Previously: Keith and Lamb team up to solve the case of the E-String Strangler, who doesn’t actually strangle, but definitely impacts tourism.
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Clash of the Tritons
Democracy Diva: I’m excited as soon as the previouslys start. They show Flashback!Lilly, Dream!Zombie!Lilly, Weevil talking about his Lilly!Tattoo, the guidance counselor whose romance with Keith I totally predicted, and Aaron Echolls getting stabbed at his own Christmas party, in case we managed to forget that in the interim episode.
Sweeney: To be fair, a whole lot of shit happens in pretty much every episode of this show. Plus, teenage shows assume everyone forgets what happens to the adult characters.
Diva: A completely valid assumption, unless the adult character in question is Sandy Cohen, who I will always care about more than any teenage character ever.
Guidance Counselor Becky is studying the long-term effects of grief on adolescents, so she’s definitely in the right town for her particular branch of research. Next stop: Sunnydale! (L: Population 0, because you know, Spike exploded.) GCB wants to interview everyone who was close to Lilly to see how they’re doing/get herself closer to that coveted PhD in Sad High Schoolers. Naked dudes inexplicably run through the hallways while a kid in an MIT sweatshirt tells Veronica he can’t wait to get out of Neptune. He got into MIT early admission, so naturally, he refuses to take off the school’s sweatshirt. I’d judge him, but I absolutely did the same thing my senior year of high school, because I was also a dork who hated my hometown.
Lorraine: In addition to the MIT sweatshirt and the glasses and the, “UGH I HATE HIGH SCHOOL” stuff, they also put a chessboard on this guy’s lap. OKAY SHOW. WE GET IT.
Sweeney: It’s really helpful when nerds carry chessboards around with them to identify themselves, though.
Diva: GCB’s Office of Sadolescents. She’s trying to get Veronica to open up, but V’s got her snark screen up and is not having any of this little feelings sesh. (Someone send Veronica a Team Heartless Cow t-shirt, ASAP.) (L: I love V, but she can’t have mine.)
Lor: I love everything about the last three paragraphs you wrote. You’re making me love sadolescents and illicit tapes. Feel about that how you please.
Diva: I happen to feel great about it. Anyway, a kid named Rick is called into the principal’s office, where Sherriff Lamb is there to abuse him and generally be douchey. Rick sort of deserves it – surveillance tapes show Rick ditching his unconscious buddy Tim in front of the hospital after a night of heavy drinking. Tim is now in a coma, and Lamb wants to know who has been supplying most of the population of Neptune High with fake IDs. Of course, the name Rick gives to Lamb is Veronica Mars.
Cut to Veronica, happily leading Lamb to her locker, because she knows she has nothing incriminating there. Except, oops, the moment she opens it up, approximately eight billion blank IDs come flying out. Now Lamb’s got an excuse to search Veronica’s purse, where he finds her personal supply of fake IDs (a license that makes her 22, a college student ID, and inexplicably, a massage therapist license).
Lor: Can we talk about the continuity porn? There’s an ID identifying her as Lilly and the San Diego State ID too. Swoon.
Sweeney: It brings us major joy to be able to dust off that underused continuity porn tag.
Diva: Lamb doesn’t realize, of course, that these are for her own personal investigatory shenanigans, and that she’s not supplying every rich idiot in town with a way to drink himself into oblivion. Lamb makes sure to handcuff Veronica in front of as many people as possible.
BRING IT ON, BRING IT ON, YEAH!
Down at the station, Cliff the Attorney is bailing Veronica out as she begs him to keep this little incident a secret from Keith. Cliff is like, LOL, yeah, good luck hiding your court date from your investigator dad. Cliff also helpfully notifies Veronica that Rick is the one telling tales on her, so she marches straight up to Rick and shoves him into a wall, even though this is a police station and you’re probably not allowed to do shit like that to the people whose testimony will be used against you in your court date next week. (S: I’m super impressed, though, because he’s a tall dude and she is mighty tiny.) But, you know, no one gives a shit, because competent police are the enemy of good TV. Anyway, Rick is all cryptic about how “they” told him to name Veronica and “they” will destroy him.
Lor: I love that Veronica’s response is that she will destroy him worse. It’s totally true, too. Veronica Mars will destroy you worse than anyone.
