VMI 2.09 My Mother, the Fiend transcript
Listen to this episode at vmipod.com/2-09.
HZ: Content note, but a different sort of content note than usual: this episode is going to be the same kind of shit you can expect from Veronica Mars Investigations - recapping a Veronica Mars episode. But obviously that is not the predominant thing on our minds at the moment, is it, Jenny?
JOY: Oh gosh no.
HZ: We also know that a lot of you listen to podcasts to help you deal with the really important stuff happening in the world by just letting your mind cool down for a little bit.
JOY: Refresh, reset.
HZ: Calm anxiety, de-stress, put you to sleep, whatever.
JOY: We're here to help. Listen to the dulcet tones of Helen Zaltzman, intercut with the maniacal cackling of Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: Something for everyone.
JOY: Yeah exactly. Both ends of the spectrum.
HZ: So we both want to emphasise that we care a huge amount about the Black Lives Matter movement and the dismantling of systems that allow for police brutality to prevail.
JOY: Yeah. Defund the police. Abolish any and all Sheriff Lambs.
HZ: We don't want this to be a world of Sheriff Lambs, and we and you will do whatever we can to make that cease. But in the meantime, we're just gonna talk shit about a TV show from 15 years ago.
JOY: Hooray!
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
After 1½ seasons about daddies, we get an episode about mothers!
Veronica investigates whether her own mom, Lianne, was the high school mean girl.
She also investigates whether, 25 years ago, mean girl for life Celeste Kane gave birth on prom night and dumped the baby in the school bathroom.
And all this leads to Trina Echolls, Logan’s adopted sister, discovering who her biological mom is.
Veronica herself has to practice being a mother, as a school assignment forces her to take care of a robot baby…
But brewing up a real, actual, non-robot baby is...Meg!??! And she’s waking from her coma???!!!!! (Wait, she woke up from her coma?)
JOY: Teaching you to drive stick without even leaving the couch, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And hitting an afterparty at Chuck E. Cheese, I’m Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations season 2 episode 9: My Mother, the Fiend.
HZ: According to the very useful website - if you make a podcast about Veronica Mars - marsinvestigations.net, this title is a reference to a sitcom from the 1960s called My Mother The Car.
JOY: What's it all about?
HZ: A mother dies and returns as a car.
JOY: No.
HZ: And the only person who knows this is her son.
JOY: Are you fucking kidding me, Helen?
HZ: I'm afraid it only lasted for one season.
JOY: I wonder why.
HZ: Sounds very Stephen King for a sitcom.
JOY: What year was that?
HZ: 1965.
JOY: Oh, damn. That's early. OK. It made me think of Knight Rider, which also had like a talking car.
HZ: Maybe that's the child of the car from My Mother The Car.
JOY: Right. My mother, the car who went on to mother other cars.
HZ: Now it makes all the sense, doesn't it?
JOY: Yep.
HZ: That reference seems tenuous. But what this episode does have to distinguish it is it's Trina Echolls' big episode, and also her final episode, because Alyson Hannigan was too busy for them to schedule shooting around. I think How I Met Your Mother started the year this was filmed.
JOY: Ah. And I love Alyson Hannigan, but this is, I think, my least favourite role I've ever seen her in. We don't like her evil, or whatever this is.
HZ: Just sort of selfish and kind of annoying.
JOY: Yeah. Where are her redeeming qualities? Uncertain.
HZ: I will say that I am glad that this big production of Hamlet she is putting on throughout the episode does not get too much screen time.
JOY: Oof. Yeah. From the snippets that we get, it's pretty rough.
HZ: The episode opens in a dimly lit classroom belonging to Ms Hauser. She's back, just as pissy as before.
JOY: Hooray! Happy to see her.
HZ: It's one of those exercises that only exists on TV, I think, where everyone has to take care of a robot baby. And they cost hundreds of dollars each, right?
JOY: Hell of a budget this school has for fake babies with such delicate sensors.
