VMI 2.03 Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang transcript
Hear this episode at VMIpod.com/2-03
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning sex, murder and violence.
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
Cassidy Casablancas hires Veronica to investigate whether his stepmother Kendall is violating her prenup by cheating on his father.
Shock discovery 1: Kendall is cheating with...Logan! Well, we knew already, but they didn’t.
Shock discovery 2: Richard Casablancas’s property fortune is a great big scam!
Jackie’s into Wallace, possibly also into some other dude, but not into Pride and Prejudice; and not even Colin Firth can bring her round.
And there’s another karaoke scene, so adopt the brace position, you know the drill by now.
JOY: With a rock-hard underbelly that can go all night, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: Keeping my heart rate in the red zone, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations, Season 2 Episode 3: Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang.
HZ: Was the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang a thing here?
JOY: Yes, but that's all I know. The title.
HZ: It's not a super relevant reference for them to make. There's a child catcher in it. So I suppose if you're like, well, Kendall's sleeping with a schoolboy...
JOY: OK. But ‘child catcher’, what does that mean?
HZ: Catches children?
JOY: Like a like a dog catcher, but for children.
HZ: So a very busy episode of Veronica Mars. Our top five things in this episode: at 5, for me, is the new to me teacher Mr. Pope. I love the teachers at this school.
JOY: I love this teacher at this school. He's so into it.
HZ: He's so enthusiastic about teaching the kids to be Future Business Leaders of America. In order for Veronica to have extra credit for her college applications - and all of her detective work unfortunately doesn't seem to count, which seems very unfair - she's doing some resumé packing and doing Future Business Leaders of America, which is just full of rich people.
JOY: Rich boys; no girls except Veronica.
HZ: Dick Casablancas being a customary Dick; Socialist Duncan, because he is a rich boy, even though he's socialist for a rich boy. And Mr. Pope, who when he's introducing Richard Casablancas to talk about his property empire, he sounds like a compere, like, "Please welcome to the stage, Richard Casablancaaaas!" And he's such a fan of Richard Casablancas, the real fanboy. It's hilarious.
RICHARD CASABLANCAS: A single $50 share in my company -
MR POPE: $52.16, to be precise.
RICHARD CASABLANCAS: Very good.
JOY: Now, if you were running a scheme, if you were scamming loads of people, would you go into a high school and give a presentation on your scam? Specifically, if you saw that noted teen detectoress Veronica Mars was in this group?
HZ: Richard Casablancas doesn't seem as familiar with Veronica as other people in Neptune.
JOY: That's true. I just assume word gets around town. But when he is at work, family doesn't exist; and when he's with his family, work doesn't exist. So it stands to reason that only work and family exist for him and nothing outside of that.
HZ: Well, certainly, clothes that fit don't exist for him, because he's wearing some billowing brown trousers and then a blazer that is way too big for him, and it has brass buttons, so I think he probably got it off a rich old dude from the 1980s.
JOY: Yeah, it was probably just hanging around in wardrobe.
HZ: But it just makes him seem like he's shrunk a bit. He's got Richard Gilmore's wardrobe, but he's a slimmer build. And I didn't really understand all the financial talk, like: "portfolio, picture of an apartment building." But he's doing this like PowerPoint presentation, and whenever the slide changes, there's a little sound effect.
RICHARD CASABLANCAS: Here's a chart [BLEEP] of our market capitalization [BLOOP] versus earnings over the last two years. [BLEEBLOOP]
HZ: Is that normal?
JOY: I think he must have programmed that in himself.
HZ: It's so annoying. He's talking about REITs. I don't even know if those are real.
JOY: It seems like they would be real. It's people buying shares in a property. So you can invest even if you don't have millions of dollars to invest. You can be a shareholder essentially in one of these properties and hopefully get a return on your money.
HZ: Do you know what's supposed to happen at Future Business Leaders of America?
JOY: I really don't. I was not a future Business Leader of America member or attendee. And yet here I am, leading business in America, in what is now the future.
HZ: That's true. It's never too late. So I assume it's just something where they go and learn capitalism so that they can keep perpetuating an unfair system.
JOY: Well, in their defence, what are you going to do?
HZ: Since it mainly seems to be the superwealthy characters that attend this class, and not the ones that maybe could use increasing their wealth, rather just keeping their wealth in the billions.
JOY: While Mr Pope is talking about how he is going to retire on his incredible earnings when he sells off his Richard Casablancas REIT holdings, he points to a boat - he just has a picture of thumbtacked of the boat that he's going to sail away on.
HZ: That's what gets him through every class with these fucks.
JOY: And Duncan just knows what that boat is. So let's just put a pin in it. Duncan eyeballs that boat from across the room and is like, "oh, that's a blah blah blah blah blah." He knew the model. He knew the type of boat.
HZ: I can just imagine Duncan being a trainspotter, but for boats.
JOY: Sure, sure.
MR POPE: At the end of this year, I'll hang up my stock market spurs, buy some cozy T-bills, and literally sail off into the sunset.
DUNCAN: Cool. Is that a Swan 40?
MR POPE: Yeah, nice, huh? From 1971. I would have retired earlier, but actually the restoration's been tricky. We had to reseal the hull twice.
