that they got Veronica to say that as a kind of satire of the male objections to this rally, and Mac also makes a joke about, "Why can't they just look pretty and get their MRS degrees?" As in, just find a husband at college.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: But then Mac also then complains about her roommate who has sex.
JOY: Oh my god. Gross. How dare she?
VERONICA: How's tricks, kid?
MAC: Shrink asked if a lifetime without a libido was such a bad thing. I think she's given up on me.
VERONICA: You just need more time.
MAC: Irony of all ironies? Frozen from the waist down's new roommate? She's a one woman red light district.
VERONICA: Really?
MAC: Every night since orientation she's been with some new dude. The phone rings every ten minutes. If college is a boy buffet, she's got two full plates and a purse full of boys wrapped in napkins.
VERONICA: Yet the void won't fill.
HZ: But also, haven't they just got there?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Mac's saying every night since orientation has been a new dude... It just seems like a lot of the people who are freshmen have been at this college for ages, but Veronica only just got there.
JOY: Yes, it is weird.
HZ: If you live in dorms, do you have more time to get settled and bang people?
JOY: Well, yeah, if you're living in dorms, you're there every night. If Veronica has a class schedule where she only has, like, classes on Monday, Thursday, and Friday or something, she has no reason to be on campus, she's not sleeping there or whatever.
HZ: She's living with Keith so that we can still see Keith; that's thoughtful of her.
JOY: Thank God.
HZ: But Mac is still dealing with the trauma of the Cassidy stuff, and that seems certainly like something she would be working through extensively.
JOY: There's a spectrum, and at one end there is "frozen from the waist down", at the other end is "one woman red light district", and then there's just nothing in the middle.
HZ: Nope.
JOY: For miles.
HZ: That's this show.
JOY: Cool.
HZ: Music erupts. The song ‘Rump Shaker’, by Wreckx-N-Effect, and a dude wearing just a balaclava and some Union Jack undies carrying a blow-up doll wearing a French maid's outfit cartwheels onto the stage. That's a spectacular entrance.
JOY: Is a balaclava what you call a ski mask in the UK?
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: Wow. That is a much better name.
HZ: I don't know, there's probably some awful origin to it. Can't trust us.
JOY: Oh, probably, but it sounds cool, it has like a nice flow versus "ski mask".
HZ: I was impressed that this obnoxious jerk chose a cartwheel. It turns out to be Dick Casablancas, and Ryan Hansen apparently is quite good at acrobatic moves.
JOY: Right.
HZ: But I was wondering: would Dick be? When would Dick have learnt these kinds of things?
JOY: Maybe he learned it from doing like surf cartwheels or something?
HZ: Is that a thing?
JOY: I don't know. But, you know, maybe? Maybe, if somebody is going to get it started, it would be Dick. Also, why a Union Jack speedo?
HZ: That's a very good question.
JOY: Your thoughts?
HZ: Maybe his mum got it for him because she lives in Europe some of the year, we learned, and she knows the kinds of things he would like.
JOY: It's really hard to suspend my disbelief that even somebody like Dick doing this, in this setting... Maybe this is like really naive of me, it just seems so over-the-top. But also a lot of things in this show are really over the top, so maybe it's just... The aesthetic just seems crazy, just seems really bonkers.
HZ: Yeah, it is quite bonkers. But then this episode is trying to say Dick is really struggling.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: So he's drinking a lot. He's incapable of really actually gelling with people, except just forcing himself into interactions with them in a horrible way.
JOY: Yeah, yeah.
HZ: He dances with the blow-up doll, and three women barge him off the stage and hold him down, and then one called Fern knees him in the balls while the others unmask him.
JOY: And it's Dick! It's Dick.
HZ: On a dark road, lit only by Keith's car, we learn a lot in a minute about Kendall and Cormac Fitzpatrick.
CORMAC: What you did for my Kendall, you saved her life. That's a tough lady to make disappear. Tends to stand out.
KEITH: All I did was get her out of town.
CORMAC: Ah, it was more than that. New passport, house, ATM card. All with my little brother hot on her heels.
KEITH: We're not safe yet. Liam's still looking for her and he'll be looking for you too, Cormac.
CORMAC: Nah, he doesn’t know I'm out yet. All that good behaviour.
KEITH: Well, that's what we've got going for us. As I understand it, your brother believes he's entitled to a cut of Kendall's good fortune.
CORMAC: Yeah, Kendall agreed. The quarrel was over the size of that cut. My little brother got greedy. That's always been a problem for that kid. That's why I'm gonna spend the rest of my days lying on some beach with the woman I love, and Liam will end up shivved in some state penitentiary.
JOY: They're.... In love?
HZ: Sure.
JOY: She's... Good at... Judging character?
HZ: Sure. Fine.
JOY: Why not? Totally.
HZ: I was wondering: presumably Kendall married Richard Casablancas for money, that she would then redistribute in her relationship with Cormac; but why would Richard Casablancas marry her? Like, what's the benefit to someone marrying a gold-digger, rather than just being in a non-legally binding relationship?
JOY: Uh. She's, um... She... Well, it's just that she's very hot.
HZ: Yeah, she is very hot. But does it require a marriage to enjoy the hotness?
JOY: Well, they had a whole thing going on where she was ringleading his real estate scam, no?
HZ: True.
JOY: And that gave her, their marriage gave her, the inability to testify against him.
HZ: Ah, there you go.
JOY: Right?
HZ: Is there anything Fitzpatrick-related that you have ever found interesting or compelling?
JOY: No. God, no. No, get me out of here, Helen, please.
HZ: I can't.
JOY: Yeah, and it's out of the frying pan of this fucking car conversation and into the fire of...