HZ: Does anyone really do that at school, or do the thing where you have to keep a bag of flour complete? I think it would probably be more helpful to give people some decent sex ed and ways to keep their sexual health on track, rather than being like, "Here's a deterrent: a robot baby." Also, wouldn't this excercise be super disruptive to the other classes as well? Taking a crying baby in?
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Ms Hauser pulls a baby out of the box and announces the exercise, and everyone's like, "[Gasp], surprise!" But then the shot widens out to show a heap of robot babies in front of the class. What the hell? We don't see Gia or Dick this episode, but they are in this class, too, so are they raising this baby together? That will be a disaster, wouldn't it?
JOY: Oh god.
HZ: That baby would be on fire and run over by the end of the school day.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: But one girl is absolutely psyched, and she grabs a guy and runs up to choose their robot child.
JOY: So pumped. Rare moment of progressiveness in terms of gender on this show: Veronica and Duncan select a baby who's wearing pink, but Veronica genders the baby as male at least once, saying, "He's colicky."
HZ: They've also got a car seat for the baby. Those are expensive, too.
JOY: So, yeah, does everybody have to buy a car seat for this fuckin' sex ed weird exercise?
HZ: Verónica seems so uninterested in raising this robot baby when she gets home, and just dumps it on the countertop with a big clunk.
JOY: Oh, god.
HZ: But the overarching plot in this episode is that Veronica gets detention due to a trumped-up excuse by Vice Principal Clemmons. He's like, "Tidy this room that is full of files."
JOY: Yeah, this is a real Cinderella episode for Veronica.
HZ: It's nice that she's actually getting a bit of time just to sit quietly with some files, after the last couple of episodes, to just recover a bit physically, mentally; not be quite so stressed. And whose files should she find, but that of her mother, Lianne Mars, née Reynolds.
JOY: What are the odds?
HZ: And they reminded us it's only six months since Lianne left.
JOY: Feels like a thousand years. I barely remember her.
HZ: Clemmons is like, "This detention is over when the task is over." And I was thinking: how does she have time for a big detention task, on top of all of her detective work and Java the Hut? Is she not working at Java the Hut any more since she went back to Mars Investigations work?
JOY: Yeah, I feel like she's hung up those vests for the time being, right?
HZ: Who is showing people to tables at a coffee shop? They won't know where to sit!
JOY: Chaos ensues. Well, later she goes there - does she get seated by someone? No. She's meeting somebody so she doesn't need to be guided to a seat. But she knows the way because she's very familiar with the tables. She's at an advantage.
HZ: She's like, "You just follow the second weird lighting state to the right, and straight on until morning." Of course, Veronica gets stuck into her mum's file, and discovers Lianne was suspended for three days for spreading false rumours about a student, but the letter has some heavily redacted words. Ooh, bit of a mystery.
JOY: Dude. Anybody in your school get suspended for spreading a rumour, Helen?
HZ: No. I think you got suspended for things like having sex on school premises, or drugging.
JOY:Or maybe like getting into a like a really hot fistfight in the bathroom with your former detention-mate.
HZ: Well, really, with that, you just want them to get back into detention.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: How long are schools obligated to keep files for? Because Lianne left 25 years ago. Do they really keep them in perpetuity? Undigitised?
JOY: Well, I think this was a time when paper was still revered, and, generationally, I think the people running the school probably have a stronger attachment to the idea of, like, "We might need that someday." So I buy this forgotten room of many records. She got to Lianne's file very quickly.
HZ: Yeah, well, what's funny is this whole thing is a cunning wheeze by Vice Principal Clemmons, we learn at the end.
JOY: Such a crafty fox.
HZ: Sort of. I guess he knows Veronica's nosy, but he doesn't want to make it too easy for her because, I dunno, is it like if she was a hamster in a cage with no wheel she'd get bored?
JOY: Oh, yeah. Better she be doing this than, you know, idle hands. Idle Mars-ian hands are definitely the devil's playthings.