Diva: Mars offices. Wallace brought Veronica’s homework, and in exchange for that favor, Veronica… asks him for another favor. Wallace, do you ever ask for anything in return? Brunch? A new pair of shoes? I am not loving the one-sidedness of the favor-doing in this relationship. But I digress. Veronica asks Wallace to find out who at Neptune High besides her is making fake IDs.
Logan broods along to the radio, where a dickwad DJ is being insensitive about his dad’s stabbing and sex life. He arrives at school to find a bunch of paparazzi clippings of his family’s scandals taped to his locker. Logan and the Locker-Vandal get into a fight and won’t back off until teachers intervene.
GCB interviewing Weevil, who is pretending that he doesn’t remember their counseling session from right after Lilly’s death. Getting angrier, Weevil explains that a little girl from his neighborhood went missing the same day Lilly died. That little girl was found dead a few months later, but there was no search party for her, no media attention, no fucking grief counseling. Because if you’re not a rich white girl, the media does not give a shit if you go missing. Anyway, GCB reads a love letter Weevil wrote to Lilly. He explains that they were together when Lilly and Logan first broke up; Lilly promised never to go back to Logan, but she did. Weevil breaks down into tears, saying that he could have loved Lilly and he knows she felt the same, and I’m getting weepy as Veronica tries to figure out why Lilly would have kept this a secret from her.
Sweeney: Obviously there are all the Weevil feels here, but Veronica too. Her best friend was murdered and she knows there was a cover up and in the already insane process of trying to be a teenage girl solving the murder of another teenage girl, she’s realizing all the things she never knew about her. Never got a chance to know. So many feels.
Diva: All Lilly feels, all the time.
Veronica sneaks Rick into her car, which is covered in a giant blue sheet, and for God’s sake, it would be so much less conspicuous to just talk to each other like normal human beings. Rick explains that there’s a secret society called the Tritons, which is in the process of hazing Rick and some other potential new members. The Tritons’ fun little rituals forced Rick and his fellow pledges to drink a dozen shots in one night, resulting in Tim’s alcohol poisoning and subsequent coma. Rick says the Tritons told him to blame this on Veronica, because destroying her life is their mission statement. (This is kind of bullshit, since the organization is older than Veronica herself, but since it’s clearly populated by creeps, they probably would have it out for an awesome troublemaker like our girl V.) (S: I think he meant that destroying people, in general, is like their mission statement – including him if they knew he was ratting them out.) (This makes much more sense.) Anyway, Rick wants to bring the Tritons down for almost killing Tim, and mentions that Duncan is one of the new pledges. Veronica puts a tracker on Duncan’s car so she can stalk him to the secret meetings.
Sweeney: Veronica, girl, boundaries. Putting GPS trackers on your ex-boyfriend’s car? You’re venturing into Christian Grey territory. Our existing “stalker” tag is gender specific, so, um, congrats on helping us bring equality to identifying stalkers?
Diva: Snark HQ’s Neptune offices will now specialize in restraining orders against stalker exes.
At Neptune High, Aaron Echolls is scolding Logan and showing no apparent signs of having JUST BEEN STABBED, which I find a bit mysterious. But the point of this little scene is just that Aaron continues to be an abusive psycho.
Mars office. Keith is there, and he knows about Veronica’s little legal run-in, so before he can get a word in, she’s all, I SWEAR I DIDN’T DO IT. She explains about the Tritons, and learns that Tim’s parents are suing the Marses, every bar in Neptune, and basically every living person who could have even remotely contributed to Tim ending up in that coma.
Lor: I wonder if they are suing Tim for, you know, drinking the alcohol. Probably not.
Diva: Mars office. Aaron needs a bit more investigatory work from Keith. He pops a couple of pills, but he still looks way too healthy for someone who took several knife wounds to the gut not too long ago. Aaron wants Keith to look into who is leaking the stories and photos of Aaron’s sexcapades. “My wife is fragile; she can’t take any more scandal,” Aaron says, apparently not even considering the idea that maybe NOT CHEATING ON HER IN THE FIRST PLACE is the best way to avoid scandal.
Lor: He also jokes, “guess I should’ve cancelled that party!” Well, Aaron, you can have all the parties you want if you aren’t a cheating asshole who people want to stab in the gut.
Diva: Veronica Voice-Over (VVO) about Triton. She fails to mention that Triton is the father of Princess Ariel, but gives us some other fun facts about conch shells or something.
