Previously: A former stunt supervisor of Aaron Echolls washed up dead on the beach with Veronica’s name on his hand, meaning its likely that the bus crash was intended for her.
—
Green-Eyed Monster
Sweeney: Veronica, looking a lot more shaken than normal, is at Mars Investigations (doubling as Mars for Sheriff HQ!) calling the hospital to find out Meg’s visiting hours. As she hangs up, an Elle Woods wannabe (D: It’s funny because it’s literally Laura Bell Bundy from the Legally Blonde musical) (S: AMAZING.) struts into the office in desperate need of a detective to investigate her boyfriend and possible fiance because she found a ring while doing her own snooping. Keith isn’t there, but Veronica goes ahead and sells her on hardcore investigative packages. (L: Future Business Leader of America shots!) Keith arrives as she’s leaving and is pleasant, but reminds Veronica that she’s no longer his employee. She desperately wants this case, since Not Elle Woods basically hands her a blank check and Stanford is expensive. He makes her call Not Elle Woods (Ms. Jumpy, he calls her, because he’s good at this!) back to cancel and she makes a big show of doing that, but doesn’t because waitresses don’t make two grand in a week. Neither does blogging for free. I guess that’s implied. Not the point.
Veronica meets with Ms. Jumpy, insisting that a female detective is better for a case like this and also she’s tooootally not as young as she looks. Ms. Jumpy is loaded and has a history of falling for broke guys who use her for her money, so she’s currently pretending to be middle class (LOLZ) to avoid that. Her potential fiance is supposedly a trust fund kid, so it shouldn’t matter, but he’s been acting very suspicious lately and it’s making her anxious.
Lorraine: Ms. Jumpy has zero logic right out of the gate. He’s rich. You are also rich but hiding that fact even though he’s rich? Taking this woman’s money might be too easy.
Sweeney: It makes zero sense. The trust fund guy wouldn’t be after you for your money. This is illogical.
Happy times in the Fennell house as Wallace makes jokes about helping hot girls with trig. As Alicia watches him drive off to school she spots Stalker Cop from the previous episode driving by the house in a white SUV. This news is clearly of the bad.
COME ON NOW SUGAR!
On Ms. Jumpy’s case, Veronica’s watching Trust Fund Fiance do laps and calls to tell Ms. Jumpy that she’s got nothing to worry about. Ms. Jumpy still isn’t convinced – she spotted the same number a millionty times on his caller ID. She’s already forwarded it to Veronica to check.
Democracy Diva: Is it just me, or do Veronica’s cameras get larger, creepier, and more conspicuous with every passing episode?
Sweeney: It would not surprise me that Veronica’s primary indulgence would be in bigger, badder lenses. Of course.
Mars Investigations. Alicia brings Keith a sandwich and as soon as he takes a bite she’s all, “BTW, can I borrow a spare gun?” (L: Nice touch with the sandwich, but girl, at least wait until he chews a bit.) Keith makes her back up a little and she confesses that she knew the guy who called out to her – he was an ex from before she was married and he was batshit crazy. Keith won’t put a gun she doesn’t know how to use in a house with a 7-year-old (one registered to him, no less…) but offers to put himself there instead. They decide not to tell the kids anything is amiss.
The next morning, Wallace can tell something’s off as she anxiously gives them breakfast. Before she has to explain herself, Keith arrives with a bag of donuts and that’s enough to distract Wallace because donuts are delicious.
Lor: And ex-sheriffs maybe-one-day-again-sheriffs definitely know where to find the best donuts, duh!
Diva: +1 to this entire conversation. Donuts are awesome; they’re like sweet bagels, and we all know bagels are amazing.
Sweeney: At school, he and Veronica laugh at Keith’s not-so-stealth morning fake-out when he spends the night. Veronica’s smile drops when Jackie comes up and jokes about how all the ladies need to get back because Wallace is all hers. Blech. They walk off, though, and V says nothing.
Back at the Fennell house, Keith takes pictures of Stalker Cop as he tries to break in. Stalker Cop knows who Keith is, already, and expected him to be a problem at some point. Keith knows all about Stalker Cop’s history of drug possession and arrest, and advises him to be on the next flight to Chicago. Unfortunately, Stalker Cop refuses to leave until he’s retrieved something that Alicia took from him.
VVO tells us that her avoidance has gone on long enough and it’s time to go see Meg. She arrives and is surprised to find Duncan. Before they can even say anything to each other, Meg’s parents burst through the door, yelling at Duncan for coming every single day. They go off on Veronica, blaming two teenagers for Meg being on the bus, because they’re terrible people. Meg’s sister Lizzie – now sporting a Catholic schoolgirl uniform – tries to calm them down, but they shut her up.
