VMI 3.141516 Papa's Un-American Mars Bars
Listen to this episode at vmipod.com/3-141516
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning murder, suicide, violence, racism and Islamophobia.
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
Veronica’s in jail for helping Josh escape jail - though later she seems to get away with helping Josh get away with kidnapping, obtaining his inheritance early, and fleeing the country.
Even though Josh didn’t actually kill his dad - turns out his dad killed his dad, for life insurance purposes.
And, it turns out the Dean was killed by Lucky in a wig, for framing Professor Landry purposes!
And Professor Landry kills Mindy O’Dell! For writing both of them off the show purposes?
And, Sheriff Lamb is killed by Steve Batando! So Deputy Sacks kills Steve! And that’s the season finale of Veronica Mars - wait, there are still several episodes to go?
Keith is sheriff again, anyway.
At least some people are having fun: Mac, Bronson, Parker and Logan do a Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt, and find a little romance on the way.
And Veronica and Piz get together! Pizvonica! A pairing as sizzling as lukewarm oatmeal!
JOY: Smoking like a big old slutty chimney, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And missing the show about women who have sex in an urban setting, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 3 Episodes 14, 15 and 16: Papa’s Un-American Mars Bars.
HZ: These episodes, Jenny, I really started to see that weird shit was happening because at some point during this season the number of episodes they were told they could do was reduced from 22 to 20.
JOY: Oh. That explains this crick in my neck.
HZ: Right. Their original plan was to do more short arcs, so that if you'd just tuned into the show for the first time you could still pick it up, and then to have three major mysteries, one of which was the dean, one of which was the campus rapist. And apparently there are some loose ends just because of this shorter order.
JOY: Helen, you just said "campus rapist" and I was like, "Surely that was last season?" It feels like a thousand years ago. Time is so weird with this show.
HZ: It's an energetic show, Jenny.
JOY: One way to put it.
HZ: There's some themes in these that we've encountered before, such as a lot of shenanigans because innocent people are trying to cover up for other people who are actually innocent, but they think they're guilty, just like the Kanes.
JOY: True.
HZ: But in this case it's Mrs Barry for her son, Josh Barry, and Professor Landry for Mindy. And then also, casting doubt over the time of a murder. And wheelchairs making people act terribly. Oh, and Parker's kind of getting the Meg treatment where she's like, "Oh, Veronica, do you mind me dating one of your ex-boyfriends?"
JOY: Yes! Wow. When in doubt, revisit your earlier seasons and just crib some plot points and recast the people, and make slight variations.
HZ: [Singing] “Everything old is new again.”
JOY: Uh-huh.
HZ: I was wondering whether the coach's murder plot was meant to be more than two episodes, because it feels pretty weird for such a big crime to be such a short arc, about a character we had seen for a second. And there's a bigger murder plot happening at the same time.
JOY: Yeah. You know when you're making pancakes, and you combine all the wet ingredients in one bowl, and then all the dry ingredients in the other bowl, and then you have to stir the dry ingredients, you like whisk them into the wet ingredients, or vice versa, like very slowly?
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: This feels like they had the two bowls, and then they just like dumped the dry into the wet, and kind of like shook it to the side a little bit, and then dumped the whole thing in a pan. It's a very lumpy arc.
HZ: That's exactly it, Jenny. Aw, if you'd been producing this, you would have gone into the writer's room and been like, "Look at these pancakes."
JOY: "They're a disgrace."
HZ: Also, I would have thought that if you were dumping a murder plot at this point of the season it's because it ties into the other murder, with the same perpetrators or something.
JOY: Right?
HZ: No, doesn't even go there, which I guess is a bit of a relief, for lack of misdirection.
JOY: In a way, it's nice to not have something shoehorned in to connect with the larger stuff.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: But it just feels like a lot, in not a lot of space.
HZ: I do love Veronica in this episode, though. She's on great form, and she's in jail. I've actually never seen her have more time off than in this episode, because she's mainly sitting around, just entertaining herself.
JOY: Yeah, I do like watching Kristen Bell do push-ups.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: That's fun. I also really liked that Cliff mentioned a movie called Caged Heat, which I was unfamiliar with, which I instantly googled, and all I know about it is what the poster looks like, Helen, and let me just tell you... The poster is compelling. Take a look at it right now, please.
HZ: OK.
JOY: It is a sight to behold. Maybe don't read the copy, don't read the tagline, but just look at the image.
HZ: Oh! There's a lot of people on this poster.
JOY: Yeah!
HZ: There's like five women wearing underwear? With numbers on, because they're in jail, but sexy. They're sexy in jail.
JOY: Yes, sexy jail. The poster says, "White hot desires melting cold prison steel," and I am smashing the subscribe button.
HZ: Wow. Written and directed by Jonathan Demme. But the strapline across the top says "Women's Prison, USA—rape, riot, and revenge."
JOY: Ugh.
HZ: Rape immediately makes this not fun.
JOY: And that's where it all starts to really fall apart. But I love the idea of Cliff watching this movie at home, alone.
HZ: It seems very plausible. It's a high risk strategy, isn't it, Josh getting himself out of prison using an allergic reaction to peanuts? That can kill people.
JOY: Yeah, he could have just died. But he didn't.
HZ: I've never had, like, an epinephrine shot. If you have, though, could you tell me whether you were in a fit state to overpower a paramedic afterwards? Veronica insists to Keith she did not know that she was helping Josh escape. Did not know about the allergy. Veronica's also drawing a tattoo on her arm because she's bored, of a unicorn with "Thug Life" written by it.
JOY: Oh dear.
HZ: There's a point where Wallace turns up to see Veronica in the jail cell, to tell her that Mason hasn't showed up to practise.
JOY: Oh, yeah.
HZ: And to try and keep this idea going that maybe Mason did it, although they don't expend much energy on that. And then Cliff and Lamb enter, and Wallace makes this weird choice of jibe at Lamb.
WALLACE: So, big news today: Mason didn't show at practice and no one's seen or heard from him.
VERONICA: Any chance Mason is lying about seeing Josh with his dad?
WALLACE: Man, I don't know.
[Cliff and Lamb arrive.]
CLIFF: Who wants out of jail?
VERONICA: I do! I do!
[Lamb lets Veronica out of the cell, then notices Wallace.]
LAMB: I know you from somewhere.
WALLACE: Yeah, you told me to go see the Wizard and ask him for some guts.
LAMB: Well, did you?
WALLACE: Yeah. He said to let you know you're the only sheriff in America who he considers a true friend of Dorothy.
HZ: Is it just playing on the fact that Lamb has all this internalised homophobia? And if not, why is he doing it? It seems very out of character for Wallace, and just such an inappropriate joke, as well as a really mean homophobic joke.
JOY: It just sounds like wrong coming out of his mouth. The only explanation, I think, that makes any sense to me is that it's like designed specifically for Lamb as a barb, because it's the kind of thing that would really bother Lamb. But it just felt like... Not right.
HZ: This plot is really complicated, but also kind of scant.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Keith's off investigating it, and basically there's two strands: Josh being on the run, and who actually did shoot Coach Barry, and what Keith learns is that he had the incurable disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which usually kills people within a year. Had to make it look like a murder so that his wife and children could get his life insurance, and there's this whole little bit about, like, well, his youngest child is autistic, so of course they need lots of money, and of course he's a piano genius, because that's what's in the big book of shortcuts for portraying neuroatypicality on television. Josh, meanwhile, has kidnapped Mason because he thinks Mason did it.
JOY: Dude.
HZ: It's not a great way to make yourself look innocent.
JOY: Not a great look, showing up with somebody in the trunk of your car.
HZ: And Veronica helps him. She must be being tailed, and yet she takes Josh to the bank to try and get his inheritance out.
JOY: Well, by the time she's taking him to the bank, it feels like she starts that project because she wants to essentially bring him in, and it's only after they watch the video of Coach Barry together that she's like, "Oh, I'm actually going to help you escape to Mexico."
HZ: Yeah, because what we're ultimately finding is that this is not a murder plot, but they need to make it look like it was a murder plot.
JOY: Right.
HZ: So she's not helping Josh get away with murder. She's helping the coach get away with suicide.
JOY: And insurance fraud.
HZ: And insurance fraud. Oh, and there's this bit where Keith goes to the Barry house, because there's this thing about guns, .22s and .45s, and there's a very brief moment where it looks like Mrs Barry might be preparing to shoot Keith with a gun she found behind a doll's house.
JOY: Have you ever seen anything better than a hefty looking handgun ensconced in the deep sweater-y pocket of, like, a knee-length mom sweater, like, cardigan?
HZ: Ha!
JOY: Also, if she was really bringing it to show Keith, why was she fucking holding it with the trigger under her finger? You know what I mean? Lady, there's better ways.
HZ: He very deftly disarms her, just like leaps out of a doorway, knocks it out of her hand. Identifies it within a split second.
JOY: How does everybody... I guess when you're into stuff you just, like, know things, but I'm so amazed that everyone's like, "That's a .22, that's a .45." Turning the safety off, turning the safety on, unloading, reloading. Whew.
HZ: We don't often see this many guns in Veronica Mars.
JOY: True, yeah, and not a taser in sight.
HZ: They've really got away from their roots. I have to say, I didn't super concentrate on this plot. This was my least favourite part of the episode Mars, Bars, and I couldn't really be arsed, Jenny. I'm really sorry. Really sorry to let you down. I'm sorry to let the Barry family down, and the gun number enthusiasts.
JOY: Helen, you didn't just let me down. You let the team down. Whistle blow! Throwing a ball at you! Hit the showers, Zaltzman.
HZ: There's too much in this episode and something's got to give.
JOY: I know, I know.
HZ: But also there's a bigger murder on the Mars horizon.
JOY: There really is. Whew. It is going to lead us to I think my favourite thing that's ever happened on this show.
HZ: Wow. I can't even begin to guess what that might have been.
