Recap: Veronica Mars: The Final Workout

I was psyched for tonight’s episode of Veronica Mars because it was a Veronica goes to jail storyline and I have always been fascinated by women on the inside. I like how they buzz their hair and hold cigarette packs in their rolled up sleeves and girl-rape each other. Unfortunately, this is the NEW CW and not HBO, so there was no bitch slapping or dyke drama. There is also no room in the show’s budget to hire a cellmate for Vero, so she’s stuck alone with Sheriff Workout, Barney Fife, and a cute jailhouse hairdo. <><>
There was lot to get to tonight, and the writers rocked it out. Did Coach Barry’s son kill him? Did Dean O’Begley’s son kill him? (If I was a parent, this episode would have had me seriously worried.) Will Veronica finally forgive the guy we all know she’s gonna end up with? And why isn’t Logan pouting? The peanut butter cookies Veronica brought Josh last week caused him to have an allergic reaction. When he was given a shot in the ambulance, he recovered enough to escape. Veronica obviously helped Josh, so where is he? She refuses to talk. Sheriff Workout has never been too good at interrogation (or evidence gathering or crime scene analysis or general case solving of any kind), but the episode where he did bench presses in his office was forever burned into my brain and I am very forgiving of men with huge biceps. I wouldn’t want him in charge of finding a lost loved one, but I wouldn’t mind him laying down the law at home every once in awhile. I admit it! I left the towel on the floor! Book me, Tiger!

I’d elect him.

When Veronica calls from jail, Keith is at Josh’s mom’s house, assuring her that he will find her son. The creepy little brother plays classical music in the next room with a blank, emotionless look on his face. Ew. He either killed someone, or he’s gonna. Creepy Brilliant Kids are always bad news on mystery shows.

While Keith is in the kitchen (he didn’t even have to lie about needing a glass of water this time!) waiting on hold for the county jail, he glances down at the counter and sees an envelope with Vinnie’s return address. Why would a classy lady like Mrs. Barry need to hire a slime ball like Vinnie?He goes to see Vero in jail. She has adapted nicely, taking up a push up routine and drawing a Thug Life tattoo on her arm. Kristen Bell is a musical theater kid, so I hope for a Chicago number, but no luck. Cliff comes to visit with good news about the “cookie incident”. Josh’s cellmate ate the evidence, so there’s no case against her. This doesn’t solve Josh’s problem though. Is he guilty of murdering his own father? It’s getting harder for Veronica believe in Josh, what with him running away and leaving her to rot in jail and all, but Cliff thinks the kid’s on the up and up. Unfortunately, Sheriff workout doesn’t have to let Veronica go yet, and he’s going to let her stew as long as possible. All she asks for is a couple of cartons of cigs to use as currency on the inside. LOL, V.

On his way out, Daddy Mars runs into Vinnie and his horrible rug. Were they both working the Coach Barry murder case? Vinnie says he was hired by Mrs. Barry about a month ago to find out if the Coach was having an affair. He didn’t get the money shot, but he does have a picture of the Coach getting cozy with a married lady in a parking lot…Keith heads over to his meeting with Dean O’Begley’s assistant who goes over his schedule the day he died. The Dean had called in his Xanax prescription that day and had an uncomfortable meeting with Mel Stoltz (the big Hearst donor who made the Dean reinstate the Greek system). When he gets back to his office, Professor Landry comes in and slams a bugging device down on the desk. It was in his cell phone. Does it belong to Keith? Keith denies it, but Landry’s pissed. Last week Veronica started a friendly conversation with him and he realized later that she was playing him, trying to probe his alibi. No one likes feeling tricked, but the fact that the Criminology Professor was duped by one of his own students really stung. He lays down his alibi. He checked into the Grand at 7:30 then watched the Clipper game in his room until Mindy showed up at 8:15. They made dirty nasty love before watching “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and falling asleep. The end. Leave him alone, because he’s really starting to get pissed. Someone needs a Sharky massage!Keith heads over to the station and tries to explain to Workout Cop that the Dean O’Begley’s death was a murder. He had traces of alcohol and Xanax in his bloodstream, but he was out of pills. Mindy had picked up the prescription that night, meaning someone had slipped him drugs. Damn that happens on this show a lot. Finally, Lamb listens and has Barney Fife call in Mindy O’Dell. It was just a quick glimpse, but I could swear I saw a look of deep thought on Sheriff Workout’s face. He’s thinking now? This can’t be a good sign.