HZ: And of course the heavily redacted letter is a point of curiosity, so she goes back to see Clemmons; she doesn't bother knocking anymore, and why would you when you've already broken into this office a number of times? It really puts you on an informal footing.
VERONICA: You've been working here for, what, like ever? Any idea what my mom did her senior year to get herself suspended?
CLEMMONS: Let me get this straight: you want follow-up on what I explicitly forbade you from doing yesterday?
VERONICA: Um, yes.
CLEMMONS: More alphabetising, less cold-casing.
HZ: He pretends he's not going to, but then, as she rises to leave, he starts talking about, "Well, when I was just a young science teacher..."
JOY: Dude, I love this.
HZ: And Veronica says, "Well, they blacked out all the good stuff in the letter," and he just lets out this wonderful “hmmm” noise. He's got such a musical grumpy voice. He actually, Duane Daniels, the actor who plays Clemmons, is an opera singer.
JOY: Oh, yeah, yeah, very resonant.
HZ: Very conveniently, he gives Veronica three names that were involved. And they are Principal Moorhead, whom we met last week sitting behind a globe.
JOY: Just in the nick of time for this episode.
HZ: Fancy that! Ms Hauser -
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: And someone called Mary Mooney, who conveniently is also at the school.
JOY: Veronica locates Mary Mooney; she is a lunch lady, and she also is deaf. And conveniently, Veronica learned some signing from her mom, but, you know, enough to get all of the letters except one, when Mary Mooney signs, "Lianne was a... fiend," and Veronica's like, "Tell me something I don't know," and then she sweeps away.
HZ: Chekhov's translation of sign language, that conveniently matches Veronica's dim view of her mother. She goes off to pester Principal Moorhead after that, and he's kind of rude to her, and because we only met him last episode we don't know if they have previous. She's probably at least bugged his office at some point, hasn't she?
JOY: Oh, of course. The cost of doing business.
VERONICA: Principal Moorehead?
MOOREHEAD: Veronica. I see that Mr Clemmons is failing in his prime directive.
VERONICA: What's that?
MOOREHEAD: Keeping you out of my face. Mind if we walk and talk?
VERONICA: You were vice principal here in 1980.
MOOREHEAD: Indeed I was.
VERONICA: And you suspended my mom for spreading a false and malicious rumour about another student.
MOOREHEAD: Well, that sounds like me. What was your mom's name?
VERONICA: Lianne Reynolds.
MOOREHEAD: Well, I saw a great deal of your mother, as a matter of fact.
VERONICA: Do you remember why she was suspended? What did she say that was so awful?
MOOREHEAD: Well, of course I don't, Veronica. But even if I did, why would I want to repeat it? I'm sure your mom turned into a terrific person, but during the time she was here, Lianne was rather… vicious.
HZ: He's got a really really wide yellow tie as well. It's so wide, it's wider than Veronica.
JOY: Is there some kind of correlation, do you reckon, between the wideness of your tie and your sense of power or entitlement?
HZ: Yes.
JOY: He's tie-spreading.
HZ: Do you think that if you were the principal of the school, you would remember students from 25 years ago? Maybe that's why they keep the files. Every year he just goes and is like, "Oh yes, Lianne Mars."
JOY: Goes and refreshes his memory in case anybody's daughter comes by his office. I don't think that you would remember, and I also don't think you would describe one of your students to their daughter as ‘vicious’.
HZ: Both that and ‘fiend’ are strange ways to choose to describe somebody, I think. Unless she was a very angry kind of dog - then maybe you'd say she was vicious, very bitey. And then Veronica turns up to her erstwhile workplace, Neptune Onlyplace, which is playing a coffee shop again, but Veronica walks around as if she's never been there before.
JOY: Maybe it is much harder to navigate without a hostess.
HZ: She's searching for someone named Patty who wrote a message in Lianne's yearbook. And Patty's a big Lianne fan, unlike a lot of people this episode.
JOY: Yeah. She loved sharing “gossip and snipe” with Lianne. You know, "girl stuff", as she defines it. I didn't realise that I was supposed to be engaging in gossip and snipe, but now that I have learned from this show that that should be of interest to me, I'm going to get right on it.
