Veronica Joins the Family Business

So far, I have really enjoyed my Veronica Mars baptism by fire. Part of the problem with recapping a show that has so many ardent fans is that you are going to sometimes reveal that your knowledge is lacking and people will take you to task for that. But most people have been very nice as I get myself caught up to speed. This is a learning process, people! As infallible as all of us TVgasm writers are (after much practice, I can say that with a straight face), even we deserve a little understanding now and then. After three episodes of dealing heavily with conspiracies surrounding the bus crash, we took a little step back to explore some more of the mundane little plot points that make up the life of Neptune’s ab fab young sleuth and those that surround her. Highlights include Duncan being a pussy and Wallace getting some more of the same!It’s a Sunday in Neptune and Veronica is spending some quality time at her dad’s office. He is in the midst of his campaign to get his sheriff job back and the Mars PI office is the war room. Veronica is minding her own business (sort of) when a woman named Julie comes in asking to investigate her boyfriend. She has plenty of money and is willing to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of things. Unfortunately Keith Mars isn’t able to take on new cases because of the election and the book and the huge backlog he already has. But this woman is willing to drop $2000 or more for a week’s worth of work, and that is money that Veronica could use in her quest to get to Stanford and more than she could earn at Java the Hut unless they “installed a pole.”

If Veronica needs to make extra money, I would suggest starting up a webcam, but that is sooo 1999. These days, the young woman working her way though college works as an escort. There are plenty of women at USC and UCLA doing it right now, or at least that is what Mrs. Petrovka down the hall keeps telling me. I have this image of a hooker who is studying forensic anthropology, and I have to say, it’s not that appealing. Call me a traditionalist – I prefer the massage parlors. Anyway, although her dad says no, Veronica decides she is going to take on the case herself and convinces Julie that this job would be perfect for a female investigator.

As happy as Veronica is to be getting some extra coin, Wallace is ten times as happy as he continues to get to know Jackie a whole lot better. He’s going to help Jackie with her trig, and since Jackie’s dad is often away, there’s a good chance that study session will turn out into a makeout session, or as I like to say “heavy petting.” I love that term, but I do wonder, why describe making out with a girl the same way they classify boxers? And is there anybody who would like “super flyweight petting”? I would figure everybody would want to go to ultra heavyweight instead. I guess all of this confusion is why they came up with the bases. I wish they all would just be as direct as Wallace’s little brother and ask “Are you hitting it?” or alternatively “Are you tapping that shit?” Either one would work.

As Alicia is laughing at her two young boys and getting ready to send them off to school, she steps outside and sees that strange man from Chicago who called her Cher. The run-in in Chicago was bad enough, but now that he has followed her to Neptune, she decides she has to do something about it. Alicia’s plan of action involves borrowing a gun from Keith. Now although he says that she fulfilled one of his fantasies by bringing him food (I find pastrami is the most sensual of the salted, cured meats), he is not about to let her take a gun into a house with a seven-year-old. When Alicia tells him that this guy she used to date followed her to California from Chicago, he offers himself up for guard duty. Keith will spend the night, but they just have to figure out some way to get all this done without the kids knowing.

Veronica is always wondering how her dad seems to know so much more than she could ever imagine, but the truth is that the same thing goes for Keith. When he shows up the next morning at the Fennel household with some donuts since he just “happened to be in the neighborhood,” who does he think he is fooling? Veronica knows that he didn’t sleep there, and Wallace knows that he just doesn’t show up in the morning with donuts unless he is trying to distract the kids. Wallace isn’t complaining though, because he is getting plenty of love, so there is no reason to stop his mom. In fact, Jackie comes by and smacks him on the ass, and Wallace really enjoyed it. He’s got a girl who seems into him and she has a basketball star who promises that he isn’t a Dungeons and Dragons geek, but to be fair the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I haven’t seen it happen yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

During her first day of investigating this dude Colin, Veronica isn’t particularly impressed. He seems to be running laps and not paying too much attention to anybody else. Julie is positive that something is wrong because Colin is calling the same number twenty times a day. See, Julie found an engagement ring among Colin’s things, and is worried that he is going to marry her just for her money. She’s rich, but has been playing middle class because money shouldn’t be important, but she has to be sure Colin isn’t like a lot of the other guys she dated who have sex with the girl teaching her spin class and the only part of the relationship she takes part in is paying the bills for his apartment. Julie’s afraid Colin is running a scam to get her money because he says he has a trust fund, but she can’t be sure.

