Veronica Mars S02 E09 – Frozen rats and prom babies

Previously: We added the Irish mafia to Neptune’s increasingly complex race war and Logan almost got shot A LOT. 

My Mother, The Fiend

Democracy Diva: We begin with Health Teacher Ms. Hauser introducing Phase 2 of Neptune High Sex Ed: Fancy fake babies that know when you’re being a negligent parent! They must just cry nonstop in Traumaland.

 

Also, in my high school, we just had eggs, not babies with memory chips. We named ours Mr. Feeny, and I dropped him on the floor when I got jostled in our stupid over-crowded hallways. Anyway, before Veronica and Duncan can get their fake baby on, she gets called down to the vice principal’s office.

Lorraine: We got eggs except for like four babies which two random couples would be stuck with. I left my egg baby in a classroom the opening weekend of our performing arts group’s show and when I came back on Monday, someone had cracked it and stolen the Beenie Baby from it’s basket. I was most upset about the Beenie Baby.

Sweeney: You’re very lucky your eggs didn’t grow tentacles, try to take over your school, and trap you in a terrible, terrible episode.

Diva: WORST EVER. Anyway, VP Clemmons asks Veronica to hand over her keys. All of them. Including the one that unlocks his own office door. He wants to know what the hell else besides (falsified) drug test results she stole, and Veronica’s like, excuse me, but I saved yo ass. Clemmons is all:

Clemmons says he’s suspending her for stealing. Veronica points out that this makes her ineligible for the Kane Scholarship For Children We Hate But Will Send To College Anyway. Clem is aware, and so he might let her off with detention IF… something. I don’t know. The scene ends. It’s weird.

Elsewhere at Neptune High, Cassidy asks Mac for some help setting up a website – it’s for his company, Phoenix Land Trust. Mac clarifies that he’s paying her to do his homework for him (assuming it’s a school project) and Cassidy’s all, “uh, yeah, sure,” in a way that means “nope, not even a little bit.”

Some exposition fairy tells us that Hamlet is being produced at the school, and directed by actress/alumna Trina Echolls. Oh! That’s Logan’s sister! WILLOW!!!! It took me a second to figure that out because I have literally never called her Trina, ever. Oops.

Sweeney: Refusing to call characters by their real names is not only more fun/convenient, but it also adds a little more magic to moments like this when you get to be all, “OMG, YOU!”

Diva: Clemmons makes Veronica alphabetically sort every student file in the history of Neptune High. Sure, give the girl who you know is a PI a room full of files to poke around in, that sounds like a totally brilliant idea! Veronica of course finds her mom’s permanent record, which says Lianne was suspended for spreading false and malicious rumors about another student. (If that’s a punishable offense, I’m pretty sure every person in my high school should have been suspended.) The juicy details are redacted, but the name of the girl Lianne got suspended with sounds pretty familiar – like it could be Ms. Hauser. Clemmons catches Veronica reading the file and is all, “stop snooping even though I put you in this prime snooping situation to punish you for snooping!”

Lor: “Also, I’m going to leave now, so feel free to just, you know, continue snooping.”

Diva: Weevil is working at the PCH-er garage when the power goes out. He goes to turn it back on, and gets punched IN THE FACE by Logan, King of the Surprise!Punch. (S: Reclaiming his recently co-opted move!) Logan and his buddies beat the shit out of Weevil.

Veronica is talking to her fake baby about her family’s history with alcoholism, and it’s kind of upsetting. She stops Ms. Hauser, the health teacher, and wants to know why she and Lianne got suspended together in high school. Hauser doesn’t want Veronica prying into this – a lot of people got hurt because Lianne couldn’t shut up, and Hauser is ashamed she ever even heard the story, let alone repeated it. So lay off.

Back at Neptune High, Weevil is bruised, beaten, and taped to the flagpole naked. Veronica sees him and tells her fake baby that what goes around comes around.

Sweeney: The show has been really big on Weevil’s Gang Member With A Heart of Gold! line, to the point that they’ve pretty well glossed over the first thing he ever did on this show. I love Weevil dearly, but the reminder was worthwhile.

Lor: But also, my darling Veronica, you had someone taped up there too. You should hope that things coming around take good intentions into account.

Diva: C’MON NOW SUGAR! Wait, seriously? That pre-credits teaser was ELEVEN HOURS LONG.

Veronica asks Clemmons why Lianne got suspended. He pretends for like one second that he’s not going to answer her, and then of course tells her literally every detail she could want to know. He names some people who were students and faculty at that time.

V talks to a lunch lady named Mary Moony, who Clemmons said was a classmate of Lianne’s. She’s deaf, so Veronica asks via her very limited sign language skills if she knew Lianne. Mary’s sign language is too fast for Veronica to really understand, but she manages to discern “Lianne was a fiend.“

Lor: Veronica’s Voice Over gets the official, “my mother, the fiend,” star!