JOY: I cannot wait to scream about it. Ah... Hoo-hoo-hoo. Yes. OK, our dearly departed dean. We miss him.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: We loved him. He's gone. There's all this new Xanax evidence. He was out of it, but it was in his system, but he called in a prescription, but he was at the office all day, but somebody else picked it up, and it was Mindy, but then Mindy's like, "Yeah, I've been taking that Xanax since my husband was murdered. What?" And I'm like, "Mmm, fair."
HZ: Oh, and cigar wanker had come by that day, but then they kind of dropped that very quickly, that cigar wanker could be implicated.
JOY: Yeah, what? That was in an episode that got cut from the season.
HZ: What a loss.
JOY: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
HZ: And there's been all this stuff about the timings of the crime, based on when Space Ghost's on the television.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: And in quite a brilliant circumstantial bit of Marsing it, she realises that it was on an hour later than they thought.
JOY: Aha, because of a Clippers game. They had to get a little more sport in there for you, Helen.
HZ: Do you think that Space Ghost, Clippers games, and the show where women have sex in an urban setting would be on the same channel?
JOY: Ha! I can guarantee actually that none of them are on the same channel. Well, if Sex And The City was in syndication, it's possible. But it wouldn't have been running on Cartoon Network, and that's where Space Ghost Coast To Coast aired, and maybe it would be on the same channel as a Clippers game, but... It's all falling apart, Helen. Nothing is safe from your discerning eye. OK, so, that obvious hole in the plot to the side, Steve Batando's fingerprints are on the dean's computer keyboard, but not just on the keys that it would take to spell out, "Goodbye cruel world," but all of the keys. Fucking asterisks, fucking pound sign, fucking brighten your screen, raise the volume of your speakers, all of those keyboard keys had Batando prints all over them. So what's really going on here?
HZ: And Cliff is Steve's lawyer, which, I don't feel like Steve would be into Cliff's thing.
JOY: They also have met previously. Does that make for some kind of conflict of interest or something? Because Cliff helped scam Steve Batando at the voice auditions at the Mars offices.
CLIFF: Brace yourself for the best free legal representation in Neptune county.
BATANDO: Do I know you?
CLIFF: I've got one of those faces.
HZ: Steve thinks Mindy's setting him up, but then shit really goes down because he breaks into the O'Dell house, and Lamb rushes off to it, and says to Keith, "Oh, thanks for the offer of help, but you're not actually official law enforcement, so don't come." But when Lamb and Sacks get to the house they hear some shouting and some smashing, and Lamb follows the sound upstairs with his gun up.
JOY: Oh, dude.
HZ: He peeps through a door. Goes into the room, and sees a man, and shoots at him straight away, and it's just himself in the mirror.
JOY: Oh, Lamb. The real enemy was inside you the whole time.
HZ: Well, the other real enemy is behind him, and it's Steve with a baseball bat. Hits him with it, and when he's down he hits him again, shouting, "You like that?"
JOY: Terrifying.
HZ: This is some real shit. And then Sacks comes in and shoots him, presumably dead. But it's also the end of Lamb.
SACKS: Sheriff?
LAMB: I… smell... bread…
HZ: Of course this show would put a reference to another show in the mouth of a dying man.
JOY: What is "I smell bread"?
HZ: "I smell bread," Jenny, according to an old interview with Michael Muhney, who plays Lamb, when he was asked what was the meaning behind Lamb's final line about bread, he says, "Just an inside thing, where someone involved with the show enjoyed the M*A*S*H episode where the soldier utters these words, and this person vowed to say these words when he really died in real life." So they had no real meaning for Lamb.
JOY: Hmm, no real meaning.
HZ: He also said he was very taken aback by Lamb dying. He said, "It was like a piece of me died."
JOY: Dear lord, if that's a piece of you, kill it off, and rejoice.
HZ: So there's speculation online about why Michael Muhney was written out of the show. Because, plotwise, I would have thought it would be more interesting if Lamb had to take sick leave for a long time to recover from this, and so Keith took over, but they were still in each other's lives as adversaries.
JOY: Yeah. Who's going to antagonise Keith now?
HZ: Keith looks genuinely very moved when he gets the call saying that Lamb has died in intensive care, and Enrico Colantoni does some amazing face acting, I think. He looks really sad and conflicted before telling Veronica that Lamb's dead.
JOY: Yeah, I'm kind of sad. I mean, all I wanted while he was on the show was for him to die, but now that he has, it is a loss. He is the best, I guess, antagonist, and having that presence in the show that could pop up and legitimately block Veronica and/or Keith with ease, you know, it will be interesting to see what happens without that for the next bunch of episodes.
HZ: Yeah. Well, what happens is Keith gets to become sheriff, and he is less fun, I think, because he becomes a little bit like, "Not Mr Mars, Sheriff Mars to you."
JOY: Yeah. He's like instantly kind of a bastard.
HZ: Yeah. It's like Veronica: they're both better when they are the underdog and they're having to play outside of official rules.
JOY: One hundred percent.
HZ: And then when they're in a good situation, they're kind of unpleasant people. But the other thing that happens, important to this episode, is Weevil-related.
JOY: Hell yeah. My boy, working hard, breaking a sweat, keeping on the straight and narrow.
HZ: Cleaning a furnace flue.
JOY: Cleaning of flue when, lo and behold, what should he find but a bag full of bloody shirt and glove. Wow.
HZ: You know the other episode where he was really excited about what someone tried to flush down the commode? I was thinking: was that actually evidence in the murder case? But he never got to tell anyone.
JOY: Ooh.
HZ: But also, just why would you hide something in the room with the furnaces?
JOY: I think the idea was that he meant for it to go into the incinerator portion of the furnace, like where the actual shit is burning, in order to destroy the evidence, but it got stuck, and was thusly preserved.
HZ: And even though it's very dark in the boiler room, Weevil manages to find this thing up a pipe, so good boy.
JOY: My boy has keen eyes.
HZ: He is a good detective.
JOY: And I think he probably feels a great sense of...
HZ: Dean obligation.
JOY: Yeah, warmth about finding something that can help reveal the killer of the dean, his buddy.
HZ: He's nice to Veronica again as well during these episodes. Not sure she's earned his trust and respect back, but she seems to have it. On the shirt that's covered in the blood, it has the initials "HRL", which are Professor Landry's initials. Now, if you were committing a murder, Jenny, if you were, would you wear your monogrammed clothes?
JOY: Only if I was a renowned criminology professor would I dare.
HZ: As a kind of double bluff?
JOY: This has got to be the stupidest fucking thing. The fact that this makes it into evidence is bananas. That anybody would actually think, like, "Oh yeah, you did it, and you wore this shirt while you were doing it. Of course, seems legit."
HZ: Because this is meant to be following the perfect murder, as invented in Veronica's paper earlier in the season, so in the perfect murder you wouldn't be wearing the shirt with the initials - but, as we know, it's a plant. Then surely it's meant to be found. And if it's meant to be found, why is it hidden so convincingly? Why wouldn't you just hide it somewhere else, not near a furnace? Is it so that they can be like, "Well, it was probably meant to be burned," but it could have been years before anyone found it shoved up a dark pipe.
JOY: It's true. That's interesting.
HZ: Is it?
JOY: But maybe Tim actually created the small flood that sent Weevil and his colleague into the basement to begin with.
HZ: Why? Because he's bored now?
JOY: I don't know.
HZ: He just wants to hurry this murder along. He's like, "God, you thought it was a suicide for too long, and I got impatient. And they've cut the series down to 20 episodes, so find the shirt!"
JOY: "Pick up the pace."
HZ: Because Veronica's got this connection to the new acting sheriff, she's got even more information about the dean's murder plot. But it means when she goes to class, where she teacher's pet, it's very awkward, as described in this Carrie Bradshaw-style voiceover that she does.
VERONICA VOICEOVER: So, here's something the freshman guidebook failed to address: your dad is acting sheriff, he thinks your favourite professor may have murdered your favourite dean. So where do you sit in class? Up front now seems awkward. But isn't a seat in the back like hanging an "I think you're guilty" sign?
LANDRY: I hope you're not relocating.
VERONICA: Oh, Professor. No. No. I was just, um...
LANDRY: I know, Veronica. It's kind of a weird situation, but I don't want you to think that this disagreement that your father and I are having will in any way affect things between us. A student like you comes along once, maybe twice, in a career. I'm glad that I get to be the one to mentor you, and I really hope that you don't forget that amid all this...
VERONICA: I won't. Thanks, Dr. Landry.
HZ: Landry seems really needy.
JOY: Dude. Bleurgh.
HZ: "I know this is weird, but I don't want anything to come between us, and students like you only come along once or twice in a lifetime."
JOY: Gross. Ew, stop it, sir.
HZ: There's a lot of Keith interrogating Mindy as well, and I think the Mindy noir is terrific.
JOY: Yes. Mindy rips. And watching law enforcement-empowered Keith interrogate Mindy... Jaime Ray Newman is so great. She's been fine, but this is like where she really just explodes as this character, like is just like so awesome. Did you know that she has an Academy Award for producing a short?
HZ: Wow.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Good for her.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: But Keith is much more in bastard mode, where it just feels like he's trying to pressurise confessions out of people.
MINDY: I didn't kill Cyrus, Keith!
KEITH: Sheriff Mars. You said you and Hank Landry were alone at the Neptune Grand on the evening of your husband's death, but a witness heard two men fighting in your room at midnight. You say you never left the hotel, but at 1:30, your car is checked out of valet and checked back in an hour later. In that time, a phone call is made between your cell and Landry's. You claim you never left the hotel and this call concerned toothpaste. Roughly thirty minutes after your car is checked back in, a student passing near your husband's window heard the gunshot. Toxicology reports show that your husband had a large dose of Xanax in his system. The dean's assistant said he was out, but records show you picked up a refill prescription for him earlier in the evening. It just doesn't add up, Mindy. I believe Hank Landry killed your husband, Mrs. O'Dell. I believe I can prove it. My question to you is this: are you gonna take the fall with him?