HZ: Sexpeople fire.
JOY: Veronica and Logan have just had some very sweaty sex. Very sweaty. So sweaty. Everyone's moist.
HZ: But she's a sexperson now. Of course, she has to ruin it.
VERONICA: Woof! You should seriously consider going pro in that.
JOY: Why, Veronica? Just savour the moment.
HZ: She can't. She has to ruin moments.
JOY: At least she doesn't say a Clint Eastwood quote right now, in bed.
HZ: Do you think she said one just before?
JOY: Before we got there? Yeah, totally.
HZ: It's 12:15am, but the phone's ringing.
JOY: Uh-oh.
HZ: Veronica tries to stop Logan answering it - but too late, it's Keith! Whoops!
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: He's very intent on Veronica not spending the night with Logan.
JOY: Yeah, I love his little, "Give Logan my regards as you shake his hand goodnight. I'll be sure to call unexpectedly again sometime soon." Nice.
HZ: It seems like Keith is more reconciled to Logan than he has been hitherto. We're back on the road with Cormac Fitzexposition.
JOY: Argh, help.
HZ: The important thing - well, vaguely important thing - we learn is that Keith spent his money that Kendall gave him on buying back his daughter's love. And then we see the form that took: a new car. A silver Saturn, which allows Piz to make some planet jokes.
PIZ: A Saturn for a Mars.
VERONICA: In Neptune. Yeah, the planets really aligned for this one. Now move your anus, the mercury's rising.
JOY: Yeah! A Saturn for a Mars in Neptune. Blammo. Hooray.
HZ: They're at the Sheriff's Department, and inside Deputy Sacks explains that the welcome wagon managed to swindle four other people out of their belongings in just 90 minutes. Incredible.
JOY: Now, is it just me, or did Deputy Sacks's moustache get more majestic, but also more fake-looking, over the summer?
HZ: A moustache glow-up of sorts?
JOY: Yes. Veronica weasels a list of those theft victims out of him.
HZ: Is that appropriate? Probably not. He just will never learn, will he?
JOY: He will not.
HZ: On the other hand, it does make sense to get her to do the work. She's volunteering.
JOY: Yeah, it's true.
HZ: All he has to do is arrest someone. At college, Veronica goes and quizzes some of those theft victims. One of them confirms that the woman was blonde and chubby, and another is walking out of the shower, and how did Veronica know to go and catch up with her in there?
JOY: Unknown. Veronica Mars has her ways, though. She's probably got a bug in the shower.
HZ: That woman is, after a while, just like, "I don't know who you are or why I'm talking to you."
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Also she mentions earlier, "Oh no, they stole my iPod and I was keeping a sort of podcast journal on there. I hope they don't listen to it."
JOY: Dude. Ha!
HZ: Please.
JOY: This is offensive to podcasters everywhere.
HZ: You know, the reputation of our medium is wretched because people still think it's this. People keeping journals on their iPod.
JOY: Yep. Yep.
HZ: Outside, Veronicas sees a poster for a band, The Unwashed, which happens to have those distinctive arrows as we saw in the car dirt.
JOY: Yep, yep. It's all coming together, Helen.
HZ: Or is it?
JOY: Well, she's swinging by Mac's room to try to get Mac to go to this show, yeah?
HZ: Yes.
JOY: Parker opens the door and the Pussycat Dolls are blaring, of course. They're singing, "Loosen up my buttons", which is exactly the kind of song a sexperson would be listening to.
HZ: Loves her buttons to be loosened.
JOY: Of course.
HZ: She also wishes Mac was a little bichon frisé she could carry in her purse. I wouldn't have identified Mac as that kind of dog.
JOY: No. Gosh, no. Inappropriate.
HZ: She's also taking off her shirt while talking to Veronica, and Veronica is obviously very uncomfortable.
JOY: Oh my god, that's exactly what a sexperson would do.
HZ: “I can't bear the sight of someone comfortable in their own skin.”
JOY: No!
HZ: “Make it stop!” She and Mac are going to be watching Top Model together tonight.
JOY: What do you think has happened? Do you think that Parker is just completely oblivious to Mac's lack of desire to hang out with her? Or do you think Mac is playing along, because she doesn't know what else to do?
HZ: I think partly that, and partly just, it is difficult when you get a committed extrovert, and they're as introverted as Mac, plus, working through a lot of stuff, you might find it hard to articulate your true inclinations. Mac gets back and is unenthusiastic, so Veronica asks if she wants to go and see The Unwashed play. "More than anything in the world," she says, and Parker, who's not invited, decides to come anyway, allowing her another opportunity to change her shirt. Oh, and I noticed that Veronica is wearing one of those long-sleeved undershirts that's meant to look like sleeve tattoos.
JOY: Oh my god. A terrible era in long-sleeved shirts, Helen.
HZ: Maybe next week she'll be wearing one of those ones that looks like you've got abs. Like U2 wore in the mid-90s.
JOY: Hell yeah. OK, I'm on board now.
HZ: The thing that I do quite like about this is, at this gig, multiple Veronica friends meet. Because Wallace and Piz come, and Mac and Parker are there. And then they all sit around quietly, except for Parker, who goes and dances.
JOY: How dare she? Disgusting.
HZ: Applauding enthusiastically? What a beast!
JOY: Unbelievable.
HZ: None of the band is playing a Gretsch, are they?
JOY: No, they are not. They are also not a band called The Unwashed; they are a band called Four Fifty One, from Towson, Maryland.
HZ: Really? A real band?
JOY: A real band playing their own music, but they're pretending to be The Unwashed.