Diva: Next up is Principal Morehead, who was Vice Principal when Lianne was a student. Morehead saw a lot of troublemaker Lianne; he doesn’t remember why that particular suspension happened, and he wouldn’t tell Veronica if he did. Because Lianne was vicious. Ouch. Sorry, Veronica.

WILLOW IS HERE! She gives Principal Morehead and Veronica double-cheek-kisses because she’s fancy. She’s obscenely perky and friendly, and asks how V is doing, aside from “that whole mess with Dad and all.” Lol, like, remember when my dad almost murdered you because you found out he actually murdered my brother’s girlfriend after videotaping himself having sex with her? NBD! Willow announces that Evan Rachel Wood will be playing the role of Veronica in the Aaron Echolls story that she’s directing! Except she won’t be named Veronica, because Keith won’t sign the release forms. (You know, because Keith Mars is the best.) Willow insists that Veronica audition for the school’s production Hamlet. In a ridiculous Shakespearean voice, Willow says, “The play is my master, and I am its whore!”

Speaking of, cut to Cordelia (Kendall Casablancas). You guys, I think my head might explode with Willow and Cordy in the same episode. Anyway, she stops at Duncan’s hotel room to try and fuck some money out of whomever happens to be there. She completely freaks when his fake baby starts crying, because she thinks it’s creepy. Lol, yeah. THAT’s what creepy about this. Not the 25-year-old woman sleeping with all of her stepson’s teenaged friends.

Lor: I was going to say it’d be awesome if Kendall had some residual Cordelia-baby-creeps, on account of carrying a demon child and all, but since she doesn’t have residual sleeping with near-minors creeps, it is unlikely.

Diva: I don’t know, but “residual creeps” is a phrase we definitely need to keep using.

Anyway, Cordy tries to sell him Big Dick’s Maserati for half its worth. She even offers to teach him how to drive stick shift, but in the dirty way. Duncan pushes Cordy off of him as she tries to convince him that she IS sex ed. RAGEW. (S: COSIGN.) Luckily, Willow and Logan arrive, and she laughs when she sees Cordy kiss her little brother. Willow and Cordy have a raging bitch-off, and it’s everything you could ever hope for in a Buffy reunion.

With a mic drop, Willow struts out the door.

Sweeney: A glorious, glorious mic drop. THANK YOU FOR SAYING ALL THE THINGS THAT NEEDED SAYING, WILLOW.

Lor: TACT IS NOT SAYING TRUE THINGS. Cordy just got hit with her own Cordy-ism.

Diva: Her BEST Cordy-ism.

Veronica Voice Over (VVO) about the messages in Lianne’s yearbook. Veronica tracks down Patty Wilson, who wrote “thanks for being a total gossipy bitch with me LYLAS” to Lianne. Patty explains that she was the Gretchen Weiners to Lianne’s Regina George. And Jake Kane was Lianne’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, until Jake’s ex got pregnant. And that ex was Celeste Kane. Patty says Lianne knew that Celeste was full of it. VVO muses over who made up this lie – Celeste, to get back at Lianne, or Lianne, to get back at Celeste.

Mars House. Veronica tells Keith about Lianne’s suspension and asks him to access the county birth records from 25 years ago. God, I hope Celeste’s baby isn’t Cordelia. (S: LOL OMG I WISH.) Cut to Hamlet rehearsal, where fake babies cry too much. Willow slips on a prop skull (dammit, Yorick!), hits her head, and gets knocked out.

Cordy “Will Molest Teenagers For Cash” Casablancas meets Cassidy for coffee. He shows her an empty box of something worth $15,000 that she sold for $5K, so he’s onto her scheme and tells her make like Uncle Joey and cut it out.

Cordy pointedly mentions that she doesn’t have a trust fund to take care of her, which means she HAS TO be the Kanes’ real daughter, right? I think this is how television works. But Cassidy has a better solution for her money problems. He’s using his trust fund to start a real estate business (the one Mac is working on the website for) and needs an adult as a partner, since he can’t legally sign a contract at age sixteen. He needs Cordy to be the face of the company. She’s reluctant, but he convinces her to do it, and it’s actually pretty damn impressive. She tells him that Big Dick would be proud. Cassidy’s all, “don’t patronize me.” Cordelia calls him “sir” and then is immediately all:

Mars House. Keith tells Veronica that no baby was born in 1980 with Celeste or Jake’s last names. Veronica thinks Celeste must have lied about getting pregnant, but Keith points out that she could have had an abortion. He asks why V is picking at this scab; Veronica wants proof her mom wasn’t the kind of girl who currently makes V’s life, and the lives of everyone else, a living hell. Keith says, yeah, but you also want to prove Celeste was a bitch. He reminds Veronica that if all that shit didn’t go down the way it did, their weird little family wouldn’t exist, and that would be bad. Anyway, an unnamed baby was found in the bathroom during the Neptune High prom on May 8th, 1980 and taken to Balboa County Hospital. Veronica’s convinced the baby was Celeste’s.

