Veronica Mars S02 E18 – Expository dreams

Previously: Weevil, Logan and Veronica team up to detect the shit out of things.
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I Am God

Democracy Diva: In what I thought was a flashback but is definitely a dream, Veronica envisions herself on the bus, with the bus crash victims. She’s crying, and there’s a girl in a tee shirt that says “I <3 DICK,” so, um, yeah. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, and that’s a feeling that will continue throughout this episode. Back in reality, someone wakes Veronica up and sends her to the school counselor. Veronica defends her bad behavior to the guidance counselor (namely, wearing headphones and sleeping in class, ripping down other students’ posters, etc.) and jokes that she’s being haunted by the bus crash victims. Except she’s really not joking – she’s seeing them every time she tries to fall asleep. She goes through all the victims – literally flipping through headshot-esque photos of them, which I do not understand – and asks the counselor about a janitor named Lucky that Meg used to talk about.

Marines: She stole the headshots from another student’s posters, which is part of the questionable behavior the guidance counselor is concerned about. Veronica doesn’t tell her to shove it, because of her stellar academic performance, unfortunately.

Diva: Okay, still weird, but at least I understand why the photos are there.

Dream sequence. Veronica watches fish swim by the windows of the bus. Sorry, Veronica Mars, I’mma let you finish, but The Sopranos had the best swimming-with-the-fishes hallucination of all time. Meg is on the bus too, with a big pregnant belly, wearing a crucifix necklace and a shirt that says “Baby On Board,” with an arrow pointing to her belly. I’m not really feeling this whole “Veronica imagines each bus crash victim wearing T-shirts that very obviously explain something about that character” thing. I think there were better ways to remind us that Meg was pregnant. Like, you know, THE BIG PREGNANT BELLY.

Sweeney: I’m just so happy to have Alona Tal in an episode again that I don’t even care.

Diva: Dream!Meg exposits that Lucky was a wounded veteran who went to church with her parents, and they would have him come by for dinner. When Veronica notes that Meg thought he was creepy, Meg accuses her of reading her emails after she died. “In Veronica land, no pulse, no privacy,” Meg says. Actually, pulse has little to do with it – Veronica violates the privacy of living, breathing humans all the time. Meg shit-talks Lucky, and says he’s just a janitor at his old high school buying beer for kids like Logan. But Veronica already knows all of this, because, you know, snooping through emails of the deceased.

Mari: We didn’t know it, though. Good looking out, Expository Dream Meg!

Diva: The Snow appreciates your helpful info as well, EDM!

Reality. Veronica tells the Guidance Counselor that the dreams have been going on for a few days. Someone named Michelle is trying to raise enough money to buy a yearbook spread for every kid in the crash. It seems pretty fucking disgusting to me that the yearbook wouldn’t be doing a tribute to the dead students for free. You don’t charge fucking booster money to honor a bunch of deceased children, murdered on a school bus, you goddamn monsters. (M: Your rage is my favorite.) (S: Cosign to both the rage itself and the favoriting of said rage.)

Dream. We learn that fundraising Michelle is also the girl who Rhonda, one of the bus crash victims, left a voicemail for just before the crash. Michelle plays the voicemail, where everyone is laughing. Veronica is confused, because she heard Dick’s voice even though he wasn’t on the bus. Back in reality, Guidance Counselor asks if Veronica has told Keith about this.

Dream. Veronica wakes up, and Keith runs into her room. (S: He asks if she was watching House of Wax because “that Hilton girl gives you nightmares,” whiiich is funny on account of the show having 1 Episode in Paris.) (D: A+, show.) I’m really confused now, because we’re still in fuzzy, weird camera mode, but this seems like it’s supposed to be reality. Is this a flashback now? I have no fucking clue. Veronica hands Keith a CD that was playing on the bus – she snuck onto the bus after the crash and stole it. She asks why he never mentioned the drawing, but Keith says he didn’t see one. But Veronica saw a drawing of nine tombstones and the message “I AM GOD” on the back of one of the bus seats.

Sweeney: And Keith reads it out loud. I’m not sure if this star goes to Keith or the bus seat, but either way, here you go:

Diva: She thinks whoever drew that probably had something to do with the crash. Because the drawing had nine tombstones instead of eight, Veronica believes the artist didn’t expect her to get off the bus. She tells Guidance Counselor she needs to find out who drew this.

Reality. Veronica approaches Logan and asks about Lucky, who was shot in the butt, Forrest Gump style, in Iraq. Logan tells her that she has also met Lucky before. Flashback to Veronica and Logan making out passionately in his car. In the present, Veronica interrupts his flashback to be like, um, can you get to the non-sex part of this story, please?