When he gets Mindy to the station to grill her, she easily deflects everything he throws her way. Yes, two or three hours is a long time to have sex, but she and Landry are in good shape. Yes, she picked up the Xanax prescription that night, but she never saw him again to give him the pills. And yes, there are pills missing from the bottle because she had been a little depressed lately and took some. Sheriff Workout looks crushed. He finally put some effort into thinking, and it just didn’t work. What’s the point of even trying? Note to writers. This is where he should have taken off his shirt and bench-pressed the desk. You’re trying to build stronger viewership…I’m just saying.

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Beefcake = Massive Viewership

Logan comes to snap a picture of Veronica behind bars. And this is why they will end up together, people. They decide to be adults about breaking up and he offers to help her if she needs anything. She asks him to get her wireless card from Barney Fife and take it to Mac for her, which he does with bells on. Parker answers the door and there is an awkward moment. Uh-oh, you know what awkward moments mean on this show. The perfect example of awkward moment love is sitting on the bed. Mac is happy with her vegan cheese, and I wanna “aww!” every time she giggles at Bronson. I try it. She giggles a lot and I “aw” a lot and my dog is looking at me like I’m crazy. Parker asks Logan if she can “borrow” him for awhile and I get scared. Two reformed hos can turn each other back real quick. Alcoholics don’t go to bachelor parties for a reason. Mac, Parker and Bronson are doing a Couples Valentine’s Day Scavenger Hunt at school and they’re missing a man. Logan doesn’t have custody of his new best friend today, so he agrees to play.

Wallace visits Veronica in jail and tells her that Mason didn’t show up for practice and no one’s seen or heard from him. Is there any chance he’s lying about seeing Josh on the freeway with his father that night? They are interrupted by Lamb, who comes in to set Veronica free. He knows Wallace but can’t place him. “You told me I should go see the Wizard and ask him for some guts.” LOL. Lamb asks “So did you?” and Wallace says “Yeah. He told me you were the only Sheriff in the world he considers a true friend of Dorothy.” LOL. Shoot and score, kid. Shoot and score.

When Cliff drops Veronica off at home that night, she is greeted by Josh in a Columbine kid hoodie. He wants to show her something in the trunk of a car. It’s a bound and gagged Mason. Josh had kidnapped him and put him in the trunk of his own car. “I know he killed my Dad, Veronica! You have to believe me!” He’s holding a gun. The gun was Mason’s, but it’s a twenty two, not a forty five. Josh doesn’t understand and gets all up in Mason’s taped off grill. “Why did you lie about seeing me there that night?!?” Veronica tries to convince Josh to turn himself in so he won’t look so guilty. It’s too late for that. All he can do now is run. His grandfather left him ten thousand dollars worth of coins in a safety deposit box but he needs an ID proving he’s twenty one to pull them out without a parent’s signature. He knows she made a fake ID for Wallace so he needs her to hook him up. She tells him to leave and call her the next day on a temporary cell phone. When she untapes Mason he insists he saw Josh on the side of the freeway with his dad the night of his death. He may have lied about having a gun, but he wasn’t lying about this.

When Daddy Mars comes home he asks Veronica why there’s a gun in the freezer and she gives him an update. He returns the favor by showing her the pics Vinnie took of Coach Barry consorting with a married woman in a parking lot. The woman’s husband is a Navy Captain, and he would own a Colt 45. I would be so flattered to have a husband that would be so jealous he killed someone over me, but Daddy Mars doesn’t think it’s such a good thing. Ah, well. To each his own. Veronica tells Keith that she convinced Josh to turn himself in and that she also promised him she would help him sell his coin collection so he could skip the country, but don’t worry. She only promised the ID to get him to go to the cops.

