Veronica Mars S02 E14 – A sliding scale of terrible

Previously: Money got stolen at the winter carnival and Logan flirted with Dr. Griffith’s daughter.
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Versatile Toppings

Lorraine: Corny is delivering pizza and we see him dance about and be entirely way too happy about a pizza he isn’t going to eat. As he walks toward a house, someone walks up behind him and tasers him. He blacks out.

Neptune High. Veronica gets out of her car and Dick parks next to her. When he opens his door, he hits her car and cares not a jot about doing so. Two jocks, one of them being Lucas Grabeel, come over to make fun of that whole Dick kissed someone with a penis thing and generally make comments so unsettling, Veronica can’t even enjoy Dick getting a taste of his own medicine. She leaves.

Democracy Diva: Lucas Grabeel is a homophobe? NOOO! What about Milk, Lucas?! 

Sweeney: After your reactions to Lucas Grabeel’s introduction I watched this episode with a twinge of sadness that the number gods didn’t give this one to you.

Lor: Somehow, I got both his episodes and have zero opinions about Lucas.

Logan is real busy intimidating people away from a vending machine and we see why when he walks just to the right of it. It’s his secret make-out place with Hannah. She lightly questions why they are hiding and he implies that her father probably isn’t happy with their relationship. She says her father had nothing to say about it. Logan keeps on about having stolen moments and alone time and mostly I think Hannah is silenced by Logan kisses. She invites him to her house to watch a movie on Saturday and he accepts. With a kiss.

Mars Investigations. Terrance’s murder-suspect-struggle is real. Keith wants to know what Terrance did on the day of the bus crash. Terrance remembers going to the stadium and signing some stuff, but he can’t remember anything he did between 5 and 11pm. The bus crashed at 7:03pm. Keith looks at him harshly and Terrance turns the question around on him. Where was he at 7:03 the day of the bus crash? Keith admits that he doesn’t know. It’s a nice way of the show trying to push the whole, “truly, it’s totally normal for him to be missing six hours.”

As Veronica walks through the halls, there is a lot of commotion as all the Extra Students hold up a pink flyer. Veronica watches as Madison Sinclair grabs one of the flyers that’s been left attached to some girl’s locker in a rainbow decorated folder. She reads it out loud: Who will spot the imposter cheering in the second row? How long can my pep-squad smile hide the me I cannot show? Madison sarcastically calls it precious and Marlena says she didn’t write it. Madison says it must’ve been some other “pep-squad lez who has her gym locker next to [Madison’s].” Veronica rolls her eyes after that bit because she thought it was going to be a normal day at school, and instead, it seems to be homophobia day. Bet she wants to crawl back in bed and try again tomorrow.

Diva: I can’t believe that unintentionally-released secretly gay poetry is a TV trope. Rob Thomas LOVES Dawson’s Creek.

Sweeney: Rob Thomas loves pop culture references of all varieties. He should come join The Snark Squad.

Lor: INTERN ROB THOMAS!

Madison keeps reading the flyer/love poem that mentions her by name and Veronica walks by them without a word. Ryan, of torturing the homophobic parents of his dead love interest fame, walks up to Veronica and says he’s got a problem. In a classroom full of students trying to learn useful things (JUST KIDDING! IT’S EMPTY!) Ryan asks if Veronica has heard about the pizza boy muggings. Veronica only heard about Corny, who was the 5th victim. Ryan was number 4. He needs Veronica to find out who mugged him. Veronica suggests calling the police (LOL) and Ryan doesn’t actually say why he won’t, but he does explain this week’s case: He had a list a list of 10 gay students at Neptune High in his wallet that was never supposed to get out. That poem Madison was reading was posted to a website that Ryan set-up called The Pirate’s S.H.I.P. (Student Homosexual Internet Posting). He was in charge of maintaining usernames and passwords. (D: Wait, why were they in his wallet? Couldn’t he have maintained them without writing down their real names?) Veronica gets it, but not why a mugger would want to out Marlena? Ryan explains that she couldn’t pay the $5,000 they demanded to keep the information secret. Veronica puts her Angry Face on even before Ryan offers to pay her for the case.

Sweeney: Veronica’s angry! vengeance! justice! face is my favorite.

Lor: COME ON NOW SUGAR.

After the credits, Veronica is questioning Ryan and Corny. They both got mugged in the same part of town and both orders were bogus. Corny remembered the house he was going to, because it’s a hot girl from their gym class. Veronica ignores his comments and asks Ryan for a list of names and addresses the mugger used.