      Flashback. Lucky knocks on the car window, along with Dick. (S: Quick aside – we used to talk about Whedon Hat Tricks in the Buffyverse and I can’t not point out that we’re going to see this actor again as a completely different character, I guess because somebody in casting got lazy.) (D: This show did not run long enough for the casting directors to have to recycle. That is some lazy shit right there.) Dick just wants to get high and play Halo, but Lucky has some mysterious important shit they have to do. They have to make someone pay for something. Logan is all, IDGAF, let me make out with my girlfriend plz kthnxbai. Present!Veronica sarcastically wonders why they broke up, and Logan snarks about how V was just too much man for him.

Physics class. Mr. Wu explains the egg drop project to his class. Logan and Dick yell racist shit because they’re awful, and Wu is all, whatever, some of you (*cough* DICK *cough*) will fail this class if you don’t get this project right, so get your shit together. Wu splits up the Logan-Dick dream team, and Dick gives Logan an “I just don’t know how to quit you” that had me laughing out loud. On a train. IN THE QUIET CAR. Yup, I’m that person.

Dick is paired with Angie, who I thought looked so familiar but I totally couldn’t place her until IMDB informed me that she’s Maureen from Freaks and Geeks! And Logan is paired with Wallace. Angie insists that Dick needs to take this shit seriously because the winner of the egg drop project gets to skip the final exam. I thought this was a dumb plot device on How to Get Away With Murder, and I think it’s dumb now. Has anyone ever heard of this happening in real life?

Marines: I have a vague memory of having a class this way, but I’m thinking it was a first year of college, GE class. The deal was that if we got A’s on all the tests we could skip the final exam, or something similar.

Sweeney: My high school had school policy of absence-and-grade based skipping. If you missed no more than two days a term and had 90% or better in a class, you could skip the final. They stopped this policy after I graduated, but it was pretty fantastic the handful of times I actually met the absence requirement. But no, I’ve never heard of something in a class enabling you to get finals exemption.

Diva: Now that my fellow Snark Ladies mention it, I think my school did some sort of getting-all-As-and-skipping-the-final thing, but the “it’s all based on one project” thing is still sketchy to me.

Lunchtime. Veronica beckons Dick over to her table with the message, “I KNOW WHO YOU DID LAST SUMMER.”

She plays the voicemail he left for Bettina. I can’t hear that name without thinking of the Will and Grace episode where Jack decides to re-name Will’s old friend Claire and squeals, “YAY, BETTINA’S COMING TO TOWN!” Any-random-sidebar, Dick says a lot of horrible things about how he was ashamed of her because she’s ugly or poor or something, but at least she’s not complaining now! Veronica points out that, you know, THAT’S BECAUSE SHE’S DEAD, YOU INSENSITIVE FREAK, and explains that Bettina played his voicemail for the whole bus. She was scorned, but Dick denies being the one who scorned her, since he gave her some tickets that were raffled off somewhere.

Hallways. Veronica sees her father there, but can’t seem to catch him. She introduces herself to Maureen and asks if she has any poems or artwork of Bettina’s. Maureen says there was nothing she’d want to put in the yearbook. Veronica mentions a boyfriend, but Maureen insists Bettina didn’t have a boyfriend. Dick was a straight-up douchebag and treated her like shit. All he wanted was to fuck her in secret, and all she wanted was for him to get her pregnant so she could tell everyone about it. That is about six thousand different kinds of fucked up.

Mari: I’m pretty sure Bettina wasn’t thinking the plan through to the part where the evidence would be a baby. Those things are high maintenance, I hear.

Diva: Dream sequence. Bettina is the one wearing that “I <3 DICK” shirt. (It says “Casablancas” in small letters underneath.) There’s also a gay guy wearing a rhinestone rainbow tee shirt, and again, I’m thinking there were more subtle ways to tell us all these basic facts about these characters rather than spelling it out on their shirts. The characters seem to feel the same way, but that doesn’t make this whole thing any less stupid, as far as I’m concerned.

Sweeney: I don’t know, I kind of like it – it fits with the whole, “This is a dream,” absurdity.

Diva: I had a feeling I would be alone on that one. It was just one dream!thing too much for me, I guess.

Veronica wakes up and hears the radio show (that one of the bus crash victims used to host, if memory serves, but correct me if I’m wrong, non-Snows) saying that this week’s “cock of the walk” is Logan Echolls, for the fortieth week in a row. Cut to Logan and Wallace in the Penthouse. They finish the project in about 2.5 seconds, and room service arrives. Logan wonders why Wallace has never liked him, and Wallace is all, uh, because you’re you? The room service woman walks in, and Logan introduces her to Wallace as his fluffer, because sexism.

