Recap: Veronica Mars: Finalist Submission II

By Zoobabe

This episode concludes the first arc of the mini-mystery season and we start at the Pi Sig house. We see Piz and Mac looking for V and then cut to her running like a bat out of hell looking for some help in the dorm and slumping down on the floor to see a mystery pair of male legs next to her.  Is Veronica doomed? Could it be just a dream? HELL NO because we then see the next scene headlined “2 days before”, so foreshadowing it is indeed!The Lillith House girls (or as I like to call them- The Violent Femmes) are celebrating the ouster of the Greeks by parading around on a float and yelling . Almost like sorority girls! Veronica sees Dick and Logan coming out of class, and after a bit of witty banter with Dick- he leaves and Logan tells her it’s not working out between the two of them and he wants to end it. V is shocked and tries to protest, but Logan says that he is never going to stop wanting to help/protect her and she is never going to allow him to be there for her like he wants to, so he’d rather deal with a little pain now then continue and try and deal with immeasurable pain later. Later we see V at the food court with Mac and Wallace, and they are trying to console her but she’s pretending like it doesn’t matter. Weevil is in the Dean’s office fixing his satellite TV for him and they talk boxing. Weevil tells him that he’ll be back Monday morning with the equipment for his HDTV hookup. The Dean has a surprise visit from an alumnus named Mel, who reminds him of how much fun he had as a frat boy at Hearst and how generous of a benefactor he’s been since graduation. Blackmail anyone? Meanwhile- the Dean visits Keith to see if he’ll check up on his wife while she’s away on business in Sacramento this weekend. He thinks she’s having an affair with her coworker, and says it’s b/c her kisses aren’t the same anymore. Maybe she’s sick of driving electric cars everywhere ‘cuz that Ed Begley sure is a stickler for conserving the environment! Anyway- when V gets home, she tells her dad about the breakup and he volunteers to postpone his trip, but she says she’ll be alright. Not so much of that is true though, b/c we next see her taking a shower and bawling her eyes out. This proves why more guys should watch this show b/c even in a weepy chick scene- there’s nakedness (and she’s hot too)!
 
We find out on the NPizR show that as they are discussing what to do with the now unneeded Greek row, the Dean comes into the station to announce that one of the Board member’s votes was nullified due to a conflict of interest over he/she being a property holder of the land under the aforementioned Greek Row. Since the DEAN gets to vote in a situation like this, he casts his vote to keep the Greeks on campus and just like that- they’re back! That blackmail must have been a doozy! This makes Dick and the Pi Sigs happy, and they ride around celebrating in a giant Hummer. Meanwhile, the Violent Femmes egg the Dean’s car. Does anyone else see the symbolism in frat boys riding a HUMMER and feminists throwing EGGS?  The Greeks being back on campus means that the Pi Sigs can once again have their annual huge bash and someone notices that the campus rapist has slipped a classified notice in the paper saying that he’ll be finding his next victim at the party. Lots of people think it’s just a joke, but V and the Violent Femmes do not. V enlists the help of the Scooby gang to check the party for any drugged girls. The Violent Femmes and their posse have devised a nifty little way to help the girls at the party know if their drink has been spiked with GHB. Parker shows V special coasters designed to change colors if dipped in a tainted drink. Each coaster has 10 test spots on it , and she also gives V a rape whistle although V is not believing anyone would actually respond to it.  Meanwhile, in V’s Criminology class- Prof. Landry is mentioning how he graded their ‘Perfect Murder’ papers while he was in Sacramento the past weekend. Sacrebleu-mento! That confirms that his affair with the Dean’s wife is still on. Speaking of whores, we are reintroduced to another one when Johnboy the TA asks V to come to his office to chat about her paper. Turns out that HIS gf is none other than the merry go round Pi Sig girl, Bonnie. Before meeting her however, V noticed that Johnboy had certain Pi Sig’s circled on his rapist board. She asks him why, but he doesn’t want to share info. unless she does. After a quip from V about how the two of them could be like “Cagney and Pasty”, V decides she doesn’t want to share either.
 
