The Cruelest Cut of Them All

Our sassy, angst-ridden, teenage crime fighting machine Veronica Marshas plenty of talents, one of them being the uncanny ability to create enemies. Now although there are several times when Veronica has made an enemy because she was too quick to judge somebody or they grow tired of how she acts like she is the smartest girl in the whole town, most of the time people dislike her because she has foiled some nefarious crime or exposed some sort of rampant hypocrisy. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget the people who want her dead because they believe she is responsible for the bus crash that killed their loved ones, or because she accused half the town of killing Lily Kane. Veronica has had a very difficult time in high school, but like a lot of teenagers, she is going to get a second chance at everything once she graduates and starts college.When Veronica was on the jury, she was approached by a faculty member of Hearst College, the local liberal arts enclave. It would probably be exactly the type of place that Veronica would be interested in, except that it is so very close to home, and she wants to put as much distance as possible between herself and Neptune. One person who is interested in Hearst is Wallace. His SAT scores are a little low, but he’s a baller and when you factor in the points, the boards, and the dimes, he should be able to get in and if they decide to give him one of the final scholarships available, he will almost certainly join. Since Wallace was interested, Veronica says that she will go with him when he goes to Hearst to take a tour. She may not want to go there full time, but if it lets her sip school this year, why not?

Everybody who was still in school learned that the town was sponsoring an essay contest. The winner would get to spend a day with Woody Goodman and would have a chance to push the detonator when they tear down Shark Stadium. That may have excited a few people ( after hearing about the demolition, Dick Casablancas was upset that he “didn’t write good”, maybe he should try to speak much gooder too), the person getting all of the high fives was Logan Echolls, who just had his case dismissed.

Since Logan had his case dismissed, that meant that he must have broken up with Hannah, right? Well, not quite. When she saw Logan outside to congratulate him on the good news and tell him how much all of her girlfriends were jealous of her on the track team, Hannah got some bad news. Logan said that they couldn’t see each other anymore. Hannah wasn’t sure what was happening. She is younger than Logan, and so she wondered if it was some weird joke that went over her head, like she had changed her name to Dick Casablancas. Logan said that she’s a sweet girl, but he’s not a sweet guy, but that wasn’t enough for Hannah. She didn’t care about that, and as Logan walked away, she could only stand there, wishing that she would get a punch line.

When I heard that Wallace and Veronica were going to go to Hearst for a tour, I thought that it would be a one-day thing, maybe an overnighter. Instead, it sounded like things were going to get very immersive, since the tour guide said that it was going to be a three-day tour. I could only imagine the writers were trying to make a joke about Gilligan’s Island, because I would imagine that any college that was going to let students in on a three day tour would at least make sure that they had applied to the school. But this isn’t The OC, so I am sure that the writers have a point.

In order to get the prospective students feeling a little more comfortable, the student tour guide had everybody play the “two truths and a lie” ice breaker used by ever summer camp and ropes course across the country. People were required to participate with people that they didn’t know, so while Wallace went over to flirt with a young woman, Veronica was left to play the game with the tour guide. After some banter involving old Johnny Cash lyrics, another person joins the party, giving Veronica a chance to share some passive-aggression with a new face, or at least that is what we thought. The new applicant was none other Troy Vandergraff.

If you don’t remember, Veronica and Troy had a little thing going for a while in the first season. Although he was one of the rich kids, he didn’t ignore Veronica like everybody else who was friends with the Kane family. In the end, we learn that Troy was just using Veronica, and although Veronica got him back and was responsible for him being shipped off to military school, it did hurt her. Troy said that he had changed, and Veronica pretended not to care, saying it was all water under the bridge. Duplicitous, evil water under the bridge.

I may have thought that things had changed for prospective students visiting college, but I soon learned that all was well. That night, Wallace and Veronica joined in a long tradition of students visiting college by going out to a party. Wallace was busy talking to girls about Kierkegaard (he Veronica Mars, Seth Cohen already did that earlier this year), leaving Veronica to fend off the advances of all of the “drunk doofuses”. One upset her so much, she decided the best way to get him to learn that this profro wasn’t going to get all googly-eyed just because he is horny over a natural blonde, she throws a beer in his face. When the dude lays a hand on her, Troy steps up to him and gets a punch in the face as a thank you. Still, Veronica appreciated the gesture, even though he saw him walking away with another girl just moments later.

Facial!

