VMI 3.020304 My Big Fat Wichita Linebacker Don't Surf transcript
Listen to this episode at VMIpod.com/3-020304
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and these episodes include storylines concerning murder, rape, violence and abusive parents.
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
Veronica infiltrates a sorority to investigate Parker’s rape, and instead finds a secret medical marijuana farm.
The ongoing campus rapist plot boils down to frats versus feminists. The two genders!
Guess which one Veronica favours? Wallace and Logan participate in some recreation of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and unfortunately we have to endure it with them, which is a bummer.
But Weevil is back! And starts working for Keith! But then punches a suspect, so he’s fired.
Logan discovers some financial irregularities that reveal that he has a secret half-brother!
Loganica are having problems, cos he likes playing poker and she likes The Arts and putting trackers on him.
Plus: some sportsball problem; a Fitzpatrick kills another Fitzpatrick; Veronica has a new job in the library SHH NO TALKING; and Keith takes a case for a hot lady.
JOY: Getting a taste of Mr Sparky, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And trashing your car and making it look like FEMINISTS did it, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 3 Episodes 2, 3 and 4: My Big Fat Wichita Linebacker Don't Surf.
HZ: Thank you, our sweet, supportive listeners, for being open to us changing the format for Season Three.
JOY: Not that you could stop us if you tried... Ah, you might, you might be able to stop us.
HZ: Well, you probably could. I'm quite easily persuaded. And some of you have been like, "Well, I appreciate you talking about the not-nice stuff sometimes." Don't worry. We still will talk about some of the stuff we don't particularly like, because it's inevitable, right?
JOY: Yeah, impossible to avoid. But we are going to try to emphasise the positive. Hell yeah. There's so much more to enjoy...
HZ: ...when you don't have to enjoy all of it?
JOY: Yeah, exactly.
HZ: So, the mysteries of the week.
JOY: Oh yeah.
HZ: And in episode two, one of those is a professor played by Dan Castellaneta doing basically the Stanford Prison Experiment, which...
JOY: Why?
HZ: I'm surprised that any professor is allowed to do this as a study.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: He opens his lecture by showing the students pictures of American soldiers torturing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.
JOY: Wow, great.
HZ: And he's basically like, "Us humans are shit, and you're shit too, you're a shit human."
JOY: "I'm going to prove it."
HZ: "If you want to get out of doing a 20-page research project, you can take part in my 48-hour prison experiment."
JOY: What exactly is he trying to…? It seems like there's some kind of academic/research premise to this, and he's getting free study participants from his students by offering this lighter paper sentence, or allowing them to avoid the test. But this study has already been done.
HZ: Yeah, and it failed. It failed really badly. They had to shut it early. That was in 1971, so you'd think he would know that. And also, it's not even really a study because he's like, "And it's a parlour game. The prisoners have got some information, and if the guards find it out, the guards win. And if the prisoners keep it, then they win." So it's basically like that murder mystery thing from the last episode.
JOY: Boo.
HZ: But one that involves 48 hours of people humiliated and psychologically tortured.
JOY: Uh, yeah, I don't love this.
HZ: And he does it every year.
JOY: Every year!
HZ: Because someone's like, "I did, I did it last year."
JOY: And the kids love it.
HZ: I was surprised to see Wallace and Logan volunteering for this, given that Wallace is a black man, and black men are massively overrepresented in the American prison system, and Logan spent a lot of last season having some very serious legal trouble. So wouldn't they just do the paper?
JOY: Yeah, well, never underestimate the allure of not having to write a 20-page paper. I'm surprised that Samm Levine volunteered because he simply doesn't seem to have the constitution for this kind of activity. But then, who among us really does?
HZ: I wouldn't, because I wouldn't want to be a guard, because I wouldn't like to be controlling of other people, I'd find it hard to take seriously, as I think Wallace does. Wallace is allocated guard, and does not exercise his authority. But then also with, as a prisoner, you're just... You're just like, "Well, it's unnecessary that any of this is happening," so it'd really be hard to emulate this real situation.
JOY: Yeah, so difficult to suspend your disbelief while Rider Strong is screaming in your face.
HZ: Rider Strong, from Boy Meets World. He plays a character who's so into this experiment, called Rafe. What is wrong with him? Just immediately he's allocated guard, and immediately becomes an evil wanker. Or, presumably, he was one already.
JOY: Right.
SAMUEL: Hey, where's the bathroom in this place?
RAFE: You'll all be using the bathroom together. There will be three breaks a day, eight hours apart.
SAMUEL: But I have to go now.
RAFE: What's your name?
SAMUEL: Samuel Horshack.
RAFE: No! There's no way you're that short, smell that bad, and have the last name Horshack. Like, how did you not kill yourself in high school? You want to use the john? Tell me the address.
SAMUEL: Come on, you're not serious?
RAFE: You know, I'm looking around, I'm thinking the Jew or the fat chick will crack first.
JOY: I wonder what he would have been like if he, if he had been shuffled into the prisoner pile instead of the guard pile, if he would have been, like, antagonistic or what?
HZ: Yeah. He would have held a rebellion against the guards, I think. In 2002, there was a British reality show based on the Stanford Prison Experiment.
JOY: No. Why?
HZ: And basically the prisoners were like, "We don't accept your authority," and they kind of became guards, and the guards were like, "OK then," because the guards were uncomfortable being guards in a situation that was arbitrary.
JOY: You know what? I think the only thing that happened... Oh, there are two things from the Stanford Prison Experiment portion of this episode that I like, or that seem relevant to the larger arc. One is that when the prisoners escape to eat Frito pie, Logan does a Scarlett What's-Her-Bucket impression.
HZ: O'Hara.
JOY: There it is. Just a little more Gone With the Wind.
HZ: Caught that from Veronica.
JOY: Yeah.
LOGAN: I do declare, that was the finest Frito pie I believe I've ever tasted.
JOY: And then, at the very end of this arc, Logan streaks the classroom, and I'm wondering did he and Wallace make a side bet at some point?
HZ: Yes, they did.
JOY: OK, I must have blinked. Cool. Well, I love that this happened.
HZ: The loser has to streak across campus, according to his and Wallace's bet.
JOY: But they didn't include the salute in the, in the original bet. I really like that Logan opted to salute.
HZ: Logan always has performance flair, doesn't he?
JOY: He really does.
HZ: Neither Logan nor Wallace are extremely motivated to win. So you've got the very evil guard, Rafe, and then you've got this very jittery prisoner who Rafe just torments all the time, particularly when he's trying to pee.
JOY: Ugh.
HZ: Oh, Rafe does some casual antisemitism as well.
JOY: Oh, dude.
HZ: Well, that's never casual, really, is it?
WALLACE: Pigs' knuckles. Yu-um.
SAMUEL: I can't eat that. It's pork.
RAFE: Then your mother was a pig?
SAMUEL: I keep kosher.
RAFE: Yeah, I don't get that. I mean, why won't your kind eat pork? It's not like it's expensive.
HZ: The good thing about this plot is that Wallace is just the angel that we always expect him to be. And there's a rule that the guards can only give prisoners food that they have tried first, and so they make them disgusting food, and Wallace is like, "I'll eat it. Mmm, yummy." What a good boy.
JOY: This is something I didn't know about Wallace, that he enjoys pig knuckles and stuff.
HZ: Well we don't even know if he does enjoy them, or whether he's just flouting the authority of Rafe. He's like, "Oh, you think you've made something terrible, and I'm just going to completely unwire that." Are you surprised that Logan does not punch Rafe at any point? We know he's capable.
JOY: It is impressive. Maybe he's working on his temper issues. His violence stuff. Although, he does get there eventually.
HZ: There's some business, though, about the guards winning because they made the prisoners think they were asleep, and then the prisoners talked about the thing that the guards have to find out about, which, again, doesn't seem like a valuable bit of psychological studying.
JOY: No. What are we learning? What are we learning and how are we learning it? There are no answers.
HZ: What's the professor learning, and how is he learning it? And who's funding it? Who's giving him grants for this experiment?
JOY: Who indeed. The main other thing that happens in this episode is a huge bummer. Well, it starts as a very big bummer that made me question whether or not we should continue to talk about this television programme, because Parker is very sad, Lamb is totally disgusting.
HZ: And he also refers to Veronica's rape whilst dismissing Veronica's rape at the same time.
JOY: Dude. Disgusting.