Before leaving for the Pi Sig Party with her friends, V gives the dorm RA (who is ironically named Moe even though he looks more like Larry and has Curly hair) her phone number b/c she finds out that he’s driving the safe ride home car that night and wants him to call if he takes home any girls that look drugged. V also has to break the news about the Dean’s wife and Prof. Landry to her father b/c Keith has already told the Dean that there was nothing going on with his wife and her coworker (who’s gay). V told Keith all the details she knew so he could check it out for himself, and when he does- he then has to go back to the Dean’s office and tell him that his wife is indeed a whore and show him the proof. The Dean figures out that the dates that wifey was bumping uglies with Landry coincided with her Junior League meetings. I bet that’s REALLY not what the Prof. likes his willy compared to! The Dean then proceeds to get rip-roaring drunk in his office while Keith watches, but he assures Keith that he’s gonna sleep it off on the sofa so Keith leaves him there. However we see him pull a gun out of his desk drawer.and check to see if it’s loaded.
 
At the Pi Sig bash, the Scoobies are not all that happy to be junior detectives (especially Mac) but generous V has made them all fake ID’s as a reward. Mac decides to stick with soft drinks , but the boys go for beer (of course) and they are told to write their names on their beer cups and not share them. They are also not happy with the cheese-ball band featuring a Billy Bush lookalike singing Neil Diamond songs, and his over the hill Nikki McKibbin back up singer (that girl could bust a move though!) V also notices that the Pi Sigs are NOT handing out the real litmus coasters, only ineffective lookalikes- so she goes and rips Pres. Chip a new asshole about it but he’s an huge asshole already so there is really nothing left to rip and she storms off. The scoobies have enough of the REAL coasters to do their testing, and there was something very religious about seeing them dipping the torn circles of white into that alcohol to see if they turned. That is if religion makes you think of drugged Jesus juice and sex…sorry to all you Michael Jackson fans or former Catholic altar boys. V also sees Johnboy’s gf Bonnie whoring it up on Dick (of course), and Johnboy actually busts in and bitches her out for her whorishness- saying he’s had as many girls on the side as she’s had guys (right-unless?). Since everyone who’s anyone is here, V also runs into Mercer and Logan chatting up the ladies, and after some awkwardness- Mercer leaves b/c he says they’re playing his radio dance show after the band. As V is trying to talk to Logan, her gang reports a positive hit on GHB in someone’s cup. The name on the cup is for a Kim Keisner who lives off campus, but just as V and Wallace are about to leave- Logan tells her to let him go and check it out and she DOES!  She lets him help her while she stays at the party.
 
Back at the Neptune Grand, Slutty O’Dell has just finished procuring a “contribution” from her “Junior League’ meeting when there’s a knock at the door. She answers it to find her husband on the other side. BUSTED!  Back at the party, V finds out that the GHB cup actually belonged to Kim’s little sis who was using her fake ID. It turns out that sis wasn’t feeling so well and decided to walk back to her dorm so now Logan and Wallace are in the wrong place and right before V leaves to track the girl down, Mercer’s show begins with a request for a band called Chicks On Speed. Back at the Neptune sheriff’s office, a deputy receives a call about a bomb threat in the Hearst dorms, but the desk officer tells him to ignore it and let the campus police handle it unless he wants to wake up Lamb.
 