HZ: Do you want to practice?
JOY: I heard... that... Jenny Owen Youngs was... interested in self-improvement.
HZ: Whoa, that's juicy.
JOY: That's as hard as I can go, Helen.
HZ: Strong.
JOY: I have a lot to learn. Practice, practice, practice.
HZ: But, unlike that, is what Patty said was the juiciest stuff, which is Lianne's love life with Jake Kane. Remember them?
JOY: No.
HZ: The hot couple, according Abel Koontz, "The prom king and queen! Do you think your father was a shitty sheriff, face like plasticine? Noooo! The prom king who's now a software billionaire, Veronica Marrrssss!"
JOY: Yeah. Ha! Oh yeah.
HZ: He's always alive in my repertoire.
JOY: So beautiful. So we get a bunch of, I don't know, speculation I guess?
PATTY: Your mom and Jake Kane - the Jake Kane - were on-again, off-again the summer before senior year. But by Homecoming, they were together for good. Or so Lianne thought.
VERONICA: What happened?
PATTY: That spiteful little shrew that he dated over the summer told him that she was pregnant.
VERONICA: Jake Kane got somebody pregnant twenty-five years ago?
PATTY: Well, your mom didn't think so. She was sure that Celeste was lying.
VERONICA: Celeste Kane?
PATTY: Celeste Conothan, back then. Her family was moving out of the school district, so she had to find a way to break Jake and Lianne up for good. Celeste finished the year at Pan. Of course, she managed to find her way back to Neptune for prom.
VERONICA: And I'm guessing she wasn't pregnant at the dance.
PATTY: That's right. Jake's love child had magically disappeared.
JOY: Veronica concludes that either her mom got dumped by Jake because Celeste was pregnant - or said she was pregnant - or Lianne said Celeste was pregnant because Lianne got dumped by Jake. Oh my god, I'm exhausted.
HZ: I liked that during this someone came over with a large tray of assorted cakes for Patty to choose from. Does this happen at coffee shops?
JOY: No. This looks like the practice of a particular kind of restaurant that is of a higher grade than the Neptune Onlyplace. I feel like they'd just have a cake on a pedestal tray with a glass cover, and you could like walk up to the counter and be like, "That one."
HZ: You go to the cakes, the cakes don't come to you.
JOY: Exactly. It's not that kind of place.
HZ: Keith has done a bit of useful investigating for Veronica anyway, and has discovered that in 1980, no baby was born to a Kane or a Carnathon, and then Veronica's like, "Well, can you find out if any one of those names had an abortion then?" And he's like, "Uh... Not nice."
JOY: Easy - easy, Veronica.
KEITH: Honey, it looks to me like you and Duncan have a nice little thing going. So why do you have to go out of your way to pick off a 25-year-old scab?
VERONICA: I just want a little proof that my mom was a good person. That she wasn't one of the girls I hate so much, one of the girls that makes high school miserable for everyone else.
KEITH: Okay.
VERONICA: What?
KEITH: Well, kind of a bonus, isn't it, that you can prove Celeste is the witch you think she is at the same time? If she didn't split Jake and your mom up, well...you wouldn't have me. And that means you wouldn't be you, Veronica.
HZ: Don't even think about the alternate timeline. Let's not Sliding Doors this. But Keith says, "By the way, though, there was a Jane Doe baby found in the toilet office at school on the 8th May 1980."
JOY: Veronica's like, "My toilet office?!"
HZ: And Veronica automatically assumes that Celeste gave birth in the toilet office.
JOY: It's interesting that it's already been established that Celeste was not pregnant at the dance, but also, we're just ready to hop on -
HZ: People who have recently given birth, say, that day, don't tend to deflate to their pre-pregnancy shape in an instant. She would probably still look quite pregnant.