Diva: Yeah, I wanted to defend them because parents of a comatose teenager are allowed to be unreasonable, but these two are total buttheads.
Sweeney: The rudeness to their non-comatose daughter made them seem extra butthead-like.
Veronica and Duncan are short with each other at first. He tries to smooth things over by inviting her to go get something to eat, but she brushes him off because she has work to do.
Said work isn’t the tennis match Ms. Jumpy expected, but him going to a random house. A woman answers the door and he hugs her. Veronica calls Ms. Jumpy and asks if she knows this address, because it is the address that matches the phone number. Veronica sends Ms. Jumpy the pictures of Trust Fund Fiance hugging the random lady, and then tries to calm Ms. Jumpy down, promising to go get more information. Why the hell wouldn’t she do that first? This is just sloppy, V.
After a Not Break, Veronica is photographing through the window and realizes that it’s not an affair but a Hebrew lesson. (D: And the Resident Jewish Snark Lady goes SQUEE at this plot twist.) As she’s realizing this, Ms. Jumpy comes peeling around the corner in her little sports car. She gets out in curlers with bleach on her face and Veronica straight up TACKLES HER to stop her from barging in there. She explains that Trust Fund Fiance is with a rabbi and Ms. Jumpy is confused because he’s not Jewish she is. Veronica stares at her and waits for her to catch up.
Lor: So why didn’t Veronica just investigate and THEN report? BECAUSE THAT AMAZING TACKLE. Someone in the writer’s room wanted that tackle to happen.
Diva: Also, he’s converting for Ms. Jumpy! I’m kvelling! (Kvell = Yiddish for SQUEE.)
Sweeney: A necessary entry for any Traumaland dictionary.
That night, Veronica is sitting up worrying about Duncan’s daily trips to the hospital. Ms. Jumpy interrupts this anxious reverie, concerned that Trust Fund Fiance is still in love with an ex. Veronica wonders about the fact that she’s sharing paranoia with Ms. Jumpy, who eagerly begs to be ripped off for an upgrade, which includes stuff like a “temptation scenario” which sounds far more Vinnie Van Lowe than Mars Investigations. In spite of the additional thousand dollars now on the table, Veronica is more cautionary than salesy now.
Lor: …which is exactly what a “temptation scenario” sounds like to me. But okay, V. At least the warning was on the package.
Sweeney: Sheriff’s Office. Keith tells Lamb he’s got an actual bad guy for him to catch, handing over Shady Cop’s picture and criminal record. They exchange snarky Imma-take-your-job banter.
At school, Weevil comes up to her to ask her about her recent hangout with Sheriff Lamb. While they snark, she realizes that the blinging earring he showed her belonged to Weevil. He shoos his boys off because he obviously didn’t calm to chat her up while a possible suspect unless he had an explanation for that. He confesses that he’d heard that some guy named Curly was hired by the other local criminal element – The Fighting Fitzpatricks – to make the bus crash happen to get back at Cervando, the Honor Roll Biker. V thinks that Keith, “put like 5 of the Fitzpaticks in Chino,” which means (1) she’s still on the table as a possible target -and- (2) CROSSOVER MAGIC SHOTS, ANYONE? Regardless, there’s more: basically Cervando cheated the Fitzpatricks out of three grand. Still, Weevil heard this by way of an anonymous tip and he’s dubious of it because the Fitzpatricks would have handled something like this with a baseball bat in an alley. Veronica puts the anonymous tipper’s number in her own phone and walks off without confirming/denying Weevil’s question about whether he can expect Lamb to bring him in.
Diva: This is such a ridiculous amount of exposition that even Veronica goes, “That’s a lot of info for an anonymous call.” Amen, girl. Amen.
Sweeney: That night, Weevil and Jackie are making out when Veronica interrupts because she wants him to come play the A/V wizard for her temptation scenario. He declines, until she offers him $200, because money. Cut to a second later when Jackie’s pissed and being a bitch. “You didn’t ask how high – didn’t goldilocks ask you to jump?” Girl, this isn’t even some favor! She’s paying him $200! It’s a fucking job at this point. She takes uber issue when Wallace tells her that Veronica isn’t somebody she wants to piss off. “Neither am I.”
Lor: Yeah, yeah. We’ve seen how evil you can get about machiatos.
