LATOYA FERGUSON: The amount of things I never thought I'd have to care about in a TV show that are in this season. Incorporation. Airplane hangars. At least like when The OC did all its real estate plots, it was interesting. But like... Jesus, incorporation.
Read MoreHZ: I don't acknowledge dream sequences. You know this.
JOY: Ha, yeah.
HZ: Well, I don't acknowledge this one. Fucking Lianne Mars? I hadn't missed her, I'd forgotten all about her.
JOY: Yeah, I kind of forgot that she ever existed.
HZ: But she's bearing laundry, because, in this dream, she's the perfect mother - as in domestic, and just sort of smiling gently at everyone else who's more interesting. She's got a much bigger house...
ALANNA BENNETT: Yes.
HZ: ...and a pancake breakfast, and Keith's in sheriff's uniform, and Veronica body-shames herself.
ALANNA BENNETT: Yes, because she's still the Disney popular girl, and gullible. I like that in her head it's like, "I wish that I were still this, like, gullible little princess."
JOY: Ha! The good old days.
JOY: I was so busy thinking about Weevil and math together.
HZ: Yeah? That doing it for you?
JOY: Yes. Two of my favourite things, Weevil and algebra. Math that I understand.
HZ: I didn't know you were into algebra. There's so much I still have to learn about you.
JOY: I mean, it's not like my passion, but if I had a workbook right now...
HZ: You could algebra the shit out of it.
JOY: I would absolutely do it to take the edge off anything to distract me from the yawning void just outside of my peripheral vision.
JOY: Weevil's locker number is 333, half of 666.
HZ: Is this like a bat signal for you, Jenny?
JOY: Yeah, hell yeah. If Weevil's locker number was 420, or 69, or 489 which is 420 plus 69...
HZ: Is that the ultimate?
JOY: That'd be pretty tight, but 333 is also worth noting.
HZ: There's quite a lot of setup this episode for this guy Lucky, but we see him for about 30 seconds, so just don't peak too soon.
JOY: Chekhov's... veteran?
HZ: Chekhov's really saving him for another play. "You know what, I'll seed Lucky in the first act of Uncle Vanya, but I won't get on to him until Three Sisters."
JOY: I'm laughing like I have any idea what Chekhov wrote and in what order, but I don't.
HZ: Anyone? Anyone?
JOY: Here's some stuff that we find out that I don't care about: she had her ex-boyfriend's name tattooed on her ass after two weeks, then she got it removed, which took six weeks, so that the guy that she's getting married to would never see it, and also one of them lost her cellphone last night, and there was a guy creeping around them at the Happy Horseshoe. Here is what we find out that I do care about: they went to an all-male revue called "Packaged Meat".
HZ: Ew.
JOY: Ha! Helen! Get on my level. This is so great. This is wonderful news.
HZ: I suppose, any of the genders in revue, I'm a little uncomfortable with them.
JOY: Well, I guess this is where you and I, our paths diverge, and I take the winding road into the strippergram forest, searching for elusive woodland hunks to pop out, being granted modesty by strategically-placed fig leaves and branches, and that's just not what you're after.
HZ: It's quite the bucolic scene of male nudity and moss and branches and things.
JOY: Come on!
JOY: When Lamb is clearly going to be difficult, and Keith hands him the CD to essentially blackmail him, Lamb crosses his fingers and says, "I really hope it's the new Big & Rich." Helen, do you know, are you familiar with the musical artists Big & Rich?
HZ: I'm not, Jenny. Should I?
JOY: Well, they are, I think, best-known for their country smashola ‘Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy’.
HZ: That doesn't work.
JOY: That's about sex. ‘Have sex with a cowboy.’
HZ: "Don't fuck a horse," OK, what a message.
JOY: Listen! You have to hold two layers in your mind at the same time. "Don't ride a horse regular. Instead, fuck a cowboy."
HZ: "Take a cowboy to the races, and see if they can handle the jumps"?
JOY: Just make sure you only have one headphone in at any time.
HZ: I just don't think this analogy works, Jenny.
JOY: Helen, I feel like you're missing the spirit of modern American country music.
HZ: Jackie's shivering. It's so cold, this is so wrong. And then fucking Madison is there missing the balls, so she just goes over to the lever and she's like, "I told you to stay home," and dunks Jackie with the lever, which is so horrible. And the teacher who wouldn't let Wallace misthrow balls is just like, "Yeah, whatever, sure." And Veronica has a face of concern. But does she do anything? No.
JOY: You know, Helen, in my elementary school, we had a summer festival thing where our principal was in the dunk tank, and I, some way or another, won the privilege of being the first person to get to throw balls to try to dunk my principal, and I missed all three times. And then I did what Madison did, but in a fun way. But watching Madison do this really made me call into question my fifth grade mentality.
HZ: Isn't the point there that the hierarchy is temporarily suspended or subverted?
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Whereas this, it's someone in a superior position in pretty much every way in society being a real shit to someone else.
JOY: Thank you for making me feel better, Helen.
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: About me, not about this episode.
HZ: Uncle Monte doesn't want Rashard to be consorting with girls in case they're leeches, and hits him in the dick to prove his point.
JOY: Helen, has your uncle ever hit you in the dick?
HZ: I've only met my uncle about eight times, and no, he didn't hit me in the dick. He taught me how to make a compass with a piece of string and a pin.
JOY: That's pretty tight. That's way cooler than hitting your nibling in the dick.