JOY: Yeah. Plus, she maybe came in before having given birth in this theoretical scenario. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
HZ: No. But I think also Veronica's running with this theory without enough evidence, because she's like, "I really need to palm this baby off onto Duncan tonight, here's some burgers," and he's like, "I can't, I'm going out to dinner, I've got a smart shirt on."
DUNCAN: Hey now, you're not about to badmouth Celeste, are you?
VERONICA: Heavens, no. I mean, what could I say about that… saint? She is a warm-hearted, good-humoured, lovely woman of high breeding and impeccable social grace.
CELESTE: Why, thank you, Veronica.
HZ: Of all the characters to return from Season 1, are you pleased that Celeste is one of those?
JOY: No, I don't feel like I ever needed to see her again, but here we are. She sweeps in and says, "Aha, I've arrived just in time to hear you talking about me." Surprise! Celeste doesn't know that Duncan and Veronica are dating again.
HZ: It's confusing, isn't it, as well, because Celeste is like, "I brought your laundry before dinner," and she has a laundry minion; but if she was living in Napa, who was doing Duncan's laundry if he's not doing himself while they're away? And then, if she's no longer living in Napa, why is she doing his laundry, but still acquiescing to him living away from home at the hotel? And also, why has Duncan not mentioned to Veronica that Celeste is around, and also they're going for dinner?
JOY: It's all very weird.
HZ: Secrecy Duncan. But it gives Veronica the opportunity to make some quips about the babybot.
CELESTE: I told your father something like this would happen. This is exactly why we should have taken you up to Napa.
VERONICA: Not in front of the baby!
CELESTE: This isn't amusing, Veronica.
VERONICA: It's not. Me, breeding with a Kane? No laughing matter. But look: no one has to know, right? Worst case scenario: things don't work out, I'll just dump her off at the big dance. It worked at your prom, didn't it?
CELESTE: Does she ever make sense, Duncan?
VERONICA: Does she ever thaw out, Duncan?
CELESTE: When I look at your face, all I see is your drunk slut of a mother.
DUNCAN: Mom!
JOY: Could you imagine being an adult and speaking to a child in this fashion? This is bananas.
HZ: But as Veronica goes off to hide in Duncan's bedroom, she gets to chat with the laundry minion, Astrid, who is putting up with Celeste because Celeste is paying for Astrid's grad school.
JOY: Grad school for laundry, that sounds like a pretty fair trade.
HZ: Maybe Celeste doesn't know that laundry can cost less than $80,000.
JOY: Yeah, probably not.
HZ: Maybe Astrid won the Kane scholarship with some extra post-grad for good behaviour. And Veronica's like, "Astrid, is that obviously dyed blonde hair natural?" And Astrid is like, "You're a weird person, of course fucking not." Veronica, that is not proof of parentage. What is wrong with you?
JOY: No, but also she's 25. Ooh! Another thing they're lining up.
HZ: Sort of.
JOY: Why isn't Veronica like, "Are you a Taurus, canonically?”?
HZ: It's a very good point. Back at Mars HQ, Veronica is obviously on a scheme because she is in costume, this time a suit and specs.
JOY: I thought that was just a regular adult!
HZ: Can't be a day under 25 herself.
JOY: I love that she has a ‘Veronica Mars PI’ nameplate ready to go. The nameplate company that the Veronica Mars production uses got some serious business out of this ep.
HZ: Totally. And they're very good at turning things around on a tight deadline. She slots it into Keith's desk, so she's out to impress this person called Mrs Mahnovski, who was a foster parent who took temporary care of what she herself calls "the prom baby", and she knows what happens to the prom baby.
MRS MAHNOVSKI: I happen to know she ended up in a wealthy local home.
VERONICA: She did?
MRS MAHNOVSKI: Though this past year, I'm afraid, her adopted mother committed suicide and her adopted father went to jail.
JOY: Of all of the wealthy families in Neptune that match that description, I wonder which one the prom baby went to?