HZ: But she hasn't really got much to say, because she is innocent. Like, they're just really trying to make both Mindy and Landry look guilty to keep this plot going, and therefore you know that neither of them could have done it because, surprise, they just keep going over this timeline evidence. It's like, "Blah, blah, blah, went to buy the toothpaste, checked the Volvo out the valet, Xanax," and I couldn't keep track. But anyway, she does admit to Keith that the person who came to the hotel that night and had the argument, that was heard by Jeff Ratner, was the dean, with a gun. And so we get a couple of Ed Begley Jr flashbacks in which he's acting the shit out of Angry Dean.
JOY: Oh, yeah. Love that we get a little bit more of him.
MINDY: The man who came to the hotel room. That was Cyrus. He was furious. He had a gun.
[Flashback to the hotel room:]
LANDRY: Put the gun down, Cyrus. Let's talk about this.
O'DELL: Oh, "Cyrus"? Oh, we're on a first-name basis now? I can see how you might be confused about our relationship, what with you sleeping with my wife and all. But let me remind you, I'm your boss.
LANDRY: Please, put the gun down and then we'll talk.
MINDY: Cyrus, please! Please!
O'DELL: There's nothing to talk about. You're done, Hank, and I don't mean just at Hearst. I mean everywhere. No tenure, no more happy days in academia bedding impressionable students and easily charmed wives.
MINDY: Cyrus, please!
HZ: She says that the dean could have ruined Hank's career, which meant everything to him.
JOY: Right, right, but then Landry says, "Oh, no, no, no, the dean was going to take everything away from Mindy because they had a prenup, and she's going to lose everything." So they both had something significant to lose.
HZ: I'm not sure this would have ruined Landry's career, to be honest.
JOY: Well, the way that Mindy kind of framed it to Keith, it seemed like the dean was so established and respected that he kind of had a line to, like, every university that would be worth teaching at, you know? That, like, he could really threaten Hank's ability to make a living, and tarnish his name irrevocably.
HZ: Nonetheless, something that I keep seeing in so many industries, Jenny, is how much they don't give a shit about anything, and they will continue to employ and promote people that are real stinkers. Let alone ones who just had sex with another man's wife.
JOY: Listen...
HZ: And it's implied may have had a few student affairs, but they never actually get into that. It's been a while so I forgot, as well, that the last thing you see of the dean alive is he's back in his office, and he turns around and says, "What are you doing here?" And I guess, at the time, you're supposed to think that that person's his murderer, but it turns out to be Mindy.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: And she watches him slosh down some Xanax that she's picked up for him with some Scotch, and he was yelling at her, so she left. And she didn't think it was Hank until Keith found the bloody clothes, but she just wants to find out whoever it was. Like, she's not trying to defend Hank, but there's no real physical evidence for Hank's guilt except for the shirt, which, as aforementioned, ridiculous, and I think also Hank's lawyers would argue that Steve's fingerprints cast reasonable doubt.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Although the next scene takes care of that, because that's Landry in the classroom saying, "Physical evidence is used in less than 25 percent of cases, blah blah blah."
JOY: Thank god we have a class going at the same time as all these plots, to keep us abreast of what really sticks in court and what doesn't.
HZ: But Sacks and another deputy, and then Keith, turn up to arrest him. And you can tell how different Keith and Lamb are, because if it was Lamb he would strut right in and arrest Landry mid-sentence, as he did Veronica the other episode. But Keith is just like, "So sorry, I've got to arrest you. Just tell the class that they're going to go early."
JOY: Keith doesn't wait until Landry is about to walk across the stage to get his diploma, in front of his grandma, which was his grandma's one wish.
HZ: Aw. Maybe it was Landry's grandma's one wish, just to finish this lecture.
JOY: Ha! Well, that wish shall not be granted.
HZ: Landry's grandparent does get to play a passive role in this plot.
JOY: Oh yeah.
HZ: For some reason, Landry says he's happy to answer questions without a lawyer present. Cliff had another thing to do? Or maybe Cliff can't be on his case and on Steve's case, and they've only got one lawyer in town.
JOY: Yeah, and also Landry probably thinks that he's smarter than any lawyer.
HZ: Mmm. The more you see of Landry, the more dull he comes across.
JOY: Bleurgh. Yeah, he sucks.
HZ: The appeal of him... Like, even Mindy, at no point, even like when they're in bed... Just get the impression that she finds him quite boring and annoying. And we've seen nothing to contradict that.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: He seems only impressive to college students.
JOY: Yes. Mmm.
HZ: Alibi time. Landry says he stopped at a convenience store for cigarettes, and the clerk didn't look at him, but he gave two cigarettes to a woman, which means woman-finding has to commence.
JOY: Oh my god... Yes, epic team-up. Name a more iconic duo than Tim and Veronica, on the case, together. What we've all been waiting for.
HZ: The iconic duo is Tim's wig and Tim's stick-on beard.
JOY: Ugh.
HZ: And I did wonder... If they knew that they were going to be writing Tim as a character that was in the series up until now, either he could have grown the beard by now, or they could have sorted out a better prosthetic hair and face-scape for him than they did. Was James Jordan playing someone whose looks were incompatible with Tim at the same time? Or, who looked exactly like Lucky the janitor, so he couldn't look... I... Just... It's a mystery that will never be solved for me, Jenny.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The truth is out there...
HZ: It's not!
JOY: But not for us.
HZ: And this is weird. Veronica's at Mars Investigations, which is even darker than usual, and she's in Keith's office writing. It's evidently much later than office hours, and yet they never lock the door in this place. So then she hears someone creeping around, which is scary, and it's fucking Lucky In A Wig. And he's so startled when Veronica opens the door that he falls over.
JOY: Yeah, he's definitely not meant for the field. And he knows it.
HZ: He's like, "Mindy's framing Landry, I'm going to do whatever I can to help him," which is, of course, bait for Veronica, because she's like, "Oh, exonerating a man because of a bad lady? Tell me more." And he gets to really learn some stuff. Veronica does some great Veronica Mars-ing.
JOY: Yeah. Get out your notebook, Tim.
HZ: So first they go off to the market, to show the clerk a picture of Landry. "Do you remember this bland man from a few months ago?"
JOY: Yeah, the clerk doesn't remember him either.
HZ: The security cameras in the store are not hooked up, which seems pretty fucking rude.
JOY: Yeah, very inconvenient for people who are trying to confirm an alibi for somebody.
HZ: But, some luck. Strip City is across the street, and at 03:00am the shifts change, and here are some strippers.
VERONICA: Excuse me. Hi. Um, have you seen this guy?
[Veronica holds up the photo of Landry.]
TIM: It would have been here, eight weeks and two days ago to be exact.
BLONDE STRIPPER: What are you, some kind of little detective team or something?
TIM: Well, as a matter of fact, we happen to be -
VERONICA: We're just trying to find my dad. He left home again without paying the rent. I'm sure there's a valid reason, but if we could just find -
BLONDE STRIPPER: Yeah, there's a valid reason. Men are scum. Mystery solved. Except for you, Randy. Let me see.
[Veronica shows her the picture again.]
BLONDE STRIPPER: No. I'd remember that one.
VERONICA: Two months ago? Any of you maybe bum a cigarette off him?
REDHEAD STRIPPER: Do we look like we smoke?
TIM: Yes.
REDHEAD STRIPPER: It's bad for your skin. Sorry, we didn't see him, but try tomorrow. Tory's on, and she smokes like a big, old slutty chimney.
JOY: I have a major question.
HZ: Yes.
JOY: What is the 3am shift change? You want to pick up the 5am rush of men...
HZ: Yeah, the pre-breakfast...
JOY: ...who desperately, at 05:00am, 06:00am... Oh, they've got the breakfast buffet going, naturally, of course. This seems like a weird time for new people to be coming on to the job. Are you busy enough to justify being open 24 hours? Maybe you are.
HZ: Meanwhile, Mindy is given the life insurance money, which she immediately exchanges for a boat.
JOY: OK. This is it, Helen, this is my moment. This is what I've been waiting for. This fucking California Cersei Lannister, fucking swooping in, in her mourning suit, fucking wearing black head-to-toe, in her sunglasses, and her fucking life insurance cheque, saying, "Give me this yacht, my tits are out, fucking let's go"? This bitch! I love her, Helen! Mindy O'Dell has been a pretty neutral character for me, but all of a sudden, forget about Weevil, forget about Deputy Leo: Mindy O'Dell in her mourning phase, with her insurance cheque and her yacht, is my official number one top Veronica Mars crush. Thank you.
HZ: Great choice. And also, she hasn't actually done anything wrong, has she?
JOY: Hell no.
HZ: She's not hiding anything.
JOY: No, no, no.
HZ: She's just living noir.
JOY: Yes! Let her live. I just, I couldn't even believe my fucking eyes. It's like the clouds parted and the godlight shone down. OK, I'm done. Thank you.
HZ: It's glorious. Hair. Glasses. Demeanour.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: It's a real shame that Mindy is not the latter arc of the season, and is shortly about to be dead.
JOY: That is truly wretched. Imagine if she was like the villain of the entire show, just like in a fucking castle somewhere, stroking a cat and smoking a cigarette in a really long cigarette holder, and being driven around in the back of a limo, and like having really luxurious suits and hats on all the time?
HZ: And she turns out to be Celeste Kane's evil younger sister.
JOY: Yes!
HZ: And also, she made it look like Lianne Mars had an alcohol problem and drove her away. And she made the bus go off the cliff.
JOY: Helen yes, Helen yes, Helen yes!
HZ: And... She stole a dog, and turned it into a coat.
JOY: A hundred and one of them, in fact.
HZ: Even though it's too warm in southern California for that shit. She did it for the vibes.
JOY: She did.
HZ: But no, she's not guilty of anything except for hotness.
JOY: Being devastatingly hot, riding off on her fucking yacht.
HZ: Grieving a bit.
JOY: Way to go, Mindy.
HZ: Now that Keith is acting sheriff, Veronica's just out in the open, taking case files and evidence and stuff.
JOY: I thought the same thing. "Hey dad, check out what I just swiped off your fucking filing cabinet."
HZ: She and Lucky In A Wig are outside the market again, waiting for the 3:00am shift change, and the wig looks even funnier outdoors at night.