HZ: Veronica, afterwards, kills the mood. She's like, "Woo, give it up for The Unwashed. My friend's possessions were all stolen, and if you have information that can lead us to them, there's $100 in it for you."
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Does that happen a lot at your gigs, Jenny? Someone just comes and does public service announcements at the end.
JOY: I had one, one couple ascend upon the stage in Bristol. And they wouldn't get off the stage until I played a particular song they wanted to hear.
HZ: That seems pushy.
JOY: But they, you know, they just had some demands, and the stage was unfortunately rather low to the ground, so...
HZ: That's why Jenny Owen Youngs only plays on pedestals now.
JOY: Yeah, exactly. I require a 10-foot high stage or I don't bother to show up.
HZ: It's not safe.
JOY: People have to be searched for grappling hooks on the way in.
HZ: Now Parker is flirting with The Unwashed's singer, and Mac calls her "boynip".
JOY: Boynip... There's got to be a better...
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: I get it, but like...
HZ: It's not the best. And then what do you make of this interaction with characters who are credited as "Rat Boy" and "Ferret Boy".
JOY: Oh my god. These children were hanging out on the college campus, they say, because they were trying to look at boobs. And Wallace and Piz, two boob enthusiasts, are really interested in where exactly this alleged, potentially topless, sunbathing goes on on campus.
HZ: Very important detective work on their part.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. Bust out the magnifying glass.
RAT BOY: We'd just come back from the parking lot. We saw these two dudes in a moving van pull up by this car. They just starting throwing stuff from the car into the van in a major hurry.
VERONICA: Anything you remember about the two dudes or the van?
RAT BOY: They were black dudes.
WALLACE: 'Course they were.
FERRET BOY: And the van didn't have any windows. It was white, I think.
VERONICA: Is that all?
RAT BOY: That's a lot! Where's our reward?
VERONICA: You didn't see squat. Motor, munchkins.
FERRET BOY: I told ya, man. Bogus.
RAT BOY: There was a chick there, a white chick.
VERONICA: 'Course there was.
RAT BOY: She hopped up in the cab with them.
PIZ: A blonde? Chubby?
RAT BOY: Nah. That was the weird part. I thought she was a heifer at first. When she hopped in, she pulled off her sweatshirt...she had a slammin' bod. Girl was packed tight, like she was wearing a fat suit.
HZ: They thought she was a heifer, but then turns out she had a slamming bod. What the...
JOY: Please put me out of my misery, Helen.
HZ: And I don't understand them claiming that there were two black guys. Nothing comes of that.
JOY: No.
HZ: And Veronica's like, "Sure, you're lying" - but then the fat suit, she takes seriously.
JOY: It's interesting.
HZ: So were they there or were they not there?
JOY: I guess we'll just have to keep watching the episode, unfortunately, to find out.
HZ: Back at Mac's room, she is woken up by a drunk-sounding Dick Casablancas outside because, you know how time works weirdly in Neptune and Parker has had like two months to get to know every guy at this university, including Dick?
JOY: Yes, of course.
DICK: C'mon, Parker. Why you wanna be like that, girl? It's the right time of the night. It's the right time of the night for making loooove.
MAC: Parker's out somewhere with the Unwashed. I'll tell her that Needs Hosed Down dropped by.
DICK: My little brother never cared about you, you know? You were just his beard.
HZ: Why? Why bother saying that?
JOY: Because Dick is a dick.
HZ: Yeah, I guess.
JOY: Mostly, I think.
HZ: There's an opportunity to be a dick, gotta take it.
JOY: Got to take it.
HZ: And Dick is supposed to be drunk, but then when the RA comes out and starts shouting at him that he shouldn't be in the women's floor, he suddenly seems not drunk.
JOY: So coherent.
R.A.: Hey, you! What's your name? You're not supposed to be here.
DICK: Isn't this the boys' floor? Oh, gosh, I am so lost. I'm just a dumb freshman who wandered onto the wrong floor. Wow! Campus is so confusing. Thanks for understanding. I'm just gonna show myself out.
R.A.: Lemme see your school ID.
DICK: We're supposed to have IDs? See, I don't know anything. College had got me plumb flustered. Goodnight, ladies.
JOY: And then...
HZ: Oh my god, something very exciting in the next scene.
JOY: Yeah, there's some stuff.
HZ: Piz sits on a bench. He's kind of fidgeting with his hair, and arranging it in pre-Bieber style.
JOY: Oh, yeah, it's very, very Bieber-esque, isn't it? Veronica brings him a bag of clothes from a friend who doesn't need them anymore. Whose clothes are these?
HZ: Duncan. Duncan's clothes.
JOY: She has that many of Duncan's clothes laying around? This is really interesting stuff.
tiny vest, if you can even see it
HZ: Veronica is wearing a tiny vest, or waistcoat in British English. It's tiny at the front, just down to like the top rib; but in the back, even tinier, there's just like two horizontal straps making this a garment that doesn't fall off her body. But then her bag strap is almost as big as the vest.
JOY: It was a confusing time for garmentry.
HZ: I admire them playing with scale.
JOY: Ha! And speaking of scales, Veronica found the guitar on Craigslist.
HZ: They go to the house of Donald Fagin, and that name doesn't seem like something you would give to someone unless they were running a gang of boy thieves.
JOY: Ha, it's true.
HZ: And Donald seems like a super cheery person, and his story is he found the guitar at a flea market yesterday for $500.
JOY: Hmm.
HZ: Claims it's worth ten times that, but he would be willing to sell it for $4,000.
JOY: Good Lord.
HZ: Except Piz is like, "That's my guitar, and I can prove it because there are two picks from Guitar Town in Portland in there," and there are.
JOY: The telltale picks.