HZ: And conveniently, we've been seeing a lot of Trina this episode. So Trina, for some reason, is putting on a production of Hamlet at the school, and that mainly seems to involve her standing on a little circular platform in the middle of a room, acting all of the parts except Hamlet against someone who has been cast as Hamlet, but the other people haven't been cast, but there are people standing around with pikes.
JOY: And I think in one case a tiki torch?
HZ: Classic Denmark. A lot of tiki style around the castle. And someone has carelessly left Yorick's skull on the tiny stage as well, meaning Trina steps on it and ends up in hospital.
JOY: Oh, dear.
HZ: So that's where she is, and Veronica goes to see her, no longer in her suit, but tussling with herself. Her wish to crack this case to humiliate Celeste Kane isn't right, but she also has an awful plot!
JOY: Oh my god, what?
HZ: Hate this.
JOY: What is this? Where is Veronica's moral compass all the time? So she comes to Trina's hospital room pretending like she wants to audition for Hamlet. She's brought some sides to run.
HZ: As in script sides, not like coleslaw.
JOY: Oh, right, right, right, yeah, she didn't bring any mac and cheese on the side.
HZ: Rude!
JOY: And she's running this little mini script with Trina.
HZ: And they're filming this on a camcorder.
JOY: Veronica has set up the camcorder just to zoom in on the mirror reflection of Trina.
VERONICA: Don't do this to yourself. You're dying. Can't you see you're dying?
TRINA: Please, let me die in peace.
VERONICA: I can't do that. Because there's hope. There's always hope.
TRINA: I don't need hope, I need bone marrow. My doctor said only a blood relation can save me.
VERONICA: What about your parents?
TRINA: I'm adopted! Unless the mother who abandoned me comes forward, unless I find out who I really am, it's over for me… And scene. You know, I really am adopted.
JOY: And Veronica lays it all out. She leaves, comes back, and says, "Trina, you were actually left in the girls' bathroom on prom night, and I think Celeste Kane might be your mom," and Trina's like, "Tight! That bitch is rich, that bitch is loaded!"
HZ: And also you have to drink because she says, "You're a rascal, Veronica Mars." Veronica was like, "My plan was to send this video that I took of you saying 'I need bone marrow' to the tabloids," even though no one would believe that's real because it's very badly acted. And Trina's like, "Fucking do it!" How has Veronica got so many tabloid contacts? I know she's got that contact with Lloyd at the Orange County Bugler or something. Also at the time, 2005, the place to have sent it would have been Perez Hilton.
JOY: True.
HZ: But anyway, it's yet another tenuous but successful Veronica smoke-out ruse. Never my faves, but very successful straight away. Back in the theatre room, Trina is out of hospital. Veronica comes in with a stack of tabloids, all with Echolls covers, so either she worked very fast and got all the deadlines just in time, or many days have elapsed.
JOY: Unknown.
HZ: But they are interrupted by:
JOY: Mary!
HZ: Mary frantically signs at Veronica.
TRINA: Look, it's lunchlady Doris! Doris was so nice to me when I went here. Used to always give me extra cake.
VERONICA: Actually, her name is Mary.
MARY signs.
TRINA: Really? I guess I just decided to call her Doris.
MARY signs.
VERONICA: You want to help?
TRINA: Oh, that's so sweet. Tell her thanks, but this is a student production.
HZ: Trina's not covering herself in glory here.
JOY: Cool, Trina. Really cool.
HZ: So Mary is frantically signing at Veronica, and then turns to Trina and signs at her too, and although Trina doesn't understand ASL, she gradually seems to cotton on to what this means. And Veronica explains to Trina that Mary wants to donate her bone marrow, and I thought, what a horrible ruse, preying on someone's kindness for bone marrow, for this? Terrible.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: But Mary doesn't seem to mind, because evidently she's got a very good heart. She and Veronica go to the lunch tables and type things to each other so you don't get any more signing misunderstandings.
VERONICA: What did my mother do to hurt you?
MARY types.
VERONICA: "Hurt? Your mother was my friend." Friend? Lianne was your friend? VERONICA VOICEOVER: What a difference a letter makes.