LAMB: Tell me I'm here because of you. Not that I'm counting or anything, but isn't this wolf cry number two?
JOY: But I did like that Lamb doesn't know what a vibrator is. There seems to be a very strong vibrator implication here, and Lamb is just like, "What would be buzzing during sex?"
HZ: She really does not want to say that she thought she heard a vibrator rather than head clippers.
LAMB: You were here. You saw her.
VERONICA: The light was off. I didn't see much.
LAMB: Well, why the hell didn't you turn them on?
VERONICA: Because I heard noises.
LAMB: Noises.
VERONICA: Like breathing. And buzzing.
LAMB: Buzzing. Like an electric razor?
VERONICA: Yeah, I guess, but at the time, I...thought it was something else. It turned off the second after I came in the room.
LAMB: What exactly did you think the buzzing was?
VERONICA: Something else, okay? Just… something else.
PARKER: Oh my God. You thought -
VERONICA: I thought it was just sex. It didn't occur to me that it was against your will.
PARKER: Thanks, Veronica. Thanks for thinking I'm the slut of the world. You let this happen!
HZ: I did think that the new version of the theme tune crashing in after this scene was probably more appropriate than the old one, just because the old one was so jaunty.
JOY: Yeah, very bouncy.
HZ: So you don't want to be like, "Someone got raped, ta-da! A long time ago, ba-ba..."
JOY: Yeah, it's starting to match up maybe a little bit more tonally with what's going on.
HZ: Parker blames Veronica, and that means Veronica has some motivation - well, some further motivation to investigate these rapes. She goes to the newspaper office and there's a young woman who was there called Nish, who we see quite a lot.
NISH: She's a great writer. But can you see her blending in at a sorority? They're not big on Dr Martens and unibrows.
HZ: She's sort of insulting the writer, whilst also thinking that sororities are too stupid for Dr Martens?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: In these episodes, they really don't seem to have a ton of sympathy for people who've been raped, or people who are angry about people getting raped. They don't like the vapid sorority girls that are ultra feminine. They don't like the feminists that they perceive to be not feminine enough.
JOY: Not a lot of sympathy for people with cancer who are using marijuana for medicinal purposes. Not a lot of sympathy, just sort of like in general.
HZ: What I thought was interesting about this is Veronica really wants this job because she needs a job for the financial aid, and otherwise they'll give her, quote, "An undesirable position at the library." But then we see that job in the subsequent episodes. It seems pretty nice to me.
JOY: Yeah, library seems tight.
HZ: Gives Veronica loads of time to do her Veronica Mars stuff.
JOY: Her Planet Zowie-ing.
HZ: And Nish is like, "OK, well, I've got this perfect assignment for you, you have to infiltrate this sorority," and Veronica really doesn't want to. She seems so resistant to this, and Nish is like, "No, you're gonna, because Parker was at the sorority before she was raped," which I'm not sure is the way to investigate it, by joining the sorority. It's probably easier to question them, isn't it?
JOY: Yeah. Is the student paper really sending people deep undercover on a regular basis, one wonders?
HZ: I feel like it could be quite difficult to be deep undercover when you're also living your normal student life on the same campus.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: And she tries to convince Nish that she's not their type. Too combative, too independent-thinking and smart-mouthed. But she is blonde and white, so she'll fit right in.
JOY: Nary a Dr Marten to be seen.
HZ: Well, she had those chunky Fluevogs.
JOY: Oh, true, which are definitely gay shoes. As the resident podcast gay, I can confirm Fluevogs are pretty gay.
HZ: So Nish has had four reliable sources tell her that Theta Betas get pledges all liquored up, take them to a secret room, and then make them undress while the guys from the brother fraternity watch through a two-way mirror. I don't know who her four sources are, because this room and this practise seems not to exist in this sorority, which is the result of Veronica's investigation, so...
JOY: Yeah, what?
HZ: Either Nish's sources are bad, or Nish is quite a bad journalist. But Veronica's like, "Secret room? Alright then!"
JOY: Ha! She can't resist the allure of a potential secret room.
HZ: What I thought, when we see Veronica dressed up in this floral dress, kind of bridesmaidy-looking dress, and goes to the sorority house, she looks like season one flashback Veronica.
JOY: Oh, true.
HZ: This is her alt timeline. When Veronica arrives, a sister named Hallie opens the door, and she's very perky and she's blonde and she had a shih-tzu called Veronica.
JOY: Eek.
HZ: And then, Jenny, how pleased were you to see that there's an a cappella choir arranged on the stage singing ‘True Colors’?
JOY: Still, at this point in the episode, I had not experienced a moment of joy, but this was the closest I got up to this point.
HZ: Because you love a cappella done by people at sororities, or because you love how much Veronica would be hating it?
JOY: I love how much Veronica would be hating it, and I love the commitment to the bit, you know? They're layered up the stairs, then they're in a corner, and they're just going hard. I like that aspect of it.
HZ: They take Veronica's purse, and they're like, "Oh, sorry, it's a house thing."
JOY: "Oh no, my taser! Oh no, all my bugs!"
HZ: Later, when they reveal why they took her purse, I thought, "What did they think when they found all of Veronica's spy shit in it?
JOY: This sorority house seems very floral, right?
HZ: Yes, yes.
JOY: It feels very Stepford. Why is there one random, enormous Lance Armstrong poster?
HZ: And the caption is, "Pain is temporary, quitting is forever."
JOY: Doesn't really seem to... Had Lance Armstrong already had cancer at this point? Because what we learn later in the episode, maybe that's about it.
HZ: OK, so there's three significant sorority sisters in this episode. There's Hallie, there's Shania, who's another kind of perky one, and then there's the supposed cool one, Marjorie, played by Rachelle Lefevre, who's in the first Twilight film. And she's different, because she's got red hair.
JOY: Oh, I see.
HZ: And she's sort of taking Veronica under her wing. She introduces Veronica to the den mother, Karen, who's carrying a huge plate of cookies because maternal, and do you recognise who she is, Jenny? Who's she played by?
JOY: No, no, no, no, no, no. Who is she?
HZ: She's played by Mary Chris Wall, who was in Wishbone.
JOY: Oh my god. Well, having never watched a single episode of Wishbone myself...
HZ: Oh, you haven't? I thought you were a keen Wishbone afficionado.
JOY: Well, I'm, I'm really an aficionado...
HZ: An awishonado.
JOY: ...of Wishbone's many little getups.
HZ: I see.
JOY: But I've never actually watched an episode. I'm just familiar... I mean, he's a fashion icon and a costumery icon.
HZ: I guess you have no eyes for the humans in Wishbone, just the canine actors.
JOY: No, yeah. What's the point of people?
HZ: Fine.
JOY: I didn't even know there were people in Wishbone.
HZ: So the reason why they took her bag is afterwards she goes out to her car and there's a bouquet of flowers in it, and a card saying, "You've been selected to attend a private party that night. Dress to impress." Which seems a bit Eyes Wide Shut.
JOY: It does.
HZ: And Veronica is not absolutely horrified that someone's been in the car. She just seems like, "A party?"
JOY: Yeah, that is... Well, she's doing it to other people all the time, so it must be a familiar concept. Her version of "dress to impress", though, is -
HZ: Newsreader.
JOY: Yeah. Newsreader, secretary at a real estate office, maybe adult horse girl...
HZ: It's the pencil skirt version of jodhpurs.
JOY: Yes, she needs a helmet.
HZ: But it does have that kind of "Take your office look from day to evening" vibe, where the evening is just "jacket off". And what's funny is she's let into the sorority house and it just seems quiet, and then someone opens a door and there's this full-on party raging just behind the door that you haven't been able to hear before. Hell of a door. And they give her a blue shot called a Panty Dropper. Veronica tips the drink into someone else's drink cup, and I was like, "What the fuck?" That is what happened to her at Shelly Pomroy's party.
JOY: Oh, yeah, what the hell?
HZ: All the bartenders are Pi Sigs, the brother fraternity.
JOY: This is my second moment of joy, at 19 minutes, like a half moment of joy when we see Dick in his Chippendales getup serving drinks. Hell yeah. There just aren't enough men running around in a collar with no shirt and a bow tie these days. You know what I mean, Helen?
HZ: It is a sort of refreshingly 1990s sight.
JOY: Yeah, he looks great. Generally, do Chippendales also have cuffs with no shirt? It's so weird, they have all of the closures of the shirt, but no shirt. It's such a funny choice.