HZ: And Donald's like, "What? This was sold to me by a hot, smokin' blonde with a thin body."
JOY: I... Hmm.
HZ: Probably Veronica.
JOY: Ha! Cool. So, great.
HZ: So next, Veronica knocks on the door at college because she's decided who she thinks the hot blonde is: Rose, the person from the shower. But Veronica just sticks a camera through the door and takes a picture and fucks off, which...
JOY: Rude!
HZ: And also - why? Because she's always managed to get pictures of people before without door-stepping them.
JOY: Yes. But she needs to find Wallace and Piz, but the sign on their door says they've gone bird watching, Helen!
HZ: Yes. Keen ornithologists, both.
JOY: Playing hacky sack in the same area where the women are sunbathing, so bleurgh.
HZ: A very Paris Hilton-looking one walking past them as they gawk at her. They're not really playing hacky sack very diligently.
JOY: There's so many of these young women sunbathing.
HZ: I guess you were at college in New York City, which was not the most sunbathingy place for most of the academic year.
JOY: Yeah, it's true. It's mostly snow and whatnot. Hmm. Nothing happens in this scene.
HZ: Well, she shows Piz the picture of Rose and he's like, "Err, I don't know," and then she's all, "Well think of her, but fat," and he's like, "I just don't know." I suppose what this scene shows is that Piz and Wallace are quite bonded in heterosexual masculinity already.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: At Veronica's expense.
JOY: Yes. Well, love to see something happening at Veronica's expense for once.
HZ: The next scene, as well, is another one where I was like, "Why is this scene happening?" It's a desert road with steam rising from Keith's car; he can't get a phone signal.
JOY: Oh yeah.
HZ: And he's like, "Well, we could walk to the nearest town, which is three miles away," and Cormac is like, "No, probably'd get like killed by a rattlesnake or hippies." And what's the purpose of this scene? Is it just to be like, "Oh, Cormac's OK, he's looking out for Keith, he doesn't want to get him killed by a coyote"?
JOY: I really don't know. Is the car still broken later when it's at that house?
HZ: Hard to tell.
JOY: Did the guy tow it there, or did he tow it to a shop and fix it? I'm confused.
HZ: You're right to be confused, Jenny. They waste time on this scene, but not car logistics. Priorities! Back at Donald's house, he's 90, no, 80 percent sure that Rose was the girl that sold the guitar. But then a clue for Veronica.
JOY: He took Intro to Criminology last year.
HZ: Yeah, he's got Professor Landry's book, Profiling. Now she's onto him, and Veronica is just like bullshitting him, and then her attention is caught by a photo, which confused me. So it's him with a blonde girl on the Space Needle.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: But you can't really see it, can you?
JOY: No. I felt like I couldn't really see the New York building in the earlier scene either. Just sort of looked like a wall.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: They just need a reason for this photo to be there and for her to ask something about it, and for us to be like, "Sure, why not?"
HZ: She's getting Donald to talk about joining in Professor Landry's mentoring programme, and he's like, "Yeah, I recommend it," so in the next scene she approaches Lucky-in-a-wig regarding it.
JOY: Ugh.
HZ: He still sucks.
TIMOTHY: All of them have juvenile records. Most of the girls, it's shoplifting, fighting, chronic truancy.
VERONICA: Wait. Just because I'm a girl, that means I have to mentor a girl?
TIMOTHY: Yes.
VERONICA: That's just in case they get their period or something, right?
HZ: But that's all a scheme as well, because Mac turns up and she's like, "Professor Landry needs you,” allowing Veronica to get into his files.
JOY: No, never leave a Mars alone with your files.
HZ: So she finds Donald Fagin's file, and his mentees were Rat Boy and Ferret Boy.
JOY: Oh my god, there's a third boy. There's a third rodent boy.
HZ: Otter Boy?
JOY: OK.
HZ: I don't know. How would they have known Veronica was going to be at The Unwashed gig?
JOY: Maybe they just seized the opportunity?
HZ: Maybe they were doing some more thieving there.
JOY: Maybe they left The Unwashed thing on Piz's car as a breadcrumb. I don't know, Helen. It doesn't make sense.
HZ: A bit of guerilla marketing?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: But I didn't really understand this plot, hereon.
JOY: No, nor I.
HZ: Another sort of unnecessary scene, of Keith napping in the back of the car, and then Cormac wakes him to tell him the tow trucks arrive. That's it.
JOY: Yeah, why? Maybe the episode came in short?
HZ: I suppose they couldn't do "Previously", could they? They didn't do a recap of what happened in previous seasons. Is it just to show that Cormac would have had time to poke about in Keith's car?
JOY: Oh, yeah. OK, that's a possibility.
HZ: At the food court, Veronica and Logan have some yellow drinks.
JOY: Sure.
HZ: She nudges Logan about not turning up for class, and he distracts her by giving her a bonus birthday gift, because, sorry Jenny, Veronica is still a Virgo.
JOY: Ha! Sure she is. Sure she is.
LOGAN: Open it, smarty pants.
VERONICA: Your room key?
LOGAN: Mmm-hm.
VERONICA: What if I drop in unexpectedly? The other girls will have to -
LOGAN: Stop it. You know there's no one else. I only want you.
JOY: Do you think it's at all weird that Veronica doesn't already have a hotel room key?
HZ: Maybe it took the whole summer for him to decide that, yes, he was willing to be exclusive? I don't know.
JOY: Right, right. Hmm.
HZ: I would have thought, even if he didn't give her a key card, she would have managed to get one.
JOY: Yeah, right?
HZ: Because she's Veronica Mars.