JOY: And we finally get that missing R, that R that was so elusive, Chekhov's R.
HZ: This is the exact typo that was on my grandmother's gravestone.
JOY: What? What, Helen?!
HZ: Have I not told you about this before, Jenny?
JOY: Tell me please!
HZ: It said, "Remembered with love and respect by all her family and fiends."
JOY: Ha! Oh my god.
HZ: And it's the cause of some mystery in the family as to how the stone masons could have made such an error, because ‘fiends’ seems an unusual word to have on a gravestone.
JOY: True.
HZ: And my parents had proofread the text, but people still thought my dad had done it deliberately, because he and his mother had uneven relationship. But isn't that great? It completely flips the meaning of the whole thing. If they'd just left out any other letter, no one would have really given a shit, would they? It would've just looked like a mistake, but that looks -
JOY: Deliberate in some way.
HZ: ‘Vicious’, to use Principal Moorhead's word. But Lianne was not a fiend. According to Mary, she was the sweetest, coolest girl in school, and she lied to protect pregnant Mary. Aw. And Veronica and Trina do a bit more Sorkining. Must be cold, because Veronica is wearing a knee-length coat. Probably made out of small jackets.
JOY: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how you get a big jacket, you've got to combine the little ones. It's like Power Rangers.
HZ: So with five minutes to go of the episode, thoughts turn to the biological father: who's Trina's daddy?
JOY: I love that she's like, "I always wished my biological parents were movie stars," and I'm like, "Well, your adoptive parents are literally movie stars." But her bio dad: not a movie star. It's just Principal Moorhead, who arrived in our consciousness just last episode!
HZ: Good thing you had that arbitrary-seeming scene where he gave Veronica that business card. Everything happens for a reason.
JOY: And Trina, lover of drama, can't just confront this guy independently. She strolls into some kind of administrative meeting with Ms Hauser present.
HZ: It looks well boring.
JOY: Yeah. Probably the best thing that happens in the meeting is Trina busting in to be like, "How come you weren't gonna give me your bone marrow, you fuck?"
HZ: And they're like, "[Gasp!]," and then, "Dumped in the bathroom? [Gasp!] On prom night? [Gasp]."
TRINA: Hey pops, hope I'm interrupting.
MOOREHEAD: Trina! Glad to see you're feeling better, I'd heard that you were -
TRINA: At death's door? And when exactly were you planning to hook me up with a little bone marrow?
MOOREHEAD: Perhaps we should take this outside -
TRINA: Oh, come on, Dad. It's the least you can do for your daughter, after dumping me in the john on prom night.
HZ: Here's the true beauty of this plot. I mean, I'm happy for Trina and Mary - well, I'm a bit sad for Mary, because she's like, "I waited all this time really to connect with my child, and she's this person." Veronica waltzes into Clemmons's dimly lit office.
VERONICA: You sly old dog.
CLEMMONS: Your sentence is up, Veronica. Unless you're here to atone for something I don't yet know about.
VERONICA: Deducing I had a key to your office, now that was clever. Obviously you had to find a way to stick me in detention. That way, you could be sure I'd find my way into my mom's permanent file.
CLEMMONS: What are you going on about?
VERONICA: You read Machiavelli this summer, didn't you? Oooh. Nice. Not taking credit for it, even more badass.
CLEMMONS: That's a very imaginative theory, Veronica. But if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot of paperwork.
HZ: Clemmons pretends it wasn't a plot, but then, as she leaves, we see him slide a ‘Principal Mr Van Clemmons’s name plate into his desk sign. So these engravers - what is it, a 20-minute turnaround?
JOY: These engravers are cleaning up. Or was the engraver having a sale like two weeks ago, and that's where this whole plan started to unlock in Clemmons's mind? He was like, "Might as well just get it now, and then, how can I orchestrate this?"
HZ: This is some useful intel acually, Jenny, because I was wondering how long has Clemmons been waiting to depose Moorhead with this information? And also, would he automatically get to be principal, or would they have to advertise it externally?