HZ: But the unexpected side effect of this plot, and one for which Veronica unfortunately will not probably receive college credit, is that she uncovers that Richard Casablancas's property empire is some bullshit.
VERONICA: It is a house of cards. And someone's gonna sneeze on it - me. Mr Pope, dump your stock.
MR POPE: You don't dump it, Veronica. You sell it to somebody else. I'd just be sticking some other sucker with the consequences. I don't think I can live with that.
VERONICA: Then I guess you won't be taking an early retirement.
JOY: How sweet is it to see somebody in this world, in Neptune, where moral compasses are totally unpredictable, to see this guy say, "I can't unload this, I'd be putting these stocks into somebody else's portfolio. I would be tricking someone else. I'd be scamming someone else. And I can't do that."
HZ: He instantly makes this decision that he's not going to sell, even though no one else knows this yet. Veronica seems like pissed off at him. And I think it's probably because, like, why does he have to suffer for the crimes of the ultra rich? But he doesn't want to perpetuate the system.
JOY: Right. Which is beautiful. What's also kind of a silver lining is: don't you get the idea that Mr Pope actually loves this job? And he would be like lonely and bored on a boat? I feel like he would be much happier in this class doing his little Future Business Leaders of America PowerPoint. "Look at this fucking chart, who's going to have the highest holdings at the end of the semester" kind of deal. He seems like he really gets something out of it.
HZ: Yeah. It's quite nice on this show seeing a character that actually seems quite content, even if they're not at a great advantage. There's also a bit where the class has each been given a theoretical one million dollars.
POPE: Congratulations, FBLAers: you are now worth exactly one million dollars.
LOGAN: What? You mean I've lost money? Heads will roll.
HZ: This is not the class for Logan, but I guess he either has to get more credit for college applications, or he just doesn't want to be by himself.
JOY: I think that might be the thing. He doesn't want to be alone.
HZ: Is this class every day as well? Or is this like several weeks?
JOY: Really hard to say. Seems like maybe an after-school thing or something.
HZ: I think it's lunch because they're always eating lunch. Duncan's always got like a burger and fries and Veronica always just has a little box of salad.
JOY: And a big jug of milk. Mmmm, I love washing down burger with milk!
HZ: Dipping his fries in milk.
JOY: Oh, I mean, back when I drank Frostys, back when I drank dairy-based and frozen chocolate-flavoured beverages from Wendy's, which are called Frostys -
HZ: Thank you for the translation.
JOY: There's something about a hot crispy fry and a frozen Frosty chocolate - OK. This is not why we're here.
HZ: A problem for Logan with this class is that he and Duncan and Veronica are in it. At the beginning, when Duncan and Veronica - I mean, they're not being super PDA, but they're being kind of fond of each other, like they're having quite a good episode compared to last episode. There's a lot more sweetness to that coupling. But for Logan, he's just like, "UGH," he drops his lunch theatrically, "I lost my appetite!"
JOY: The drama!
HZ: And then later, there's this very kind of slight insult, but they lunge at each other and spill out into the corridor fighting. I suppose it's that thing they established in season one that Duncan is generally quite mellow, but when he when he breaks, he breaks. But you don't see much of the fighting because then it really cuts to the nurse's office, and she's like, "Well, whichever girl you're fighting over, she won't be impressed by this." And Logan's like, "Yeah, veronica would be impressed and hot for this." She always is! She's hot for a punch!
JOY: We know how she feels about punching.
HZ: But the true pain between them is not Veronica-based, not Logan losing Veronica; he's like, "She's in the rear-view mirror. But didn't you know what I was going through this summer and where were you? You were supposed to be my friend." And he was like, "Well, this summer I was busy dealing with the fact that your dad murdered my sister." So, touche.
JOY: And, importantly, I think, the last thing that Logan says as Duncan is leaving the nurse's office is, "I hate him, too," which like, you know, isn't something that's been shared between the two of them. And they both have this wound: Logan loved Lilly and Duncan loved Lilly and Mr Echolls killed her. What a difficult thing for a friendship to weather.
HZ: But I think that would put them on the same side somewhat, that they both hate Aaron Echolls and felt betrayed by him.
JOY: Maybe they'll get there. But Logan is just so sore. He felt like while he was deeply under attack, somebody who's been so close to him for so long was absent, for his own reasons and because of his own pain; but it's just like a rough situation for them to to work past. And Duncan dating Logan's ex, who's also Duncan's ex ex, doesn't help.
HZ: And also Logan just not really having friends, because last season for at least half of it he had Veronica as an ally and he had Duncan, and now he just has Casablancas brothers, who suck. And Kendall, who doesn't really care about him. And she's definitely not a safe haven; she's made that very clear. So in at four is a plot that initially seems like it's separate, but then all ties in with this Future Business Leaders of America stuff. Beaver hires Veronica to prove that his stepmother, Kendall Casablancas, is cheating on Richard Casablancas so that her prenup will be invalidated. He's like, "She's a gold digger; before they met, she was a Laker Girl earning ten grand a year," which is pretty difficult to live on in 2005 in LA, I would think. So you think, well, she sort of made the best of her situation. It's sort of like someone in - have you ever read House of Mirth by Edith Wharton?
JOY: I have not.