Logan and Dick are walking down the hall bro-chatting about surfing. Hannah sees them and asks if they want to buy some spirit buttons for a good cause. Without acknowledging her otherwise, Logan pays up, says thank you and keeps bro-ing on his merry way. Hannah looks hurt.

Veronica’s in her Bathroom Office for one second before KRISTIN CAVALLARI walks in asking for her help.

I paused for a solid minute just to giggle.

Diva: It took me a minute to figure out who she was, but when I realized it, I laughed my ass off.

Sweeney: THIS GUEST APPEARANCE IS ALSO MY FAVORITE THING. We often talk about the Spreadsheet O’ Dreams and it’s filed away with a projected timeline of “Probably never” but The Hills has been on that list for almost as long as the document has existed, because I’m confident it would be hilarious. But then I remember that there are a million good shows to watch and, you know, “probably never” it remains.

Lor: Veronica says she doesn’t have time to help, but actually, Kristin is being blackmailed for being a lesbian. Veronica thinly disguises her shock or else Kristen Bell is trying real hard not to laugh at Kristin’s “acting.” (D: It’s AWFUL. Stop looking so happy about being blackmailed.) Veronica tells Kristin to ask for 24 hours to pay the demand, and V will handle the rest.

Later, Veronica walks into Mars Investigations just as the phone is ringing. She takes a message and tells Keith that the credit card statement for Terrance Cook is coming via fax. This is the first she’s hearing that Keith is working for Terrance. He thought she might be excited and she seriously exposits, “why? Because if Terrance is guilty that means all those people didn’t die because of me?” You mean those people you feel so guilty about you didn’t even bother to learn their names? (D: A+) Keith meant she’d be excited since he’s helping our her friend’s dad. Friend is kind of an extreme word, but still she offers to help on the case. He gives her a list of people to call who might know something about the six missing hours of Terrance’s life.

Terrance arrives later and they have a name for him: Hank Melton. After a bit, Terrance recognizes him as Crazy Hank who works on his car whenever he’s at the Seven Rivers Casino. He says it’s very likely that this plot-convenient chunk of time he’s missing was spent at the casino. Keith thinks this is swell news, since casinos have a ton of video surveillance, but Terrance is less convinced. The casino is run by Leonard Lobo and Terrance owes him millions.

Neptune High. The announcements are on and Ryan sneaks into this classroom and starts having a pretty loud conversation, though no one seems to notice. Ryan hands over the list of all the addresses of those kids to whom fake pizza was sent, prior to the muggings. Veronica recognizes one of the names but her attention is caught by the announcements again. Kristin Cavallari is doing a special feature on the latest pizza boy mugging.

This last time, the mugger chose a seemingly random victim: Lucas Grabeel. Lucas tells us that the mugger took his watch, wallet and rims. (D: Also, this interview takes place while they’re walking through the parking lot instead of, like, standing still. It’s super-distracting.) Before ending the segment, Kristin announces that she’s gay and that Marlena is her girlfriend. She’s outed herself so the Pizza Boy Mugger won’t be collecting his ransom. Veronica’s classroom goes crazy.

In the hall, Kristin Cavallari and Marlena walk hand in hand to much whooping and commentary from their peers. (D: Marlena is wearing SUCH a Willow Rosenberg sweater.) Dick and Some Dude are on hand to make the requisite, stereotypical, “woah-ho-ho! Les-bi-ans!” commentary. As they pass, Dick asks why lesbians are always so angry. Because of you, Dick. Or I just say, because of dicks like you. Veronica walks up to Dick and Some Dude makes a great, “yeah, I’m out of here,” face. You might want to pretend it’s because of Veronica, Some Dude, but we all know you don’t have a SAG card. Dick asks if Veronica is following him around. He says he’ll fix her car if that’s what she wants. Veronica snarks that she thought they were getting to be friends. Dick’s all, “LOL. NO.” because she dated Logan and he’s accused of murder. She dated Duncan and he’s wanted for kidnapping. She served on that one jury, and those two rich guys are on their way to Chino. He calls her “rich dude Kryptonite” and he wants no part of it.

Diva: I mean, it sucks, because that shit was not her fault, but out of context, being called “rich dude Kryptonite” is really just an awesome compliment in disguise.

Sweeney: Agreed! Put that on your comic book, Veronica Mars.