JOY: In the wild.
HZ: When he's drinking an absolutely huge soda.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: I mean, they're quite amiable, which is so weird given that you find out that Lucky In A Wig is pulling a con this whole time. But then some strippers come. One of the strippers does remember Landry, and so, in the Sheriff's Department, she tells Keith about it, which is quite obliging. Meanwhile, in the department, Landry bumps into Veronica and Lucky In A Wig and thanks them for their help, and says to Veronica, "I wish there was a grade higher than an A." Ugh.
JOY: Ew, sir. Ew.
HZ: Tim offers to help some more, and Landry's like, "No, no, you've done enough," and Tim is like, "You have no idea."
JOY: Ha, going off in the dark to twirl his fake moustache.
HZ: He can't twirl that thing, because it'll slide right off.
JOY: Yeah, yeah.
HZ: Tim and Veronica have other plans, which include to go and find the taped transmissions from the bug in Landry's phone, which they reckon are at Steve Batando's house. They can get his keys from evidence. It's the second time a Mars has broken into Steve's home. Wouldn't it be totally legitimate for her to say to Keith, "We think Steve's got these recordings, can you go and get them using legitimate means?" But they don't.
JOY: Veronica doesn't believe in doing things legitimately, I think, is just kind of the bottom line.
HZ: Everywhere belongs to a Mars. But Lucky's not there yet, because he's whispering and clearly very nervous about being in Steve's house.
TIM: There's nothing here.
[He notices Veronica staring.]
TIM: What?
VERONICA: Nice gloves. You headed to the parlour to strangle Colonel Mustard after this?
TIM: We're breaking and entering. I can't leave prints.
VERONICA: Use your sleeve. It's less creepy.
JOY: They find the recordings in short order. It's hidden right in a DVD case for a film called Taps.
HZ: Jokes, jokes, jokes.
JOY: Isn't that cheeky.
HZ: That is quite funny.
JOY: And, uh-oh. Uh-oh! One of the tapped calls is Landry giving Tim an anti-recommendation, which is so brutal.
[Recording] LANDRY: Hello?
REID: Hey, Hank, Bob Reid at Pepperdine. I'm calling about a job application we got from your teaching assistant, Tim Foyle. He put you as a reference, so I'm calling for your thoughts.
LANDRY: Yeah. Well, um, Tim is loyal and hardworking. A good TA, kind of a kiss-ass. Very linear thinker. No imagination. You could do worse, but, honestly, Bob, at Pepperdine, I'm sure you could do better.
[Tim turns off the recording.]
VERONICA: Tim...
TIM: No, it's fine. It doesn't matter.
HZ: Tim looks kind of crushed, even though he has presumably heard this before. And then back to the Sheriff's Department for some jokes.
JOY: Oh my god...
KEITH: Did you talk to the airports?
SACKS: L.A.X., yeah, but I'm still waiting to hear from John Wayne.
[Veronica turns up right on time to do a John Wayne impression:}
VERONICA: And you're not gonna, pilgrim, 'cause what I am is dead.
HZ: And they give Keith the recordings of the bug on the phone, which I guess are inadmissible given how they obtained them. Mindy has fucked off on a yacht, because why buy a yacht if you're just not going anywhere on it?
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: And also, she sent her kids to her parents in Surrey, in England. So these kids have just lost one parent to murder, their bio dad has been killed by Lamb, you're about to lose another to murder, and they've moved continents. That's a shitload to deal with.
JOY: Oh, no.
HZ: But also, why is Mindy skipping town when, as aforementioned, she's done nothing wrong? Is she just being like, "Well, I suppose I should look guilty just to give everyone something to do, to spice things up a bit? Episode 15, go on, the thing's lagging.”
JOY: Very considerate of her, and I deeply appreciate it. Mmm.
HZ: And now Veronica thinks Landry and Mindy were working together. There's some time-consuming bullshit where, on the recordings, Mindy's like, "Oh, I'd love to go and have some time out," and Landry's like, "What about a week at papa's cabin?" So then Veronica and Tim are like, "Cabin? A cabin... Grandfather's 'papa'..." And they break into Landry's house, look at his photos. Find a phone in the bin. There's some kind of redial business, and Veronica pretending to be from a local radio station giving out iPods.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: And the winner of their fake competition is the child of the stripper who said she'd seen Landry, who'd given her two cigarettes.
KEITH: Hank was on the juvie board overseeing her son. The kid was one strike away from foster care. She says she was on her lunch break the other day and Hank called and threatened to take the kid off probation unless she showed up at that convenience store and said she saw Landry the night of the murder.
HZ: He got the alibi through blackmail, which is really fucked up. It's a real abuse of power.
JOY: Yeah. Also, do you do that kind of shit when you already know you're innocent?
HZ: Right?
JOY: I mean, I get, like, not having a firm alibi, but it's just like... Dude, yikes. And Veronica and Tim have kind of like a little detective-off, where they're like, "What about this? What about that? These trees? That street?" "Oh, those are aspen trees," Veronica says, "I recognise them from my nightmares about Madison riding Logan like a wild stallion." Then they go on and on and on and on and on…
VERONICA: It looks like the mountains. Those are aspen trees.
TIM: Quaking aspens, so western mountains.
VERONICA: And on this one, you can actually make out the license plate on this truck: navy letters on white.
TIM: The most common pattern, so it could be anywhere: Virginia, Alabama, Illinois, Kansas.
VERONICA: Quaking aspens, Western U.S.
TIM: Okay, so Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Utah, or California.
VERONICA: California has red state letters. So does Washington.
TIM: Not on the endangered animals specialised plates. That could be a whale.
VERONICA: Or a lake. As in crater lake, a specialised Oregon plate.
KEITH: Or "Papa" could be Ernest Hemingway.
HZ: So they do all this stuff where they're, like, identifying trees, but neither of them at any point thought, "Oh, let's just put 'papa's cabin' into Planet Zowie and see if anything comes up." Could have saved themselves that trip to get the photos in the bin. But Landry's now missing, too. He's on Mindy's fucking boat.
JOY: How does Landry get on the boat?
HZ: Great question.
JOY: When the scene starts, she wakes up, and I'm like, "Who the fuck is driving her fucking boat in the middle of the night?" But once she gets up and sees Landry is on the deck, then it's clear that there are like lights in the distance, so she must be docked offshore somewhere.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: So did he take a little rowboat out there?
HZ: But they're at this resort in Mexico, so she's managed to get to Mexico, unless Landry got on her boat and they were like, "Oh, let's go all the way to Mexico now," which I'd imagine would take a little while.
JOY: Well, in the Mars-verse, though, it's just hop and a skip. I mean, they're all constantly driving to Tijuana.
HZ: Yes, but do the fast roads of Neptune also work on sea?
JOY: It's possible.
HZ: Like, special currents.
JOY: Yes. You’ve just got to pick up a speedy one.
HZ: Keith gets to go to Mexico again. He's been a few times this season.
JOY: Yeah, well it's right there, we think.
HZ: Yeah, but he never goes for a holiday, does he?
JOY: When Keith and his officers arrive at papa's cabin, ugh, it's really dreadful. They find a very drunk Landry on the boat by himself, and he reveals that he and Mindy fought, and he hit her, and she fell overboard, and then we see poor departed Mindy washed up on the beach. Gone from us so soon after blossoming into full villainhood. She will be missed by me, most of all.
HZ: Because everyone else who cared about her is dead, pretty much. He insists, though, that Mindy killed her husband and he tried to cover for her, and set up Steve by switching Steve's keyboard for O'Dell's keyboard. How did he manage that?
JOY: Dude.
HZ: How did he get to the crime scene before the police took the computer? How did he even get Steve's keyboard? And why is he covering for Mindy? And why would you cover for someone unless you knew they were guilty?
JOY: At least, to obtaining the keyboard, it's been proven to be very easy to break into Steve Batando's house.
HZ: Good point.
JOY: That's all I've got, though.
HZ: Yeah. Maybe he could have planted some evidence at Steve's then as well.
JOY: That would have been thoughtful.
HZ: And Landry's like, "I would have gotten away with it, too, if you hadn't come on board as acting sheriff."
JOY: Yep.
HZ: And also, if Lucky In A Wig and Veronica hadn't been trying to track him down, and if Lucky hadn't been setting him up this whole time.
JOY: Yeah, those are all factors.
HZ: There's some hilarious awkwardness at Tim's office with Veronica.
TIM: So since Landry's been, you know, arrested… Well, it's kind of caught everyone by surprise, including me, as you know.
VERONICA: Yeah. It kind of caught everyone by surprise.
TIM: Anyway, I've been asked to take over his classes until they can find a replacement, and it's kind of a big job, and as you are kind of a star pupil, I was hoping you might be my TA, while I try to get a handle on all this. Beause I could really use the help.
VERONICA: Of course.
TIM: Great. Can you pick up my dry cleaning?
HZ: If you were guilty of a crime, and it required quite an elaborate cover-up that could crumble at any time, why wouldn't you keep Veronica Mars at a distance?
JOY: I think Lucky may be... Ha, "Lucky" - Tim may be so in love with criminology and wanting to be better at it, that he just wants to be around Veronica so he can learn from her, and he legitimately needs the help to take over the class that he just kind of doesn't think it through the way that you might want to if you want to avoid getting caught, because it does not take long, Helen.
HZ: It's amazing, the turnaround. His first class, and there's a kid reading The Neptune Register, and interrupts Tim's criminology class to be like, "Why aren't we talking about our professor's being involved in an actual crime?"
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: And Tim's like, "Well, it's a bit awkward for me, but here I go, monologuing and pacing. Crime of passion! Motive!" The student is like, "Did Landry just crib it off the perfect murder papers that we wrote as freshmen?" At which point Veronica wakes up.
JOY: Yeah, Veronica's wheels are turning. She's like, "Ha, Landry wouldn't have needed that paper, but I know somebody who would have needed that paper to come up with a good, perfect crime." And at the same time, the wheels in my head started turning. Even though I have seen this season before, I did not at all remember what the deal was.