Wallace drops by to inform Veronica that there’s a locker at school that you can put your name and money into in the morning, and there will be a fake ID waiting for you in the locker by that afternoon. Kudos to whichever entrepreneurial Neptune High student created this brilliant system. Veronica sets up some cameras so she can spy on who opens the locker in question, #110.
GCB’s office. Logan calls her “Becky” to her face, because he’s an asshole. He mentions that he and Lilly had been together since junior high, but gets prickly when GCB clarifies that they were on-and-off, and off in particular when Lilly died. After being disrespectful and inappropriate about GCB’s relationship with Keith, Logan gets emotional and explains that Veronica saw Logan drunk-kissing another girl, and ratted him out to Lilly. If Veronica hadn’t done that, Logan thinks he and Lilly would have stayed together, and she wouldn’t have been alone the day of her death, and he could have saved her. GCB says if they had stayed together, Logan could have died that day too, but he doesn’t give a shit, because the life he’s currently living isn’t much better than the alternative. This existential moment increased my Logan feels from virtually nonexistent to like, 1.5%.
Sweeney: In fairness to Prince Brood, he blames/hates everyone because he’s 17 and has all the feelings. I didn’t even have real problems like abusive parents and dead friends and that line is totally something I would have said. Probably not out loud, but, like, in a livejournal entry or a crappy poem or something.
Diva: Qualifications for being a Snark Lady: broody teenage years involving overly intimate livejournal entries and truly terrible poetry. Anyway, Veronica and Wallace are tracking Duncan’s location. Hilariously, when Veronica inspects the poor quality ID, she gets supremely offended that anyone would believe such a shoddy, imperfect fake is her handiwork. They follow Duncan to a bar where he’s engaging in some terrifyingly drunk karaoke. Veronica tries to talk to him, but I understand literally none of what he says. Duncan hands Veronica a piece of paper that says, “The judges hold the vital scores. You shall hear my voice once I’ve heard yours. – The Great Triton.” Well, thank goodness the Triton can write, because I certainly wouldn’t have been able to understand those instructions through Duncan’s slurred speech.
Anyway, the crowd starts bullying Veronica into doing karaoke, and the camera work gets very jumpy and creepy like a horror movie, which was more than a bit disconcerting. V takes the stage and dedicates her fantastic rendition of “One Way or Another” to the Tritons. It’s hilarious and adorable and awesome and exemplifies all the things that all of us love about Veronica.
Diva: Then she gets a creepy note from the Tritons to meet someone in the bathroom, alone. A really stupid voice coming from a toilet stall is all, I’M THE GREAT TRITON LA LA LA but Veronica opens the door, and it’s just a blonde dude named Jeff who was paid $20 by a stranger to do this Triton routine. Pay no attention to the douche behind the curtain!
Rick tells Veronica that the Tritons know he’s been talking to her. He knows this because they nailed a fucking live rat to his door. WHO DOES THAT? Seriously, unless you are a relative of Lord Voldemort, what in the actual fuck is that about?
GCB’s office. I love the way the action of the episode gets punctuated by these little one-on-one scenes in the guidance office. They’re so revealing and fascinating, and you know I can’t get enough Lilly backstory. Duncan tells GCB that he can feel Lilly with him, watching him, so he’s never alone. He calls himself psychotic, but GCB says that’s normal for a kid who’s lost his sister. Duncan mentions that he’s been feeling Lilly’s presence since he stopped taking his meds. GCB gets nervous and asks if his physician knows, or if he’s had any “episodes.” Duncan clarifies that he only stopped taking his antidepressants, not the other drugs he’s been on even longer. Veronica, listening in from her car, is all, um, what fucking medication is this? She hears Duncan say that he thinks Lilly is mad at him for not remembering the events surrounding her death. He basically had a 3-day blackout around that time. Hmmm.
Sweeney: Team HMMM is everywhere.
Diva: Veronica, still as conspicuous as can be in her covered car, gets kidnapped by Tritons. But the Tritons don’t watch TV and are shitty kidnappers, so they didn’t take her phone. She calls Wallace from the trunk, and he comes to her rescue. They hear, via the GCB office stapler-recording device, some weird chanting noises, and they run into the school to catch the Tritons at their initiation creepiness. When the creepers remove their hoods (revealing Duncan, MIT kid, and some others), Veronica jumps out with her camera and sasses, “Say ‘repressed homosexuality!'” 1430 for you, Veronica, for your adequate assessment of any and all secret societies. The Tritons chase Veronica down, but she gracefully hops into her waiting convertible and Wallace drives her away. They compare the photos of the Tritons to the surveillance tapes of Locker 110, but nobody opened the locker at all, and they can’t figure out how that’s possible.