One of the problems with Veronica Mars the show is that there are so many great characters, it’s hard to give them all screen time. I think the writers actually do a great job giving us just enough insight that we aren’t screaming too loudly about the characters we don’t see each week. One person that we haven’t heard a lot of information on is Cliff McCormack, Mars family friend and Neptune public defender, but all of that is about to change. Keith gets a phone call, and meets Cliff at a hotel room, where he finds the lawyer tied to the bed. How did he make the call when his cell phone was on the nightstand? I’m not too sure, but I think it is banned in at least a dozen states. Cliff is well known as somebody who enjoys the “titty bars”, as the kids say, and not because of the great lunch buffets. Still, he had been at an OBGYN convention handing out his card (they are the most sued doctors in the state), so one wouldn’t expect that a person making so much money looking into vaginas would want to take advantage of Cliff, or steal his briefcase.

I forgot the safe word

Keith was the first Mars to get an emergency call that morning, but he wasn’t the last. Veronica got a call from Troy Vandergraff, the girl that Veronica saw him going home with was given rohypnol, raped, and then had her head shaved. When they came looking for Troy to gather some evidence, they found that he already had washed his clothes. Although he admitted that there were a lot of people there that saw him together and he did go back to her room, Troy said that Stacy had thrown up on him. He tucked her into bed and then went to an all-night laundry to preserve his only clean change of clothes. Veronica wants to believe Troy has changed, so she decides to help him out. There were plenty of other suspects at her party, so it could have been one of them.

Digging further into Cliff’s robbery, Keith was able to dig up some security tape from the Neptune Grand. He confessed that he had become tight with the security staff when Veronica was dating Duncan, which explains why he always had a sixth sense about what she was doing over there. Eventually, they come to the part of the tape where Cliff is on camera, and while he may not have had good memories of the night, he sure had his fun with some good mammaries. Stuffing his face down there and doing the “motor boat”. Definitely not quite as funny as the shocker, but amusing nonetheless.

A little bit later on the tape, Lamb comes in with a little tart of his own. By this time, the OBGYN has returned from tying up Cliff, and appears to know Lamb. The two of them have a little conversation and then Lamb goes back to work on a little motor boating of his own. I am surprised they couldn’t have worked in a dirty Sanchez line in there somewhere, but when Veronica walks into the office (the three day tour didn’t require people to actually stay on campus), she notices the girl on the tape as none other than Madison Sinclair. Man, what is it about these Neptune Sheriff’s and their interest in high school girls? We learned earlier that Madison dumped Dick in favor of an older man, although really, Lamb isn’t all that much mature than the elder Casablancas son.

Veronica’s first stop in the search to exonerate Troy is the house Pie Sigma Sigma. He had remembered there was a guy with Greek letters on it, so why not see if any of them wake before noon and will answer some questions. It’s funny because when you look at the name of the fraternity on the house, it says π∑∑, which sort of looks like PEE if you know Greek letters, but ∑ is not E, but an S, so it is really PSS, which is kind of dumb. Again, a good opportunity the writers missed to name the house Kappa Omega Chi, or something like that. Or maybe the joke went over my head and one of you will be kind enough to fill me in.

As Veronica enters and tries to combat the foul stench of beer, vomit, and marijuana smoke (ahh, those were the days…) she noticed that the guy who was bothering her was a member. Unfortunately, the guy who Troy noticed, Gordon Peters, was at the hospital getting his stomached pumped after only 18 tequila shots. Quite obviously, he wouldn’t make it at Dartmouth, where we would have called that little display quite weak unless he had been playing pong AND had a paper due the next morning.

Without Gordon Peters there to take the fall, Troy was looking a little bit more guilty, but he told Veronica that he left his name and number on Stacy’s door, and would he be so stupid to leave his name and number if he had raped her? Veronica went to her room, where she did see part of Troy’s name and number, but it looked as if somebody had erased part of it and place “CCC” with a circle around it in it’s place. At that moment, Stacy comes out, and she thinks that Veronica is rape crisis counselor or something and has a pamphlet or something for her.

She can now start a Sinead O’Connor cover band

If there was one part where I thought that the writers sort of glossed over, it was this interaction between Stacy and Veronica. Veronica was raped herself, and although it turned out to be somebody that she loved (and thankfully not her brother), she didn’t know it at the time, and so all of her pain and humiliation was real. You would think that they would have visited it a little more, but Veronica just says “It’s going to suck, and then it’s going to suck less” without much indication of why Veronica would be somebody to listen to. I’m not saying that every person who is sexually assaulted needs to take up the cause and people deal with it in their own ways, but I thought Veronica’s character would be the type that if nothing else, was going out for some sweet revenge.