HZ: No, same.
JOY: Right when I saw Veronica's face going into computing mode, I too was like, "Wait a minute, he made a joke about her picking up his dry cleaning. If she was going to be his TA, who had access to friggin' Landry's shirts? Why, Tim did, of course!"
HZ: That is some nice, sneaky clueing. He's really lucky that Landry made himself look fucking guilty by faking an alibi and framing Batando.
JOY: Yep, yep. But not lucky enough. He just, like, overplays his hand way too hard. He's just throwing out stuff that he has no way of knowing unless he bugged Veronica's phone, and there's the bug, she pulled it out of her phone right in the middle of class! Chekhov's Unknown Source Bug.
VERONICA: So whoever bugged Landry's phone knew that the dean caught Mindy and Landry together and that the dean was drunk in his office?
TIM: Well, if you're suggesting Batando killed them, it's possible. If you follow the thread through -
VERONICA: So this person would also be aware that Professor Landry shot down your chances for a teaching job at Pepperdine.
TIM: Yes, if they listened -
VERONICA: - to all the tapes. Which it sounds like you did.
TIM: I'm not sure I understand.
VERONICA: I do. When my dad called to tell me that Mindy had sent her kids to relatives in England, you couldn't have heard. You were in a convenience store talking to a stripper. You bugged my phone. You bugged Landry's phone. You knew he shot down your job application. You knew the dean threatened him. You knew the dean was zonked out on Xanax and scotch in his office, and you had access to Landry's clothes. You murdered Dean O'Dell to destroy Professor Landry. Because he used you, then betrayed you. And when he said he had an alibi, you faked it, so you'd be sure he'd go down. Bet he'll change his mind about you not being that smart.
HZ: Does this work? If he wanted Landry to be implicated in a murder, why would you make it look convincingly like a suicide? Like, it almost got counted as a suicide because Lamb's not that good, and all the alibi-making and alibi-faking that's discovered in such a roundabout way... And why the dean? He'd done nothing to Tim.
JOY: You are raising an incredible point. It is extremely not linear.
HZ: Also, there was the bit in episode nine where he goes and very ostentatiously shouts at Bonnie in the middle of the party, and I had thought, "Was that to provide him with an alibi, because everyone would have noticed him there?" And also, what about Tim's creepy rape investigation wall? That, I guess, was just for investigating the rapes?
JOY: Yeah, for the love of investigation. His one true love.
HZ: And to celebrate, Veronica cooks meat and potatoes.
JOY: Oh my gosh.
HZ: While the TV news shows Tim being arrested, and his wig is even funnier on the news.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: And the headline is, "TA Foiled."
JOY: Wow. Zing.
HZ: Gil T. Pardy.
JOY: Ha! Oh god. Great. Love it.
HZ: There were a couple of mysteries of the week that just slid right by.
JOY: Yes, agree. Tell me more.
HZ: Must I?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: So a local restaurant, Babylon Gardens, is being vandalised.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: The owner is played by Carole Davis, who was a runner-up Playboy Playmate of the Year, 1981, and she was in the film Mannequin.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: A living legend walks amongst Veronica Marses. The windows were broken, and the word "terrorist" was spray painted on the door. Have we had any specifically Middle Eastern characters on the show before, having their own plots? I'm not sure that we have. And this is what they get.
JOY: This is what they get.
HZ: They have a fun daughter called Amira who went to school with Veronica, although they don't really know each other. All she knows is Veronica lost her pirate points.
JOY: Yeah, I love her residual pirate points-related hatred of Veronica, until Veronica does her a favour.
HZ: She's got an angry dad. Like, when Veronica's surveilling the restaurant in case someone else comes along to attack it, the dad is like, "Go home, we don't need a girl surveilling it, go home." And then a yellow pickup truck comes by, and people shoot paintballs at Veronica and the Krimani family that own the restaurant, ruining Amira's sweater. The dad's got a framed picture of Uncle Sam.
JOY: Dude.
HZ: Has he got his own face behind the beard?
JOY: Yes, he does. That is what's going on.
HZ: I suppose it's the show trying to say that people of Middle Eastern extraction had a horrible time in the States after 9/11, but they're still Americans.
JOY: Yeah. And also, if you are of Middle Eastern descent and living in America, and you love America, and the American dream and core USA values and whatever, and everybody having a shot, then you are good. But if you don't like the idea of American soldiers killing people... in the country that you came from... then you're bad... and Angry Dad should call immigration on you?
HZ: It's very messy, because the daughter is dating a Jewish man, and the dad is like, "The Jews caused this vandalism, even if it wasn't them, even if it was our community, it's because the Jews set our community against us, and blah, blah, blah," and Nasir, who's a waiter at the restaurant, who they thought might marry the daughter, is taking pictures of them. And Veronica does a bit of cunning Veronica work to get Nasir's photos from the one hour photo development place. Which is fun and really disturbing to watch - and ultimately pointless, because the dad still gets the photos. She convinces them to hang up a banner that has got a tracer stitched inside.
JOY: Oh, yeah.
HZ: And that brings her to find this man called Derrick.
VERONICA: Look what I've got. It's a surveillance photo from Babylon Gardens. Shows you painting "Terrorist" on their building.
DERRICK: Well, you ain't a cop. So my response is gonna have to be, "So the hell what?"
VERONICA: Why did you do it?
DERRICK: If you have to ask that then you ain't been paying attention.
VERONICA: That's it? You're just another closed-minded redneck who thinks it's his patriotic duty to harass innocent people?
DERRICK: Not quite.
HZ: And then he's like, "I did it because my brother came back from Iraq in a wheelchair," and his brother's like, "Yeah, he seems very worked up since I came back in the wheelchair." His brother seems quite serene. Derrick shows Veronica a flyer that he was given at the mall by someone who works at Babylon Gardens. Can you describe this flyer, Jenny?
JOY: The general idea is American soldiers, in caskets, covered with American flags, who have, we assume, been killed by some people in Iraq. And those people are on the flyer and laughing, I think?
HZ: Derrick thinks that's terrorist propaganda, which I suppose makes this equation so much more difficult, right? Because what if Derrick isn't the only racist? Ah! Off she goes to Babylon Gardens, more subdued spirits than she usually has for a denouement, and Mr Krimani is so much calmer and nicer. She tells them the vandal's name, she shows them the flyer, says that Derrick's brother was shot up in Iraq and wasn't part of this at all, and she says that Derrick's on probation, so if they press charges he'll probably go to jail, and Rashad says, "I want to meet him." Really brings the speech.
RASHAD: I wanted to meet you. Talk to you.
DERRICK: Lucky me.
VERONICA: Hey, if they report you, it's off to jail you go.
DERRICK: So, I end up in jail. My brother ends up in a wheelchair and these foreigners are free to spit on America and everything it stands for.
RASHAD: What it stands for? Do you even know what it stands for? Saying you love America is easy. It's easy until someone spray paints "terrorist" on your door. It's easy until you are handed a flyer that mocks the sacrifice of your brother. We all came from somewhere else. We all are trying to make it. In America, whatever you stand for you're supposed to get a fair shot. That is what your brother was fighting for. In case you wanted to know.
DERRICK: So turn me in, Ali Baba. It makes no difference to me.
[Derrick slams the door shut. Veronica starts to dial on her phone.]
VERONICA: He'll be in jail in an hour.
RASHAD: No, no. Don't, don't turn him in. I suspect that our troubles with Mr. Karr are over. I'm glad that I had the chance to speak with the man.
JOY: Very inspirational.
HZ: His wife loves it.
JOY: This felt extra weird to me. It feels like furthering this particular character in the direction of... If you are, like, super-super-duper pro-American values, then you're great, and then also, if your instinct, when you find out who has been vandalising your storefront, if your instinct is to talk to them, be totally chill and calm, and then just be like, "Yeah, I don't think we're going to be having any problems with him anymore," it feels like there's no space for this character to feel, like... Angry? I don't know. Obviously, it makes it more human to look into the face of somebody who has wronged you and to have more just basic human compassion for them that, I think, is kind of triggered just by interacting with people and also, like... I don't know, more context for what their life is like. But it just feels like Mr Krimani's getting shortchanged.
HZ: Derrick calls him "Ali Baba", and at that point you'd be like, "OK, he's heard this speech. He says something racist. Fuck this guy who's doing it on behalf of his brother who doesn't even want this." But then what he does is he's like, "Well, Nasir didn't break any laws handing out the flyer, I support his right to free speech, but the cartoon was un-American," and then he fucking gets Nasir deported.
JOY: Dude, 100 percent fucked.
HZ: He's kinder to the racist vandal than he is to someone who was his potential son-in-law.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: And he's angry at the Jews. He's angry at the rest of his community that he thinks might have vandalised the place. He's nicer to the awful shitty racist man than to anyone else. What the fuck?
JOY: Yeah. Next up: underage drinking.
HZ: Ugh, yeah, I feel like this episode can't even be bothered with this plot. I guess it's showing Angry Keith's gonna clean up this town. He's in charge.
JOY: Yeah, he's serious, aw yeah.
HZ: The bars are not checking IDs, or, rather, some of his deputies are not checking IDs, and a 19-year-old staggered out drunk and got run over, will never walk again. And the only thing that really sticks in my mind about this plot - which thankfully does not take place in the River Styx at any point, there are other bars in town - is he sees Wallace and Piz out on their fake IDs, which Veronica makes. And he's very angry at Veronica for making fake IDs, which is a serious crime.
JOY: Fair.
HZ: But then he invites Wallace and Piz out for drinks, which is funny.
PIZ: Sheriff Mars!
KEITH: Hello, Stosh. What do you say we head out, have a few beers?
PIZ: It's one of those trick questions, isn't it?
KEITH: I've got some new IDs for you. Wallace!
PIZ: This picture is Jon Bon Jovi.
KEITH: Yes. It is.
WALLACE: Biggie Smalls? We don't really all look alike, Mr. Mars.
KEITH: I know that, Wallace. Now, let's go out and get our drink on.
HZ: This is basically so they can catch one of his deputies not checking IDs, and just being like, "Ah, whatever, don't care."
