HZ: Meg has got a secret admirer. She's narrowed it down to two guys. Someone sweet but moony called Martin, or someone called Caz who's flirty, but he would flirt with a trashcan if it had boobs.
JOY: Trying to picture a trash can with boobs. Hang on one second.
HZ: Pretty sexy.
JOY: Okay, please go on. I'm ready.
HZ: But Meg needs to find out who, because it could be her soulmate - there's a lot of soulmate chat this episode.
JOY: Meg, you're 16, you barely even have a soul let alone its mate. Her soul is still baking!
HZ: You're basically a trash can with boobs!
HZ: At school Veronica is at the lunch tables questioning Yolanda's friend Gabrielle who's just talking, talking, talking, talking. And I love how Veronica says in voiceover some stuff that really illustrates the daddy-daughter dynamic chez Mars.
VERONICA VOICEOVER: One thing about an ex-cop for a dad is that some boring Sunday when you’ve seen all the reruns, he might kill time describing, for instance, how to tell if someone’s lying in an interrogation. Take Yolanda’s friend Gabrielle here: the indirect eye contact, the smile that doesn’t crinkle the eyes.
HZ: It's so useful. I wish I'd had such a useful dad. He probably could have told me how to like cut down a tree or something - but then I wouldn't have been allowed to touch his chainsaw.
JOY: OMG, a chainsaw!
HZ: Oh, my dad loves his chainsaw, yeah.
JOY: <psycho music>
HZ: Not like that; you would never besmirch it with human flesh, it would clog the chain! God, Jenny.
JOY: Oh my god. My mistake.
HZ: Have some respect for the implement!
HZ: Veronica's playing with the stapler, partly as a sign of rudeness and partly so she can swap it with a spy stapler! Is there an office supplies catalogue has identical models of the most common stationary items but with cameras in?
JOY: And had Veronica noted what kind of stapler she had before? Like on a previous trip to Miss James’s office?
HZ: I admire the research.
JOY: The important questions of our times.
HZ: And also does it function as a real stapler?
JOY: Oh, great question.
HZ: I suppose it must, because otherwise it would arouse suspicion.
Read MoreJOY: This episode is anti-guitarist propaganda. This is very offensive representation of the guitar playing community. This guitar store - okay, if you're not watching along with us for some reason, let me just paint you a picture. Helen, they’re at a guitar store - listen, they are in the fifth circle of hell. If you're a musician and you're like, “Wow, I love being a musician but man, it is sure difficult to go to Guitar Center” because there's always like somebody playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ as loud as they possibly can poorly and then somebody across the the store plugged into a different amp playing fucking Free Bird - it's a sonic nightmare. And this guitar store takes that idea and - to nod in the general direction of Spinal Tap - turns it all the way up to 11! There's like 100 dudes around, it's basically a chug chug a circle jerk of 10 dudes standing in a circle playing <metal riff>. Why would this happen? Also! Also, there's this mural behind the register, that eventually the guitar store guy comes out and talks to them in front of, that's kind of like a D&D/fantasy/Megadeth album cover of like a sort of like Conan the Barbarian meets a Minotaur kind of thing and he's like shirtless and he has a guitar and his arms in the air and like there's probably like lightning and mountains and shit behind him. I just - Helen. Helen, Helen. Did you see it?
HZ: Jenny. Are you ok?
JOY: I'm not okay.
HZ: Do you need me to call a medic?
HZ: At Mars HQ, Keith and Aaron are having some coffee. Keith asks Aaron to pull a file out which he's got tucked into his armpit, which I found really cute. But I was wondering also whether Keith had a kind of game plan of informality with Aaron and cosseting him a bit where he's like, "So, you fucked someone that's not your wife, but my memory is not so good, either. So it doesn't matter that you lied to me."
JOY: Aaron seems like somebody who's gonna lie to make himself look better, until he doesn't have the opportunity to do so but still wants to feel good about himself. So I think the trick to getting Aaron's to cop to stuff is give him soft ways to backpedal for sure.
HZ: Keith is very smart. Then he's like, "I'm not going to tell Lynn that you cheated, because you didn't hire me to tell you that you cheated, she hired me to protect you. So here's a list of people who were at the Casablancas Halloween party. Can you circle the people that you slept with?" And Aaron's like circle circle circle and Keith's like, "No just the people you slept with whilst at the party." Amazing. And Aaron's like, "Ooof. I was on the hard cider." Now, anyone who's been 15 years old in Britain can identify.
Read MoreHZ: Have you heard the word ‘mooncalf’ before, Jenny?
JOY: I haven't, should I have?
HZ: Well, it's a derogatory term for stupid people.
JOY: Really? What a strange choice!
HZ: Yeah, but it derives from a word from the 1500s that meant an abortive foetus of a cow or a farm animal. Because at the time, there was the thought that a malformed foetus was the result of the moon having a malign influence on foetal development. And it was just like a fleshy mass, like Duncan Kane. Why would you name your cult after an abortive cow foetus?
JOY: Yeah, this is a very strange choice now that you're giving me some context. before that I was just like “how sweet, how nice”.
HZ: Yes, it is quite a pretty name until you know what it means. And then it sucks.
