The Not So Magic Schoolbus

By Erica From I Heart TV

The second season of Veronica Mars premiered on Wednesday night with
a ratings increase over last year’s pilot of 16%, and it was well worth the wait. A lot happened
over Veronica’s summer, and we hear about it all in about a million
different flashbacks. Veronica’s with Duncan now! Logan’s sleeping
with Charisma Carpenter! Dick’s not a dick! Meg hates Veronica! Weevil
kind of hates Veronica! Also, a whole bunch of people are most likely
dead. It’s totally awesome.Last season, on Veronica Mars, Veronica almost got burned to death
while trapped in a refrigerator. Didn’t she ever see that episode of
Punky Brewster? Did Cherry’s near-fatal game of Hide and Seek teach us
nothing?

We open in a dimly lit coffee lounge/restaurant. Veronica is our
hostess, outfitted in a tacky gold vest and trying to be normal.
Because normal is the watchword, as we’ll hear many times in this
episode. We learn that Veronica has a boyfriend and that Aaron Echolls
is behind bars for the murder of Lilly Kane. Everything is hunky-dory
for Veronica, even with the ugly vest. Until…

Kelvin Moore, an athlete and former stoner, comes to ask for
Veronica’s help. He’s failed his school drug test and been suspended
from sports for senior year. Veronica refuses to help, because
hostessing in a vaguely Asian-themed coffee shop pays more and is more
fun. Um, right. Get on with it! We know she’ll be back to sleuthing
before the 15-minute mark. Calvin tells Veronica she’s an 09er now,
with a rich boyfriend, and that last year was just an experiment (like
her end-of-the-year makeout session with Shelly Pomeroy the year
before, but with way less sexy results.)

Veronica’s boss calls her over to the television, where her dad is
being interviewed by none other than Julie Chen of Big Brother. Keith
has written a book called “Big Murder, Small Town” (rejected titles
included “That’s Right, I F*cking Told You So!”), and Julie is
interviewing him with a lot of weird head-dipping and monotone-voiced
questions. Ahh, so that’s why you guys call her the Chenbot.
Veronica’s voiceover reviews the events of that night.

In flashback (and there are many, many flashbacks in this episode),
Veronica wakes up, hears knocking, opens the door, and says “I was
hoping it would be you.” And then, she hesitates, and says to the
person whose back is to her, “Logan?” It’s unclear whether she
hesitates because something is clearly wrong with him, or if she
hesitates because she thought it was Duncan. Don’t you hate when you
get your ex whose dad tried to kill you confused with the ex who you
thought was your brother? Logan limps around, covered in blood, and
collapses in her arms. The look on her face says “Man, I almost just
died, and now I have to deal with this shit?” In a very pretty shot,
she nurses his wounds while he takes us back, in a
flashback-within-a-flashback, to when the bikers showed up as he was
dancing on the railing of the bridge. Logan, who I believe is wearing
man sandals (they go very nicely with his beaded necklace), kicks
Weevil sharply in the face, knocking him unconscious. The other bikers
kick the shit out of Logan in return, and he wakes up with a knife is
his hand and a dead Felix next to him. In case you were wondering,
Felix’s last seen words were “Oh son! You don’t know what you just
did.” Frankly, I would have preferred “Oh snap!” but I’ll take what I
can get.

When she shows up for the first day of school, Veronica discovered
that Wallace has also failed a drug test and been suspended from
sports. When Veronica says “but you don’t do drugs,” Wallace regresses
to fifth grade and replies “No duh, Sherlock!” He tells V that 5 other
kids were also suspended from sports…everyone except the rich kid.
Wait, do you think it has something to do with him being rich? I never
would have guessed. I am kind of surprised, though, that Meg also
failed the test. Veronica finally agrees to help, and we have our very
first case of the season.

New credits!

Wallace details the drug tests for Veronica. It involves signing a cup
of your pee. Growing up, I always hated going to the doctor because
the bathroom was all the way out near the door in the waiting room,
and so any time they asked for a urine sample, you had to carry a cup
of your urine past all the other kids in the waiting room. Why do they
make it so difficult? Wallace asks V where her boyfriend is, and we
flash back to Duncan, arriving at Veronica’s place of business. Mommy
and Daddy Kane have moved to Napa to escape the scrutiny of their
trial, so Duncan is staying at a hotel. Logan shows up then, still a
little bruised, and marks his territory by peeing on Veronica. Oops, I
mean kissing. In present time, we learn that Logan and Duncan no
longer speak, but unlike the rest of this paragraph, it has nothing to
do with urine.