JOY: Yeah, behind her back, she’s reaching into her wallet and throwing out the key she had already weaselled out of a staff member of the hotel.
HZ: Keys to all of Neptune. I guess Logan has processed his father's death in the break as well? We don't hear about it.
JOY: Oh, yeah.
HZ: It's such a meaningful gesture that Veronica doesn't even have a quip to say about it, to ruin the moment.
JOY: For once.
HZ: So Dick ruins the moment instead.
JOY: Oh, nice, thoughtful of him.
HZ: By arriving and plonking himself down a table where a girl is sitting alone. Even eats some of her food.
JOY: Dick is drunk.
DICK: Hi, my name's Dick. What's yours?
DEE DEE: Dee Dee.
DICK: How long have we known each other, Dee Dee?
DEE DEE: Eight seconds.
DICK: So, where's this going, Dee Dee? I mean, is this thing we feel real, or are we just in it for the torso butter? Truth is, I've been kicked out of on-campus housing, and I know timing's a little sooner than we hoped for, but what do you say we move in together? Make our own love nest.
DEE DEE: You should really walk away.
DICK: You'd like that, wouldn't you? I'll admit it: the kid looks good walking away. It's all me, too. Ass like Marky Mark and the entire Funky Bunch.
HZ: The guy grabs him and throws him to the ground and punches him, but Logan borrows Veronica's bag and tases him.
JOY: Get yourself a boyfriend who knows exactly where you keep your taser, as I always say, Helen.
HZ: Although if I had a taser in my bag, I would have to dig through that thing and take out, like, my wallet, a load of crumpled receipts, keys, just to get to it.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: It'd be tangled in headphones.
JOY: Yeah, yeah.
HZ: I was really surprised that Logan didn't just dive in and get punchy, because that's always been his MO before. Has he changed?
JOY: Mmm. Maybe he's looking for a less-muss kind of approach to life? Why bloody your knuckles on this random dude?
HZ: But now I assume he's going to have an assault charge or something for tasing.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Dick's not pleased with Logan for saving him from this punching.
DICK: What - do you want a hug or something?
JOY: So huffy.
HZ: But Piz turns up, wearing the black and white argyle shirt that both Duncan and Logan have worn.
JOY: And this rips, because Logan is like, "Nice shirt." And now it makes sense, because now there's a narrative reason for everyone to have worn this shirt.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: We saw Logan wearing it when he was living with Duncan...
HZ: Because his house had burned down.
JOY: ...and then Veronica gave his... Oh, a bag of clothes that were formerly Duncan's, OK.
HZ: Logan and Piz don't seem super keen to see each other. Piz is reeling that Veronica has a boyfriend, as if she's obliged not to have one, just in case he's interested.
JOY: Bleurgh. But hey, Piz can confirm that the pic of guitar guy in front of the Space Needle is with Welcome Wagon girl. So that's progress.
HZ: She goes to the Sheriff's Department and explains to Sacks that Donald Fagin is leading a gang of boy thieves. Doesn't explain what the fat suit was about, if anything, or who the woman is. Presumably Rose was just a red herring?
JOY: Yeah, very strange.
HZ: And then she and Piz go and spectate at the bust of Donald's house. They've got deckchairs, they've got red drinks. So red.
JOY: Does anybody know what the hell they're drinking? If you know what the hell they're drinking, could you please tweet at us, @VMIpod?
HZ: Sacks brings Donald out of the house, complaining, and then he notices them and Veronica cheerses him with the bottle, and he opens the garage door, and it's just packed full of stuff.
JOY: Packed full of stuff.
HZ: Piz is pleased at this bust, and they clink bottles, but then the mood sours because he asks whether "the guy from last night" is Veronica's boyfriend.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: She doesn't answer. She doesn't need to.
JOY: Why do you have to ask, sir? Clearly. Clearly. Like, what else would he be?
HZ: Yeah, it seems a bit entitled of Piz to be disappointed by that. They only just met. She's working for him.
JOY: Yeah. They barely know each other.
HZ: In the desert, it's so dark, which is actually realistic for once in this show. Keith and Cormac arrive at a house.
JOY: Huzzah.
HZ: A house with a Kendall in it.
JOY: Yay, Kendall.
HZ: Ever have a woman who loved you so much she'd do time for you, Jenny?
JOY: Maybe? Fucking none of your business, Helen.
HZ: I had an ex who - his judgement on whether you cared about him was whether you would provide him with an alibi if he'd done a crime, and I was like, "No."
JOY: Oh lord.
HZ: And he was very offended by that.
JOY: Just don't do the crime, sir.
HZ: Yeah. Well, I don't think he actually did. I think it was just theoretical parameters.
JOY: Sure, sure.
HZ: Kendall rushes out and leaps on Cormac and they rotate lovingly.
JOY: Aw.
HZ: Do you rotate lovingly?
JOY: Of course. And that's also how you know if something, like, there's real chemistry on this show, is if there's a rotation and a lift.
HZ: And then we go back to the dorm and Mac is sitting outside her room because Parker's in there, sexpeopling, but also their movie tickets are in there...
JOY: Nooo!
HZ: ...so what are she and Veronica going to do?
JOY: Veronica bravely takes the keys, keeps her head down, fucking pops in, pops out.
HZ: Hears a sex noise. Hears the college radio station, KRFF. Mac, also, she's really into the sex-shaming this episode - which is not new from Mac, there's been some dodgy moments last season as well - but she was like, "Our tickets are in there, stuck in the mirror above her suggestion box and tip jar." She's at college! Let Parker be a sexperson!
JOY: Dude, yeah, what are... I don't... This sucks.
HZ: Sexpeople never prosper.
JOY: This whole vibe sucks.