Lor: Veronica moves on to her next hallways interaction, this time with Carmen! Damn, this show is so good at recycling these little one off actors and plots. I love this show. (D: Carmen is one of the only ones for whom I’ve been like, “oh, yeah! that girl!” instead of “wait, have I seen this guy before?”) Veronica asks after her douchey ex-boyfriend. He called over Christmas break to apologize for releasing that video of her and a Popsicle. Carmen says it doesn’t matter anymore because her scandal is forgotten. Carmen quickly realizes that Veronica isn’t just there to catch up. Carmen’s name was on the list of fake-pizza-orders. She hands over the full list and asks what ties all the fake-pizza-orderers together. Carmen says they are all “coconuts,” which is the derogatory term you’re called in Neptune if you are Latino and date white people or join honor society. BRB. Reliving my childhood trauma for a second.

D: At least all that trauma made you awesome at gifs.

Lor: #silverlining

Carmen keeps explaining that it’s like an Oreo or a Twinkie (racists apparently also love their snack foods) (S: Racism requires the kind of energy that only corn syrup and artificial sweeteners can provide.) except with people who are brown on the outside and white on the inside. Veronica gets it and apologizes. She asks Carmen to please make up a list of anyone else who gets called a coconut and you can see her discomfort with all this racism stuff as she bumbles around the words.

Lucas Grabeel walks to his rimless car and Veronica tries to get more information about his mugging. He went into the Sac-N-Pac and when he came back out, his car was up on blocks. Veronica thinks that must’ve taken an awfully long time. Lucas Grabeel says he already spoke to the cops and certainly doesn’t need to speak to Veronica.

Logan shows up for his date with Hannah. She’s still a little annoyed at him for ignoring her in the hall. Logan puts on his best puppy dog face and says that his first girlfriend was murdered and his last girlfriend was almost gunned down by a PCHer. He’s trying to protect Hannah by ignoring her. This logic seems to work on Hannah and she doesn’t in fact run away from Logan Echolls, Tiny Blonde Girl Kryptonite. (S: 1430.)

Inside, those two cuddle up and chat about Hannah’s parents divorce and how they used to always argue about money. Dr. Griffith gets there and stiffly greets Logan before taking off. Later, Dr. Griffith finds Logan alone in the hall following a potty break. He tells him to GTFO and leave his daughter alone. Logan says he will if the doctor rethinks what he saw on the bridge with Felix. Or, that is, what the Fitzpatricks told him he saw. Dr. Griffith threatens to tell Hannah all about this blackmail, but Logan calls his bluff. He probably doesn’t want to tell his teenaged daughter about how he’s in the mob’s pocket. Logan says they are done and that he doesn’t want to keep Hannah waiting.

Diva: This is disgusting, even for Logan. It’s not homeless fight club bad, but it’s terrible.

Sweeney: Somewhere just better than “buying a poor Mexican family’s home to evict them” and a little worse than “torching the community pool during the peak of summer” – that’s about where you’ll find, “using innocent girl’s emotions to manipulate/blackmail her father” on the sliding scale of truly fucked Logan behavior.

Lor: Wow, when you put it on a scale…

Keith visits Leonard Lobo to ask about the security footage from the day of the bus crash. Lobo isn’t too accommodating until Keith points out that it’ll be hard for him to get paid if Terrance is in jail. Lobo sends one of his lackeys to check the footage. He also gives him a couple of bucks to spend while he waits.

Back at the Griffith’s, Hannah and Logan are goodnight kissing. Once Logan leaves, Dr. Griffith comes outside and says he needs to speak to Hannah.

Casino. Keith is actually siting at a Black Jack table but not paying too much attention to his hand. The lackey comes over to collect him and take him back to Lobo.

Pizza Place. Corny is on shift and things are very busy because apparently this is the only pizza shop sending it’s delivery boys into the face of danger. The phone rings and Corny records another order. Veronica compares it against Carmen’s list of “coconuts” and there is a match. Veronica asks if Corny is ready to be the bait. He seems too enthusiastic about this task, but probably only because it lets him drop a “master bait” joke.

Lobo comes back with a picture of Terrance at 7:01 and another at 7:06. This doesn’t help Keith at all and Lobo’s basically like:

Keith is walking out and tries to make a call as he goes. A kindly man sees his struggle and tells him he has to take it outside. The casino jams all the cellphone signals within a 100 mile radius to prevent cheating. Keith smiles.

Master Bait Mission. Corny gets out of his car and sure enough, someone dressed in black starts chasing after him. Veronica is there to trip the mugger though, plus, she’s brought Backup. The mugger pulls down his bandana and says his name is Arturo. He’s been mugging pizza boys to impress Thumper, so he’ll be let into PCH.

   

Arturo says he didn’t mug Lucas Grabeel and he hasn’t been blackmailing anyone. Arturo asks if they are done and Veronica says not yet, because she got his confession on tape. We cut to a Deputy Sacks spotting Arturo taped to a street sign, confession tape in an envelope just above his head.