Veronica does some sleuthing on the drug test case, and while I love
every second of this show, this mystery is kind of boring. Kelvin
implicates a kid named Butters, who was pants-ed in the gym by Kelvin
and mocked by the rest of the athletes, who are (except for Meg) all
minorities. Wow, it’s a race AND class conspiracy. Well, except for
Meg. Her only difference from the other 09ers is that she’s nice. Or
at least she WAS nice, until Duncan dumped her. Now she’s a bitch, at
least to Veronica, but I kind of like her better this way. She doesn’t
have any ground to stand on, since Duncan was Veronica’s boyfriend
first, but it’s always fun to see a nice person go totally over the
edge. And I swear I wrote that line without thinking about what’s
coming next.

In yet another flashback, spurred on by Veronica’s entrance through
the school’s new metal detectors, we learn that Logan was indicted for
Felix’s murder. The weapon was never found though (Logan threw it into
the water, where it rests wit h his dead mother) and so Logan’s lawyer
got him off, and the less affluent residents of Neptune were not
happy. Ok, we get it, CLASS TENSION OMG! Rich people and poor people
hate each other!

Though, I guess things have escalated to a pretty dangerous degree, as
we learn when Veronica and Logan passionately make out in his car
while parked in front of her house. He tells Veronica he’s in love
with her, and at this point I turned to look at my two viewing
companions and discovered they were so overcome with emotion and
excitement that they were actually holding hands. They were much more
thrilled than Veronica, who brushes it off as Logan trying to get into
her pants without even acknowledging how hurtful that might be. Sure
Veronica, you can catch killers, but you’re going to break Logan’s
heart, and that is not allowed! Before she can either hurt him more,
someone shoots through Logan’s back window. CLASS TENSION OMG!

After testing Wallace’s urine, Veronica figures out that the parents
of the kids that will replace the suspended athletes paid a lab tech
to tamper with the results. Snore.

Back at school, Naima from America’s Next Top Model is the new
journalism teacher, and she asks Veronica for a permission slip to go
to the Sharks’ field. Because baseball never really enters my mind as
a possibility, I was very confused at this point, wondering why a HS
journalism class was going to the zoo, and why the sharks would be in
a field. Even though Veronica mentioned baseball. This episode was a
lot to absorb, okay? Also, Naima’s terribly wooden acting left me
unable to think coherently. Stick with modeling, Naima. No speaking
for you.

Flashback, again: Logan had to take summer school classes, because
finding out that his dad killed his girlfriend, nearly getting killed,
and possibly killing someone else really distracted him from his
studies. Veronica is walking through the parking lot with him as he
tells her how Trina is trying to sell their story to a TV network when
Dick and Beaver show up, and god damn it they’re making me like Dick a
little! His name is Dick, and last season he was the biggest asshole
in Neptune, and now I like him, just because he greets V as “Logan’s
special lady friend who I approve of wholeheartedly, with no doubts or
reservations.” I like to think that maybe Dick is just a little dumb,
but cares so much about Logan as a friend that he’s willing to make
amends with Veronica.

Dick and the Beav are loading gas canisters into a truck, like way to
go guys, you’re trying to make Veronica like you, but do you not
recall how she was set on fire a few short months ago? They claim it’s
to vandalize the Pan High football field, which is, by the way, still
a crime, but really they’re going to go torch the community pool. Ok,
maybe Dick is still a jerk.

Back in the present, Beaver dives into the Casablancas pool and
splashes Logan and Dick. “Don’t make me get all Ordinary People on you
Beav,” Dick says, as though he’s actually read Ordinary People. I
guess maybe he’s seen the movie. Beav reminds him that it’s the older
brother who dies there. Then we get our first glimpse of Charisma
Carptenter in a bikini. She’s a little too flirtatious with her little
stepchildren, but she seems to treat them well enough. Dick asks Logan
what his plans are, and Logan says “As much as I enjoy the company of
men, I have other plans tonight,” while making a weird hand gesture
that Dick mimics while they hand-gesture high-five.

Am I missing something? Was it a V for vagina? I watched this scene a
few times and
that’s all I can come up with, but I’ve never made a genital-oriented
high-five so I’m not sure if that’s really what it is.

At work, Veronica is told that her boyfriend has arrived, and she
walks up and kisses…Duncan! I have to admit that I was spoiled on
this little bit of info, but was this surprising to anyone? It seemed
like they were dropping some pretty obvious clues throughout the
episode, but I’m curious.