HZ: At Kendall's house, they're eating cake. That's cute.
JOY: They're in love. They're so in love. Oh my god. Keith is like, "Let me get you your travel documents so I can get the fuck out of here, so you guys can get horny together."
HZ: Sexperson together.
JOY: So I guess the car is working. He pops out to that car, and discovers Vinnie's pen in his briefcase, and the gun isn't in the glove box anymore.
HZ: And he can't find his keys! What the fuck?
JOY: Fucking Cormac just killed Kendall, and it's a cold night in the desert, Helen!
HZ: Keith, why would you have trusted a Fitzpatrick? But also, what's weird is we don't see Cormac kill Kendall. We just see him shooting through a door in a room that we assume she's in. So they kill this major character off-screen. Either that, or it's a fake - but it's not a fake, because she doesn't come back.
JOY: It's very strange.
HZ: And maybe they were trying to leave in the possibility, and then they were like, "We don't have the budget for Charisma Carpenter."
JOY: Right. We can't afford her.
HZ: Or, it's too hard to write that character because she's not at college.
JOY: Right, right, right, right, right.
HZ: Although her being a PI would have been great.
JOY: Oh, hell yeah.
HZ: Don't you think she and Vinnie…?
JOY: Oh yeah, and now there's a team up.
HZ: And then Keith could have got her to freelance. She would have been terrific. Cormac shoots at Keith, and he runs away and hides behind a rock. He's injured a bit, so he can't go far, and Cormac's just like, "I'll leave you to die, I won't shoot you." What's that about?
JOY: Oh, well, as we learned in earlier scenes that we questioned the purpose of, they're far away from everything. The desert is dangerous. The desert is cold.
HZ: Yep.
JOY: Keith is probably just going to die of exposure? It's going to get so cold that he'll die, if not bit by a scorpion or chomped on by a coyote, or ended in some unforeseen way by a hippie on mushrooms. So I guess Cormac is just like, "Why would I even trouble myself trying to kill you right now when I can just let the desert do it for me?"
HZ: Well, just in case Keith pops up and goes in for round two.
JOY: Keith!
HZ: Also I was just thinking: Cormac's been in prison for a long time. He and Kendall seem pretty hot for each other. I'm surprised he didn't sexpeople with her and then kill her.
JOY: Bang her first and then, yeah. It's weird.
HZ: It's a Fitzpatrick plot. It is dramatic, and I was very pissed off that this means no more Kendall; but ultimately, the involvement of a Fitzpatrick just raises my indifference to quite a high level.
JOY: Who cares?
HZ: But, something exciting in the next scene: it's evidence that Logan's hotel suite actually has windows to the outdoors! Not just novelty backlit glass!
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Logan is mournfully electric toothbrushing his teeth, and like looking out over the Neptune skyline.
HZ: That's what I do, actually, in the mornings now, because I just moved the other day into a flat that has a nice treetop view, so while I'm brushing my teeth I'll wander out and look at the trees and the squirrels gadding about.
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: And then a knock.
JOY: Uh-oh!
HZ: It's Dick. He has bruised eyes, his hair is messed up, and he's crying.
JOY: Yeah, he's fucked up.
HZ: Is this the start of the Dick Casablancas arc, of him actually showing an emotion that you can sympathise with?
JOY: Maybe? Could be? Not ruling it out.
HZ: He also has no one now.
JOY: Oh my god, yeah. His dad's gone. His mom's away. His brother has died. He says he "messed up bad". Wonder what that means.
HZ: Yes, well, I suppose the implication is that he was involved in the crime in the next scene. Veronica and Mac return from the film and Veronica is drunk on Irish coffee.
JOY: Oh, Veronica.
HZ: Because she didn't know they had booze in, because she is somehow innocent in that very specific way.
JOY: Yeah, it's very strange.
MAC: You worked in a coffee shop. How can you not know that an Irish coffee has whisky in it?
VERONICA: At Java the Hut, it meant a latté with a little shot of Irish Cream syrup.
MAC: That explains the first one you ordered.
VERONICA: They were magically delicious.
HZ: Because that's the Lucky Charms catchphrase, and the show associates the cereal Lucky Charms with Irishness, and therefore Irish coffee. That's how they Irish here. But the point is, she's not fit to drive home, and she goes and sleeps on the couch in Mac and Parker's room - and wakes up to a scream.
JOY: It's Parker's scream, and her head is shaved, and you know what that means? Somehow we have to continue experiencing plotlines wholly consumed by yet another rape. That's all that happens in Neptune, is rape. And here is more of it.
HZ: And we know that there have been at least four survivors of this head-shaving rapist now.
JOY: Yeah. It's like Rob Thomas doesn't know what to do to top himself, except just put more logs on the fire.
HZ: And that is the end of the episode, and there's a new font for the credits, because they're at college now.
JOY: It's a grown-up font.
HZ: Shall we go and visit Lo Dodds to find out all the laws that have been broken in this episode, in the first LoDown of Season Three?
JOY: Let us do so, and get some answers.
THE LODOWN
HZ: Welcome back, Lo, for Season Three.
LO DODDS: Hey, hey, nice to hear you all again.
HZ: Obviously, some crimes took place in this episode.
LO DODDS: There was a lot of criming.
HZ: We know that rape is a crime, and that shaving someone's head against their will is a crime, and tasing someone's boyfriend who's punching Dick Casablancas is a crime. Stealing Piz's shit is a crime.
JOY: But against all odds, we've discussed all of those already.