Mars house. Veronica asks Keith if she saw him at school, and he jokes that she must have been hallucinating, which is really not so hilarious under the circumstances. She notes that he was wearing his date outfit, and she’s wondering if he rekindled things with the Guidance Counselor who he dated for that hot second. Anyway, Keith hands Veronica an envelope. It’s from Stanford, and it’s a small envelope, so my heart sinks. But Veronica opens it, and SHE GOT IN! She screams and hugs Keith and it is unreasonable how excited I am for her.

    Mari: I feel like we’ve had an, “acceptance letters aren’t that small,” rant on this blog before. BUT YAY VERONICA!

Sweeney: I’ve ranted about this multiple times, I know, BECAUSE IT ALWAYS MAKES ME ANGRY. People try to stick up for shows in the comments, but I still call bullshit. BUT YAY VERONICA!

Diva: +1 to the bullshit and the YAY.

Principal Clemmons’ office. Veronica and Angie are told that there was an error in calculating the class ranks. Angie took a Semester at Sea class that was college-level, and so her GPA for that should have been a 5.0 but it was calculated as a 4.0. This means that Angie is now first in line for the Kane scholarship. (S: WHICH SHE DOESN’T EVEN NEED.) Veronica is devastated, because if she were rich, she could have taken that Semester at Sea AKA Fucking Strangers On A Boat 101 and gotten that 5.0 added to her GPA too. Angie is pretty much a dick about the whole thing.

Guidance Counselor’s office. GC insists that Angie is nice, but V’s like, NOPE, SHE’S A DEMON. Veronica is still having nightmares, and can’t find the mystery bus graffiti artist, but at least her dad is happy. Veronica basically tells Guidance Counselor that she’s happy GC and Keith are fucking again, and GC is all UH, NOPE. Not a thing.

Wallace and Veronica in the halls. She complains about Angie having purchased her grades, which count more than the ones Veronica earned through sleeping in every class hard work. They walk past a board honoring the dead kids, and there are only five pictures on the board. Weird, since eight kids died in the crash. Anyone, Wallace refers to one of them, Rhonda, as “poor white trash,” which I find pretty fucking offensive.

Mari: The race/class stuff is never too far out of the picture on this show and it also cuts both ways. Yick.

Sweeney: Yeeeaaaah, not appropriate regardless, but extra specially not when you’re talking about a dead high schooler.

Diva: Cut to Keith, on a date with someone extremely annoying.

Cut to Mr. Wu’s class. He tells Angie that her mother has sent her something that’s clearly more important than attending class, and she needs to go get it. It’s Logan and Wallace’s turn to do the egg drop. Angie comes in with a big bunch of balloons and announces that she got into Stanford. I would have punched a kid in the face who sauntered into class and announced that they got into a fantastic school, but everyone’s just like, ok, cool.

Mari: Also, does this mean that Mama Angie opened her mail? I would’ve been pissed about that. I LOVE OPENING MY MAIL ESPECIALLY IF IT HAS GOOD NEWS.

Diva: ME TOO. I didn’t even think of that, but I would have been FURIOUS not to open that envelope myself.

Anyway, Dick mentions that Veronica got in as well; Angie is shocked, but Wallace is proud. (S: Sticking-Up-For-People Wallace is my favorite Wallace.) (D: Cosign.) Wallace and Logan pass their egg drop project. Angie asks Mr. Wu for a different partner, since Dick’s version of helping with the project was just sexually harassing her. He insists he helped, so Wu, being the awesome teacher he is, tells Dick to go grab their project from a big pile of projects. Predictably, Dick has no idea which one is theirs, so he fails. Logan calls Angie a bitch, because obviously it’s her fault that Dick is the worst. Angie just saunters off with her Stanford balloons.

Wallace tells Logan that he’s going to keep improving the project so they have a shot at getting out of the final exam. Logan offers to help.

  In the mean time, Veronica and Wallace spy on Rhonda’s sister, who we learn once offered to make out with Wallace for cigarette money. She drives off in a fancy convertible, which is confusing, because shouldn’t she be poor? Veronica calls Keith, who seems to be at some sort of speed-dating event, and asks him to run the financial records of the families of the kids who died in the crash. Because, you know, it obviously takes like four months to think of something like that. (M: Or to remember the names of the kids who are suddenly haunting your sleep!) Keith returns to his speed date, who tells him that he reminds her of George Costanza. Mostly because he’s bald. Poor Keith.