JOY: Oh yeah.
HZ: And then he fires him and several other deputies, which is a... It's a big move.
JOY: It's really interesting, the one interesting thing, I think, about this plot, is that this shitty cop who comes into the bar and is like, "Put your IDs in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care," and then he says, "This waste of time brought to you by the temporary sheriff of Balboa County," when in just the previous episode they identified this as Neptune County. In the space of just one episode, they are now in a totally different county. That's all. So Keith fires those guys, because he's very serious.
HZ: Don't fuck with Power Keith. He's angry.
JOY: Mm-hmm, very angry.
HZ: Luckily, some cute stuff happens throughout these three episodes.
JOY: Wow, all kinds of shit is going on.
HZ: Yeah. Well, arbitrary shit to do with Veronica's wireless card brings Logan to Mac and Parker's room, where Bronson also is, and they're like, "We have something we need you for." So now Logan is part of that pack of people, which is really nice, actually seeing Logan have friends that aren't Dick. Although, obviously, 11-year-old girl was the greatest friend of Logan's life.
JOY: Yes, naturally. Well, that prepared him for these new friendships.
HZ: That is probably true, actually. You see this softer, happier Logan. Maybe also because he's not with Veronica, so he's not constantly on the defence, because he was like, "I can't really be myself around you because you're very critical of who I am." But they're going to do this Valentine's treasure hunt, which is all centred in the Hearst cafeteria, as everything is.
JOY: Uh-huh, it's the only place on campus.
HZ: So the first clue is in a horrible font, and it's a mix of numbers and letters, and it takes them to the library.
JOY: Yay, thank god, a set we have already.
HZ: It leads them to a book through Dewey Decimal, which is the Kama Sutra.
JOY: They have to do a little pose from the Kama Sutra.
HZ: "Congress of the Cow".
JOY: I know that when I'm engaged in fun, sexy times, I'm always standing with one leg up while my partner holds it, and then they lift one of their legs and I hold it. This doesn't... This seems like a wild... Like, I just... The practicalities... I guess I have some reading to do.
HZ: It looks more aerobics class than it does like something that would bring body parts together in a sexual way.
JOY: Correct.
HZ: But I don't want to yuck anyone's yum.
JOY: No, no.
HZ: It was also very awkward when Logan and Parker, who barely know each other, have to enact the pose for a photo to send to scavenger HQ.
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: Whoever's coordinating the scavenger hunt, I think they're just doing it for their own fun, because they're just looking at the photos of the things that people have found and just laughing their heads off.
JOY: Totally.
HZ: The next clue takes them to a pharmacy, where they've got to buy a box of Super Titan Love Gloves.
JOY: Super... Titan... Super Titan. The Titans, of course, were pre-Olympian gods, and I believe they were enormous. Just gigantic. So that's what we're talking about, condoms for enormous penises, just to be very clear.
HZ: And yet, when the group make balloon animals out of them, they look like normal-sized balloon animals.
JOY: Pretty regular, right?
HZ: Again, the coordinator seems thrilled. And then the final clue comes all too soon, and it's at the beach. They're having such a good time, they're running around and laughing. The last clue is out in the sea, it's a pink balloon, floating. How very Pennywise.
JOY: Yeah. Yes. And Logan and Parker have a little, "Oh, I'm going to swim faster than you, sir," flirt race.
HZ: "I'm able to tolerate cold water just as much as you."
JOY: Yeah, they're both really tough. They're both in the friggin' Polar Bear Club.
HZ: How many people have died getting this clue?
JOY: Ha! It feels like they're going to win, right? But they get friggin' third prize for all of their troubles and possible near-death experiences, which is a $50 gift certificate to the Neptune Grand Restaurant.
HZ: That's useful, although it probably doesn't go that far in a hotel restaurant, does it?
JOY: No, especially not that one, I think.
HZ: You know what, Jenny? They won the prize of a good time. At least three of them have been through many traumatic events. And this is not one of those. But they have been up all night, and Bronson's got a class at 11 o'clock, but he can't make it home to have a nap beforehand, so Mac suggests he goes and naps in her room - but no napping takes place.
JOY: Where is Parker during this alleged napping?
HZ: Good point.
JOY: Lil' sock on the doorknob. Parker is somewhere else, and Mac and Bronson bone.
BRONSON: And this is what you meant by "crash"?
MAC: Oh. Yeah. I meant "bang." I got my onomatopoeias mixed up.
BRONSON: I don't think "bang" is the right word, either.
MAC: Well, not when you're all sweet and tender about it.
BRONSON: I like being sweet to you.
MAC: I'm really glad. Wait. Can I say something else, instead of that?
BRONSON: Oh. I like being sweet to you.
MAC: Now all I got is. "thank you."
JOY: [Fanfare noises] It's very cute.
HZ: Aren't you glad to see Mac have a sexual experience that she's in control of, and feels good about?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Also, you know what? This episode they had planned for Mac to be taken advantage of by a professor. And then, thank god, they thought, "You know what? Just for once, let something nice happen to her that's not going to fuck her up for life."
JOY: Unbelievable.
HZ: So things are good between Mac and Bronson, and things are hotting up between Logan and Parker. What do you think of them as a match?
JOY: I'm intrigued. That seems fun. And I think the more we see of Parker and Logan interacting, the more Logan seems like a better person.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: With Parker.
HZ: They seem to be getting on great. Veronica is seeing this, and it's hard for her to digest. And also there's girl code. Girl code, Jenny!
JOY: Yes. Girl code.
HZ: You know Veronica will violate any other laws willy-nilly, but not that one.
JOY: Ha! This is so interesting. When Parker says to Logan, like, "Oh, you're like really great, but like a friend like Veronica, like, that's really important," I'm like... What has Veronica... Hmm. What is this friendship of which you speak?
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: Uhh...
HZ: Well, she did ultimately catch Parker's rapist, but also Parker was instrumental in that as well.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: And we've seen very little of Veronica with Parker, and Parker really seemed to be very angry at her for quite a long time. It's really hard to know, because they didn't have Parker in for loads of episodes. They did go bowling.
JOY: But don't worry, Logan gets permission to ask Parker out.
HZ: They also seem to be, like, desperately trying to find things for Wallace to do. So in this, Wallace is kind of Veronica's wingperson in her dealing with the prospect of Logan and Parker.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: At one point she says, "I'm just trying to figure out which Gilmore Girl you are." I have theories about this, Jenny, about which Gilmore Girl Wallace is.
JOY: I, too, have a theory, or two.
HZ: I say Lane. One of the best characters that the show does dirty.
JOY: I also say Lane.
HZ: Yes!
JOY: Total dreamboat who is unnecessarily sidelined in service to a main character who is, perhaps -
HZ: Self-absorbed?
JOY: - less compelling. Yes, there you go.
HZ: Or, I suppose, Wallace has the helpfulness of Luke, without the misanthropy.
JOY: Oh, true. Sunny, sunny Luke.
HZ: Also, Logan, you remember at the beginning of the episode where Logan is friends with the 11-year-old girl and he's failing economics?
JOY: Yes.
HZ: And then at the end of that episode he's like, "I'm back in the game, doing economics." And then this one, he seems to be trying to impress upon Parker that he's going to class, but they return him to someone who forgets to go to class, and then I suppose the involvement with Parker makes him more keen to go to class... I don't... Just decide.
JOY: Yeah, just pick a thing, man.
HZ: Just make Logan go to class or not.
JOY: Yeah, yeah. Don't make us keep adjusting. I don't have the emotional bandwidth for this rollercoaster. As we continue to see Logan exhibit this, unseen previously boyfriend-ly aptitude, he decides to throw Parker a birthday party, which Veronica's very stressed out about, but it's important to them that she comes, and she doesn't want to go, but it's a whole thing, and meanwhile the episode kind of like leads everyone to this party.
HZ: They introduce Mac to Max - you know, the guy I hate from previous episodes. And she's had one episode of having a happy time with Bronson, and they're already bringing in this arsehole for a meet-cute. I object.
JOY: The only thing that I can say about this is that I could see where they might have been like, "Hmm, Max and Mac: their names are similar, and they also both have a history of doing school scams for profit."
HZ: They really bond over that.
JOY: “Maybe we should put these two on a couch, see what happens.”
HZ: Hmm.
JOY: I don't like it.
HZ: No, I don't like it, because he's an awful man. Although he does have to ask whether his friends paid for her to talk to him, so they've really scarred him for a long time.
JOY: Yeah, he's been traumatised. Dick has met a couple of girls on MySpace, and he invited both of them, and he decided that he's going to see which one is hotter. Woo-hoo-hoo! The girls tell Dick that they met each other and they figured it out, and they want to do a "Doublemint twins" thing with him, aka a threesome, and he's like, "Tight!" And they send him on a sexy stuff scavenger hunt. He goes to the ice machine for ice, then they fucking lock him in the ice machine vestibule, and then they're like, "We fucking are friends, like, we're in each other's top eight on MySpace," which, for those of you who are younger than me and Helen, your top eight, of course, was a place where you could display your top eight friends on MySpace. So, if this dingdong had taken two seconds to look at anything on these girls' profiles besides their pics he would have realised that he was inviting two people who knew each other to the same party. Anyway, they are like, "Ha ha ha, we are friends, fuck you," and then they go to the elevator and, in silhouette, make out with each other as the elevator doors close. The elevator doors opening and closing while people make out in this episode: huge. It's like, you know how they say that New York City is the fifth character in Sex And The City? The elevator doors opening and closing is like the 12th ensemble member in this episode of Veronica Mars.
HZ: Well, now that they're rebooting Sex And The City without Samantha, they're saying New York City's the fourth character in this series, so it got one up on the call sheet. It's a Promethean torment for Dick, seeing these girls start to kiss, and he can't watch because they're in the elevator. Hilarious. Looks like a good party. There's a face cake as well, with a picture of Parker and Logan on it, which seems fast.
JOY: Dude, this is like extreme boyfriend activity. It is bananas.
HZ: In like... A month? Less than a month?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: It's accelerated, certainly.