HZ: It's very good. It's someone in, is it late 19th, early 20th century, where you're like, OK, she behaves badly, but also didn't have a ton of options. So marrying into wealth was one of the only ones.
JOY: Sure. Yeah.
HZ: Although Kendall could just have got a different job. If the jobs that pay you for being hot don't pay much, get a different job. Because she's clearly very wily, very cunning. That's a useful skill. She probably could have done great in Silicon Valley at this time.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily we get to see an old Laker girl promo of Kendall.
HZ: They've done some wonderful, wonderful Kendall photo things.
JOY: Really nice. So Veronica's plan is to follow Kendall. She gets Kendall's schedule from Beaver and - long lens alert!
HZ: How long has it been since we've seen the long lens?!
JOY: Far too long. And it is broad fucking daylight. She's not in the safety of her car. She's like hiding behind a plant with a foot-long lens.
HZ: Or just walking directly behind Kendall through busy gym and then just standing in a doorway.
JOY: Snap snap snap!
HZ: I would have thought that people in a gym generally are not keen on having someone taking photos of them very obtrusively.
JOY: She's got to be a member at a pretty exclusive high-end gym, and thus you would expect the employees at this Equinox or similar to notice somebody taking photographs of the patrons with an enormous camera and say, "Hey, you can't do that in here."
HZ: How did Veronica even get into the gym? She's got all these costumes and disguises, and yet for the gym doesn't bother.
JOY: Maybe she's there on a day pass.
HZ: She refers several times to Kendall as a bimbo.
JOY: Rude!
HZ: I think that's rude. Cassidy is paying her a thousand dollars to get a photo of Kendall cheating. Initially she fails to provide this because she tracks her to the gym and she finds her exchanging gym bags with a guy -.
JOY: Well, she doesn't even know that she's exchanging gym bags; she just takes pictures of Kendall with this guy, then they go to a motel, then they go in the motel room, then they come out and they've traded bags and fucking eagle-eyed Beaver is like, "Who cares that she traded gym bags?" and Veronica's like, "Wait, what?" And it's fair, because they're both just kind of like nondescript black or charcoal-coloured duffel bags. So good on Beaver for noticing this.
HZ: Great detectivery. But that forces Veronica to raise her game.
JOY: And it's time to get buggy.
HZ: She's like, "Get me all the music that's on Kendall's iPod." 2005, this is a high tech plot, iPods. It's an iPod Shuffle, isn't it, it's a small one. And so then she creates an identical iPod Shuffle, and then she crosstrains next to Kendall, because I forgot: not everyone in town knows Veronica Mars. Kendall has never seen her. So Veronica starts talking to her while Kendall's wearing headphones and then just irritates her.
KENDALL: Can I help you with something before my heart goes out of the red zone?
VERONICA: Oh, totally. No, this'll just take, like, a second. Um, it's just, I think my player is acting funky, and I'm not sure if it's my player or my headphones, and I don't want to borrow my boyfriend's headphones because he has, like, major earwax and that would be totally gross, so could I -
KENDALL: - Borrow mine?
VERONICA: Yeah.
KENDALL: All right, just, you know, make it quick. My ass needs some major work here, okay?
HZ: Veronica also tells her that her ass looks awesome.
JOY: Nice.
HZ: And then you get the busy music that we've had in various Veronica-being-a-busy-detective montages before in this show. So she's switched the iPods and there's surveillance equipment in the iPod?
JOY: Yeah. And conveniently -
HZ: She takes it everywhere.
JOY: She takes everywhere, and it's prominently eye level.
HZ: It's never in a bag. It's never in a pocket.
JOY: It's so bonkers.
HZ: So she follows Kendall and this guy to a place called the Sandpiper Hotel.
JOY: And she thinks to herself, "Where have I heard that name before? Whyyyy...."
HZ: It was in the terrible PowerPoint presentation at the beginning. But it looked very different, didn't look like a little seaside motel in that, it looked like a big tower.
JOY: Yep. Yep. And she just happens to have the brochure in her bag. So she does a quick visual comparison, gets some pictures, and goes to see Mr Pope and says, "If I was gonna do some real estate fraud, how would I go about doing it?"
HZ: He's like, "There's a true Future Business Leader of America, and maybe a president." But she also follows the guy that Kendall has met with, and he's working in the courthouse where the sheriff's department also is. He's the assessor, Mr Montana; what do assessors do? I don't even know.
JOY: Something real estatey.
HZ: Seems like it. Thus we learn that the company is bullshit and he's inflating the stock value by selling fake properties. I'm not an expert on scams, unfortunately. So I was like, I'm just going to assume that this all holds together and I'm just gonna go with it.
JOY: And also, Helen - everybody, including Helen, stay tuned at the end of this episode for a quick pitch for me on some real estate that you could get in on the ground floor of. I have got a beautiful property I'm developing and shares are affordable, so...
HZ: “Get me the penthouse!” So she and Cassidy look at the pictures that the iPod that was actually a surveillance camera has taken; it takes a picture every 15 seconds. And thus Cassidy finds out that Kendall is cheating. And they both find out that Kendall is cheating with Logan because there's a picture of Logan shirtless with Kendall getting undressed in the background.
JOY: As if we haven't seen enough of Logan shirtless.