HZ: Yeah. I wonder how they decided that's what people would find sexy: shirt parts. Marjorie takes Veronica to meet Chip, who is the chairman of the Pi Sigmas.
JOY: You remember Chip.
HZ: Yeah. He's like, "Oh, Veronica, the person who accused me of rape last year." And she's like, "Yes, hahaha, ah, you know, just a prank, hahaha."
JOY: Yep, yep. Just having a laugh.
HZ: Sorry to tell you that Chip seems to appear quite a few times this season.
JOY: Noooo...
HZ: You know what would have been a bloody amazing callback, Jenny, is if in this scene she'd thrown a beer over him. What could have been.
JOY: Missed opportunities, Helen.
HZ: She's got other plans. She's got to dance as loudly and exhibitionist-ly as possible in a big circle in the middle of the floor. And she's basically acting like Parker did last episode before she was raped, and Veronica was very critical of that. But it's fine if you're pretending?
JOY: The "faux-lesbian" dance...
HZ: Yeah. How do you feel about that designation?
JOY: You know, it's a tale as old as time, Helen.
HZ: Hmm.
JOY: Many men seem to be interested... When you have one good thing, and then you add another good thing to it, multiply by two and then mush them together, that's very exciting for some people. And, I can't argue with math, and I can't argue with giving the people what they want at this party. It's an effective tactic for blending.
HZ: Well, it isn't an effective tactic, though, because she's making too much of an exhibition of herself. She spots this camera up in the corner and she's like, "Woo, we're on TV, woo!" And grabs a chair and then dances even more exhibitionistly on the chair.
JOY: Yes, yes.
HZ: So then Marjorie and Chip are like, "We have to show you something," and they take her to this mysterious door.
JOY: It's the door!
HZ: Veronica's like, "Yes! Mysterious door!" And instead they're like, "Here's outdoors. We've called you a ride."
JOY: Yep, yep, yep.
HZ: And then her safe ride home is Fern, who wrestled Dick the previous episode in the anti-rape rally.
JOY: Ah, yes.
HZ: Who seems really grumpy. She seems to really victim-blame.
FERN: I don't know why I do it. You girls get all tarted up, parade right into the belly of the beast, and drink until you can't say no. You're lucky you didn't end up with a shaved head. You should know better. The Greeks are evil.
VERONICA: Okay, so here's the thing: I'm not really drunk. So, if you could just take me to the parking lot...
FERN: Yeah, like I don't get that speech from everyone who sits in that seat.
JOY: My third moment of joy of the episode comes when Veronica, in an attempt to prove her sobriety, is offering all sorts of things that she can do to show Fern that she's not really drunk. And then her last offering is...
VERONICA: Do you want me to juggle? Back handspring? A Vagina Monologue, perhaps?
FERN: Get out.
HZ: One thing we learn is that the person who drove Parker home in the little carts that night was Moe, the - what do they call them, RA?
JOY: Yes. Yes, that's an RA.
HZ: Yeah. He's playing classical music again, which probably means he's a psychopath. He's making tea again, in his huge room with no windows, and he said that Parker was fine, and there was another girl getting a ride who later confirmed that, yes, he'd dropped Parker off. While all this is happening, Mac and Parker are actually seeming to be getting on pretty well, and forming this friendship, because Parker's mum wants to take her home and she's like, "I knew you're not smart and mature enough to be independent." And that just seems like an unnecessary cruelty, and also not a good read of her child. She's giving her wigs to try on, and she's like, "That wig you like is a bad wig. See, I knew you couldn't make decisions, because you're not mature enough." Someone who's been recently traumatised, and then re-traumatised by Lamb's questioning... It's probably not a good time to make decisions about anything, and they don't even want to wear the wig, so they're probably not going to be like, "Oh, brilliant, OK, this wig," because all of the wigs are ones they don't want. So fuck off, Parker's mom.
JOY: Her mom sucks.
HZ: But at least Parker has got Mac, and Mac's like, "Stay."
JOY: I love this for them.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: Mac says she'll have Parker's back from now on. So nice. So sweet. We love to see it.
HZ: Veronica goes for a contrition chat with the den mother, Karen, where she's like, "I'm sorry, I don't usually behave like that," and Karen's like, "That's all right, have a Snapple. You'll probably still get in, because my girls are such good judges of character. I'll go and talk to them." Leaves the room - of course Veronica dives in for her keys, and having seen a camera in one of the sorority rooms, wouldn't you just assume the whole place is rigged, and that they're going to see her in the keys drawer?
JOY: Oh, yeah. What are you doing, Veronica?
HZ: She's off her game, I think, a bit.
JOY: But ultimately, those keys lead to something: it's a whole lot of weed!
HZ: It certainly doesn't seem like something you could mistake for people being forced to undress while frat boys watch.
JOY: Yeah, what?
HZ: Because it definitely looks like weed.
JOY: So hard to confuse those two things. Not sure what happened here.
HZ: Nish doesn't care, though, that her sources were wrong. She's like, "Brilliant! One Greek house down, nine to go."
JOY: Hmm.
HZ: And Veronica seems to be trying to stick up for the sorority, and has quite, "Oh shit," vibes, especially when she sees Marjorie, who's like, "Well, Karen has cancer. Look what you've done. And if she gets in trouble, she's going to lose her job and her health benefits when she's got cancer, and she needs the medical marijuana." Quite resourceful of them to grow it themselves.
JOY: Yeah, from seed.
HZ: Yeah. How long would that take?
JOY: I feel like a while?
HZ: But it would have been amazing if she'd just gone through that door and found just thousands of poinsettias.
JOY: Ha! The ultimate cash crop. Hell yeah.
HZ: They just really cheer Karen up while she's going through this. So then Veronica phones Nish, and she's like, "Please don't print the story," and Nish is like, "Nah, tough shit."
JOY: Yeah, this is a huge bummer.
HZ: And it has kind of longer-term implications as well, doesn't it? Because over the next two episodes of this batch, Veronica and Nish seem to have quite a tense relationship. Veronica is not working for the newspaper anymore, and all the feminists are suspicious of her/angry.
JOY: Yeah, understandably.
HZ: Oh, and also, in the next episode the Dean is going to suspend her unless she gives him the names of the marijuana farmers.
JOY: Right, right.
HZ: And she could have got into the sorority! They all voted for her. She might have had some female friends.
JOY: It's true. So what has Veronica learned, in terms of trying to track down this rapist and potentially crucify him, as she has vowed to do? So far this episode, she has learned that Chip Diller seems to be around when rapes occur, and someone in the Theta Betas had Parker's room key the night she was raped. Yeah?
HZ: Yes.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: We're not yet closer to narrowing down the rapist. The rape investigation is picked up in episode four. She kind of achieves some kind of entente with Parker, who's still pretty angry at her, and then Veronica was like, "I know how this feels, I've known since the night of Shelly Pomroy's party," and gives a date six months after the date we were given for the party in season one.
JOY: Oh, wow.
HZ: Shelly Pomroy's end of school year party, in the summer, whereas in the original depiction it was Shelly Pomroy's end of calendar year winter party.
JOY: When Veronica is done talking to Parker, or like ending their conversation, Nish comes by, and Veronica wants her to be careful. Gosh, wonder what's going to happen there.
HZ: Mmm. In this episode, the investigation is into the Pi Sigs’ frat because they've had an event on the night of every attack, and the campus paper uses the headline "Rape-ternity", which is, in Allusionist parlance, a portmantNO. There are times for portmanteaus, and I would say sex crime is never a time for portmanteaus.
JOY: No. No, choose your moments, friends.
HZ: But then the fraternity hires Veronica to clear them. They send Dick to tell her, "The fraternity thought you did such a great job of clearing them in season 2 episode 16 that they want to hire you." But she didn't; she just cleared Troy.
JOY: Yeah, this seems very weird. I would steer very clear of this woman if I were this fraternity, but...
DICK: We need you to do your Veronica thing and prove it's a pack of lies.
VERONICA: Is it? A pack of lies?
DICK: We're a frat. Why rape the cow when you're swimming in free milk?
JOY: Ugh, dude.
HZ: Dick comes to Veronica's apartment and bumps into Keith.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: He's like, "Oh, I recognise this building. We had to come here to pick up our maid once. Oh, you've got a little kitchen area! That's so awesome."
JOY: Oh my god, this is so upsetting to watch.
HZ: And yet, it does seem like they are trying to do a bit more with Dick. All of it is Dickish, pretty much.