Veronica and Duncan meet up by the bus to go on the school trip, where
they’re accosted by a sullen Logan. He tells Veronica he’ll miss her,
but she blows him off. In flashback, we learn that Veronica dumped
Logan because he had “become a different person” (a nice choice V, I
don’t think “it’s not you, it’s me” would have worked there), one who
sets fire to community pools. I’m not excusing Logan’s behavior, but
all the flashbacks in this episode take place over at most 3 months,
and in the time leading up to those 3 months, Logan’s mom committed
suicide, he discovered his dad killed his girlfriend, he was almost
beaten to  death, and he was arrested for murder. Pool vandalism is
never okay, but maybe you could cut him a break, Veronica? Oh, but
then I guess you couldn’t go back to the guy you thought was your
brother, who had sex with you while you were both on GHB and then left
you there to think you were raped. Never mind.

Logan doesn’t take it well, especially when Veronica accuses him of
enjoying all of this. He takes it out on a lamp, which gets him shoved
up against a wall by Keith, who tells him never to return.

Back in present day, on the bus, Veronica and Duncan hold hands while
Dick sits behind them and complains about a death smell at the back of
the bus. He makes eyes at a cute girl sitting across from him who is
in no way his type, especially if you consider that his last
girlfriend was Madison Sinclair, a.k.a. Bitch Barbie, and this girl is
more the Amelie type.

Logan arrives at the Casablancas house and is greeted by Charisma, who
promptly disrobes once Logan asks if Dick and Beaver can come out and
play. Get it? Get it? I think I’m going to have to start calling them
Richard and Cassidy in my head, because this is getting gross.

At the Sharks’ field, Steve Guttenberg, candidate for mayor, yammers
on about baseball. Turns out he planned this field trip so that his
daughter, Gia (the Amelie type Dick’s drooling over), could make some
friends. Oh, that’s a bad sign, when your dad has to help you make
friends. Something about Gia seems really off to me. She’s just
funny-looking, and her dye job is way too dark. She also talks too
much, and too fast, like a bootleg Rory Gilmore. Although her dad says
she’s a “cool kid,” so it must be true.

Dick tells Duncan and Veronica  that he doesn’t want to take that
“stank-ass” bus back to Neptune, so his dad is sending the limo. Wait
a minute, Dick is a journalism student? Dick knows how to read? Meg
refuses to ride in the limo with Duncan and Veronica, so Veronica
decides to take the bus back to try to talk to Meg and make amends.
Because that’s worked so well so far.

After that fails, we get a musical montage flashback of Duncan
stalking Veronica at her place of work every day. He even clears
tables for her, and on her birthday he leaves her a box containing a
fortune cookie.  Veronica, impressed at his servitude and impressed by
what she reads on her fortune (which we don’t get to read, grrr),
falls back in love with him. I think they did this in montage form
because they knew that Duncan and Veronica’s banter is stilted and
boring.

The bus pulls into a gas station for a break, and Veronica sees
Lilly’s ghost dart off to the side of the building. Poor use of
Lilly’s ghost! When she follows, she finds Weevil, who seems to have
gotten burlier since last year. Meg lets the bus drive off without
Veronica while V and Weevil argue about Felix’s stabbing, Veronica’s
return to the 09ers, and the time the bikers shot at Logan’s car,
which Weevil seems not to have known about. He pretends to drive off
on his motorcycle, but then comes back and offers her a ride. Aw,
Weevil. Weevil, of course, does not wear a helmet, because helmets
aren’t cool and head injuries totally are.

Well, I guess he only had one helmet, so he let Veronica wear it. Aw,
Weevil again.

They see smoke in the distance, and Weevil pulls over. The limo is
there, and at first I thought they had just decided to pull over and
have a little impromptu party. But we hear screaming, and Gia is
starting to cry, saying “it just went straight off the cliff,” saying
“they’re all dead” over and over. Duncan spots Veronica at that point
and is so grateful to see her that I almost believe in their
relationship for a minute. We pan out over the cliff, where pieces of
the bus lie scattered below. Guess Veronica doesn’t have to worry
about making it up to Meg anymore, huh? But it’s Neptune, and nothing
happens accidentally, and I believe we have our new season-long
mystery. Funny how all the main characters were coincidentally not on
the bus.

What did you think? Are you on the Veronica Mars bandwagon yet?