At the Mars office, Keith tells Aaron he knows who has been selling the scandalous pictures. Meanwhile, Veronica drops by the sheriff’s office with a box of donuts (A+) and directions for Lamb on how to catch the fake ID maker, via Locker 110.
Lor: Lamb tosses the box aside like he isn’t supremely interested in that box of donuts. What I’m really saying is that I’m supremely interested in that box of donuts.
Diva: Neptune High. Logan is sitting between his parents, who are berating each other and it becomes clear that Lisa Rinna released the photos. Aaron threatens to cut her off entirely if she tries to divorce him; Logan threatens to kill his dad if he says another word to his mom. Lisa Rinna’s frozen lips declare that they cannot take any more of this. She stomps off, hops into her cherry red convertible, pops a few pills and drives off. Hope those are vitamins, Lisa Rinna!
Veronica stays in the sheriff’s office all day so that Lamb knows it’s not her making the fake IDs. And who walks in but Rick himself, with the $250 in his wallet that proves he’s the perp. Veronica knows this is the same $250 that Lamb put in the locker that morning, because she wrote a little message on it, which Lamb reads aloud: “Veronica Mars is smarter than me.” And I giggle excessively, because Lamb is a sucker and Veronica continues to be the shit.
Sweeney: Also because he’s a bitter little asshole.
Diva: The only thing Veronica can’t figure out is why Rick blamed her in the first place. Rick explains that last year, Keith was hired to track down an embezzler who turned out to be Rick’s father. Even though Rick thinks his dad was justified in what he did because the company stole from him first, Keith’s investigation ruined Rick’s family. Everything was taken from Rick’s parents, who ultimately divorced because of this. And Rick blames Veronica for all of this, because he’s a high school kid incapable of understanding that Veronica is not to blame for her dad doing his fucking job. Actually, that’s basically the theme of this show: people blaming Veronica for shit Keith does. And not even random, evil shit – just SHIT THAT’S HIS JOB. Shit that would only be marginally appropriate to blame HIM for, and that’s positively insane to blame HER for.
Lor: And again we get this weird logic. Instead of blaming the people who catch you doing shitty things, DO NOT DO SHITTY THINGS. #SnarkLadyAdvice
Sweeney: Fuck this kid forever, but it’s also another subtle reminder of the fact that Veronica’s worldview resists complexity. Everything is very black and white for her and she has this brief moment of shock as she tries to process the idea that it could ever be more complicated than that.
I just like pointing it out because I love that flaw of hers. Not in the sense that I love that she is that way because obviously that’s a bad thing, but it’s also fairly consistent and we see time and time again why it’s not something that she’s likely to grow out of any time soon.
Diva: Veronica hands Duncan the photos from the Triton initiation, promising to keep his secret. He plays dumb. It should be noted that Duncan is exceptionally good at playing dumb. (He may not actually be playing.) VVO wondering about Duncan’s other meds and what’s really wrong with him.
Cut to a cherry red convertible, empty of its driver, on the side of a bridge. I don’t need the police scanner voice reading the license plate – Echolls2 – to know that that’s Lisa Rinna’s car, and it seems like she’s jumped off the bridge.
LISA RINNA. NO. YOU ARE THE ONLY ECHOLLS FAMILY MEMBER I DO NOT ACTIVELY HATE. I promise I will never make fun of your frozen lips again, just please, come back to us!
Lor: Hopefully those lips can float?
I LOVE this episode. The scenes between Becky’s office really paced things well, plus the mystery of the week gave Veronica some fun moments.
Sweeney: I’ve never enjoyed inappropriate spying more.
Next time: The Marses try to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a hip-hop mogul in Veronica Mars S01 E13 – Lord of the Bling.
I'm a J.D. by day/blogger by night who directs her snark and judgment primarily towards celebrities and their many red carpet mishaps. Blogging from the style capital of the world (just kidding - I live in DC), I rant and rave over the best and worst in fashion and pop culture.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