Diva: So unnecessary, Veronica. Just call the cops and wait for them to get there. 

Sweeney: Unnecessary and more than a little fucked up. It wouldn’t even rate on the aforementioned sliding scale of fucked up behavior, but definitely not the kind of behavior that’s going to win you any karma points.

Lor: Neptune High for the Curious. Veronica asks Mac to get her into the gay chatroom and there’s a little bit of awkward confusion as Veronica says she isn’t gay, she’s just curious… about the website. Mac looks uncomfortable, but only because she helped set the site up. If Ryan wanted her to have access, he would’ve given it. Veronica says she doesn’t need names, just to comb through the forum or else she can’t help stop the blackmail. Mac relents and asks her to burn the hard copy when she’s done.

In an empty classroom, Veronica is going through the printout when a teacher walks in. She asks if she can ride the bus to the game that night, but the teacher can’t let her. They have a strict no girls on the bus rule. Jackie drops in long enough to offer V a ride and have cute banter so that we can continue warming up to her. Ryan walks into the still empty classroom next and sees that Veronica has copies of the forum. She tells him not to be mad at Mac, because she doesn’t care who’s gay and needed the information. Ryan isn’t mad, he just didn’t want to let her on the site himself, since he’s let the SHIPers down enough. Veronica explains that she caught the mugger and he’s dumb, so he definitely wasn’t the one blackmailing. The list getting out wasn’t Ryan’s fault. She thinks someone from the site is the one doing the blackmailing. She points out a post from “Mizz P” who went on about the “outing of all outings” in Neptune and then disappeared. Ryan says Mizz P. was Peter Ferraire and he died on the bus crash. Awkward.

Diva: And Veronica didn’t know his name either. Also, are we done with kids from the bus crash yet? Has everyone had their own postmortem plotlines now?

Lor: I don’t think the Snow gets to ask those kinds of questions.

As it is, there’s been another blackmailing letter, but Ryan won’t tell her who the victim is. Veronica snits about heading into the hall and looking for a guy twirling his mustache.

An Actual Class Where Students Are Working. Logan interrupts and gives the teacher a slip of paper. Cut to Hannah leaving the class and Logan pulling her into… AN EMPTY CLASSROOM! Dr. Griffith told Hannah that Logan stabbed Felix. Logan swears that he didn’t and that he didn’t know who Hannah was when he met her at the carnival. (D: Right, but you are still with her and using it to blackmail her father.) (S: This claim also smacks of bullshit, because he (a) bought her the slushee before actually meeting her -and- (b) made such a point of doing the GOTCHA! greeting of rivals at his car.) The reason her parents were always fighting about money is because Dr. Griffith was blowing it on coke. He’s in deep with the Fitzpatricks, the people who really wanted Felix dead. Hannah asks if she’s supposed to believe that and Logan thinks she already does. He asks her to keep an open mind and look around the house, then lets her go.

Mars Investigations. Keith is real happy about the surveillance photos he got, but Terrance is not. They prove he was in a private meeting with Lobo. If they are released, they won’t be good for his image. And neither will being arrested for murder, Terrance. Keith says they’ll take the photos to the sheriff for leverage and he’ll make sure they don’t get out.

Neptune High. Veronica spots a license plate that catches her attention: KUZZIKAN. It’s Lucas Grabeel’s car, so she confronts him. There was a poster on the SHIP username KISSNKUZN. SEE ALL THE Ks AND Zs? Detecting the shit out of things. Lucas Grabeel wasn’t mugged. He sold the rims for cash because he’s being blackmailed and he’s gay. Veronica asks him why he acts like such a jerk, calling back to the homophobic comments he made at the start of this episode, and Lucas says he’s just trying to survive high school. Veronica asks to see his blackmail note. Lucas hands over an email from “Rick Santorum” (ha.) telling him to mail the money to a local address.

At the Griffith house, Hannah looks through the phone and the caller-id has lots of calls registered from the River Stix and Fitzpatrick. No first name, just Fitzpatrick. Hannah next looks in the medicine cabinet and finds a little baggie of drugs.

Diva: Hidden inside a box of band-aids. Dude, everyone is always looking for band-aids. Find a better hiding spot.

Lor: Mars Investigations. The address on the blackmail email was a fake, but Veronica put a tracking device in it and sees that it ended up on Hobbell street. Her big smile takes us to school the next day where she greets Kristin Cavallari with, “hey blackmailer.” Kristin figured she’d see Veronica because she found the tracking device. Kristin assumes Lucas Gabreel wants his money back, which bums Kristin out because she wanted the money to get out of Neptune after graduation. She’s apparently never heard of student loans or working and fell back on the little known plan C option, blackmail. V asks why she would out Marlena and Kristin calls herself a crazy bitch. She wanted to be out, but she wanted to be out with her girlfriend. Okay, interesting. Let’s finish the episode and get back to this.