HZ: Keith comes in buttoning his cuffs. And he hears Veronica saying:
VERONICA: Seriously, you should talk to him.
KEITH: Am I giving you the birds and the bees again, Wallace?
HZ: Spectacular!
JOY: Give him the birds and bees, Keith!
HZ: Oh, wouldn't you love the birds and bees talk from Keith?
JOY: If I had to get it from somebody.
HZ: It'd scare you into never fucking a bee.
JOY: Or a bird.
Read MoreHZ: Logan, and Weevil are stuck in detention together, and Weevil rightly complains that he got zero in the test for talking, where even though it was Logan who was talking to Weevil, and it was Logan who insulted the teacher in front of everybody. And Weevil is really on about the injustice in this town - and rightly, I think.
JOY: Yes, the injustice is real. But if the injustice didn't exist, we might not get to watch Weevil and Logan start playing poker together and they just can't stop flirting with each other.
HZ: It is beautiful. Thank goodness they're stuck in this detention unsupervised, and that they seem to have found an alliance so quickly. Unfortunately, the card game is short-lived because Mr. Daniels comes in scoops up the cards.
WEEVIL: Aw, come on, man!
LOGAN: What the hell? We were playing a game here.
DANIELS: This is punishment, gentlemen, not party time.
LOGAN: Well, that would explain the absence of balloon animals.
JOY: And gives them a full week of detention - and I'm so happy for them that he didn't confiscate the money in addition to the cards, because I feel like that could have easily happened.
HZ: That is a good point. I feel like Mr. Daniels isn't after their money in the way that Sheriff Lamb, say, would have been.
JOY: Yes, exactly.
HZ: He just hates everything - but that includes financial gain from children.
Read MoreJOY: No, alas. We plunge headlong from this into a really beautiful father-daughter scene where Keith and Veronica are doing their detective bit together.
HZ: Yeah, their detective a bit from when they were alive in the 1940s.
JOY: Yes, exactly.
VERONICA: Tough day?
KEITH: That ain’t the half of it. See, this dame walks in and you shoulda seen the getaway sticks on her. Says something’s hinky with her old man.
JOY: If you think I'm ever referring to my legs as anything other than ‘getaway sticks’ from here on out, you are sorely mistaken.
Read MoreHZ: They leave the diner. It's still dark. They're still bantering about girls and - oh shit. Where's the car? Where's the car?
JOY: Where is the car? The car is gone as hell.
HZ: But what is amazing about this is that Logan says:
LOGAN: Well maybe it's like Brigadoon. If you come back in a hundred years, it'll be right back in this spot.
HZ: When did Logan watch the 1954 film or 1947 Broadway musical Brigadoon, about a Scottish village that only appears for one day every hundred years and the plot makes absolutely no sense at all? This seems like a deep cut.
JOY: That's what Brigadoon is about?
HZ: That's what Brigadoon is about. I would explain more but it's just too complicated. So yeah, where did Logan get that reference? Do you think you watched it with his grandma?
JOY: This is a mystery. This is yet another mystery of the show.
HZ: And of Logan.
JOY: It doesn't really line up with his deal.
HZ: He contains multitudes.
JOY: Well, this episode begins in the way that I've always hoped and dreamed, with Veronica and Troy making out.
HZ: Outside the Mars front door, which I would have thought would be tricked out with bear traps and things that could detect Veronica kissing boys.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, like heat sensors. Maybe Keith on the other side of the door with like a stethoscope.
HZ: The heat sensor is showing exactly how much erection the boy has got.
JOY: Oh my god!
HZ: Keith goes there! He's a details guy.
JOY: That's true.
JOY: It's really starting to feel like Duncan is a radio, and the dial is just a spin.
HZ: Yeah, he's free-associating. “Oh, bleachers, what’s the association I have with bleachers?” Duncan Kane putting on his one-man production of Grease.
JOY: I would actually like to see that more than I've seen anything else from Duncan, a one-man production of Grease starring Duncan Kane. Hell yeah, sign me up.
HZ: You’re going to love his rendition of ‘Beauty school dropout’.
Read MoreJOY: Here comes Sheriff Lamb.
HZ: Wuh whoa. There's a newspaper story about a killer escape from the sheriff's cruiser. Whoops. What a blunder!
JOY: Oopsy Daisy! Old butter fingers.
HZ: There'll be another one along in a while. And so Keith is on form this morning because he's been warming up by razzing Veronica about her cap, so then he can give Lamb a good razzing and then Lamb absolutely biffs that volley of the razzing by being like:
SHERIFF LAMB: “You know what’s coming up? October 3rd. Are you doing anything special to mark the one year anniversary of Lilly Kane’s murder? Got it! Dress like a sheriff and crucify some poor, grieving father, just for old time’s sake, you know?”
HZ: Good one, dickhead.
JOY: Like, Lamb, God! If you just try!
HZ: Yeah, he's not got good chat.
JOY: No, no.
HZ: Imagine Lamb in a rap battle!
JOY: I refuse.
JOY: Have you ever been duct taped to a pole naked? I have not.
HZ: I haven't, and now you make me feel like my upbringing has been so sheltered.
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