LO DODDS: Yeah, they're all kind of ones we have talked about before. Oh, underage drinking? No, we have talked about that, yeah, we talked about that with the River Styx, so sorry, yeah, they have not invented any, I don't think, new crimes this episode. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor? I don't know what that guy would be charged with for using the juvenile mentoring programme to further encourage those kids to commit crimes. He's probably getting something - and obviously all the stuff for theft.
HZ: He's mentoring them for their crime careers. Did the programme specify how to mentor them to not crime?
LO DODDS: Yeah, I guess, yeah, it wasn't in the wording there. And why was that kid from Boston? I could never figure that out.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: It's like, is he even from Boston - that accent is really mystifying. It sort of sounds like a combination of like somebody doing a horrible Boston accent and a horrible Jersey accent, or like Staten Island accent, together. It's real bad.
LO DODDS: Yeah. For some inexplicable reason, you're from Boston, but all your friends are not.
JOY: So excited to be hearing you and seeing you right now, and I don't mean to jump right into favour town, but could you possibly pick me up from prison? Is that allowed?
LO DODDS: Yeah. Yeah, I could totally do that for you. But now, they have Ubers and they have Lyfts, and as long as the person picking Cormac up is not somebody he's not allowed to hang out with.
HZ: Do they check?
LO DODDS: For probation or parole, there are normally going to be restrictions on people you can associate with. So felons are not supposed to hang out with other felons; that's like a condition of their parole. There are exceptions to that, obviously. If you are going to a halfway house where there might be other felons there, if you are married to a felon or you have some sort of relationship with someone else who's been convicted, that could be...
JOY: Also, what, you're just supposed to, like, go meet people and immediately ask them if they're a felon to figure out if you can hang out with them?
LO DODDS: Yeah, like you're not supposed to hang out with people with known criminal records, known felons. But there are also specific provisions that some people have. So Cormac would probably not be allowed to hang out with Kendall, so depending on how that whole situation worked out, you're generally not supposed to hang out with people that were your co-defendants, people you were convicted with, your co-conspirators. There are rules like, "Hey, you need to stay away from these people," you know, "Stay away from your gang affiliation," if you were in a gang, etc, etc.
HZ: But a Keith Mars would be fine.
LO DODDS: Yes. Keith's a stand-up person to pick you up from prison.
JOY: Lo, put yourself back in a university seat in your law school days. Let's just say that you had a class with Professor Landry. Would you rule him rakishly handsome or not?
LO DODDS: I've always found Professor Landry super hot. He was also in the baby back ribs commercials, and so when I saw him on Veronica Mars, I immediately was like, "Isn't that the same guy that's in the..." Is it Chili's baby back ribs?
HZ: He's multifaceted.
LO DODDS: Yeah, I would have been happy with him as a professor, for sure.
JOY: Would it make him any less hot to you if you discovered, in the course of taking his class, that he lifted part of his curriculum from like a 1980s murder mystery game?
LO DODDS: I would have been super stoked about that. I took so many psychology and the law classes, criminal procedure trials, all of these stupid classes that I took, and not one of them had like a fun game like this. If I recall, even the ones where we did trial practice, they were actual cases and not even very exciting cases.
HZ: Rather than completely pointless parlour games that teach you nothing about actual law.
LO DODDS: I think it would have been a fun exercise of going, "OK, now you have to you have to interview witnesses. You have to do that as a lawyer. You have to bring people in to try to decide whether your client's lying, whether your people that you're interviewing or deposing are lying." I don't know. I think it would be a fun way to start the semester.
HZ: Criminology is not supposed to be fun!
LO DODDS: Never.
HZ: You went to San Diego University, right?
LO DODDS: I did. So the campus that they're at is USD, University of San Diego. I think that is USD. And that is actually where my mom went to law school. I went to college at UCSD, which is where they film a lot of Veronica Mars going forward. Her classes and all the dorms that you see, especially before when, remember when she did the prank with the guys that were hackers who were, you know, that whole thing? That was at UCSD.
HZ: At these places, Lo, are all of the windows opaque?
LO DODDS: Yeah. They're all orange and red, like they're all stained glass. It just helps you study.
HZ: Hmmm.
LO DODDS: Yeah, no, your windows are all normal colour. They allow light in so that you could read your books and do your learning.
JOY: Interesting.
HZ: Amateurs. And are the walls of your dorm room semi-transparent onto the corridor?
LO DODDS: Yes. Yeah, so that you can watch people undressing and stuff.
JOY: Great.
LO DODDS: The lights in the room, now, even more confuse me, but I guess it's like the theme now of the show that they have weird film noir lighting.
HZ: It's not exactly film nor, is it? It would be film rouge, or film jaune. Film orange.
VERDICT
HZ: How did you feel about this episode? Because I thought, "Oh, maybe I'm enjoying it quite a bit," when I was watching it, and then I started to wonder.
JOY: Yeah, it tricks you. It tricked me anyway, where I was like, "Hey, I'm kind of having a good ti-... Oh, no, no. Nope. Oh, man."
HZ: It gets quite chaotic.
JOY: Happy to see Wallace in a beanbag chair.
HZ: That's wonderful.
JOY: Happy to see Wallace with a friend. Happy to see Kendall Casablancas. But, you know, most of these things are ruined as soon as they're given to us.
HZ: Right. Well you see Kendall for a second. The good thing is that she and Keith are talking about cake. That's great.
JOY: Totally.
HZ: But that's it?
JOY: That's it. I mean, we see Backup, we see Vinnie, but we're just not getting enough of anything good.
HZ: I think it's interesting, potentially, to see Veronica in criminology class. At the moment it seems a bit beneath her.
JOY: Right.
HZ: Were there any lines you liked?