HZ: It's not for us, it's not for us. I'm sorry, Jenny, that there's no Weevil in this episode or the last episode.
JOY: Oh my god, where is my sweet Weevil? Or Leo? Would take either.
HZ: Veronica responds to this in a bizarre way. She goes to the Echolls house, which I would have thought would be maybe quite a difficult place for her to go, it has a lot of traumatic memories. And also, where is Aaron? Is Aaron not out on bail? Because he's rich enough.
JOY: Unknown.
HZ: She just like walks in, and walks into Logan's room where some sexpeopling has been taking place.
JOY: Lamps are all everywhere.
HZ: You know, when you're a sexperson, you hump a lot of lamps, and you leave them askew. And she and Logan have a very frosty chat.
VERONICA: I love what you've done with the place.
LOGAN: Yup, now you know what you were missing.
VERONICA: Is your girlfriend still here?
LOGAN: Girlfriend? Girlfriend, I don’t… no, you have to be a little more specific.
VERONICA: Let me clarify, the one's whose husband is going to break you in half when he finds out that his son's old cub scout camporee buddy is secretly ploughing his wife?
LOGAN: Aaah ha, that one is less a girlfriend and more a… playmate.
JOY: It's interesting because she's hurt and mad. Also, it's worth mentioning that before this happens, Veronica calls Logan and Kendall screens the call and is like, "Who's Veronica?" And Logan says it's somebody he goes to school with. And she says, "Oh, a schoolgirl. I already have a schoolboy. A schoolgirl might spice things up."
HZ: Disgusting - but that does make her only the third character in this whole series that has ever expressed any non-cis-het preferences of any kind.
JOY: Love it. Love to see it.
HZ: I don't love it and I wish she would stop referencing school kids as if that's sexy. Please stop! But then it feels like she's a product of the patriarchy, and maybe she had to do a lot of these fantasies for gross old men earlier in her career. But also Logan was gonna answer the phone while they were sexpeopling? That's bad etiquette. Don't you think it's weird that she just goes into the house and up to his room?
JOY: I mean, I wouldn't do it as an adult, but it doesn't seem particularly out of character for a headstrong teen who has confusing feelings about and toward her ex.
HZ: But the reason why she has gone there is so that she can walk out, upset, past a wall of Aaron Echolls posters, because as we know, he loves to have a lot of Aaron Echolls on display. And thus she sees a poster for the movie -
JOY: The Long Haul!
HZ: Aaron's breakout film, with the stunt coordinator Curly Moran. Thus these pieces click into place.
JOY: I believe it has to do with a stunt involving like a semi, a big vehicle, careening down a mountain or something.
HZ: Of all the people that would know how to make a large vehicle do a dramatic thing... But that also makes her think the bus crash was meant for her, and presumably that was like Aaron took revenge by getting someone to crash a bus that she was on. There's gotta be a lot of easier ways if you want to take revenge on Veronica. Aaron would just be like, go and kill her in her bed.
JOY: Yeah. Veronica, it's only episode three. Relax.
HZ: Everyone knows what Veronica's car looks like. Curly, go and sabotage the car. That kind of shit would be so much easier than this. Curly Moran is the guy who washed up on the beach with 'Veronica Mars' written on his palm in very clear Sharpie despite his body being in water. Which you would think would be suspicious, but instead it means Veronica is brought in by Sheriff Lamb for questioning. And although she sasses him some, ultimately she does not win in this scenario.
JOY: Well, nobody wins in this scenario.
VERONICA: So are you gonna tell me why I'm here, or should I just sit back and enjoy your impression of a mildly-constipated David Caruso?
LAMB: What can you tell me about your relationship with this man?
VERONICA: Ah yes, I remember that summer. He was a roadie for Whitesnake, I was singing backup for Boyz II Men. They said it would never work, but -
LAMB: I'm glad that you find this amusing.
HZ: And I hate to say it, because Lamb is an arse, but I had missed Veronica versus Lamb, as it turns out.
JOY: Yeah. He's a good foil, a good antagonist for her.
HZ: He's easy to hate. Veronica seems very surprised by all this. So that's another thing for her to investigate: this dead man and her name on his hand.
JOY: The list just keeps getting longer, Veronica.
HZ: The drinking game gets ever more sinister.
JOY: It really caught my eye, in addition to that wall of Aaron Echolls posters that Veronica was standing facing, over her shoulder then you could see the white Echolls grand piano, which was also covered in framed photographs, mostly of Aaron's face.
HZ: Logan is living in this house on his own? Or is Trina still there but unseen?
JOY: Trina is kind of an absent.
HZ: You would think that, things having gone the way they've gone, maybe Logan would have got rid of some of the pictures of Aaron that are everywhere.
JOY: That would require like effort and confronting a reality and stuff.
HZ: Okay, I understand that you wouldn't want to do that. But someone's keeping this place clean and tidy. Except for Logan's room. You'd've thought that the sex people would have knocked over a lot of framed photos.
JOY: Right. Right - well, they're just keeping it to one zone.
HZ: But also given that he's in this big house by himself, why do they do sexpeople things at the Casablancas house where Kendall's stepchildren and husband live?
JOY: Danger? For danger.