JOY: But the range is gently expanding.
HZ: The grief we saw in the first episode of the season is happening offscreen, I would suppose. Another woman named Claire has been raped, and there's a whole load of bollocks about how the Pi Sigs had events on the night of each of the rapes, and the night Claire was raped it was a haunted house, so Veronica's investigating that, and she questions a bartender named Charleston Chu, who is an Asian man, and Charleston's a nickname, and I was a bit uncomfortable about this nickname.
JOY: I... We don't love it.
HZ: But he served drinks to Claire. Did not rape Claire. Did see Chip when he went to give him the money from the drink stand, and Chip opened the door naked and sweaty.
JOY: Mmm. We of course learn that what he was actually getting up to was Charleston's girlfriend, and the banging thereof. So there's going to be a little bit of an alibi conflict.
HZ: Seems that way.
JOY: Either it shan't be produced, or it will be produced and create trouble in the frat.
HZ: The frats are pissed off because they think Veronica's going after them instead of trying to find the real rapist, or "raper" as Dick says.
JOY: Oh my god, Dick.
HZ: All these frats seem to have bruised hands.
JOY: Well, there's a perfectly good explanation for that, which is that they have a Boo Room at the haunted house where it's dark and dudes jump out and say "boo" and try to grope women. So the ladies from Lilith House put rat traps on their gropeable parts, and somehow managed to trap the fingers of, like, every dude.
HZ: Good for them. Good for them, I say.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: But all of the women seem angry at Veronica for working for the frat people, and for consorting with Dick, and not hating them. Because, at the end, Veronica's like, "I've managed to get this ATM photo of Claire taking out cash two hours after the haunted house closed. She still had her hair, so she hadn't been raped yet, and in the photo, there is an Asian guy standing behind her, but he's not your one Asian member, Charleston Chu, so you're innocent. Yay." And the frat boys are like, "Cool," and all the women have not seen previous seasons of Veronica Mars, so don't know that Veronica is not going to be working for them.
JOY: Ha! Bleh. Veronica does say, I think, to Parker, when Parker confronts her about working with the Pi Sigs, she says, "Do you want to nail someone to the wall just to have them nailed there? Or do you want the actual person?" And it seems like everyone has already decided that it's, you know, whatever. I mean, Helen, I hate this plot.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: I wonder if it'll go away soon.
HZ: I don't know, Jenny, because after these three episodes we're not any closer to catching the rapist, and the people who've been raped are just angry at Veronica. That's the development, isn't it?
JOY: Yes.
HZ: So the mystery of the week in episode three, and the titular Wichita linebacker is played by Armie Hammer. And I'm going to summarise this quickly.
JOY: Hit it, Helen.
HZ: Because this is a plot about a missing playbook for sportsball, and no way you can you make me give a shit about this, because this isn't even a crime, is it?
JOY: Mmm.
HZ: And then Veronica's motivation for investigating it is so that Piz can impress Armie Hammer's girlfriend, Trish, because she's the mentor at the student radio station, and he wants a radio show.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: How is that the bait for us to care about this plot?
JOY: No.
HZ: And I don't know what a playbook is, and you can't make me. And there's a piece of popcorn that's an incriminating piece of evidence, except it's bollocks.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: And there's a painter called Larry where Veronica's like, "He's a jerk," and I was like, "Well, you came in and pestered him at an art exhibition, asking him rude questions and pointing out that he'd been dumped." Then there's a stupid blackmail plot to get someone to come down to the library so Veronica can question them, so she's sent a blackmail letter to this rival footballer, which says, "Come and check out The Tell-Tale Heart from the library, or else," and luckily she's on duty. What the fuck would have happened if someone else had been on duty? Or if the book had been out already? And then she's just like, "Aha, you're here! I've got questions," and, like, you could have just gone to his room and knocked on the door. Why all this rigmarole? Why, Jenny, why?
JOY: Ha!
HZ: And then... All for nothing! All for nothing! Because he was nothing to do with it, because of course it was Trish, and she's like, "Well, I just wanted my boyfriend to quit the team because the coach was mean," and you're like, well, that's an awful thing to do in a relationship, isn't it? And then he'll lose his scholarship, and why don't you people just converse with each other? And then Piz gets his fucking radio show and it's the worst.
JOY: No! Boo.
HZ: And then it comes back to the show hating feminists.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: Help.
JOY: So Helen, this is your favourite episode, is what I'm getting.
HZ: It's terrific. The big kicker, Jenny, is we get to see Piz's first radio show, and it's a debate between the heads of Lilith House, ie the dreaded feminists...
JOY: No.
HZ: ...and the editors of Hearst Lampoon. So there's been this whole thing where the legit paper printed a photo of this topless protest for Take Back The Night, and the Lampoon has printed a joke one, which is all topless men, and they've got this banner that says, "No thanks, except maybe the blonde in the middle." And so then on the radio show, they're having this horrible discussion.
DARREN: The problem is simple: feminists aren't funny.
NISH: Should I wait for the rimshot, or can I respond?
DARREN: Can you say ‘rimshot’ on the radio?
NISH: Please. If I say Mr Hartman here is an idiot, that's one thing; but I say he's an idiot and should be strung up and beaten to death, is that different? I mean, do words matter any more?
HZ: And then ‘the blonde in the middle’ is revealed to have been raped, Claire. So, then they start shouting about it, and Piz is just like, "...and we're just going to cut to a break."
JOY: I love that Piz's radio show, his first episode, is just like... Pretty much the only thing he says is, "Oh, they've got a good point, actually." And that's it. Who let this man? Who let this man? Trish. Trish did.
HZ: Yeah, well, because Trish was distracted by being dumped for her terrible plot. But the one good thing Piz does, I think - because he's an annoying, self-absorbed pest in this episode; having been reasonably endearing when introduced, in this he just seems entitled - in the debate, he says:
PIZ: Alright, let's flip a coin to see who goes first. And it's the head of a white slave-owning patriarchy, which means we will go with the gents.
JOY: "The head of a white slave-owning patriarch," maybe should have gone to the ladies?
HZ: Yeah. For reparations.
JOY: Mmm.
HZ: A good thing, maybe, about episode three is the return of:
JOY: Well, it's Weevil! He's got his hair growing again, which is not my favourite Weevil look, though, if that's what you're into, I celebrate that for you, and please enjoy. What he lacks in smouldering baldness, though, he makes up for in this would-be, almost happened, buddy cop comedy of Keith and Weevil's Detective Agency.
HZ: Ah! Ah, it's such a glorious glimpse of what could have been - but unfortunately he gets fired by the end of episode.
JOY: It is so sad. But it's very important for Weevil to be on campus, I think, so we can see lots of him.
HZ: Yeah. Well, the thing is, Weevil needs a job as conditions of his parole.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: And he spent the summer in Chino on assault charges. Not murder charges, though. So that's all happened off screen.
JOY: His car wash extreme exposition thing with Veronica, where they see each other and it's like, "Ah, I see you are still working here as a condition of your parole, because you plea bargained down to assault, from murder, and here you are, working."
HZ: "But if you don't get a job (on campus) then you'll be sent back to (not being on screen this season) Chino."
JOY: Ha!
HZ: So Veronica gets him a job with Keith.
JOY: See, you hated this... You hate this episode, but it's way more fun to talk about so far.
HZ: He doesn't have a great phone manner when he starts working at Mars Investigations.
JOY: No.
HZ: But he does seem very keen.
JOY: Bully for Keith for recognising, like, "OK, this secretary situation isn't working out, but let's see like what else he's got."
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: Like, "Let's see how he does if I send him out on surveillance." And he fucking nails it.
HZ: He does great.
JOY: Yeah. Great instincts.
HZ: He's learned from Veronica, hasn't he?
JOY: Mmm.
HZ: And also I guess he and Keith know each other pretty well at this point of both of their careers.
JOY: Keith refers to having arrested him many times.
HZ: But there's sort of a respect between them.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: There's so many people, like Kendall, you'd think would be great co-detectives with Keith, Weevil as well, but then he has to get rid of him because he's been on this child abuse case and he beats up the likely child abuser.
JOY: And this is so sad, because Weevil is having like a very strong response to something. He's seeing a wrong, and he's trying to right it in a way that he knows how, but unfortunately, aside from, you know, violence not being the answer to fix violence, he essentially loses Keith the opportunity to protect this child, which is such a bummer.