Logan waits for Hannah after class and she admits that he was right about her dad. They walk away hand in hand. Veronica sees them and asks Mac who the girl is. “Hannah something,” is what she offers. “I’d be a willowy blonde too if my dad was a plastic surgeon.” Veronica looks back at them, worry creasing her face.

That night, Jackie and Veronica stop off at a hangar Terrance borrows from Woody to store the millionty cars he could sell to get out of gambling debt.

Diva: SERIOUSLY. IT’S SO MANY FANCY CARS. And a fucking helicopter. SELL YOUR SHIT AND YOUR PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED, ASSFACE.

Sweeney: And his mansion. “BUT IF I SOLD MY EXPENSIVE THINGS I’D HAVE TO LIVE LIKE… LIKE… A MIDDLE CLASS PERSON! THE HORROR!”

Lor: Neptune PD. Keith and Terrance and visit Don Lamb. Keith presents him with the surveillance photos and is all, “guess he’s clear now!” Don Lamb doesn’t think so.

Keith tries again and says that Lamb isn’t going to press charges and hands over a CD. It has the audio of Lamb blackmailing Terrance. If Lamb doesn’t drop the charges they are going to take the recording to Woody. Lamb DOES NOT CARE. If they release the audio he’ll lose his 50k civil servant job, but Terrance will lose a whole lot more. Lamb calls their bluff. It makes Lamb seem like something more than just a bumbling sheriff though because he literally does not care about losing his job or doing the wrong thing.

Jackie and Veronica are driving back from the game. They talk about Wallace for a bit and then Jackie brings up her father’s case. Jackie says it means a lot that Veronica is helping. They arrive back at the hangar and Jackie freaks out a bit when the top won’t go back up on the car they borrowed. Veronica thinks she can fix it and goes poking around in a locker for a screwdriver. Instead, whatever she finds surprises her.

Cut to Veronica waking Keith up to tell him that she found a locker full of explosives and detonators at Terrance’s hangar. So much for Keith’s gut.

To me, this was a good example of how this show manages to get some things very right and then just fumbles a couple of things on the way. I already mentioned how much I loved all the bits of continuity. It’s delightful. Can we talk about how great it was that instead of having a token homosexual, Neptune is shown to have this entire community of them? Now, I can’t speak to the experience of being gay and in high school, but I think that they did a great job capturing the panicky feels of being outed. I loved that Ryan never gave Veronica the names. I loved that we had that brief fake-out story line of Arturo targeting “coconuts.” It wasn’t explored, but just kind of dropped in there as a reminder that if you blend in sometimes, sometimes if you are just yourself, you are still attacked.

My biggest issue was with the blackmailer being Kristin Cavallari. I just don’t think I buy her motivations. Or maybe I just hate her for forcibly outing her girlfriend for selfish reasons. It seemed incongruous with the panic Ryan and Lucas were feeling and the embarrassment Marlena went through. Kristen and her sub-par acting come in and are all, “I wanted to hold my girlfriends hand, LOL!” and then just flounce away. I don’t know. You may feel differently, but that’s where I am.

Diva: I think if Kristin Cavallari had even a modicum of acting talent, we could have been able to buy her motivations. But she didn’t have any – or at least, we couldn’t tell what the fuck they were from her expressions. So I wholeheartedly agree. But I loved Lucas Grabeel. Because I always love Lucas Grabeel.

Sweeney: +1. I actually think it was a solid writing move to have a bit more of a spectrum of feelings on the idea of being outed. Ryan and Lucas were panicked and concerned. Marlena, too, maybe, but we didn’t see much of her. It would be weirder if you painted this many students as having some sort of monolithic experience. Kristin Cavallari’s motivations also make sense to me – it’s a selfishness that’s pretty on par with being a teenager. At the same time, for however bratty and unfair it was to Marlena, it also comes from a place that makes sense on another level – beyond teenage selfishness – that she wants to be able to just feel normal, which is a thread running through all of those things Lor mentioned.

All of this rambling is to say that I think the problem falls squarely on actual Kristin Cavallari’s shoulders for not being able to act. On the plus side, this post got to have all those great gifs so it all worked out in the end.

 

 

Next time on Veronica Mars: Seems Wallace only gets girlfriends who need help from Veronica in S02 E15 -The Quick and the Wed.