HZ: I guess. It's bit gross though, the thought of stepchildren... But then she's got a whole school boy toy thing going on.
JOY: Yeah. So that's that...
HZ: My favourite bit about this Future Business Leaders of America plot is that Cassidy goes to his dad to reveal the implicating photos of Kendall cheating. And he's like, "I'm really sorry, dad," and his dad's like, "Who took this?" Cassidy's like, "I hired a private investigator," and he's like, "Everyone! Everyone! Shred all the documents!".
JOY: "Shred shred shred shred shred!".
HZ: Stuffs his briefcase full of documents; runs out the office; there're some SEC officials pursuing him. He runs up to the roof where there's a helicopter waiting. Has there just been a helicopter waiting on the roof whenever Richard is in a building? The helicopter's like, this could be the hour, this could be the minute that everything comes tumbling down. What an incredible resource to have at your disposal.
JOY: Yeah, right? That's some fucking 09er shit.
HZ: Maybe that's the ultimate status symbol.
JOY: Right. A permacopter. In the next slot, a relatively brief thing that we should talk about: Keithlicia! Their romantic getaway to Chicago. Veronica asks Keith if he's going to propose.
HZ: We're like please, please, please!
JOY: Let it happen, let it happen! But he says no. And they go and stay at a hotel that has a famous jazz club up top, and she looks a little alarmed when he specifically names this place; she looks uncomfortable. She looks stoked about going away, less stoked when he says Chicago, and then even less stoked when he says, "I'm staying at this hotel and there's a jazz club on the top floor."
HZ: He seems very excited by a bit of hotel jazz. And again, I say there's no way that since the summer his book would have been written, published and he'd be on book tour. And yet here we are. Just suspend that disbelief. A year has passed without anything remarkable happening, and then the show cut back in for when the book was finally out. Keith also mentions that his book is 97 in The New York Times best seller chart.
JOY: Is The New York Times bestseller list the 100 best selling books? Is that the tip there?
HZ: I thought it was like the top 10 and then whichever are in the 90s. This couple - things are clearly going great for them because they just can't keep their hands off each other.
JOY: They're so in love.
HZ: Having a great time eating beef, drinking wine and snuggling, watching some jazz. So of course that can't last.
JOY: No. Because on their way out at the bar, a man says, "Cheri? Cheri?"
HZ: He's just ordering some sherry.
JOY: And Keith and Alisha keep walking; they get in the elevator and the guy just misses them, but he watches what floor their carriage stops on. Then he goes down to the desk and asks for the name of a white guy and a black woman who are staying somewhere on the third floor. The concierge is understandably resistant until this guy flashes a badge. What could it mean, Helen?
HZ: It's just his Future business Leaders of America badge from 1988.
JOY: Yeah, I have to say, I feel like I don't have a clear enough picture of what a police badge looks like to make me comfortable doing whatever somebody who showed me a badge tells me to do. If I was that guy, I'd be getting my manager.
HZ: Also, I wonder if you'd need a warrant for that information to be given to you.
JOY: Seems like you would, right?
HZ: They don't want us to get stuck on this, though, because they want this guy to find out whatever name Alicia is living under now, IE Alicia Fennel, and he does, because the next time we see him - it's quite cool actually, I think Veronica's car drives past a diner, one of the ones that looks like an old Airstream or something, and he comes out of the diner and then goes to the phone booth, which is handily outdoors and has a pristine-looking phonebook.
JOY: Okay, now kids, a phonebook was like Facebook, kind of, or LinkedIn. Everyone you know is in there, but only within a certain geographic region.
HZ: It's like Tinder in that it's regional.
JOY: You look them up by their name and it tells you their phone number and where they live. What a terrible system.
HZ: And this surprised me that if Alicia is trying to leave behind an identity, maybe you'd be unlisted in your new identity. But then it also made me think: where did Wallace come from? We saw him arrive in junior year, and I don't think they mentioned where he transferred from or where he'd been living before that. Where had the Fennel family been, if not local?
JOY: Hmm. I guess we'll just have to see what what develops.
HZ: And so this makes me feel dread, because I just want Alicia to be happy because I just want Keith to be happy, I just want all the Fennels to be happy because they're adorable. I don't want Wallace to have any trouble; I just want them to have a good time.
JOY: Big news in the numero dos slot: the Neptune Onlyplace has a name!
HZ: It is Java the Hut. It's a pun place! That also doesn't explain why it's sometimes a posh Chinese restaurant or why they're wearing these Chinese silk waistcoats when they work there.
JOY: Maybe it has a different name depending on what time of day it is.
HZ: But it's Java the Hut, and it's karaoke day.
JOY: Lamentably.
HZ: And extraordinarily, a karaokist is the Dandy Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor! Singing a version of ‘Love Hurts’.
COURTNEY: Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks any heart...
HZ: I know that the music in this show has been specifically sharpened to a fine point.
JOY: Why do they hate us so?
HZ: It's like a silver bullet for Jenny Owen Youngs.
JOY: Exactly!
HZ: And just before him there was another karaokist doing a terrible job because that's how karaoke goes. And apparently it is the person who in Season 1 Episode 8 is Meg's co-anchor on the student news station. He's serenading a girl, Jeannie. She's got that kind of teary-eyed look during the karaoke, like in Twin Peaks, when Donna sees any music - like when they go to the Roadhouse and she sees like Julie Cruse singing and she can barely control the emotions. That's what this girl is like.