In Logan’s Brotel room, Wallace is hopped up on espresso and ready to make their project fly. He wants to know why Logan is helping him, and Logan insists it’s for the spirit of the competition and not to win back an adorable, petite blonde girl.

      They bro out a little bit, and it’s kind of cute, until Wallace channel-surfs and stops at Tinseltown Diaries: The Aaron Echolls Story. Turn that shit off, man. Logan notes that they rerun it twice a day, since it’s such a popular episode.

Mari: Wallace looks totally caught and embarrassed when Logan walks into the room. I’m not sure what he thought would happen.

Sweeney: I would have been embarrassed that it was on for even a fraction of a second. Stupid, Wallace. Just stupid.

Diva: Agreed.

Mars house. Keith ran the financial records, and none of the bus crash victims’ parents made money on insurance; they only got enough to cover the funerals. But Rhonda’s family won a separate lawsuit for $2 million dollars, from Woody himself. He made a secret payout to Rhonda’s family after her mother found a finger in her food.

After the not-break, Veronica’s got her trusty giant ring o’keys and is breaking into the school’s permanent files, as per usual. She hears Principal Clemmons and Keith walk in, so she hides in the closet. Keith says he’s making slow progress with the case; Principal Clemmons notes that they’ve had a lot of students diagnosed with anxiety lately, all from the same doctor. The faculty is pissed, because they don’t want to offer extra time on exams and get-out-of-homework-free passes to so many students. Keith is hopeful that he’ll have some more information soon. He opens the closet and spots Veronica, who silently passes him his coat. He glares at her, but doesn’t rat her out to Clemmons.

Sweeney: The Golden Compass/Northern Lights begins with a similar scene! I never noticed this connection between two of my favorite characters before!

Diva: Keith’s Speed-Dating Extravaganza. The woman he’s with now talks about how she used to think he was lying about the Lilly Kane murder, but then she realized he was right and voted for him out of pity. She mentions that she works for a doctor, and Keith asks to hear more about it. So Keith is not just torturing himself via speed-dating – I think he’s trying to find someone linked to the school anxiety thing? Maybe? I’m not sure what speed-dating has to do with that, but okay.

Neptune High. Veronica Voice-Over mentions that Peter, the bus crash victim who was gay, might have had a relationship with Mr. Wu. Because it’s been like ten whole minutes since a teacher fucked his student in Traumaland. Anyway, Veronica asks Mr. Wu if he wants to donate to the yearbook tribute, and not-at-all-subtly wonders if Wu misses him. Wu isn’t falling for it, and Veronica admits she thinks Peter was going to drag him out of the closet. Mr. Wu tells her that some men who like to dress and are detail-oriented aren’t gay; they’re just Asian. Wu admits that Peter told him that he had feelings for Wu – they ran into each other at a gay bar. (Wu was there for his cousin’s birthday party, because he’s cool like that.) Wu told Principal Clem about the whole incident, and it’s all on file. Veronica apologizes for being really fucking nosy, but then asks if Peter liked to draw. Wu is all, uh, wouldn’t you know that, since you said you were friends with him? Veronica, be better at pretending to know who the fuck any of the bus crash victims are.

Mari: Or ask them to show you even more revealing t-shirts in your dreams!

Diva: Dream sequence. The bus is now a dance party. A gay club, I guess. Veronica talks to Dream!Peter and sees her name written on her own hand. Peter scoffs that Veronica should be asking why he was even on the bus to a baseball game, because obviously all gays hate sports, or something. (M: Whatever. Wanting to get out of school is universal.)

Veronica voice-overs about the PCH-er who died on the bus – Cervando. He once threatened Cassidy, so she approaches him to ask about Cervando. Flashback to Cervando, telling a story about the $200 jeans he bought with the money he won winning pool against the Fitzpatricks. Dick enters to spray bleach all over Cervando’s jeans. He inexplicably blames Cassidy for this and insists that Cassidy has to buy him new jeans. Present!Cassidy is pissed for always getting blamed for Dick being a dick.

Sweeney: That’s fucking rough. Dick’s not a small dude, but Cassidy is and when other shitty people got mad at him it’s awful but unsurprising that they’d go after the easier target.

Diva: I have a surprising amount of Cassidy feels.

Principal Clemmons’s office. Keith hands him a tape recording of the doctor offering to hook Veronica up with a diagnosis of anxiety for $1,000. Did Keith have sex with that lady in order to obtain this tape? Is he Connor from How to Get Away With Murder?