JOY: And when did they get that photo taken at Sears?
HZ: There's a particularly sinister piece of face cake that Veronica gets. It's Logan's face staring as if he's chopped through a bathroom door in The Shining.
JOY: Ha! Ugh, poor Piz. Poor, clueless Piz. Wallace got Piz to go out and they met a girl I guess that they are... Competing for? Or, like, sharing or something? They met her at the bar.
HZ: Yeah, during the plot that we didn't care about, about underage drinking. I think what it is, is Wallace is just keen for Piz not to be hung up on Veronica, because Wallace does not perceive Veronica to be interested in Piz.
JOY: Right.
HZ: And he's mostly correct. And so he's like, "Go and ask that girl out, ask that girl to the party, make some moves on that girl, just stop moping around after Veronica." So I don't think Wallace is interested in her. I think he just really wants to move Piz on. Piz is missing a Yo La Tengo concert to be at the party.
JOY: I mean, that says a lot. And Logan tries to set Veronica up with some kind of swing dancer guy, and Veronica throws herself on Piz as like an escape route, and Piz immediately is like, "Oh, yeah, I'll do anything for Veronica, I'll go get drinks and pretend to be her boyfriend so that she can get away from this other guy."
HZ: So she's ruining that for him.
JOY: And Wallace is like, "OK, man, I have to be straight with you. Piz is into you. It's obvious, everyone can fucking tell. It's clear that you're not into him, so please, be kind, let him know what the deal is so that he can let go and move on."
HZ: "They wrote him just for you."
JOY: And Veronica's like, "But what if, instead, I tell him that I'm not into him, but then when he leaves, what if I run after him and make out with him in front of the elevator just as the doors open and Logan sees us?"
HZ: "What if?"
JOY: "What, how would that be? Would that be good?"
HZ: Well, no, it's not good, because she cockblocks him when he's adequately flirting with this woman who is disproportionately interested in him, and then she takes him out on the balcony to do this big monologue about how she's not into him, and then he kisses her, and I think it's bad form to just leap in to kiss someone who's clearly saying to you that they're not into you.
JOY: Yeah. Also bad form.
HZ: Except, of course, the show is like...
JOY: "...unless…?"
HZ: The magic kiss that Logan sees.
JOY: Pfft.
HZ: Of course. Although he's also happy, because he seems slightly hung up on Veronica, but also wanting her to be happy, because he is at the same time happy and moving on.
JOY: Yeah. It feels like more crimes were committed in these three episodes than we've seen in a while. It feels very crime-dense, but also a fair amount of repeats.
HZ: Yes, some classic crimes.
JOY: Hard to argue with the classics. Let us turn now to our faithful North Star in the Californian sky, professional lawyer and recreational marshmallow Lo Dodds, for this episode's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
HZ: Josh is not a murderer, but he seems to have racked up a lot of crimes.
LO DODDS: Yeah.
HZ: What are they?
LO DODDS: Well, he'll be charged with escaping from custody. I assume that he's not going to come clean about the fact that his dad committed suicide, because he needs to give his mother plausible deniability, so he's going to be still wanted for murder. The escape can be charged as a misdemeanour, regardless of whether or not he's eventually convicted and put in prison. It would either be added to his prison sentence if he was convicted, but it's still a crime on its own. Possession of the fake ID, at the state level, presenting false papers to the Border Patrol is also going to get you charged with fraud, as a federal crime.
JOY: Whoa.
HZ: Kidnapping, for Mason?
LO DODDS: He's not going to get charged with kidnapping because, as we've seen before, kidnapping, that specific charge requires movement of some distance, and presumably Mason is just in the same city. Mason's probably also not going to press charges, but if he did it would probably be charged as false imprisonment.
HZ: What about getting the coins before he turns 21?
LO DODDS: This is kind of stupid. So for a safety deposit box, just like your bank account, the bank has a list of account holders that they're allowed to give access to the account to. So this sounds like this was put in trust by his grandfather, so his grandfather probably had a trust, and the parents are probably trustees, and it probably doesn't say, "Josh on his 21st birthday," it probably says, "Josh on this date." So the possession of the fake ID would really do nothing for him if the bank has that trust and it says, "This guy is allowed to access it on this date." But again, his mom is probably the trustee, so it's not like she's going to call the bank and say, "Hey, this was stolen."
HZ: I was a bit confused, though, by this plot. So what's the deal? Josh stays away until the statute of limitations has expired on getting the life insurance, and then he can be like, "Surprise! Dad died by suicide, not murder. Can I come back now?" How does it actually work?
LO DODDS: So here's the thing. If his mom doesn't know that the father wasn't murdered, so she doesn't know this was suicide... Josh has escaped. Whether she thinks that he's running because he doesn't want to be falsely convicted, as far as she knows, she is now submitting a valid claim to the insurance company that her husband was murdered, and she gets her money. Like they said in that episode, he's going to try to get in touch with his mom, and I'm like, "Well, I hope he's not going to tell her," because, like I said, she now has plausible deniability. She has not made a false representation to the insurance company. The statute of limitations for fraud is three years, and federally I think it's five years.
JOY: Really? That's it?
LO DODDS: But, if I learned anything from Ocean's Eight, it's that insurance companies are scarier than the police. So even if you have passed that statute of limitations, I don't think that Josh should be wandering back in there. Yeah, I don't think that would ever truly go away - but yes, in theory, if he waited out his three to five years, he'd be OK.
HZ: What's the statute of limitations for murder, though? That would still be pending.
LO DODDS: Yeah, yeah. So the police would still come after him for the murder. So he could still exonerate himself and still have the insurance money, though, because just because he didn't kill his dad, as long as they didn't use the defence, "Hey, his dad submitted this video," if he just got exonerated by saying, "Hey, you don't have any evidence tying me to the crime," because now Mason's going to be like, "Uh, I don't know about this," that wouldn't get tied to the insurance fraud.
HZ: Exhausting.
LO DODDS: But the insurance company is going to investigate, and they're going to press charges, and they are definitely going to subpoena Veronica, and they're going to subpoena Keith Mars, and they are going to tell the truth so as to not be charged as accessories after the fact.
HZ: She doesn't wittingly help Josh escape jail, but she did. And then she definitely helped him go and get his coins.
LO DODDS: Yeah, so she could be charged as an accessory after the fact to the escape from custody, so...
HZ: What kind of sentence would that be for a Mars?
LO DODDS: Well, the escape is just a misdemeanour, depending on what you could plead it down to. It's generally less than a year or so. But if they cooperated, I'm sure they'd be fine.
HZ: And then Coach Yeager assisted a suicide. What's he going to get for that?
LO DODDS: That's a felony. He's going to get three years. There's an exception in California, actually, for doctors.
JOY: Can just any doctor assist a suicide without penalty?
LO DODDS: I know there's an exception for giving life-ending drugs for certain doctors.
HZ: But if you're, like, a dentist?
LO DODDS: If you're like a vet...
HZ: Podiatrist?
LO DODDS: Yeah. Technically I have a doctorate, and I don't really think that's going to help me get out of a murder charge.
JOY: Could you shed some light on who out of Mindy and Lamb is right about perjury? And, let me add, it had better be Mindy, my beautiful widow queen.
LO DODDS: They're both right.
HZ: Oh.
LO DODDS: Mindy is right that she is not committing perjury because, unless she has taken an oath to tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that's perjury, when you lie under oath, but it is still a crime to lie to a police officer when they are conducting their official duties. So technically, they're both right. I just can't handle the amount of people - Mindy, Landry, all of these people - that are just willing speak to the police without a lawyer. That is the crime of stupidity. Why would you do that at all?
HZ: Why would you put people like Lo out of business, huh?
LO DODDS: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
JOY: Speaking of lawyers, Cliff tells them that since Batando was taken into custody inside of the neighbouring Santa Rita County, anything he tells the sheriff will be inadmissible in court. Is this correct? And, furthermore, if you pick someone up outside your jurisdiction, do you have to return them where you pick them up, or could you just release them by the front door and pick them back up immediately?
LO DODDS: This is true. It's called territorial jurisdiction. However, there are exceptions to it, and there are also, in places like California where you have densely populated areas like, say, Orange County to LA County, those counties have agreements that this doesn't apply.
HZ: Right.
LO DODDS: But again, why would Cliff even let him answer the question in the first place?
HZ: So it's not like Steve could just run to the other side of the county line and then just stand there flipping the bird at Lamb?
LO DODDS: Yeah, mooning him. No, you can't do that. No.
HZ: Wouldn't an officer go into the O'Dell house with backup if there was a Steve Batando raging around in it?
LO DODDS: I talked to my dad about that, and an in-progress crime always requires backup, but apparently if someone was in immediate danger, so someone's about to get murdered in the house, if they think Batando's about to murder Mindy, then, yes, the officer would go in.
HZ: And then, is it normal that when Lamb dies they just bring in Keith? Wouldn't they promote someone who's already a deputy, or working for the Sheriff's Department?
LO DODDS: It's not crazy, because a sheriff is an elected official. So depending on what state or county, or what level of elected official it is, there are... Everybody has different rules about how they appoint people to those positions. So your governor can end up appointing them. In this case, a board of county commissioners could end up appointing them prior to, as Keith mentions later, a special election. But it wouldn't be crazy, especially if there were no deputy sheriffs that had as much experience as Keith, and they knew that he was already involved.
JOY: Can you flip through police files, just whichever files you feel like flipping through, any files which might just be within reach?
LO DODDS: If you're Veronica Mars, absolutely. If you're literally anybody else in the world, no. How is that file so thin for a murder case? I don't get it, but alright.
HZ: Maybe it's a dummy file because they knew Veronica would probably get her hands on it at some point.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: Is there any legal reason why Mindy is not allowed to fuck off on a boat if she wants to?
LO DODDS: No. I mean, there's nothing... Unless there's some court order holding her, she's not under arrest, she's not in custody, she has no legal obligation to stay where she is.
JOY: Can you believe how good Mindy looks when she buys her fucking boat? Ah! I just can't stop thinking about her.