All of this paranoia seems unfounded to Veronica, but it’s still money so she goes ahead with the plan. Eventually, she hits pay dirt as she catches Colin skipping his tennis lessons and heading to a house on Primrose lane, which is a desperate housewife kind of street if I’ve ever heard of one. She calls Julie with the bad news, and goes in for a closer look to get some evidence. Veronica may have no trouble snooping, but she does have some scruples. Upon closer inspection, she sees that Colin is not boning some horny housewife, but is instead boning up on his Hebrew, and not because Bonnie Bernstein just became available.

Seeing the error of her ways, Veronica is about to leave, but Julie has decided to drive over and take matters into her own hands. Still in curling irons[that would be rollers - thanks realityfan], she is about to storm in and stop this activity before Colin starts wearing ironic t-shirts and gets a perm. Julie is just getting to the front lawn, and Veronica decides to stop her before she does something she regrets. Sprinting across the yard, Veronica takes down Julie, Terry Tate style, with a flying tackle and tells her what’s really going on. At first Julie is confused because Colin shouldn’t be seeing a rabbi because he’s not Jewish, but if he wants to marry her and she is Jewish (and she is), shouldn’t he be applauded for going the extra distance? I mean, short of hiring a moyle, what else could he do to show her he wants to be part of her life?

While all of that was going on, Keith Mars still had stuff do himself. This guy that he is trying to keep away from Alicia is turning out to be quite the ordeal. His name is Karl Morgan and when Keith gets pictures of him snooping around Alicia’s house, he doesn’t act worried. When Keith pulls a gun, he is still calm, and insists he is not going to leave until he gets back what she took from him twenty years ago. Seeing that this guy might be a little bit bigger of a problem than he wants to deal with, he serves Karl and his prior arrests for drug dealing to the sheriff. Figuring that Karl will listen to official threats more than just a flash of a nine mil., Keith figures his problems are solved. Case closed, right? Well, no, because when Keith wakes up one morning, he sees that there is not one, but four boots on his car. Calling up the sheriff, he finds out that Karl is not Karl, but Nathan Woods, a detective with the Chicago PD. Clearly, there is more to this than Alicia was letting on.

Back at school, Veronica runs into Weevil. Could somebody tell me how he got that name? Is it because he rides a motorcycle? You know, Weevil Kneivel. I guess he is pretty tough, but seriously when you have to roll with your boys in order to intimidate a girl, what does that say about you? Weevil is a little pissed because he knows Veronica saw the sheriff and he was afraid she would give up information, but mostly he is pissed because Veronica mostly gives it up to rich white guys who are worth millions. Since Veronica is much smarter than him, she remembers that he used to wear a different set of earrings, one of which looked an awful lot like the one the sheriff found on Curly Moran. He says he knows that Curly was hired to do the bus job, and somebody had led him to believe it was a bunch of Irish meth dealers, but Weevil didn’t think those dirtbags were low enough kill kids on a bus. All he has is a phone number of an informant he doesn’t know, and he gives it Veronica to let her see what she can do with it.

The bus scenario is still important, but Veronica is still on the case for Julie. She is starting to think that Julie is creating more problems than she is solving but decides to set up a temptation scenario to see just how short a skirt has to be before Colin will chase it. Having professionals do it would cut away from the bottom line, so instead she grabs some stuff off of the skank rack of Forever 21 and decides that she will do a little temptation herself; she just needs Wallace to be wingman. It takes a lot of convincing to get Wallace to help her because he was in the middle of a good grope session and Jackie was on the receiving end. I’m sure Wallace really wanted to stick around and see if she would reciprocate, but Veronica is offering $200, and he can’t resist. Jackie, who we saw with another guy last week, is really upset that he is going and promises that she is going to have a chat with miss pixie stick because she wants to know why Wallace is always going to help her out. I will point out that Wallace’s “get busy” music was not Journey. I should have known the brother would have good taste.

Veronica’s trap is simple indeed. She dresses like you’d pay her $10 for a blow job in a 7-11 restroom, fakes a flat tire in front of Colin’s house, and has Wallace tape all of the seduction that goes on. Playing the dumb college girl, she does manage to get him to stare at her ass, but let’s be honest, is that really a crime? If checking out a hot body was a misdemeanor, the entire male population of this country would be incarcerated by the time they were seven. Even before we know we are supposed to lust over women for sexual reasons, the mere shape of boobs or an ass is enough to get most boys to stare. It’s like picking on your little sister, you don’t know why it’s so enjoyable, but it just feels right.