Egg drop competition. Angie’s winning so far. Wallace drops the Echolls-Fennel egg, which breaks ever-so-slightly. Some blonde girl talks to Angie, who is getting an extension on something because of her “generalized anxiety disorder.” Stupid show is stupid, because I am actually diagnosed with and medicated for anxiety, and that shit does not get you extra time on tests. You’re thinking of ADD. Veronica runs into Logan, looking so tired that he calls her Steve Buscemi, and I giggled. She snarks him about Hannah, and Logan walks away. Wallace tells Veronica to cut Logan some slack, and V is like, um, ew, no.

Clemmons announces that Neptune is no longer honoring exemptions or extensions for “section 1123” students, whatever that means. Veronica sleeps in Wu’s class with her headphones in, until he makes her come to the board and solve a problem.

Dream!Veronica is on the bus, talking to Dream!Cervando in his bleached pants. I’m surprised he’s not wearing a tee shirt that says “I’M THE SMART PCH-ER WITH RUINED $200 JEANS.” He dream-exposits that the bomb on the bus killed the driver, but not the rest of them. The crash killed everyone else… except Cervando. He drowned. Dream!Cervando shows Veronica where a person would have to be in order to blow up the bus to only kill the driver. They’d have to be close enough to the scene of the crime to know when to detonate the bomb. Veronica realizes that Cervando thinks Weevil did it, and she repeats the “I AM GOD” thing as crazy music starts playing.

Veronica is writing “I AM GOD” on the chalkboard, when suddenly she wakes up from her confusing, inceptive dream-within-a-dream. She’s still listening to the Cap’n Crunk and Imitation Crab radio show. She looks up a song called “I Am God,” and its album cover is the image drawn on the bus. Guidance Counselor asks if Veronica is done being haunted yet. I’m thinking no, since the episode’s not over.

Mars house. Veronica is half-asleep on the couch. Keith tells her that they were following the money, but the money wasn’t on the bus. The rich kids were behind it, in the limo. Veronica realizes that it’s possible that whoever detonated the bus bomb thought the rich kids would be on it. Keith exposits that Big Dick Casablancas took out an insurance policy on his sons three days after marrying Kendall. Little Dick and Cassidy are worth more dead than alive.

Dream!Veronica on the bus. One of the dead kids tells her it must have been nice, thinking the crash wasn’t her fault, but she was wrong. This was because of Veronica. He hands her a ringing phone as the bus flies through the sky. Veronica sees explosives in the seat next to her. Rhonda calls and asks where she is, and the phone rings and rings, and the episode ends.

True story: I really did not understand this episode. I’m hoping it will make more sense as we get closer to the finale, but mostly, I have never felt more like a Snow.

Mari: It relies on the dreams a lot and dreams are tricky for a show to do. In theory, they worked well as part of Veronica trying to put the pieces all together. It wasn’t didn’t seem like Veronica was getting clues from dead people, but rather that her brain was processing information it already had in this weird dream space. It’s like all the clues were being laid out for her, and she was obsessing over them even in her sleep. Hence, the t-shirts. I think the problem for me was that sometimes the dreams fell flat and didn’t always play out like particularly compelling TV.

This episode kind of dropped anxiety haphazardly in there, but if there is anyone suffering anxiety here, it’s V. Perhaps this season hasn’t been as good about showing us just what she’s going through as season 1 was. She’s #1 (or 2) in her class, she still works for Keith and another job, she’s worried about college and how to pay for it and this case is clearly heavy on her mind. She plays it cool, but Veronica looks like she’s losing it.

I liked the Logan and Wallace bits and I loved that they silently went to bat for Veronica, even if they failed in the end.

We haven’t really discussed the main case in these recaps, probably because it’s so easy to spoil it if you are in the know, but I kind of like how they keep throwing all these motives and suspects out. Having a group of people die means there is this entire realm of possibilities. It’s a hard solve and we see that it’s wearing on our heroine. 

Maybe not the best episode we’ve see so far, but I still am very excited to get to the end!

Diva: I did feel like Veronica was getting clues from dreams, but I feel like I don’t mind the T-shirts as much with that perspective on it. Still a bit on the nose, but I get it now. And the point about Veronica is essential. Girlfriend is close to the edge and we needed this episode to really see that. And the Logan-Wallace relationship was probably my favorite part of the episode. As confused as I am, I am also utterly psyched to be approaching the finale.

 

Next time on Veronica Mars: Veronica investigates a hit and run on that kills a classmate’s dog in S02 E19 – Nevermind the Buttocks.