Sweeney: Veronica shows up in attire that’s no so much more revealing as her usual gear as just weirdly country. They joke about her get-up and Wallace says he needs to get paid ASAP to help smooth things over with Jackie. Veronica chooses this moment to tell him about Jackie and the other dude. Wallace isn’t really concerned – “when you assume you really just make an ass out of you.”
With that, Veronica quickly lets the air out of her tires. She gets her shirt all dirty and goes to the door to ask Trust Fund Fiance to help her. She plays dumb and flirts while he tries to help her. (D: Also, he’s Scottish. A Jew with a Scottish accent? DO NOT LET THIS ONE GET AWAY, MS. JUMPY!) Wallace films and laughs. This guy says they’ll be out there all day with him trying to change her tire (WUT?) (L: Is that code for, “I don’t know how to do this crap either?”) (S: No, it’s code for, “IT TAKES 20 MINUTES.” Do I need to take the team to Ladies Need To Learn To Change Their Damn Tires School?) so he offers to let her come inside so he can call a tow truck.
Inside, Veronica lies that she needs to email a midterm so that she can get on his computer. Outside, Wallace is finding that the signal is breaking up and he can’t really hear her. There’s not much to hear, because he’s pretty solidly rejecting Veronica and inching away from her creepy advances. She notices that he’s got some movie posters and quick banter later, he reveals that he’s house sitting for Nicolas Cage. As one does. Wallace rings the doorbell and Veronica appears behind Trust Fund Fiance miming for him to stall. He tries, but he’s not nearly as good at it as she is. She runs to the door with her stuff as Wallace is trying to sell the guy an opened box of candy.
Later, she and Duncan are woken up at 2am by pounding on the door. It’s not Keith, as she feared, but Lizzie, Meg’s sister. Veronica’s pissed that he asks her to stay in the bedroom. Lizzie’s there because Meg kept a secret laptop at school and her parents have now been informed of this. Lizzie got her hands on it first, hoping that Duncan – “son of a computer visionary” – can get Meg’s personal shit off by morning. Duncan’s dumbfounded, “Uh, I can burn a CD” is wonderful. Dumbfounded is one of the few notes Teddy Dunn can hit.
Lor: I’m not sure that’s a compliment.
Sweeney: A very underhanded one, at best.
Lizzie is terrified that her parents will pull the plug on Meg if they learn all her secrets (which is fucking insane) (D: LITERALLY THE MOST FUCKED UP THING IN THE WORLD AND NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT) and then decides she’s really got to pee and beelines for the bedroom before Duncan can stop her. Sure enough, she gives Veronica murderglare. It’s not V’s fault, but I get it. Meg’s her big sister. Meg’s in a coma and when she wound up that way, she was way not over Duncan, meaning it’s sort of Lizzie’s job to hate Veronica. Veronica seems to get it too, and placates Lizzie, adding that if she’ll let her, she knows someone who can help. Cut to a bit later when Mac (D: YAY!) is sitting at Meg’s computer, congratulating herself on still being able to sneak out at 3am. She copies all of Meg’s files onto a flash drive, which goes to Duncan, I guess because Lizzie doesn’t think she can hide it?
The next morning, Tegan & Sara’s “So Jealous” plays (oh, 2005!) as Veronica Voice Overs about how Duncan leaving the flash drive out in the open is akin to leaving heroin out around junkies. She gets out her laptop and starts to copy it. Her phone rings and it’s a paranoid Ms. Jumpy, wanting to know how the entrapment thing went. As she’s explaining that Trust Fund Fiance was a gentleman she realizes that she, too, is being paranoid. “There I am in the morning. I don’t like what I see,” they sing, and Veronica sighs and puts the flash drive back.
The next morning, Keith wakes up to find a boot on his car. He calls Lamb to bitch about this and Lamb says he’s just returning a favor. Convict Carl Morgan is also Nathan Woods, highly decorated Chicago detective. Apparently, Keith missed that in his own background check.
Lor: Is sloppy detective work contagious? WTF, Marses?
Sweeney: There’s something going around the office. Campaign signs can be filled with random germs, so…
Mars Investigations. Ms. Jumpy comes in, fearing that the news must be awful if it couldn’t be given over the phone. Not so much – Trust Fund Fiance is pretty damn great.Veronica does have two fairly innocuous secrets to reveal: (1) That his house and car aren’t really his but Nicolas Cage’s – the photo Ms. Jumpy’s so afraid of is Lisa Marie Presley. (Thanks to my Questionable Google Search of the Day, I now know that they divorced in 2004.) -and- (2) That he did look into her background and knows about her money. Ms. Jumpy is horrified and incredulous that he went digging for information on her and lied about his trust fund because she’s a terrible person.