LO DODDS: She's so...
HZ: But then, of course, she dies.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Is Landry facing manslaughter for that, or murder?
LO DODDS: Landry would be facing voluntary manslaughter, so that's the crime of passion.
HZ: Right.
LO DODDS: He's looking at, I think, what is it - three, six, or eleven years, depending on the crime?
HZ: How much passion?
LO DODDS: How much passion? How premeditated? I mean, in this case, like, he got on a boat, got on a dinghy, got out to the boat, that seems kind of premeditated.
HZ: Landry using his position on the juvie board to force someone to give him a false alibi seems like it ought to be illegal.
LO DODDS: Yeah, there's that packet of crimes: witness tampering; evidence tampering; giving a false statement to the police; perjury, since presumably he gave a sworn statement and the woman gave a sworn statement as well... They're going to be charged with that, as a group: conspiracy to commit all of those crimes, as opposed to which one actually did them. And obviously, presumably he'd lose his job on the board. Same for switching the keyboards. Evidence tampering, obstruction of justice.
HZ: If Mindy's death happens in Mexico, would that be a matter for the Mexican legal system?
LO DODDS: He goes there with the Mexican officials, so he's got their blessing. But, yes, if you go to another country, you're subject to their laws and their jurisdiction, so the Mexican officials are going to be treating you with their own legal system. But Mexico and the US have an extradition treaty, and the US could petition to have Landry extradited back to the US to stand trial. The victim's nationality matters a little bit as well. Because Mindy is a US national, they're both US nationals, I think the US probably has a better case for extraditing Landry to the US.
HZ: Would there be a provable murder case against Tim? Because that's a lot of wacky evidence to present in court.
LO DODDS: It is a lot of wacky evidence. But I think the point of Veronica figuring it out is that once she had that idea in her head, she's going to go connect the dots with the physical evidence. So they're going to go to the dry cleaners, they're going to know that Landry wasn't wearing those clothes or didn't have access to those clothes. They're going to find physical evidence of Tim in the places where he shouldn't have been, such as Batando's apartment, even with his stupid, creepy gloves. So I think that they probably could have connected it easily enough that he would have - which he did - confess, so he could plead down to something lower.
JOY: Did your dad do surprise checks on bars? Was that part of his whole deal?
LO DODDS: Yes, they do random bar sweeps. They do it a lot in college towns. They're going to check the bar, though. They're going to check the bar's licence, to make sure that's valid, and then they're going to check the drinkers. The underage people will get in more trouble, but a bar is less likely to do this, especially in California, because if you lose your liquor licence, a liquor licence is really expensive. It can be up to $100,0000. So if you get a bunch of violations for underage drinking at your establishment you stand to lose a lot, as the establishment.
JOY: And are the deputies crime-ing by not actually checking the IDs?
LO DODDS: Yeah, well, I mean there's going to be whatever your punishment is within the Police Department for disobeying an order.
HZ: Probably get egged.
LO DODDS: Yeah, exactly. They probably just demote you to desk duty or something. The OC Sheriff's Department is a union, so you would not be allowed to just fire everybody in the department at once. It would be sort of a dereliction of duty. And there was a law passed in California, I think in, like, 2002, that makes it a misdemeanour for a police officer to not arrest somebody that they have the authority and a reason to arrest. I do not know whether this would really rise to that level, but, in theory, yes, you could face some criminal liability.
HZ: Is it a crime for Veronica to have obtained someone else's photos from the one hour photo place?
LO DODDS: Yeah, it's kind of like if you stole someone's clothes from the dry cleaner. So, the dry cleaner could possibly press charges against you, but it's technically their property, so you'd be charged with theft of their property. It's called a bailor-bailee situation, when someone is holding your property sort of in trust. And that means they actually have an extra obligation to make sure that it's safe, because you're paying them to take care of your property. Nasir would have to prove the value of those photos, and I don't know what the value of that is other than keeping Amira single. But yeah, since they just up and called ICE on the guy, he's probably unlikely to make it to small claims. Yeah, it was very... Like, after the whole... They were taking care of him, I thought they were just going to be like, "Right, you can't work here any more," but no, the crimes committed by... What was it, Derrick?
HZ: Ugh.
LO DODDS: The racist younger brother of the veteran.
HZ: Yeah.
LO DODDS: So obviously he's going to get charged with vandalism and theft. Well, I guess if they're not going to charge him, right, they're not going to press charges.
HZ: What about if you're using a paintball gun outside of a paintball range? Because you can do someone some damage with that.
LO DODDS: You cannot do that. You can't even carry a paintball gun outside of the shop that you buy it, the private paintball range, if you're taking it to a repair shop, but you can't carry it, you can get fined for that.
HZ: So if you're taking the paintball gun from your car to the paintball range, that bit?
LO DODDS: That'd be OK, but actually there are even some rules that, like, your own front yard isn't appropriate, even though technically that's your private property. Especially when you have a paintball gun like theirs that's not clear, or bright yellow, that looks alarmingly like a real, scary gun. So they could be charged for that. They'd obviously be charged for assault and battery, and whatever vehicle code violation it is for them to hang out in the back of a pickup like idiots. She could be charged with the same; she can be charged with battery and assault and what have you, destruction of property, vandalism, burglary, breaking and entering, not just trespassing. Yeah, Veronica has so many crimes.
JOY: This didn't feel like a particularly hilarious trio of episodes, but was there a line that called to you?
HZ: I found them pretty funny, actually.
JOY: Oh, alright.
HZ: I found Mars, Bars and Papa's Cabin funny, but I think it's because Veronica was on really good form. I've been quite down on Veronica this season, but I thought this was some of the best Veronica I've seen in a long time. But, for all the funny lines that came out of her mouth, I'm going to choose a bit of dialogue between Mac and Logan.
MAC: It just takes me back to high school. Remember, Logan? We stood at the same lunch table and made fun of all the fat kids.
LOGAN: I'm sorry - we went to the same high school?
MAC: Uh, yeah. We ran over that fisherman and promised to take the secret to our graves.
LOGAN: I remember the fisherman.
MAC: Remember? You bet your friends you could turn me into a super hot prom date as a joke, but you ended up falling in love with me?
LOGAN: Nope. Lost it.
HZ: But it's nice, it's a pairing the kind of works as friends.
JOY: They are fun to watch together.
HZ: Again, when there's no sexual chemistry, I think Logan can actually have quite a healthy friendship with people. So it's basically him, Wallace, and Mac. And 11-year-old girl. Those are the friends that make Logan a better Logan.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: How about you, Jenny?
JOY: Well... no one is more shocked than I to realise that my favourite line of these episodes came out of Piz's mouth. Can you believe it?
HZ: Ha!
JOY: He... Oh, just dripping with game. He strolls up to a beautiful woman at a pool table, throws a $20 bill down on the green felt, and says, "I got $20 that says you can whip my ass and make me like it." To which I say cheers, Piz.
HZ: He's kind of got some great beta male moves. Except for kissing someone who's saying that she's not interested.
JOY: Well, yeah.
HZ: And how did these episodes sit for you overall, Jenny?
JOY: Helen, I have to tell you, sometimes something, someone comes along that is so incredible, so unexpected, so life-shattering and mind-altering, that they change everything. They alter the scale upon which all things are measured. And therefore, upon the strength of my girl, a beautiful widow dressed in black, buying a yacht, fucking off into the sunset, with the icy chill, honestly, of a, yeah, like a Disney villainess, I think you nailed it with the Cruella thing, Mindy O'Dell, she is so compelling that it gives me no choice but to give these episodes five out of five.
HZ: Whoa.
JOY: That's right. It's because she brought... She's like 15 points, so all the negative that's working against her, you know, just like... It's still five out of five.
HZ: OK, that makes sense.
JOY: And I can't even see past it. It's just five out of five beautiful widows sailing off into the sunset, Helen. I don't know what you want from me. Mindy O'Dell has my heart, and that's it.
HZ: I just want you to be happy, Jenny. It's like a Cruella De Vil-Jessica Rabbit cross.
JOY: Yes! Correct.
HZ: There were quite a lot of things I liked in these episodes. I didn't really like the Barry murder plot, but overall, I thought Mars, Bars was a really fun episode. There was loads of great Veronica. And I thought the Valentine's hunt was fun, and it was just nice to see some friendship, which I think is one of the strengths of this show on the increasingly rare occasions that it chooses to depict it. There was some fun Lamb, as well, so then it hurt even more that he died. The Mindy noir was great. Veronica doing the denouement against Lucky in the classroom is pretty magnificent.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: And I liked the party. Some of the stuff I liked the most was Veronica sitting in jail, or sitting at home watching TV, because she didn't want to be out on Valentine's Day, and it was sort of a relief for something slow to happen. So, just trying to put aside the plots I didn't like very much, I will give the rest 4.1 face cakes.
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: And I guess that's these episodes of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: Case closed.
JOY: That was Veronica Mars Investigations Season 3 Episodes 14, 15 and 16: Papa’s Un-American Mars Bars.
HZ: Watch season 3 episodes 17, 18 and 19, and join us next time to investigate them.
JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
HZ: The website, where the show is never shifted back by an hour because of sportsball, is vmipod.com.
JOY: My name is Jenny Owen Youngs and when I am not making VMI with my beautiful friend Helen, make another podcast called Buffering the Vampire Slayer. And I also make a lot of music that you can check out over on jennyowenyoungs.com.
HZ: I am Helen Zaltzman and when I'm not making Veronica Mars iIvestigations with my esteemed colleague Jenny Owen Youngs, I make the podcasts Answer Me This and the Allusionist.
JOY: Helen, you're always esteeming me and I just don't know that it's warranted. I don't know that it's been earned.
HZ: It's not for you to decide, is it?
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Ian Steadman for the transcript.
HZ: The music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
JOY: The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
HZ: Ad sales are thanks to multitude.productions.
JOY: Until next time, who’s your daddy?
HZ: Who’s your daddy?
JOY: Hopefully not a mean sheriff on a power trip.
HZ: Save him a jelly doughnut or they'll be hell to pay.