HZ: Yeah. I mean, violence is not the answer, but I think Weevil also knows that going through official law channels may not be the answer.
JOY: Doesn't always work.
HZ: But because Weevil needs a job so that he can be in season three, we've had this whole plot where the dean of the university, played by Ed Begley Jr -
JOY: Having a blast with him. He's great.
HZ: Having a blast with him, but he's like, "Veronica, you're going to be expelled unless you give up the names of the marijuana growers," and he's also got this thing when his car's been vandalised, and in the end she's like, "I'm not going to give up those names, but I'm going to reveal to you that it was your son who crashed it, and then made it look like it was vandalised by the Dreaded Feminists, and I know someone who can fix it, and then you need to hire him to do this maintenance job you've been advertising." So that brings Weevil into season three, and keeps him out of Chino.
JOY: Thank god. And I love that Weevil also fixes the dean's AC; the dean has been bitching about his AC not working for more than a week at a time. You could just tell that Weevil and the dean are going to have something special.
HZ: He seems very blissed out with his AC, and then Weevil, having fixed it, just stares through the office window at the dean enjoying the AC. I couldn't really work out what that meant. A little creepy. Now, when we saw Keith in episode one, he was wounded, and in the desert overnight.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: And we see in the second episode that he has survived, and he spends most of the episode limping through the desert. Doesn't have any water or anything. Very worried about him. And Cormac Fitzpatrick is tracking him. Keith has found a big, long stick, even though the desert plants in the area don't seem like they would supply a five-foot stout staff.
JOY: Nope, nope. Just low shrubs.
HZ: But usefully, the stick gets caught in an animal trap, which would have snapped Keith's leg, but the trusty stick took it.
JOY: Thank you, stick.
HZ: And this is Chekhov's Animal Trap.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: Cormac is following Keith's footsteps. Cormac's got water, he's prepared. Keith finds a railroad track and follows it, and Cormac therefore follows the railroad track. He spots a pen sticking out of the ground. It's a Vinnie Van Lowe pen, therefore there's a bug in it. And I did think, if you were a private investigator, would you put your name on your bugged pens? Because that would clearly mark them as being suspicious.
JOY: Ha! Wow, great point.
HZ: But, it's a trap! It's two traps. It's a trap laid by Keith to get Cormac to be caught in the animal trap. Never bet against Keith Mars, even a thirsty, hungry, tired one.
JOY: I... This is... I don't know. I mean, I'm... It brought me my first moment of joy in the episode, to see Cormac step into an animal trap. I don't know if I buy the setup. That is a big bear trap, and the land around him is clear, and he just steps right into it.
HZ: Presumably, the Vinnie Van Lowe pen was bringing Liam Fitzpatrick to them? Because Liam turns up and follows the trail of blood and finds Cormac lying in the trap, and he crunches his foot into his wound.
JOY: Ugh.
HZ: And Fitzpatricks at him.
JOY: Fitzpatricks at him:
LIAM: Ahh, ouch. That looks painful, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as being betrayed by your own brother.
CORMAC: Liam.
LIAM: Yeah, I thought we had a deal. I take care of your trashy girlfriend, I get a cut of her cash. Where's the money?
CORMAC: I don't know!
[Liam points a gun at Cormac's head.]
LIAM: Do you know now?
CORMAC: Look, Liam, I found some cash, but most of it is missing. I don't know what she did with it.
LIAM: You know this is going to be the last time I ask you, right? Dondé está MY MONEY?
CORMAC: It wasn't there.
LIAM: I don't get it. Mom always liked you best.
HZ: Then he shoots and presumably kills Cormac - it's offscreen again - so now he'll never find the money. Idiot.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: I thought it weird that they introduced Cormac just last episode, and they were like, "Ooh, the Big Bad, ooh, he's going to be up against Keith," and then they're like, "Nah, he's taken care of. Done."
JOY: Yeah, no time for Cormac.
HZ: Keith finds the local police.
JOY: Imagine this guy stumbling into your police station, filthy, bloody, wounded, dehydrated, telling you there's been a murder. Keith might want to lead with, "I didn't commit it."
HZ: But at the house, the police can't find Kendall's body. But they do find some blood on a picture frame, and as they're bagging up the picture frame having taken the picture out of it, Keith realises what the picture is.
JOY: Dude, it's a Van Gogh painting?
HZ: Yes, The Two Lovers, which is a real one.
JOY: Worth gazillions of dollars.
HZ: This confused me, because Keith looks at the painting as if he's like, "Wait a minute, that painting's a very valuable Van Gogh," but he had seen it at the end of the last season when Kendall's like, "Look in my briefcase, and then you'll want to delay your trip to New York." Is it just he wasn't expecting it to be in a glass frame in the safe house?
JOY: It's very weird. Maybe the listeners know something we don't know.
HZ: Anyway, Keith sells it to a museum, and donates all the proceeds to the South Neptune Food Bank, which is a lot of money for one local food bank to receive.
JOY: Right? I think he could have split that up.
HZ: Also, it's not Keith's to sell. That's evidence.
JOY: Oh, yeah.
HZ: When Veronica gets home and finds him, he's crying, because he seems to blame himself for Kendall's death.
JOY: It's understandable. He's not right, but I understand why he would feel that way, being a good dude.
HZ: But there's something to take his mind off it in episode four!
JOY: A lady comes into Mars Investigations. She and Keith have a history, albeit just a teeny-tiny one.
HZ: Is it the history of them both having been in Just Shoot Me! in 1997?
JOY: That doesn't come up, weirdly. What does come up is an unbelievable fucking tidal wave of hot, hot, combustible, sizzling chemistry and energy. These two need to bang as quickly as possible. But there's an obstacle, because she comes to Mars Investigations because she thinks her husband's cheating. They've become glorified roommate; he's a wonderful father; he's taking all these business trips all of a sudden, you know, as straying husbands tend to, in quotes, "do". And she wants to hire Keith to make it official and get the money shot.
HZ: It's sad, isn't it? Because she just wants an excuse to leave this marriage, and she doesn't get one.
JOY: It's like... Listen. Lady. You're glorified roommates with this guy. Leave your husband, it's OK, you're allowed to have agency and make a decision for yourself that isn't beholden to a decision you made for yourself like 25 years ago.
pHZ: This woman, Harmony, is played by Laura San Giacomo, who is in tons of stuff. I recognised her from the 90s adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Stand. She's in Pretty Woman as well. And she's great. And she brings Keith a pizza.
JOY: Oh my god. You're fucking telling me this isn't going to happen by the end of the episode?
HZ: I know.
JOY: Come on!
HZ: It's been like a year since Keith last had an on-screen romance. Give him a break.
JOY: Yeah, this man needs to have a good time. He's earned it. Please let this man have a romance.
HZ: He gives her a bug to put in her husband's tie. Amazing. Wouldn't you notice that your tie had a lump in it?
JOY: Unfortunately, despite the bugging of the tie, despite Keith catching actually the money shot, alas, the money shot is paired with a recording of the husband saying, "No, no, no, I can't. I'm a married man." And then he hands off the account that he shared with this woman, and he does all the good husband stuff. But, listen, Laura San Giacomo. You can still leave. It's OK.
HZ: Yes, if you're not happy.
JOY: Get out of there.
HZ: Use this as a sign. You know you had your husband investigated because you wanted an excuse to leave. But what's weird as well is that Keith is like, "Here's the money shot," and she starts listing all these things about like, "OK, what do I do now that I've got the incriminating photo?" And he's like, "But listen!" And then it's the exonerating recording of the husband going, "No, I have a wife, I'm not going to have an affair with you." Why do it that way around? That just seems cruel.
JOY: Maybe to give her hope, to see how she would react to the money shot, and thinking...
HZ: "Here's what you could have won."
JOY: Yeah. We're rooting for this. Listen, people change. Harmony and this guy have raised a kid. He's a great father, and that's really nice, that's awesome. Doesn't mean they have to be bound together for all eternity if they're not happy.
HZ: No. If they're glorified roommates. Become inglorious sexmates with Keith, just for a bit.
JOY: Hell yeah. Do it.
HZ: Let's just check in on Loganica, because they were very hot for each other in the first episode, but by episode three they're having problems that just seem to come out of nowhere. Which is, they don't want to do the same things. Logan wants to play cards and be a lad, and Veronica is into the arts, based on virtually no previous.
JOY: Well, you may remember she mentioned MoMA one time.