Diva: SHUT UP, MS. JUMPY. Just marry the Jewish-Scottish friend of Nick Cage and go live the best fucking life in the universe and stop ruining everything.
Sweeney: Keith walks in and is pissed that she took the case. She apologizes and asks if she’s sorry that she took the case or that she got caught. He continues to go off, saying she’s not quite as clever as she thinks she is – he also knows that she stayed out all night at Duncan’s. (L: HOW EVEN?) (D: It’s the Magic Power of the Non-Negligent Parenting Eyebrows.)
Veronica sits down at her desk, disgruntled, but notices something in the search history and decides to call Ms. Jumpy. Ms. Jumpy is sobbing because she just dumped Trust Fund Fiance via voice mail, like a terrible person. Veronica says that the genealogy search is a mere five days old – she found the ring two weeks ago. Veronica thinks he was just looking for her father. Ms. Jumpy doesn’t care because he told a lie of omission about the house, which means he probably also lied about the trust fund, which is totally different than her lying because she lied about being poor. His lying is “way less cool.”
Fennell House. Keith comes in and finds that nobody is home. He takes that as an invitation to rifle through Alicia’s files, because privacy invasion is a family trait.
Lor: I thought a lot about privacy invasion just because of this little moment. It’s so easy for the Marses to just dive in and take the information that people do not want to volunteer. Veronica compared it to an addiction and I don’t think that’s that far off the mark. It’s certainly a habit for these two, and one they exercise for what they feel are the best reasons.
Diva: A lot of Veronica’s privacy invasions were excused by her searching for her best friend’s murderer. I get that. But they’ve solved that case, and they still have no problem violating the privacy of basically everyone else in their lives. I love the Marses, but it’s definitely an addiction for them.
Sweeney: One that they really can’t seem to shake, even when they get called out for being so seriously in the wrong.
Later that night, Veronica has a big epiphany when she sees the scarf she inadvertently acquired from Trust Fund Fiance during the temptation scenario. She recognizes a logo as a scotch logo because contrivance and her alcoholic mother. We cut to Ms. Jumpy getting a box from Veronica as VVO explains that he told the truth about everything – he just didn’t like to flaunt his wealth or celebrity friends. SUCKS TO BE YOU, MS. JUMPY.
Lor: MARRIED INTO AN ALCOHOL EMPIRE. IT COULD’VE BEEN YOU.
Diva: I repeat: JEWISH + SCOTTISH. Your grandparents will approve, but his accent is super sexy and he looks like a fucking Viking. Everybody wins. AND YOU RUINED IT.
Sweeney: Mars Investigations. Keith is answering his own phones and doing a terrible job of both that and filing his own paperwork, as we learn when he has an over-the-phone mix-up with a client.
Back at home, he goes into V’s room to admit that he could actually use her help at the office. Veronica’s so excited she doesn’t really care that he’ll never tell her why he changed his mind. He does want her to keep her food service job too, probably because it’ll be helpful for the plot. (L: Suspects have to eat too!)
Once he leaves, she moves back to her gruesome case of the season: she searches the number and ties it back to none other than Aaron Echolls. At school, she confronts Logan about the two minute call to Weevil about Curly Moran. Logan has no idea what she’s talking about.
Diva: I’m having an official “so that’s when that gif I’ve seen a thousand times while searching for other gifs finally happens” moment. The internet loves Logan’s evil moustache gestures.
Sweeney: The internet mostly just loves Logan and Logan snark in particular, but yeah, that too! More importantly: it’s a “BROUGHT TO YOU BY TUMBLR” moment! Woo! Tags!
He does, however, know what he was doing that day – he threw a “Life’s Short” party in “honor” of his dead classmates, because he’s returned to total douchecanoe mode. In addition to all the 09ers, the party was crashed by PCHers and the Sheriff’s Department, making all of Neptune suspects for placing the call. Veronica tries to press him further, noting that this number is one of five registered to his house and she doesn’t recognize it. He ignores her and walks away.
Mars Investigations. Keith is making some calls while looking at birth certificates. He’s doing some digging on Alicia. Someone on the other line says something he’s not very excited to hear.
At her house, Wallace is fixing a car when Stalker Cop appears, holding up a photo of him and Alicia. Wallace asks if he’s supposed to know him. “You sure are, Wallace. I’m your father.” DUN DUN DUN.
Next time: As Wallace copes with this revelation, Veronica and Jackie hash out their differences on Veronica Mars S02 E05 – Blast From the Past.
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.
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.
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.