JOY: Well, my interpretation is that first the guy sings to Jeannie and she seems all revved up and just moved and like it worked, even though he is not doing a great job. And they are very like lovey dovey and romantic. And then Courtney Taylor-Taylor does his intro where he's like, "Even young love has a dark side."
HZ: When I've been to karaoke, they haven't really invited people to do shtick before their songs.
JOY: Right. You're not like doing a bit.
LARS: [finishes singing] I love you, Jeannie.
KARAOKE MC: Thank you, Lars. Lars, everyone. And now, Courtney. Courtney, you wanna come up here?
COURTNEY: Nice one, Jeannie. Strapping young lad. Young love, so beautiful. But you know, even young love has a dark side, so let's not lose perspective.
JOY: And then something about the power, the unbridled raw truth of his performance impacts Jeannie and the dude in such a way that they're both just like so bummed. "Love does hurt!".
HZ: Well it is a bummer.
JOY: Yeah, they're bummed, but for the wrong reason.
HZ: "I thought karaoke was fun, then I was faced with reality."
JOY: Yeah. Brutal.
HZ: A couple of other important things in this scene: this is where Veronica meets Cassidy to look at the surveillance photos. Cassidy is sitting with a huge teapot, and the teapot has a picture on it of a steaming cup of tea. And then on the shelves behind him, there are also several teapots, including one which is the same kind of teapot that he has got. And also there is this oil painting of a steaming cup of tea or coffee in this place. So they've sure gone for the beverage theme amongst like seven other themes. And then Cassidy somehow sees through several layers of decorative corrugated metal that Veronica has a customer in her section, and her section is standing at the door showing people to tables, even though it's a coffee shop; and the person waiting is Jackie with just some dude, some handsome dude. And Jackie doesn't seem perturbed to be greeted by her apparent boyfriend's best friend whilst with another dude, which suggests to me that there's nothing suspicious about this dude, it's just a dude. Albeit one that she is a bit flirty with. But that's not going to make Veronica like Jackie anymore.
JOY: No. I feel like that brings us just up to the yawning maw of our final topic. Is it Keith beating his chest like King Kong for no apparent reason? No!
HZ: Is it lite jazz? Definitely not.
JOY: No, no, no, no, no, no. It's Pride and it's also Prejudice.
HZ: This is a funny runner to have in this episode. Jackie has to study Pride and Prejudice, which she's pissed off about.
WALLACE: So, how you doing?
JACKIE: Awful. No matter how many schools I get kicked out of, I can't seem to escape this thing. Six-hundred pages of pasty white chicks cat-fighting over some stick-up-his-butt dude's prospects.
WALLACE: Hey, I got the CliffsNotes. Only eighty pages. You can borrow it sometime, if you want, or something.
JACKIE: Even one page of this pre-Victorian corset crap puts me to sleep. Why can't we read Burroughs or something?
JOY: It's interesting that she's like, "Ah, these pasty white people, why can't we read Burroughs?" Ma’am!
HZ: But they're all gonna get together and watch the BBC Pride and Prejudice, even though this was set in, presumably, September 2005. The Pride and Prejudice film starring Keira Knightley was released in early September 2005. So wouldn't they be like, hey, let's go to the movies and watch Pride and Prejudice? You're more likely to get away with pretending you've read the book, if you've just seen the BBC version. But there is this famous scene where Colin Firth jumps into a lake with his shirt getting very wet, and that's not in the book. And I remember when I was being interviewed to study English at university, the person interviewing me said it's amazing how many people pretend to have read the book and then mentioned that scene that's not in the book. So don't give yourselves away. Just saying you can't get away with it, make a note.
HZ: They get together in Duncan's suite at the Neptune Grand, and they all watch BBC Pride and Prejudice together.
JOY: And Veronica is pretty bristly.
VERONICA: Are you sure there's not a more you kind of girl at Neptune?
WALLACE: So, what, you think she's out of my league? You think I'm too small-time for a girl like that?
VERONICA: Wallace, no, that's not what I mean.
WALLACE: Then what did you mean?
VERONICA VOICEOVER: What did you mean, Veronica?
VERONICA: I mean...I think you're out of her league.
HZ: She hates it when Wallace is happy with someone else.
JOY: She hates it when Wallace is happy with someone else; but Jackie is also presenting in a way that I think a lot of people might be like "urghhhhh".
WALLACE: I realize I'm not a 19th-century British woman, but I just don't get that Colin Firth thing.
DUNCAN: I think it's less him they're after and more the mansion with the matching swans.
JACKIE: No, it's him. Last year I dated this actor, big mistake by the way, but he did this play in London, and he was at the after-party. I'm no nineteenth-century British woman either, but if Mr Darcy would have asked, he would not have needed swans.
VERONICA VOICEOVER: And so it's gone all night: how Jackie met Colin Firth, how Jackie got herself thrown out of St Paul's Prep for borrowing the dean's car, how Jackie got bored with Manhattan and flew to Paris with her boyfriend for her birthday.
JACKIE: Get a guy who knows how to wear a Savile Row suit...