HZ: I don't think I've hit any of my niblings in the dick so far.
JOY: Good on you, Helen.
JOY: Have I told you that my mom used to save birds in the freezer? If a bird would fly into one of our windows and die, she would save it in the freezer for some reason.
HZ: Was she hoping that they would be reborn after three days?
JOY: Possibly? When I was quite small our dog killed a baby raccoon and I was really upset about it, and so then, as a response, my mom had the raccoon taxidermied.
HZ: No!
JOY: For my birthday.
HZ: She's angry at Logan as well for carrying a gun, because she's scared that he's gonna get killed. He's in a reckless mood. He was like, "It's all right, the gun's not loaded, and it was a present from Dick's dad." Like, what a comfort.
JOY: First of all, why is Mr Casablancas running around just doling out guns? He's like, "Oh, it's Halloween, trick or treat, here’s a fucking firearm."
HZ: Well he was probably like, "Logan, you're like an extra son to me. Have one of my precious guns." They had a good time at the range. Also maybe he was like, "This is not going to fit through the shredder, you'd better have it."
JOY: What is it about people and twins and threesomes? You ever think about that, Helen?
HZ: Not in a desirous way. I feel like it's a bit disrespectful of the family relationship between them.
JOY: The family relationship, the autonomy… The mystery of twins, and the pain and struggles that we shall never know as two non-twins.
HZ: I have nieces who are twins, but they are ten, so it feels like not the time to talk to them about it.
JOY: I just googled ‘Celebrity Boners and Gaffes’ -
HZ: No, no — no Jenny! Delete all the cookies!
JOY:There is a seemingly endless list of articles from mostly BuzzFeed, In Touch, some other websites and news outlets. Here are some sample article titles: "Celebrities who've had erections during sex scenes". "31 celebrity bulges that went hard in 2015". "The 21 most important celebrity bulges of all time". "Boner alert! Nine celebrities who have had boners in public". "Boner alert! Make America bulge again".
HZ: Argh.
JOY: "13 celebrity dudes who aren't afraid to show off their goods". I've googled it, so you don't have to.
HZ: Thanks, Jenny.
JOY: Ugh. You're welcome.
HZ: How do you know I hadn't already? (I hadn't.) So no gaffes, just boners?
JOY: No gaffes, just boners.
HZ: Gaffes are less popular than boners, I guess.
VERONICA on phone: Have you had dinner?
DUNCAN: No, I'm tired of room service. [Opens door: it’s Veronica, holding up a bag of food.]
VERONICA: Then may I suggest dim sum, and then some?
JOY: Ew. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. Ew. OK, I'm going to say this, and then I need to go get some Listerine. "Dim sum and then some"?
HZ: It gets worse. It gets worse, Jenny.
DUNCAN: What if we start the evening with ‘and then some’ and work our way back to the dim sum?
VERONICA: It's officially under consideration. May I ask you something first?
DUNCAN: Yes to costumes, no to props. Does that cover it?
JOY: Helennnnn!
HZ: Veronica does have a lot of costumes, but her props are bugs and tasers. So I can understand why he didn't want to use those.
JOY: Yeah, I guess. I guess that makes sense.
HZ: Then Veronica ruins the dim sum and then some, or the then some and then dim sum that Duncan's angling for, by saying, "Why didn't you tell me how often you'd been visiting Meg since the accident?" And it's hard to carry on the sexy chat after that kind of line.
JOY: Yeah. It's not great.
HZ: She's really done the roleplay badly there.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: “I'm roleplaying as one of the Manning parents.”
JOY: Ugh. Sick.
HZ: I have two other reasons that I think account for Veronica's hostility. One is: I think she senses that Jackie is a sexperson. She has already said in the previous episode that she hasn't dated a high school guy since eighth grade. She makes reference to actors she's been out with. She's a sexperson. But I think the true reason she dislikes Jackie is because Jackie also wears tiny jackets.
JOY: Tiny jacket competition. They have to have a tiny jacket-off.
HZ: Who's got the tiniest jacket? And also, Jackie's name is so close to ‘jacket’.
JOY: Wow. Yes. Also really regretting saying 'tiny jacket-off'.
HZ: It's interesting seeing Tessa Thompson in this, given that her career is now stellar.
JOY: Yeah, another person who was in Veronica Mars who is now incredibly successful.
HZ: And I'm happy for her; she's very charismatic, I think, on screen even in this but I feel like she's done a bit of a disservice with the character in this. I think they're not quite sure who Jackie is, because they have just piled all of the styles on her at once. She's wearing elements of five very different outfits at most times.
JOY: She's like a girl group. But like all five of them at a time. Sporty, Ginger, Scary, Baby -
HZ: And Belts.
JOY: Do you think that in this context, pantsing refers to just Butters's pants coming down or him getting fully exposed?
HZ: I'm trying to remember what we would have called it in England; it would have had a different name; pants would definitely unambiguously be undergarments in British English.
JOY: Oh right, so you'd be like, "Oh, he got troused" or something. Sorry if I've offended anyone.
HZ: When you've pantsed people in the past, Jenny, which I'm sure actually I'm sure you've never done because you're a kind person.
JOY: Honestly, I'm not a pantser, but Jess pantses me on the daily.
HZ: She romantically pantses you? And when she does it, is it overpants and underpants?
JOY: Just overpants, and then an impish scurrying away.
HZ: So we should clarify: Jess is your girlfriend.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: She's not your high school bully.
JOY: Or a ghost.