Duncan’s Hotel Room. Veronica drops off the fake baby and Duncan tries to rush her out, since he has dinner plans. He mentions that Celeste was always afraid Lilly was going to get pregnant, and Veronica scoffs about how ironic that is, coming from Celeste. She gives a big, bitchy speech about how fabulous and perfect Celeste is, every word dripping with sarcasm. Of course, Celeste walks in having heard the entire thing, the way supervillains always do.

Sweeney: Showing up to make people uncomfortable when they gossip about you is a pretty neat power as non-super super powers go.

Diva: After the not-break, Veronica jokes that she’s here as Duncan’s secret girlfriend and they have a love child – the fake baby. Astrid the maid is also there, feeling awkward. Veronica says that if it doesn’t work out with Duncan, she can just dump the fake baby in the bathroom during prom – isn’t that what happened at Celeste’s prom? Celeste asks Duncan whether Veronica ever makes sense; Veronica asks Duncan if his mother ever thaws out. He makes a face like “oh God, please leave me out of this,” or he would, if he could act. Celeste tells Veronica that when she sees her, she can only think of her “drunk slut of a mother.” OVER THE LINE, CELESTE. Duncan agrees, and Veronica runs into the bedroom to hide with Astrid. Astrid happily answers a series of weird questions from V – she’s only in this job because Celeste is paying for grad school, and she’s 25, and her blonde hair is fake. Celeste and Astrid leave, and the VVO wonders if Celeste is really hiring her birth daughter as a maid and paying her tuition.

Lor: I love watching Veronica take these leaps of logic in a single bound.

Diva: Yeah, that seemed like a bit of a reach. “She’s 25 and has brown hair! THUS SHE IS CELESTE’S DAUGHTER.” Calm down, V.

Neptune High. Logan leaves class to hit up the boys’ bathroom. Weevil storms in and bars the door and threatens to kill Logan for taping him to the flagpole. Logan reminds Weevil of everything that was done to him – the shotgun through his car window (which Weevil denies being a part of), the fire in his house, the Russian roulette the PCH-ers played with him in the last episode. Weevil says he did that because he thought Logan killed Felix, and Logan’s like, well, I didn’t. Weevil knows that, so now they have to team up to find out who actually killed him. But of course, Weevil’s reputation can’t handle leaving this bathroom with Logan having all his bones intact, so they beat the shit out of each other for an excessively long time. Finally, Clemmons and a security guard rush in and break up the fight. One of the other PCH-ers says if it were him, he’d have killed Logan. Thanks for your contribution, buddy.

Mac shows Cassidy her awesome website options, and they flirt and choose the better layout and all of that makes me happy. He tells her to change the CEO name to Kendall Casablancas. She tells him to give her a tip once he goes public; he points out that that’s illegal.

Mars Office. Veronica is wearing glasses and her hair is in a bun, so everyone assumes she’s like 30 years old. She’s talking to a foster parent who once fostered the Prom Baby for a few weeks. Veronica explains that the child’s birth parents want to take care of her financially, but Foster Mom says that’s probably not necessary. She ended up in a really wealthy home – except this year, her adopted mother committed suicide and her adopted father went to jail. Shit, you guys. That’s not Cordelia – THAT’S WILLOW.

Sweeney: But hey, you did correctly guess that prom baby was a Sunnydale alum!

Lor: HALF POINTS!

Diva: I’ll take it!

Veronica visits Willow in the hospital, post-Yorick-induced-unconsciousness. She sets up a video camera so she can practice a scene with Willow for the Hamlet audition. Willow reads the lines about how she was abandoned as a newborn, and then adopted, but she’s got a rare disease and will die if her blood relatives don’t come forward and donate their bone marrow. Once the scene ends, Willow tells Veronica she actually was adopted, and V plays dumb. Before she can even leave the hospital, though, Veronica realizes just how shitty a thing she’d be doing by releasing this tape – making a public spectacle out of not just Celeste, but Willow. She goes back to Willow’s room and tells her the whole story. Willow at first thinks she’s being punked, but then is kind of cool about the whole thing, especially since this means her birth mom is totally rich. Willow seems weirdly proud of Veronica’s evil plan to release this tape to the tabloids, and says, let’s do it!