HZ: And Logan portrays her as this dry feminist as well. What is happening, Jenny? I was hoping you could illuminate.
JOY: Not a lot of trust. A lot of tracking.
HZ: She's jealous, because girls have invited Logan to a party.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Generally, it seems to be the theme in this whole series that Rob Thomas doesn't think that it can be interesting if happy and hot Loganica are getting on fine. But he really didn't mind Veronica doing fuck all and being happy with boring Duncan.
JOY: You know?
HZ: She gets this message from Logan saying he can't see her that night, and so Veronica uses her phone tracker to track him down to a dorm room where there's a casino set up.
JOY: Oh my fucking god...
HZ: We meet someone called Mercer.
JOY: Helen. I hate it.
HZ: I would have thought she'd be pleased that, like, "Oh, Logan's making friends in the university," except these people seem to suck. Like, Mercer mocks someone's stammer, and then he acts like it's no big deal.
ALAN: Hey, M-M-Mercer. You got a spread on this weekend's game?
MERCER: I d-d-d-do! You must hate when people do that. It's us by four.
[Mercer turns to Veronica and Logan.]
MERCER: Yes. So, uh, if you don't mind.
[Logan and Veronica go into the hallway.]
LOGAN: You know, as adorable as it is when you do it to criminals, the surveillance thing is starting to bug.
VERONICA: You said you'd come by.
LOGAN: *Might* come by.
VERONICA: And then on your message, I heard all this partying and I wanted to know what was going on.
LOGAN: Yeah, and while I appreciate your interest, Big Brother, I hope -
VERONICA: Wow! A Nineteen Eighty-Four reference. Did you read that in weightlifting?
LOGAN: You know, your dad was half right. You have a thing for bad boys, but, well, you don't want to reform them, you just get off on judging them.
VERONICA: Which reminds me: can I borrow your copy of 101 Brooding Comments?
LOGAN: I only have the CliffNotes. Look, I gotta run, so to save you the trouble: I'm surfing in Mexico with Dick and Mercer this weekend. I'll fax you the coordinates so you don't incur any more cell-tracking charges, and I'll keep a journal of my bad thoughts in case you want to stick my face in a cage of rats when I get back. Sorry, Nineteen Eighty-Four is the only book I read.
HZ: And then she puts a tracker on his car.
JOY: But then she thinks better of it, or undoes it. Un-tracks his car.
HZ: Logan's got a new car. No more yellow Xterra.
JOY: Oh, yeah. He's got a friggin' Range Rover or a Land Rover, some kind of Rover.
HZ: Logan's already on going-to-Mexico-on-a-surf-trip-with-Mercer terms, but then, as a gesture to Veronica, decides not to go. And there's a scene in the library where Logan suaves up and is like, "Is this the help desk? Because I need some." And when someone else comes up asking for help, she just slams the closed sign in front of them.
JOY: This is the Veronica Mars work ethic in full effect.
HZ: She's also always talking loudly in the library.
JOY: Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. Veronica.
HZ: She's bad at this job.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: But they make up.
VERONICA: I thought you were in Mexico.
LOGAN: Yeah, well, us bad boys usually love Mexico, but,I was feeling a little reformed. I don't even think Mercer surfs. And I always feel bad about those poor donkeys. Are you free this weekend? There's a film festival. Incomprehensible foreign movies of 3+ hours.
HZ: Why do they make it seem like that's Veronica's thing? We've seen her film taste. She likes The Big Lebowski, and she and Keith rent the same action films multiple times.
JOY: Yeah, I don't know what's happening here, but I guess she's in college now, so...
HZ: Were you impressed that they're able to walk upstairs whilst kissing, despite their height difference?
JOY: I think that is a very impressive feat that we should all celebrate.
HZ: And then in the next episode, Logan is invited to dinner with her and Keith.
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: He and Keith actually seem to get on fine, but Veronica is jumpy as fuck and makes things weird.
JOY: She can not be cool!
KEITH: What classes are you taking?
VERONICA: Where is this going?
KEITH: My end game is to find out what classes Logan is taking.
LOGAN: Just core stuff, you know, sociology, freshman comp. Mass com, which is kinda coming in handy. You know, apparently being the offspring of a murderer doesn't get old. I'm getting all these interview requests. Larry King wants me to come on with OJ's kids.
KEITH: Oh, you thinking about it?
LOGAN: No.
KEITH: Why's that?
VERONICA: Time out! Can we stay in the shallow end, please?
JOY: I just want to draw attention to a very brief walk-and-talk that Dick and Veronica have, where Veronica says, "Where's Logan?" And Dick shrugs and says, "Nailing other chicks?" Stirring the shit, stirring the shit!
HZ: He also says that, "Whipped guys aren't good friends." I guess if anyone's going to whip Logan, Dick wants it to be Dick.
JOY: Hmm.
HZ: So we have this plot in the fourth episode, Charlie Don't Surf, where Logan's accountant is like, "Wow, you're really blowing through your fortune." And he has been living for, what, a year in a hotel suite that costs over a thousand dollars a night? So I'm sure that would do it.
JOY: Yeah. Also, it's just weird that what we learned, what, that, that Charlie Stone is receiving $10,000 a month or something? When you think about what you imagine the Aaron Echolls fortune to be, I wouldn't think that, like, $10,000 dollars a month would make like such a sizeable dent that Logan's like, "Holy shit, I'm about to run out of money all of a sudden."
HZ: Well, Logan's spending more than three times that on his hotel room.
JOY: Exactly why I don't think it's an amount that's, like, big enough to catch his notice or be the thing that's tripping him up. It just feels not to scale.
HZ: Yeah. Although we don't know what Logan's cut of his money is, because it's the money you've been allocated before you're 21, where presumably he gets control of more.
JOY: Right, right, right, right, right.
HZ: So $10,000 is going to a charity called Aaron's Kids, with an S.
JOY: That's what you think: however, it's actually Aaron's Kidz with a Z, and it's not a charity, it's literally Aaron's kid, Charlie. Veronica digs this dirt right up out of the ground.
HZ: I don't know how she finds that it all leads back to Charlie Stone, but she's filled the whiteboard with flowcharts, so...
JOY: Just trust her on this one.
HZ: He works at a private school in San Juan Capistrano. Very charming place. And he's in the book. I'm sure Veronica could find his number even if he wasn't in the book.
JOY: Oh, definitely.
HZ: And so Logan calls Charlie Stone, and we meet him, and he's played by the other Logan, Matt Czuchry.
JOY: Dude. Ugh. If I never saw this guy's fucking punchable face again, it would be too soon, Helen. Why, I can't stand this man.
HZ: Well, I think Matt Czuchry specialises in playing people that you want to punch in the face.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: So they sit on Logan's balcony. The outdoor aspect of Logan's room is suddenly getting a lot of airtime.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: And he explains his parentage.
CHARLIE: She was a stewardess when she met Aaron. She said she met him working first class on an LA to New York red-eye. My mom is a looker.
LOGAN: Yeah, I'm sure she is.
CHARLIE: I didn't believe her, till she showed me the cheques, the hush money. How many kids of single parent flight attendants score the best private schools? Still I'd see pictures of your family and think that life should be mine.
LOGAN: Nah, you don't want it. Trust me.
CHARLIE: No, I know; that's the thing. The more I watched, the happier I was that it wasn't my family. Your dad cheats on your mom, it's on the cover of People. Your sister shoots Nicole Richie with a BB gun, Jay Leno opens his monologue with it. Then the murder. I started wondering if something was wrong with me, you know, if this is my bloodline.
LOGAN: Yeah, join the club.
HZ: And he's got to go off and grade papers, because he's got a real job; but ah, if he gets it done, he can go surfing, and Logan's like, "Surfing? We must be brothers then!"
JOY: Oh god.
HZ: So then they bob around on surfboards in the ocean, and Logan tells him a horrible story about his abusive father.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: It's really grim.
JOY: Phewww.
HZ: I mean, Logan seems so happy to have his brother, so of course it has to be short-lived.
JOY: No, Logan can't be happy.
HZ: And Veronica's like, "Well, I should be happy for him, but I'm not." So she goes to the school where he supposedly works.
JOY: Listen, she's just trying to protect Logan.
HZ: And a different Charlie Stone - well, the actual Charlie Stone, appears.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: You can tell that he is Logan's bio brother because... He's wearing pond green!
JOY: Ha.