While she is at Stacy’s we see that somebody had left a box outside. Inside the box is a bunch of dark hair, which seems just too cruel, but we learn that it isn’t Stacy’s hair. At this point, Veronica wonders there was another girl who had been attacked, but we don’t know whom. Thinking that maybe the other rape Victim might need to wear a wig, she heads to the wig store and tries to get some information out of them. The shop owner isn’t completely convinced that she should help out Veronica, especially when she learns that Veronica doesn’t even know the name of this friend who was supposed to have a wig, but is that going to stop Ms. Mars? Hardly. She puts on a performance that would have Sean Penn giving speeches at the Academy Awards. It seems as if her sob story about her friend who ran away but might hurt herself was going to work, until Veronica said that it was her sister. The shop owner informs Veronica that is impossible, because the girl who came in was Hawaiian. Well, so much for that plan.

Veronica learned from her tour guide that the Hawaiian students have a group that meets for lunch every now and then, but he had a better piece of information. Our boys at PSS kept a list of conquests in their basement, along with what score they received. A ha! All Veronica has to do is get down to that basement, figure out who scored a “CCC” and go from there. With Wallace’s help, she sneaks into the basement and finds the board in question, with the names of brothers (all sounding like actors in gay porn with names like Ice Man, Topper, and Spanky), the scores of the girls they had sex with, along with a few reminders of the evening, like pairs of panties or even pictures. One brother, Bird Dog, even had a picture of Veronica.

In order to get plenty of evidence, Veronica took a bunch of pictures of the wall, but before she could leave, a brother found her. This brother was none other than Gordon Peters, who now had short hair. Veronica quickly figured out that he must have been the one to leave the hair at Stacy’s since it wasn’t hers. Because his head was shaved, it means he didn’t score any points with her and so he left the hair not because he was guilty, but just because he is a vindictive asshole who won’t take no for an answer, especially when she says yes to a pre-frosh.

Why not just sell them on eBay?

Since the basement was members only (and quite pathetic I might add, with not even ONE pong table), Veronica had to leave, but not before she found out whom Ice Man was. Ice Man scored a CCC, and when Veronica saw him, made mention of how he had to have sex with somebody or else they would make him shave off his Ryan Seacrest hair. He said he it was none of her business, and that he scored CCC not for Stacy, but for nailing the wife of an administrator. When she is finally shown the door, she makes it known that Bird Dog (who was the same guy that she poured beer on) most definitely didn’t have sex with her, so his 210 points were nil. She didn’t get her guy, but at least she made one of the douchebags shave their heads, not to mention plenty of evidence should she need some blackmail material later on.

Keith Mars had plenty of blackmail material of his own. He and Cliff went to the Sheriff’s office in order to find out what he knew about this OBGYN that stole Cliff’s briefcase. Lamb wasn’t impressed by the photos inside the Neptune Grand, and when Keith showed Lamb that he had evidence that he was with a high school girl, Lamb laughed it off by saying that she was 18, meaning there was plenty of consent. When Keith showed Lamb a hypothetical campaign poster with the slogan “She’s 18, it’s legal. Re-elect Don Lamb” with a picture of him smooching Madison, Lamb gave up the information. The lady in question was an escort who goes by the name of Sugar Jones.

Veronica’s last chance to save Troy was to find the other girl who was raped, and she was able to find her at the lunch meeting of the Pacific Islander student group. She took the girl to tell Stacy and the Dean of Student Affairs about what happened. She didn’t see her attacker, but it happened on an evening when Troy Vandergraff was on the other side of the country. Just to make sure that her fraternity friends have something to remember her by, Veronica hands the Dean pictures of the basement she was in. It was good enough to put the fraternity on social probation.

This is usually were I say “Another job well-done by Veronica Mars!”, but although Veronica exonerated Troy, I was really expecting her to solve the crime. Isn’t that how these things are done? Although Veronica says she is not going to Hearst, I think that the fact that this mystery is unsolved is a clue that she may be going to Hears next year after all. Like Wallace said, she already has enemies, so why not apply? Besides, if the writers need a mystery for Veronica to solve, this rape case will still be open. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and say Veronica is going to solve this case next year while she is in college. If she doesn’t go to Hearst, she will find similar crimes at her school and discover the person visited a friend at Hearst the weekends of those crimes or vise versa. Of course now that I have mentioned it, the writers may do the opposite just to spite us nosy bloggers, but it just makes too much sense don’t you think?