Neptune High for Dangerous Hamlet Productions. Veronica shows Willow the covers of the tabloids, all about her. Suddenly, Mary Moony runs in and is signing frantically. Willow remembers that Mary (whom Willow decided was named Doris) was always nice to her in high school. Mary signs that she wants to help – not with the play, but with Willow. She wants to give Willow her bone marrow – she’s Willow’s real mom. She cries and hugs Willow, and Willow hugs her back, and I’m having a whole lot of fucking feels.

Veronica and Mary sit down to talk (via a computer, so Veronica can get every word). Mary says Lianne was her friend – not “fiend.” She was the sweetest, and the coolest, and she learned sign language and sat with me during lunch, Mary reminisces. That’s sweet, and Veronica deserves to be able to think of her mom as a nice person, but she’s also a drunk absentee-at-best parent who stole $50 grand from you. So maybe it’s okay to think of her as not the best person.

Sweeney: It’s interesting, considering that Veronica is usually so unforgiving and hardline about the GOOD/BAD dichotomy of people. Her mother (rightfully so) is someone she’s not shy about having written off. And yet, it’s both heartbreaking and telling that for whatever she’d have everyone believe about her feelings for her mother, she’s still desperate to believe there’s some good there. More feels.

Diva: In the parking lot, Willow asks Veronica why she was so interested in this story. V exposits that Mary confessed to Lianne that she was sleeping with a faculty member. Lianne asked Debra Hauser (now health teacher) for advice; Debra spread the story around and got them called into the principal’s office. Lianne recanted the story, because Mary begged her not to tell. She was pregnant and terrified. So she gave birth to Willow and left her… on her father’s doorstep. Not at the prom. Willow’s father was the one who left the baby in the bathroom during the prom – he figured it would be the perfect solution, since someone would assume the baby belonged to a student. And who is that complete fucking monster now? Why, none other than PRINCIPAL MOREHEAD. In a moment of pure awesomeness, Willow marches into Morehead’s Important Teachery Meeting and tells everyone in the room how he abandoned her in a prom bathroom after impregnating a student. Can this whole show just be Willow, telling people off for having inappropriate and/or illegal sexual relationships, please? (S: PRETTY PLEASE?)

Mars House. Veronica asks Keith why there’s a dead rat in the freezer, a lot more calmly than I would have. He explains that he found it on the bus, duct-taped under one of the back seats. (Which actually still does not answer the more imperative question of why it is in their freezer. Like, where they keep food. If you need the evidence preserved so badly, invest in a goddamn mini-fridge, Keith. Put that book sale money to good use.) Veronica thinks it was a message for her – she’s the rat. But Keith isn’t sure what it means quite yet.

Sweeney: I’m also not entirely sure why Keith needed to have it. He is absolutely more competent than Lamb, but I’m not sure how stealing evidence from the bus is actually helping the case get solved. Can’t he just take a picture and jot down, “FOUND RAT ON BUS,” in his notes or some shit instead of, I don’t know, tampering with evidence?

Diva: YES. ALL OF THAT.

Veronica strolls into Vice Principal Clemmons’s office. She says that he did this whole punishment on purpose, to get her to look at her mom’s file for his own evil scheme. As he replaces his name plate with one that says PRINCIPAL CLEMMONS, we see that Veronica was right. That is some seriously brilliant shit right there. You go, Clemmons. You are doing high school administration politics right.

Lor: Agreed. I love that he totally banked on Veronica’s guarenteed snooping ability. He just knew that if he put Veronica near Lianne’s file, everything else would play out in his favor. The only icky thing is how totally glossed over it is that this this man had a relationship with a disabled student and then abandoned a baby in the bathroom. It serves the punchline at the end of Now Principal Clemmons and there just isn’t enough EW EW EW EW built into the episode, if you ask me.

Diva: Also, it was a great way to explain why Clemmons would put Veronica in such a high-snoop-factor situation. Because snooping was the goal all along!

Veronica heads to the hospital to pick up Abel Koontz’s belongings. She checks Meg’s room, which she notes is “unguarded.” I’m not sure why she expected to see guards there, but whatever. Veronica looks at the machines surrounding Meg, and realizes that there are two heart monitors. With two different heart beats. As Veronica pushes some machines away, she realizes that that’s because Meg is majorly, MAJORLY pregnant. WHOA.

I guess we’re in for our umpteenth paternity plot line of the series – is Duncan the father of Meg’s baby? Or is it that dude who wrote her the confidential letter that Duncan stole? OR IS IT VICE PRINCIPAL CLEMMONS? Anything is possible.

Next time on Veronica Mars: Veronica gets jury duty and the Aaron Echolls case FINALLY gets some attention in S02 E10 – One Angry Veronica.