HZ: Shirt and tie. As Logan and Gilmore Girls Logan walk across the beach, Veronica is lurking there, and she reveals that he's actually called Norman Phipps, and he's a Vanity Fair journalist.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: Would have been great if they'd called the character Logan Huntzberger, because he was a journalist in Gilmore Girls simultaneously as cast in this.
JOY: That would have rocked.
HZ: So, some face-punching happens. Jenny, were you pleased to see the face you find punchable getting punched?
JOY: Well, this guy sucks, and he's trying to hurt Logan, and Logan is a notorious puncher, so it really just seems like it was inevitable and it happened.
HZ: Logan and the actual Charlie Stone go on Larry King in order to ruin Matt Czuchry's scoop, but we don't see that.
JOY: Nay.
HZ: And we find out that Norman Phipps tapped the real Charlie Stone's phone, which, for how long?
JOY: What the hell?
HZ: How many years did he tap it, waiting for Logan to call?
JOY: Right? And how?
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: And then Logan keeps trying to reach out to real Charlie Stone after this Larry King deal, but he's not returning his calls, so Logan remains an island.
HZ: It's sad, because he's lost a lot of family members, and he seemed to really gel with fake Charlie Stone, and then the whole brother concept is snatched away.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Well, shall we check in with Lo Dodds on the crimes committed in these episodes, in today's LoDown?
JOY: By all means.
THE LODOWN
HZ: Lo, when you were a student, were you forced into a Stanford Prison Experiment-esque experiment?
LO DODDS: I was not forced into a Stanford Prison Experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment itself was a shoddy experiment, from an experiment point of view.
HZ: Yep.
LO DODDS: And then after that, they put in all those ethical reforms, so you wouldn't do something like that now. I don't think you can actually consent to having PTSD? I spent a lot of my psych undergrad doing data entry on police reports, and nobody let me get out of a term paper for it, either, so, no, I don't think people are running around doing that experiment nowadays. And you definitely wouldn't find them doing it on freshmen either.
JOY: You want to experiment on kids who have a little more experience under their belt.
LO DODDS: Psych 101 for freshmen is not this involved.
JOY: Totally unrelated, Lo and Helen, would you guys want to come over to my house and hang out in my unfinished basement and wear contrasting shirts?
HZ: Mmm.
JOY: One of you will have power over the other one. We'll just see what happens.
HZ: Unequivocally yes.
LO DODDS: I'm fully willing to sign up for that. I've been trapped in my house with my children, working full-time, so I will totally go to your basement.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: I was confused by Keith Mars and this very valuable painting that he just takes and sells. Surely that is evidence? Surely he should not be taking it?
JOY: If you just find something worth a lot of money at a crime scene, you could just pocket it?
LO DODDS: No, you're not allowed to take evidence just because you find it. And yes, the police would have to process it for evidence first. But, how wily do we think Kendall is?
JOY: Very wily.
LO DODDS: Wily, right? She had that whole separate apartment. Kendall gets all that money. Dick Senior is in the wind. It's her sole and separate property. Was she crafty enough to have a will and trust? If you have a bunch of assets, or if you have children, you're supposed to have a will and trusts. You should. And if she put it into trust, say, in the event of her untimely demise, you know, she could have appointed Keith. It sounds like he was very up in the mix of having their personal documents sorted, and passports and stuff. So it's possible that Kendall did do something, knowing that she was involved with some shady characters, so that Keith could dispose of it in the event of her death. And I feel like Kendall maybe thought about that, or at least Keith could have advised, "Hey, maybe you should do this."
JOY: Lo.
LO DODDS: Yes?
JOY: This poor den mother, this poor sorority mom: we're led to believe that she could lose her job and her insurance based on a photograph and some hearsay about her getting these marijuana seeds and planting them, but listen, I'm looking at friggin' Wikipedia right now with my own two eyeballs, and it says that in 1996 California became the first state to legalise medical cannabis. So can you explain to me why this would even frigging be an issue in the mid-2000s? Why would this woman have to be hunting down seeds from the Botany Department?
LO DODDS: As far as her having a prescription for marijuana, that would be one thing, versus her growing medicinal marijuana. And you always have to remember that California is still an at-will state. She's a den mother. She presumably has no tenure, like a professor would be, so they can pretty much fire her for anything. And considering that she's supposed to be caring for these women as they are in college and guiding them to make right decisions, the fact that she was growing marijuana illegally, or even growing it in general, those, the women of the house don't have medical marijuana licences or anything, so it shouldn't have been in that property, probably. So yeah, I think they would have easily fired her.
JOY: I just feel like this never should have happened.
LO DODDS: It should not have happened. And I feel like this is not a good look for Veronica, and she doesn't seem super remorseful about it. Like, it usually feels like Veronica fixes all her mistakes, like there's always that quip at the end where she's like, "...and I found this, and now you can live rent-free in this house forever," and she didn't do that this time. And I feel bad about that.
HZ: That's adulthood. You can't fix all your mistakes with a quip.
LO DODDS: It's true. She's an adult now. She has to realise that.
HZ: But then in episode three, the dean is threatening to expel Veronica for not giving up the names of the people growing the weed. And he says that as a student journalist she's not covered by rules governing protection of sources - but they do pertain to student journalism, I thought.
LO DODDS: Yeah, you're right. In California, student journalists have successfully argued that the Shield Law should apply to them, which is the protection of sources law. But the Shield Law is designed to protect you if you are in certain legal situations. If you're, you know, to prevent you from being held in contempt, or if there's a criminal trial, there are certain balancing, you know, measures they take to see if they need to protect sources or protect the disclosure of that evidence. But this is not really any of those situations. She's just being threatened with expulsion, and I took this as a bluff. Like, he in theory could expel her, but there are attorneys that specialise in school expulsions, wrongful school expulsions.
HZ: Wow.
LO DODDS: So I think she'd have a good case to say this is just bullshit and he just wanted me to give up a name. And also, how many botany professors can there be?
JOY: Honestly, narrow it down. The one who's driving a Volkswagen or a Volvo is probably your person.
LO DODDS: It's not that hard, but maybe the botany professor had tenure and he couldn't fire them anyway, you know, unless for like major malfeasance, I don't know. But yeah, I don't, I don't think this is a really good case for Cyrus. Also, why is he so, so confident in his assertion that the First Amendment is so protected at his university, but he does not care about the California constitution that protects sources?
JOY: Hmm.
HZ: Hmm.
LO DODDS: He's inconsistent, Cyrus, but I do love him as a character.
JOY: Speaking of love: the apple of my eye Eli Weevil Navarro was recently in Chino, after he was arrested for murder, and then pleaded down to assault. What do we think the likelihood is that he would be out just months later?
LO DODDS: First of all, there is no proof that Weevil killed Thumper, other than those kids in the van that saw him assault Thumper. So the idea that he pled down to assault because the prosecutor was like, "Well, we don't have an eyewitness putting him and his bike in the stadium, we only have evidence from two children, who are maybe not the best witnesses, that he chloroformed him." I find that plausible, that he got convicted of assault. What he's out on, he's not technically out. It sounds like what he's doing is work release, or work furlough?
HZ: Oh, so that's why he needs a job, otherwise he gets put back in Chino?
LO DODDS: It's unlikely he would have actually been offered that, because it's usually for non-violent offenders, and also first-time offenders. Weevil doesn't really fit into that category. And it's also not usually just any job, like it's a specific job you're supposed to have. Normally you can do it for the state, or for charities, community service, stuff like that. If he'd lose his job he goes, you know, he has to serve his time the regular way.
HZ: Right. Instead of the car wash way.
LO DODDS: Yeah. Instead of dealing with the horrible car wash boss.
JOY: Previously, up to this point, all the car washes we've seen in Neptune have been really sexy. This one does not, disappointingly, fit the bill.
LO DODDS: This was not run by cheerleaders.
JOY: No. Boo.
LO DODDS: Well, yeah. But probably they were better at car washing.
JOY: Maybe. So using your your little tracker device, to track your boyfriend Logan? Illegal, yay or nay?
LO DODDS: Don't track someone's cellphone without their consent. Obviously you do have, like, Find My iPhone now. You need to have given consent for this sort of tracking. If the police need a warrant to do it, you should not be doing it illegally.
JOY: Right, right, right, right, right. For absolutely no special reason, could you give us as much detail as possible about the deal with setting up a fake charity for the money?