VERONICA VOICEOVER: How can Jackie stand the non-stop excitement of being herself?
JOY: She seems a little high on her own supply.
HZ: I find it quite difficult to dislike Tessa Thompson, but the show really wants you to.
JOY: They're working really hard.
HZ: They just have to keep adding things to make you not like her.
JOY: Right. And I do think, while they're watching Pride and Prejudice, and while earlier when Jackie comes and sits with Veronica and Wallace at lunch, it's sort of the show is saying like, "Here is Jackie. Veronica doesn't like her," they're kind of like giving us the option, you know, to be open to her or not. But like the stronger implication is "Be on Veronica's side, the show is called Veronica Mars." The evidence is circumstantial. It's like, OK, she's really like talking herself up or whatever; but also, she's the new kid and maybe she just is overcompensating, trying to look cool, in my opinion, until she shows up at Java the Hut with another guy, on the night that she said she couldn't watch Pride and Prejudice because she had other plans. I feel like it's pretty clear the implication is that she's on a date.
HZ: Yeah, although it is probably misinformation. I can't remember who the other dude is. But it's like when in Mystic Pizza, Julia Roberts gets really furious because she sees her boyfriend with another girl and she fills his convertible full of fish and he's like, "That's my sister!" Well, if you just mentioned a bit earlier. Because why would you withhold that information?
JOY: "Why was your tongue in her mouth?" Convertible full of fish!
HZ: When Jackie is bragging and Veronica is hating it - you've been an insecure person in a situation where everyone else knows each other and are kind of hostile to you and this is a way people behave in that situation.
JOY: Yeah, I think it's just harder to have evolved empathy when you're 17.
HZ: But she was so nice to Yolanda when Yolanda was the new girl, in episode 13.
JOY: That's true. But Jackie's first interaction with Veronica was like pretty adversarial.
HZ: OK, I have two other reasons that I think account for Veronica's hostility. One is: I think she senses that Jackie is a sexperson. She has already said in the previous episode that she hasn't dated a high school guy since eighth grade. She makes reference to actors she's been out with. She's a sexperson. But I think the true reason she dislikes Jackie is because Jackie also wears tiny jackets.
JOY: Tiny jacket competition. They have to have a tiny jacket-off.
HZ: Who's got the tiniest jacket? And also, Jackie's name is so close to jacket.
JOY: Wow. Yes. Also really regretting saying 'tiny jacket-off'. So sorry, Helen.
HZ: Absolute filth.
JOY: Ummm... Cool.
HZ: This is going to be a runner, isn't it? Veronica versus Jackie versus Wallace's enormous, beautiful heart.
JOY: Oh, bless him.
HZ: And also, he's an 18-year-old-boy, just give him a break.
JOY: I think it's time we check in with Lo Dodds so she can elucidate for us what exactly is going on here and just how illegal is it in this week's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
HZ: Lo, I've got to admit ignorance: I didn't really understand what the fuck was going on with the Casablancas financial crimes. What is happening? Explain as if you're explaining to a baby.
JOY: You know how you're always explaining huge financial scams to babies.
LO DODDS: It's just fraud. You are lying to people about what they are buying. And so he has created this sort of pretend real estate portfolio and people are buying into that, investing into it with stocks based on the idea that they believe that they are getting a piece of the Sandpiper $60m hotel, the penthouse in Tokyo; and he is bribing the tax assessor to value the property at higher than it's actually worth. And then, once he has that on paper, official government paper, he then uses that inflated value to go and buy other properties to increase the real estate portfolio, so that when he goes and shows it to people and says, "Hey, get in, buy a piece of this pie," they think that they're buying something great when they're really not. I mean, like the teacher said, it kind of works as long as it doesn't fall down. People continue to buy; the stock goes up because people continue to buy; they can sell their stock. Stock and money itself is only as valuable as anybody thinks it is. So once it falls down because you realise it's not valuable, all of that money is lost. All of that wealth is lost.
JOY: Veronica rolls up at Curly Moran's former garage workspace and poses as his niece and steals all of his personal possessions that they're about to throw out. Not that I'm necessarily looking to go claim any possessions of dead people, but if I were going to, is that legal?
LO DODDS: It's not legal. It's not even a little bit legal. It's still theft. Your property when you die doesn't just become anybody's property. Your property belongs to your heirs, based on if you have a will, then you know it belongs to the people. I'm assuming Curly didn't have a will, which means his property would go through probate, and the state would take some of whatever potential value there is as a fee for processing his estate. But those pictures might have value and whatever is in his box or whatever is in his apartment or his cars or whatever - that belongs to his heirs and/or the state, depending on what his situation is in thinking ahead about his own death.
JOY: So his former co-workers who were just getting ready to put that box of stuff out on the kerb also potentially they could be charged with something?
LO DODDS: They're going to get in more trouble. And so is Veronica, because this is this is pretty bad in the sense of I know she's trying to figure out if they had heard Curly talk about her, but to go into a workplace and say, "I'm Veronica Mars and I'm committing a crime. Did you hear me correctly? My name is Veronica Mars, and I'm committing a crime." And considering that she already knows that Lamb is digging around in here and thinks that she's responsible, this seems like a very stupid idea, posing as his niece as opposed to just doing it any number of ways, finding out if they've ever heard him talk about her. She could pose as a reporter! "Hey, this guy washed up on a beach. He's your friend. Hey, he had 'Veronica Mars' written on his hand. Does that mean anything to you? Hey, do you mind if I rifle through his stuff a little bit?" It seems very weird that Veronica would make such a such a stupid move when she knows that Lamb has at least got something right about this case.