Logan, Parker, Mac and Bronson search the library for the first clue in their scavenger hunt. They find the book they are looking for. The Kama Sutra! They have to reenact pose number 73 and take pictures of themselves. Those crazy kids! So innocent! They have no idea there’s some pervert out there rubbing his crotch to their JPEGs.

Horny college kids and the perverts who love them.

I hope this scavenger hunt doesn’t spawn a genital wart outbreak. Smartening up, the kids make their next stop at the drugstore to buy Super Titans. I think the Pharmacist is played by the Nurse that turned against Susan on Desperate Housewives. I guess this woman just has a face for the role of Disapproving Medical Worker. This scavenger hunt is getting downright sexy!

When Keith gets home late, Veronica is still up on her computer. He had told her Hank Landry was watching a Clippers game at the time of the murder. She found out that Channel 9 always pushes their programming back an hour when there are Clippers games, which means the wasted stoner that heard the shot while he was walking back to his dorm to watch Space Ghost actually saw the show at three thirty that night, not two thirty. That meant Mindy’s car had already been returned to the valet. I think TV just helped clear a woman of murder. This show amazes me sometimes.

The crazy kids are at the beach. They have to fetch a heart balloon out in the water and Bronson can’t swim. Finally, Parker gets to unleash her inner Blanche Devereaux and strip off that constricting sweater. Logan unbuttons his shirt and they run into the water together. Aw. Ew. I just can’t buy it. Sorry. This poor girl is gonna have her heart smashed to pieces. How much does one girl have to go through? <><>

Veronica and Keith go to the Sheriffs Station to tell Lamb that they figured out the timeline was wrong, making Mindy innocent, when Barney Fife comes in with the results of the finger printing done on the Dean’s keyboard. They are…drumroll please…Steve Botando’s! Slimy Cheesy Actor Dad! I told you actors were horrible people! Daddy Mars doesn’t buy it. The anorexic little bastard didn’t seem like the “perfect murder” type. Well it wouldn’t be a perfect murder if he left fingerprints, Keith. Veronica reminds him that two men were heard arguing that night, which makes sense if Botando was there.

When the crazy kids get to the end of the hunt, they find out they only won third place. (sad horns) When Bronson leaves, I get a flirty vibe as Logan looks off after him longingly. Was this a trick of my gay ass imagination? Or is it the easiest way to end LoVe to make way for the Piz?

Mac and Bronson are past their awkward phase and decide to do the deed between classes. I pause the Tivo to dance around the room and shout to the heavens. You better work it, Mac!!

Cheesy Actor Dad has been brought in for questioning by Sheriff Workout, but refuses to say anything but “that bitch framed me!” when asked about his fingerprints on the Dean’s keyboard. Cliff is his lawyer. OK now, how big is this town? I know we’re shooting with a low budget these days, but seriously. The man is overworked. He does still come through for the slimy Cheeseball, though. Batando was arrested at a Laundromat 100 yards outside Neptune, which means Sheriff Workout has no jurisdiction and anything Cheesy Actor Dad says is inadmissible. Ruh-roh.

Keith shows up at the house of the woman Vinnie suspected was having an affair with coach Barry. Turns out that she’ a neurologist who was treating Coach Barry for a terminal brain disease that was about to get extremely painful. She says whoever killed the Coach did him a huge favor. By the time he relays all this to Veronica, he has had more time to dig. Two days after Vinnie took the “incriminating” pictures, the Coach’s wife took out a larger life insurance policy out on her husband. Making it worse (or better, depending on where you’re standing), if the Coach died from an accident, say a carjacking, the payout doubled and left the family with five million dollars. Mrs. Barry had a solid alibi, so if she is guilty, she would have had to hire a hitman, and it’s not like she had any money to spare. That gets Veronica thinking about the ten grand in coins sitting in a safety deposit box. She finishes up Josh’s fake id and gets him to the bank. If the coins were missing from the safety deposit box, it would prove to her that Mrs. Barry hed the money to kill her husband. Wow. This season has a lot of kernels about family members murdering each other, and I don’t think it’s coincidence that my mother called and left a voice mail as I typed that paragraph. This is the fourth time today! Yes, mother! I’m within my allotted Weight Watchers points! Let me be, woman!