Cut to the girl’s unicorn-themed dorm room where we see Mercer describing in ooky detail why he likes raping over plain old drunken effing. Did I tell you? MERCER IS THE RAPIST! MERCER IS THE MF’ING, LOGAN STUCK UP FOR HIM AND RUINED HIS TRUST WITH V FOR HIM, RAPIST!!! As he hovers over her bed with the clippers, we hear a noise and see that the girl is in the closet and V has gotten there (how?) and shocks him with her taser gun! He goes down , but doesn’t stay down and they struggle and he punches her hard in the face. She tries to hide under the bed, but he’s still coming for her- so thank God for unicorns b/c Buffy/Veronica finds a pointy/twisty/metalley (thanks jampony!) horn and stakes/stabs him in the thigh with it! She’s able to run out of the room and now we’re back to the opening scene where she’s barreling through the hallways looking for help. She comes to Wallace and Piz’s room but no one answers and as she slumps down we see the SHOES. Who’s shoes? Moe’s- the RA will save her! He takes the hysterically sobbing V to his room and makes her some tea and tells her to stay put while he gets help b/c the rapist is still out there. While she’s calming down, she notices a picture of him and Mercer on his bulletin board at the same time she’s starts to feel sleeeeepy. Oh no! Moe and Mercer are in cahoots! A veritable GHB raping tag team! This is bad for V b/c now she’s barely coherent and as she goes to the window to try and escape, it’s too high up to risk and she knows that Mercer’s coming back for her. She calls her dad, but only gets his voice mail so she tries to croak out a call for help. Then she goes to hide in the closet, and through her hazy vision we see her find a hammer and a chunk of hair (ew!) on a shelf above her head. When Mercer and Moe return, they think she’s escaped but her dad calls back and they hear the phone in the closet. She manages to swing the hammer and catch Moe by the toe (rape humor is HARD)! Mercer tells Moe that they’re gonna load her up with GHB so she doesn’t remember anything, and he goes back to his stash in the unicorn room to get some. Before he leaves, Veronica manages to blow the rape whistle- but no one seems to hear it. On the way back to Moe’s room, Mercer encounters Parker in the hallway. OH HELL YEAH -PARKER HEARD THE WHISTLE! He tries to play it off,  but Parker starts crying RAPE and a bunch of guys (including Moe) come into the hallway. Parker asks Moe if someone is in his room and HE tries to play it off, but the big guys are starting to circle and Mercer and Moe take off running. Parker finds the unconcious V in Moe’s room. Keith comes to pick V up at the police station and chastises Sherriff Lamb for not answering the bomb threat. V tells her dad that she called him from Moe’s phone so he could track him and track him he DOES! Right as Moe is pulling the horn tip out of Mercer’s leg (that’s a pain that will linger!), Keith busts in with a gun and nabs them. The next morning, we see Logan breaking the windows in a police cruiser right in front of the deputies. Why you ask? The look on his face when they throw him in the jail cell with Mercer and Moe explains it all. Sweet manly revenge for what Mercer did to him and V. We see V telling the Scoobies that Moe was Mercer’s set up guy. He slipped the girls the GHB, and called Mercer to let him know where they lived since he was the one driving them home. He was also the one that quick-shaved V’s head in the parking lot to scare her off the case too. The only involvement the Pi Sig’s had in it was harboring a veritable plethora of drunken girls.
 
The final scenes show the Dean back in his office and getting eggs thrown at his windows. There’s a knock at the door, and we see him ask a mystery visitor ‘what are YOU doing here”?  The next morning when Weevil comes to install the new TV equipment, he finds the Dean slumped over his desk. Dead.
 
That sets up mini-mystery #2. Who do you think killed the Dean? His wife, Prof. Landry, his blackmailer, the Violent Femmes, his mystery visitor? Do you think he used his gun first? Did you like how they wrapped up the rapist mystery, or did you think it was too far-fetched? Did Keith track the boys using the cellphone GPS or were they just dumb enough to stick around campus after the botched rape? How DID Veronica get in the girl’s dorm room before her and Mercer? Discuss in the comments section and let me know whether you want me to be your new VM recapper. I hope the CW orders enough episodes to let  us VM fans get through all 3 mini-mysteries this season. Oh and btw- I still love Piz!  Did you see his dance moves?