HZ: Put out a plea to anyone who does keep a number of personal artefacts at work to include some intriguing clues. Just in case you die prematurely and some grifter comes and takes your things, give them a puzzle to solve.
LO DODDS: I would also like to point out Veronica's crime in this show, although it probably wasn't a crime in 2004, of her bringing a giant ass camera into the gym.
JOY: Right?? So rude!
HZ: She can use a long lens inside a gym room without getting caught. That's how good she is. Maybe she's like Ant-Man, she can shrink down to tiny. Even tinier.
HZ: I also noticed that over the credits of this, there's Kristen Bell's voiceover saying "Featured music by the Dandy Warhols." They have another song on the soundtrack over the thrilling end. Jenny, there was a line that really, really made me laugh in this.
JOY: Explain it to me. Tell me everything.
HZ: It is a Duncan line. A Duncan line made me laugh!
JOY: Hang on, I have to mark my calendar, one second.
HZ: Veronica and Wallace have been having an uncomfortable conversation in the bathroom at Duncan's suite in the hotel during the Pride and Prejudice watch, where she's kind of pissy that Wallace is seeing Jackie and Jackie comes in as well and is all coupley with Wallace, so it becomes even more awkward. And Duncan still watching Pride and Prejudice and shouts, "Hey, you're missing it. Some guy just touch Lizzie's glove!" And that just really made me laugh.
JOY: As someone who has never seen nor read Pride and Prejudice, who is Lizzie, what is her glove and why does it matter that someone touched it?
HZ: Okay. Well, Lizzie is the female lead, and she has this firstly very frosty and then pretty hot courtship with Mr Darcy, played in this adaptation by Colin Firth. So for the first three or so episodes, they hate each other. And then for the last three, they're in love with each other, but aren't together and then they get together. I think it's okay to do spoilers for something that is 200 years old. It's funny because him saying "Someone touched Lizzie's glove," it's about as hot as a courtship got in the Regency era. In Pride and Prejudice, you wouldn't have sexpeople knocking over lamps.
JOY: Sure. No, no, no. Knocking over candles. Candelabras.
HZ: Too dangerous! And whether Duncan was like, "Hey, this is genuinely exciting," or he's like, "Jesus fucking Christ this is so dull, this is the most exciting thing that's happened and it's some glove-touching," I just thought that was great.
JOY: Incredible. My favourite line was when Sacks tells Veronica that Sheriff Lamb wants to ask her some questions and she says, "My answer was final. I will not go to prom with him.".
HZ: It's just always a pleasure. And then how would you score in this episode, Jenny?
JOY: I mean, I'm having a great time!
HZ: Same, love it! This is fun-packed!
JOY: Half a point deducted for wretched karaoke. But otherwise, four and a half helicopters waiting for me on the roof, propellers a-flinging.
HZ: There was a lot to enjoy. It was packed again, but not in a way that made me too stressed. No one is sexually assaulted, so that's nice.
JOY: That is really nice.
HZ: You have these multiple plots. I like that they converge; I think that's unexpected. But also Veronica does some good detectiving - and Cassidy, surprisingly. And then you have this ongoing "what's this with Alicia? What's this with the guy with the words on his hand?" Lots to enjoy. So I'm going to give this 4.5 as well, 4.5 teapots with a picture of a cup on. So that's this episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
JOY: Case closed.
JOY: That was Veronica Mars Investigations Season 2 Episode 3: Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang.
HZ: Watch season 2 episode 4 and join us in a week to investigate it.
JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
HZ: The website, where the show lives until it destroys all its documents and takes off in a helicopter, is vmipod.com.
JOY: One of the many things you can find on VMIpod.com is our beautiful, beautiful merch. We have a lovely soft Tshirt. We have beautiful enamel pins.
HZ: We have Not Milk pins in tribute to Duncan, but we also have a shiny new pin designed by one of our listeners. If you're in the #GayForWeevil team, this pin is for you.
JOY: Yeah. Designed by the wonderful Danny Mooney, it is glorious. Let everyone know where your allegiance lies.
HZ: That's at vmipod.com/merch.
JOY: I am Jenny Owen Youngs, and when I'm not making this podcast with Helen, I am making jams, hot hot songs; you can hear them and learn more about me at jennyowenyoungs.com. And you can also listen to me talk about another tiny blonde protagonist over on Buffering the Vampire Slayer.
HZ: I'm Helen Zaltzman; I make the podcasts the Allusionist and Answer Me This, which you can find at the podplaces and at theallusionist.org and answermethispodcast.com.
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman.
HZ: The music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
JOY: The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
HZ: The show is distributed by PRX.
JOY: Until next time, who’s your daddy?
HZ: Who’s your daddy?
JOY: It's that guy in the helicopter that's disappearing upon the horizon.
HZ: I'm sure he'll be home for dinner.