Colin is clearly not interested in taking advantage of Veronica, at least not in broad daylight, but she still manages to get inside his house under the guise of having to turn in a mid-term. Once inside, she once again tries to seduce him, asking if he would like to party with her, and hinting that party may include possible lesbian experimentation with her roommate. But still, after all of that Colin says that he has a girlfriend and he is not interested. She manages to get his browser history on a CD and leaves before he really starts to wonder what is going on. Mission accomplished! Seduction took place and not once did Colin offer to show her how he plays “stuff the haggis.”

Earlier in the week, Veronica had tried to visit Meg in the hospital. She was more than just a little bit surprised to see that Duncan was there, but before they could get into any big argument about the whole thing, Meg’s parents come out of her room and blame the both of them to some degree for her condition. To make up for it, Veronica brought some dim sum, and promised that Duncan could get some a little later, but when she pried a little bit more about why he didn’t tell her he visited Meg every day, he decided to pout and not have sex with her. Traditionally this is a tactic that girls use when they are upset, but apparently Veronica is enough of a randy minx that the lack of sex begins to bug her as well. If Duncan really wanted to prove a point, the truly assholeish thing would be to have sex with her and then immediately kick her out of his room. Make her feel cheap, and then apologize for it later. As an added bonus, there is the makeup sex, which as we all know is only eclipsed in the sheer enjoyment of conjugal visit sex. On the flip side, if Duncan is being such a whiny bitch about his ex, why doesn’t Veronica kick him to the curb?

Before she gets a chance to contemplate that move, there is a knock at the door. Veronica is scared to death that it may be her dad with a gun ready to kill Duncan, but it turns out to be Meg’s sister Lizzie. She is not pleased to see Veronica there with her comatose sister’s ex, but she really needs help getting some files off of her sister’s laptop before her parents get to it. They aren’t so big on their kids’ privacy, and she is afraid that if they find out what was on there, they might pull the plug themselves. Veronica knows a handy computer nerd friend of hers (we can tell she is a hacker chick because of her dark black hair and general disdain for everybody in the room) and she helps them get the files off of the computer. There is a moment the next scene when Duncan is taking a shower where Veronica has a chance to copy all of the files over for her own review, but she resists the temptation and decides to trust her boyfriend, no matter what some of the evidence to the contrary would suggest.

In her final report to Julie, Veronica says that it appears that Colin is loyal and committed and he has no criminal record. Even his exes don’t have bad things to say about him. All of this isn’t enough for Julie. Colin’s house actually belongs to Nicolas Cage, there is no evidence of a trust fund, and Veronica did find that he had looked up genealogy information on the web. And even though he looked up the information only after he had bought the ring, Julie decides to cut him off. Only later does Veronica recognize the crest on Colin’s handkerchief as one from a famous Scottish maker of, well, Scotch. He is heir to a fortune and is known not to flaunt his money. And to think, she could have been godmother to little Kal-El Cage. If only all of us were that lucky.

Keith caught on to Veronica and her little side job and the fact that she was sneaking out to stay over at Duncan’s. Although he was mad at her, he realized that she might actually be of some help around the office. Better to have his daughter be the receptionist than hire some young guy or girl and have Alicia thinking that they were sleeping together all of the time. Keith had a lot on his mind. He took some files from Alicia’s house to get a little more background because he wasn’t quite sure what to make of this whole situation with the mysterious cop from Chicago. BTW, the irony in all of this is that the actor who plays Nathan Woods also played a Chicago police officer on ER, but the producers didn’t find it funny enough to give them the same name in the two different shows. Also ironically, the actress who plays Alicia Fennel also had a recurring role on ER that year. Way to recycle actors, Warner Television.

So what was this secret that Alicia was trying to keep from everybody about her and Nathan? Well, it turns out Alicia did take something of his a long time ago, as he claims Wallace is his son, and breaks the news to him at the very end of the show.

This was an OK episode, kind of scattered. We were concerned more with the plot of the characters than the bus accident that was consuming the first three episodes. I guess I need to learn more about these characters to get a feeling for them (I would love to find time to watch all of season one on dvd, but let’s be honest, I am far behind with the writing as it is), so these kinds of episodes are necessary. We got another chance to see Logan at the end, as it turns out that the phone call Weevil received came from Logan’s house the night of the party. This little piece of information that they tried to stuff us with at the end of the episode and I am trying to stuff in at the end of this recap will probably be the direction our conspiracy takes us in the coming weeks. Sorry, but in the five minutes he was on screen, the only layers of his personality I saw was of the douchebag variety. He still has a penis head and some terrible pit stains. He also seems to be throwing lots of parties that facilitate problems for Veronica. Oh yeah, those two make a great match.

Penis head + pit stains + pissy attitude = Logan sucks

What did you think of the episode? Are Wallace and Jackie for real? What were those e-mails that were on Meg’s computer?