Turned out the coins were in the box, along with a DVD addressed to Josh. Also turned out that my mom was just calling to tell me my sister broke her toe. Two family murders averted so far! Keith goes to Mrs. Barry’s to confront her about his hitman theory, and she is understandably pissed that he is insinuating she had her son kill her husband for insurance money. She tells him to wait there. She wants to show him something. He has a hunch that things aren’t right, and we all know where Daddy Mars’ hunches lead. I know they write this character as kind of a wimp to make Veronica look smarter, but do they also need to make him look high all the time?

He sneaks around the house, not trusting Mrs. Barry for a second. She pulls a gun out of a hiding place in the bedroom wall and tries to find Keith. He jumps out from around the corner and twists the gun out of her hand. She wasn’t trying to kill him, for crying out loud. She just wanted to show him the gun. It was her husband’s from his old Army days. She hid it because she thought it would make her son look guilty, but then she read on the internet that they can test guns, so now it might clear his name. She also learned some other things on the internet, but Keith is too high to experiment with her new info.

Keith takes the gun to the Sheriff’s Station in time to overhear a call to the O’Begley house. Breaking and entering. Batando! Lamb refuses Keith’s help, but he follows him there anyway. Sheriff Workout does pretty well sneaking around the house with his gun pulled at first, but gets excited when he hears Cheesy Actor Dad yelling “Better hide, you crazy bitch!” at Mindy and crashing glass all over the place. When Lamb sees himself in a mirror, he shoots it, blowing his cover. Hope the kids aren’t wandering around the house today, or they’re dead meat. Batando sneaks up behind Lamb and beats him with a baseball bat until Barney Fife comes in and shoots him dead. A Slimy Cheesy Actor shot down. I felt America collectively not cry. Sheriff Workout mutters “I…smell…bread.” LOL. Keith arrives on the scene, but it is too late. Shocker.

Veronica watches the Coach’s final message DVD with Josh. The Coach said that he was responsible for his own death. He was dying, and decided to save his family the pain and medical financial drain and just get it over with with the help of a good friend. Veronica sees someone else in the shot. From behind, it looks just like Josh, which would explain Mason’s accusations. Josh identifies the man as Assistant Coach Yager, one of his father’s oldest friends. When Veronica gets home, Keith is pissed. He found out about her making the fake id for Josh. She tells him the whole story, which ends with Josh leaving to Mexico until his family’s insurance money is safe. He felt it was the manly thing to do. Running away to another country to evade the police and commit insurance fraud doesn’t sound so manly to me, but I cry when I can’t get the peanut butter jar open, so what do I know?

Keith gets a call from the County Commissioner. Sheriff Workout is dead. WHAT?!?! His last line was “I smell bread”?!?!? Good Lord, writers. You’re cruel people, and I love you. Poor Don Lamb! Logan, workout duty is all yours now. Please don’t let us down.

While cleaning out the gutters in the basement (poor Weevil. Please get this guy a better job), Weevil finds a bag of bloody gloves and a shirt with Hank Landry’s anagram on it. When Mindy arrives at the police station to be questioned by the new Sheriff, it’s Daddy Keith! He knows either she is covering for Landry, or he’s covering for her, and he’s not letting her leave until she fesses up. We all know he’s on the wrong track here (why would a Criminology Professor kill someone while wearing a shirt with his own initials on it?), but it’s good to see Keith in uniform and I’m psyched to see what Veronica will be capable of now that she has a full access pass to the Sheriff’s Department. How does that work, anyway? Don’t people have to vote for the Sheriff? Wouldn’t the Deputy Sheriff move up in the world? Poor Barney Fife.

Another case solved, but Veronica can’t really celebrate. Josh has to hide for three or four years, her friend (whether she admits it or not) was killed, and to top it all off, she sees Logan and Parker flirting over lunch together in the cafeteria. (sad horns) So what do you think, dear Readers? Did Mindy kill O’Begley after all? Did Lamb deserve a baseball bat to the head? Will Daddy Mars start working out now that he has a hot uniform again?

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