After one night of the single life, Logan decided that he couldn’t take any more. Dick was going on and on about how they weren’t beholden to the rule of women any longer, but it was just and excuse to get Logan to stick around with him and get drunk and play X-Box. Hannah had said she had left a surprise in his locker before she knew about his case, and it turned out to be a cake with the frosting in the design of a “get out of jail free” card from Monopoly. As a further gag, she even placed a metal file inside. When Logan discovered this, he realized that he made the wrong decision, and decides to apologize to Hannah.

Much better than “Pay Poor Tax”

Meeting up with Hannah after her track meet (nice Neptune tracksuits by the way, much better than what the Armenians are running around in all day in Los Angeles). Logan is honest with her, saying that the only reason why they weren’t together was because he had made a deal with her dad. He even says that the reason he started seeing her was in order to get to her dad. It’s good to see that Logan has some morals when push comes to shove, and my only wish would be to see him have some conviction when he doesn’t have his back up against the wall.

I thought that Hannah would at least make Logan beg a little bit more for forgiveness, but she was just so happy to have him back that she wasn’t making any demands. With all of that over, the only thing left to do was pick up where they left off, which was Logan making his way into Hannah’s pants. I have to say, I was happy seeing these two get together. Like I’ve said before, Hannah loves Logan, even with all his faults, and that’s really all that any guy wants. Their moment of bliss didn’t last very long however. Logan was just about to demonstrate how good he is at “diving”, probably as a precursor to him making Hannah a woman, but instead Hannah’s dad interrupted them. Logan was defiant about the deal and said that there was nothing he could do to make him stop seeing his daughter. Uhhhhh, not so fast Logan. Dr. Griffith could send his daughter to a boarding school in Vermont, which is exactly what he did. Now Logan has no girl and no deal, and will probably soon have a cellmate named Tiny eager to tattoo “Bunky” on his ass.

Returning home from her Hearst adventure, Veronica discovers that her father is waiting for a woman, which made me wonder whatever happened to his relationship with Wallace’s mom, but whatever. Keith was simply waiting for Sugar Jones, who reveals that somebody paid her to get the briefcase, although she doesn’t know exactly who it was. With that bit of the case all over, Keith can get back to what’s really bothering him, which is Veronica’s college plans. She is still adamant about getting out of Neptune even though her father doesn’t really want her to. Free laundry, and Keith Mars’ gourmet cooking aren’t going to do it; not even if Wallace gets the scholarship, which he does, deciding to go to Hearst next year.

Veronica’s little chat with her dad does make her think of Woody Goodman, the essay contest, and what you win for the essay contest. That’s right, you win a chance to destroy Shark Stadium, which takes explosives. Woody Goodman owns shark Stadium. Woody Goodman owns the hangar where the police found explosives and detonators in order to implicate Terrence Newman (also MIA this week, apparently recovering from his gunshot wound).

Taking a tour of the construction site, Veronica manages to take a look at the C-4, and the explosives and detonators are exactly like the ones she saw at Terrence’s Hangar. And to make things even more interesting, she sees that Danny Boyd works there. Danny is a Fitzpatrick, and if he had access to the C-4 that implicated Terrence Newman, than things are really, really interesting.

So, I thought it was a great episode. I was pleased that it had a lot to do with college because I participated in an online blogger press conference for Veronica Mars last week, and I actually asked Rob Thomas a question on how the writers planned to transition the show to college life, seeing as how Neptune is such a great setting for everything that goes on now. To make a long story short, Rob said there was plenty that the writers could do with the character because they aren’t constrained by age considerations. Veronica has always been too mature for Neptune, so I guess that means she can really become an adult after graduation.

I only mention that because another blogger asked how intertwined the Fitzpatrick/Felix murder story line is with the bus crash, and while Rob wasn’t committal, he said that one would be resolved before the ever. That’s very vague, but I am betting we are starting to build towards a solid season finale. I am guessing with everything that is going on with Logan that the Felix murder will be the first one that is handled, but you never know. I do know that more and more roads are leading to Woody Goodman’s as being the center of a lot of the controversy this year.

What did you think of the episode? Why was Sugar Jones hired to steal Cliff’s briefcase? How is Woody Goodman connected? Will Veronica really move away for college?