LO DODDS: That's definitely fraud. People go down for mail fraud, for wire fraud. You can go down for several years for each count of that.
HZ: Wow.
JOY: Let me write that down...
LO DODDS: But this I don't think was illegal, because Avi is not going to risk his licence just to protect, or to support, Aaron's love child.
HZ: Also, Charlie Stone is older than Logan, so it's not child support anymore, is it? Is it hush money?
LO DODDS: I think that Aaron's trust made a provision for this, and this was Avi's way of covering it up so Logan wouldn't find out, and I bet this was done at Aaron's behest.
HZ: Is it a crime for a journalist to pretend to be your prodigal half-brother?
LO DODDS: Yeah, I don't know that it's a crime unless you're extorting someone for money, or you're... It's funny, I have a friend in the AP and I asked him about this, and I guess journalists do have ethical obligations, and they take ethics classes. So they have their own kind of version of the Hippocratic Oath. We have licence requirements. We have to take ethical tests and we have background checks or whatever, so you could lose your licence if you act unethically. But for journalists, I think it's more of a code, because obviously Norman Phipps is never going to work again for a reputable newspaper or magazine, if he actually did this.
HZ: Well....
LO DODDS: I don't think that Vanity Fair is willing to expose itself to the lawsuit that is definitely coming from Charlie, from Logan, for just this two-bit story.
HZ: Seems like an un-Vanity Fair kind of project for him to be doing.
LO DODDS: Yeah, I don't see this happening. And the watch: Logan has given him something of value. He's defrauded Logan out of something of value. That, again: Vanity Fair, Norman, they're all getting sued.
JOY: Ooh.
HZ: And then he tapped Charlie's phone for years, just waiting for Logan to happen to call?
LO DODDS: That doesn't make any sense. Like, if you break that story, you found Aaron Echolls's other love child. That's ridiculous. I don't understand that at all.
HZ: Right. What kind of story is he trying to break here by posing as Logan's fake half-brother?
LO DODDS: Just shitty stories about Aaron, a guy who's already dead.
HZ: I think it was 2011, the British newspaper The News Of The World was shut down for having tapped people's phones. It was an enormous scandal.
LO DODDS: As it should be. You can't do that as a regular private citizen, just tapping people's phones. We've talked about this previously, about how many people have to consent to a conversation being recorded. Some states it's two parties, some states it's one party, but yeah, you should not be doing that just for your job.
HZ: They found out because they'd tapped a phone and discovered that Prince William had an injured knee, and that's what blew open the phone tapping that was really widespread.
JOY: Wow.
LO DODDS: That was the scandal?
JOY: Whoooo gives a shit!
LO DODDS: Yeah. Wow, that's, that's what... They deserve to be shut down for tapping a phone and only getting that.
JOY: Ha.
HZ: Well, the scandal that really outraged people was they tapped the phone of a young girl that got murdered.
LO DODDS: Oh my god.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
LO DODDS: The British tabloids are horrible.
HZ: And then, can paparazzi just turn up at a school and shoot a load of photos? Surely there's rules protecting people going into a school and taking pictures of minors?
LO DODDS: Yeah, you can't do that. So, generally speaking, we've talked about in public, you don't have an expectation of privacy. But there are exceptions for schools, and for private property. And this is a private school, especially. He's parking in the parking lot of the school, so all the paparazzi surrounding his car, they're definitely trespassing. They definitely weren't invited. It's interesting, California actually has specific laws for paparazzi taking pictures of celebrity children, but obviously Charlie is an adult, so it wouldn't really help him. Maybe, perhaps, why Norman waited so long to write this story.
JOY: So bust out your scales of justice, Lo. A grope room? Is it legal?
LO DODDS: I don't need the scales that much for this. I'm pretty sure there is no defence to sexual assault just because you are in costume. But no, you cannot sexually assault people just because they go in a haunted house. I did not see any waivers being handed out at the beginning of the Boo Room, so no.
JOY: Is it legal to have wear rat traps on your boobs?
HZ: Yeah, is it assault if it's like rat trap self-defence?
LO DODDS: No, I mean, I think you would argue it was self-defence. If you said, "I've gone into this boo room before, and last time I got groped, and this time I'm protecting myself from getting groped so that I can go through the rest of the haunted house," you know, I think you'd have a pretty good case for that. Generally, booby traps are kind of frowned upon in the law. Like, you can't booby trap your house.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: Oh, so Home Alone was a lot of crimes on the part of Macaulay Culkin?
LO DODDS: Yes and no. I'd have to go through that entire movie to find out. But yes, at the point where he's defending himself because he knows they're coming in, I think that'd probably be allowed. This is more like the famous case of somebody setting up a gun so it's like a hair trigger, so if anybody steps onto their property, they get shot. And the court was like, "No, obviously you can't do that."
JOY: Lo, it took you saying the phrase "booby trap" to blow this case wide open for me. The height of the brilliance of this situation is only now dawning on me, and thank you.
VERDICT
HZ: Well, Jenny, we've dispatched three episodes.
JOY: We have.
HZ: They've not moved the long plot arcs on a whole lot.
JOY: Mmm, no. But they were fun in places. There were some good times. There were some guest stars.
HZ: There were several guest stars. I guess Rider Strong got quite a lot to do, albeit all of it disgusting and evil. Wallace was only in one of these episodes, but he was Angelic Wallace. And they cut some stuff as well, in one of the episodes where they'd filmed scenes with Mac, where she's kind of processing her Cassidy-related trauma with Wallace as her friend, and I would have loved to have seen that compared to seeing more frat boys.
JOY: Honestly.
HZ: Didn't ask for more of Chip. Did you have a favourite out of these three episodes?
JOY: I liked 3 or 4, because I'm totally all in on Keith and Harmony. Let's go.
HZ: I agree. Logan's brother plot was quite interesting as well, albeit brief. What lines stood out to you?
JOY: Here's where I'm at. I'm picking one line from the three episodes, and my one line - that's right, my favourite line from these three, my very favourite tip-top line - is when Veronica says, "I'm a freshman, I only recently learned where Waldo is," which is tight.
HZ: I liked it when Veronica vows, "I'm going to catch the rapist and see him crucified," and Wallace says, "I don't think they do that anymore."
JOY: I don't know. They might make an exception for Veronica, she might figure it out.
HZ: Taping people to the flagpole is part of the way there.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: And should we grade the episodes as a bunch, or should we just grade your favourite of the three?
JOY: Hmm. I like averaging them together. I found watching three episodes in a group, like, more fun than one at a time.
HZ: Yeah, well, it's difficult isn't it, because there's stuff that we really didn't focus on because we did not like it, and that would bring the grade down, and then the stuff that we really liked, like Keith and Harmony, which would bring the grade up, and maybe it's just always going to average out to a 3 point something because of that.
JOY: That sounds about right. I think this bundle altogether would probably get to 3.8 little wire bugs that go in the knot of a tie. Also, do glorified roommates tie each other's ties? That kind of sounds sexy to me. Maybe things aren't as died out as Harmony thinks.
HZ: Where would you put it if you were given a bug, to bug your wife-to-be Jess?
JOY: Hmm. Hmm.... I would never bug her.
HZ: There's the thing.
JOY: Couldn't possibly.
HZ: I suppose I could hide a bug in my husband's hair.
JOY: Yeah. His beard is... Mmm.
HZ: He's very bad at finding things, so I could hide it practically anywhere.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: When I think about these, I just think about the parts that I liked, and not the swathe that I didn't, so I'm not sure my grade is truly reflective of my feelings, because I'm trying to focus on the things that I found interesting. The trouble with these is that most of them didn't amount to much.
JOY: Mm-hmm.
HZ: But I was pleased with, like, the Weevil and Keith stuff, Keith and Harmony, Wallace and Logan. Even though I hated the experiment, I love to see Wallace and Logan in a situation together. There's the interest of Logan's brother, which, I think it was originally supposed to be a recurring plot, but it isn't.
JOY: Oh.
HZ: But I kind of wish it was. And then I was pleased that the sorority turned out to be a marijuana farm and not a rape pipeline.
JOY: Mm-hmm.
HZ: But then I don't love the whole portrayal of the feminists as kind of being the worst people in this, which means I'm going to bring the grade down to 3.2 incriminating popcorn kernels.
JOY: Ha! .2 popcorn kernels. Tight. Well, I guess that's those three episodes of Veronica Mars investigated. Yeah?
HZ: Cases closed.