JOY: Oh, yes. You know what I liked? I liked when Dick came by Parker and Mac's room, and Mac said, "Parker's out somewhere with The Unwashed. I'll tell her that The Needs Hosed Down dropped by." That worked for me. If anybody on this show needs to be hosed down, it's certainly Dick Casablancas.
HZ: I like that when they go to the gig and she's like, "So gang, are we ready to rock?" And she does the rock hand, and she's kind of doing it in an ironic way, but still Mac goes, "No," and Wallace is like, "Not particularly."
JOY: Ha.
HZ: They're asserting their independence.
JOY: No one is ready to rock.
HZ: They do not want to rock, and they do not want to enter into the spirit of this gig.
JOY: Please, no.
HZ: And then what do you score this episode overall?
JOY: You know, happy to see old friends.
HZ: The old argyle shirt. A Brigadoon reference. A tiny, tiny waistcoat.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, there's some bad stuff going on, and some stuff that, frankly, I think we've seen more than enough of on this show. And still it persists. Therefore, I cannot give this episode any more than 2.5 tiny little basketballs that you throw at the tiny little basketball hoop that clips on to your dorm room door.
HZ: I was pleased to see the show back. I think I liked it a bit more than the season two premiere, where there was a lot of recapping and also then a plot about fake piss tests, but it became a bit chaotic towards the end and the mystery of the week just seemed quite irrelevant.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: I suppose it introduces Piz, and it gives us some college atmosphere scenes, and it gives Wallace something to do - but not enough.
JOY: Not nearly enough.
HZ: Never enough. And then -500 points for killing Kendall.
JOY: Yeah. Bullshit.
HZ: But I'll give it 3.4 fake tattoo sleeve shirts out of five.
HZ: Oof.
HZ: And Jenny, I don't remember much about season three for my first watch all those years ago, but I also don't remember enjoying it all that much.
HZ: No.
HZ: So now it's finally upon us, I'm like, "Oh, shit, this thing that was facing us for over a year is now truly happening."
JOY: Yep, yep. The moment has come where we shall be tested.
HZ: But also I have been tested by just not enough time in my life to edit this show, and the other two shows that I make.
JOY: Good lord, no. Certainly not, Helen.
HZ: To the debilitation of my body and soul. I mean, I love doing this show with you, Jenny. I don't get the impression that people love us talking about the parts of the show that we don't enjoy.
JOY: Yeah, yeah.
HZ: And there's a lot of sex crime in it, and you know what we think already about the sex crimes of Veronica Mars.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: The show, not the character.
JOY: So, in an effort to find a way to stay true to you and talk about the entirety of the series, but also stay true to ourselves and make it enjoyable, more enjoyable for everyone, by giving us more things for us to talk about that we like, and not having to labour over every detail of the things that we despise - and also to save poor, tired Helen, whose fingers are bloodied from tip-tapping away on a keyboard, editing these episodes, we're going to be truncating Season Three in the following way: we are going to be talking about three episodes per episode for the next six episodes.
HZ: For season three, three at a time.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: And then we'll do a full finale recap, because also I'm just very excited to get through season three so we can do the movie.
JOY: Helen can't wait for the movie. I can't wait for season four.
HZ: I haven't even seen all of season four. I've been saving it for this.
JOY: There's a lot to look forward to. We just have to power through this season.
HZ: The books! The books are canon, Jenny.
JOY: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, the books perhaps cannot be avoided.
HZ: I bought you the books. Did you lose them in your recent house move?
JOY: No, no. No, no, no. I have them there on my to-read shelf. Don't worry, Helen. So your homework for the next episode is to watch season three episodes two, three and four. We will be talking about all of them in the next episode, so do your homework and join us.
HZ: Yeah. If you've got a favourite bit that you want us to cover, just let us know on the Twitter.
JOY: I think it's going to work out great. I can't wait to talk about the things that I love about this show.
HZ: Absolutely.
JOY: And gloss over the things that I don't. How exciting!
HZ: Right. That seems reasonable to me - but you're a very reasonable person, Jenny.
JOY: I try. Helen, dammit, I try.
HZ: Well, I guess that's this episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: Case closed.
JOY: That was Veronica Mars Investigations season three episode one: Welcome Wagon.
HZ: Watch season three episodes two, three and four, and join us in a week to investigate them.
JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
HZ: The website where the show lives, along with a load of stolen guitars, is VMIpod.com.
JOY: I am one of your hosts, Jenny Owen Youngs, and when I'm not making this podcast with Helen, I'm also making a whole other podcast calledBuffering the Vampire Slayer, which you can find in the pod places. I also make loads of music; you can learn about a whole bunch of it at JennyOwenYoungs.com. And what I will highlight is friend of the pod and former guest Charlie Harding and I recently recorded a quality to cover of the song 'Dammit' for the Blink-155 podcast. They've got a compilation up on Bandcamp called Been Here For Too Long and it is comprised of twenty-eight covers of 'Dammit'. You can hear me and Charlie and 27 other versions of that song and decide which one you like the best.
HZ: It's like The Aristocrats of covers of Blink-182.
JOY: Exactly.
HZ: I am your other host Helen Zaltzman and I make two other podcasts: Answer Me This and the Allusionist. And recently on the Allusionist feed is a quiz where every answer is a swear, so as you listen to it, you have to shout out swears. It's for catharsis, but there's also some very educational bits of word history in there as well. I found an incredible fact about kestrels when I was researching it and I laughed for several minutes. You can find that at theallusionist.org and on the podcast.
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman, god bless her. 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?
JOY: He's out in the desert alone. It's dark. It's getting colder. There are scorpions. I don't love it. I don't love this for him.
HZ: At least he just a nice piece of cake.
JOY: That's true.