JOY: I don't know. Yeah, is it like the presidency? Do you just get bumped up automatically? OK, next, can we check in on my favourite ongoing romance? Weevil and Logan.
HZ: It's a real Montague-Capulet situation, with a bit of Fight Club thrown in.
JOY: Do they love to hate each other, or hate to love each other? Or both?
HZ: Weevil is doing some welding. Were you excited to see it?
JOY: So excited.
HZ: Car maintenance with Weevil.
JOY: Mm hmm. The lights get cut out, I guess maybe all the power gets cut out.
HZ: Yeah, the music goes too.
JOY: And he's like, "What the fuck?" He thinks somebody has tripped the breaker again, but no, he goes over the box and gets punched in the face for his trouble. It's Logan! Logan's there.
HZ: Loves to punch.
JOY: Logan is a funny hoppy little fighter. I wonder if this is a deliberate choice, or just a personal Jason Dohring kind of special?
HZ: I think partly they're Jason Dohring moves, but also I wonder whether it's because Logan grew up in a violent household and maybe, particularly when he was smaller, Aaron had a lot of strength, but maybe what he had was the ability to dodge him?
JOY: Right. Yeah.
HZ: He's flanked by two nameless guys, just like fighting bros, but they're not particularly beefy, they're just a couple of guys.
JOY: They're just present.
HZ: They're just backup fighters. We know that Logan can obtain fighting people from his bumfight days. But these just look like high school kids, maybe from a few grades below. But that's all he needs, because the next thing we see:
JOY: It's Weevil on a flagpole! How the tables have turned.
HZ: How have they not taken the flagpole down? How many students need to be taped to it?
JOY: Right? How many cars need to be impaled on it?
HZ: Seriously.
JOY: They're asking for trouble, leaving that flagpole up.
HZ: I suppose the previous tapees have been taped by Weevil, so it stands to reason that the taping patterns on Weevil would be different. He's got this kind of crossover chest harness made of the silver tape. Was that to cover up the dog tattoo? I did wonder.
JOY: Entirely possible. You know what this made me think? Where's Wallace?
HZ: I know.
JOY: How is Wallace not back? This is a bunch of bullshit.
HZ: Next up for these two is a little assignation in the toilet office. I assume it's a different toilet, but it looks just the same as the toilet office.
JOY: Well, you could tell it's the boys' room because there's graffiti everywhere, and that's what boys do in a bathroom.
HZ: Yeah, but Logan's washing his hands, and I'm pleased to see that, because hygiene's important.
JOY: And people often like don't wash their hands on TV in bathrooms scenarios, and also in real life. Please wash your hands.
HZ: Weevil wedges the door shut, but finally I get what I have wanted for a few episodes, which is Logan and Weevil agreeing to work together to find Felix's murderer. It makes all the sense.
WEEVIL: I thought you killed Felix.
LOGAN: I didn't.
WEEVIL: Yeah. I pretty much know that now.
LOGAN: Are you waiting for the music to swell before you start the apology?
WEEVIL: We have something in common now: we both need to find out who killed Felix.
LOGAN: So what - we team up? Get matching capes, I ride shotgun in a sidecar?
WEEVIL: Something like that, but not yet.
HZ: And yes, follow Logan's suggestion that he rides in a sidecar on Weevil's motorbike. Bring it on.
JOY: With their matching little capes.
HZ: Goggles.
JOY: Would have loved to see it, but we'll settle for the fact that in order to keep both sides, their Montague and Capulet houses, pacified, they're going to have to leave this bathroom bloodier than they went in. And they do. Bathroom fist fight!
HZ: And bin lid fight.
JOY: Oh yeah. Logan's resourceful and scrappy.
HZ: Have we actually seen Weevil be violent before? Because he's certainly set other people to do some violence for him, but I don't remember him actually getting punchy himself.
JOY: I can't recall.
HZ: Whereas Logan, of course I remember him being punchy.
JOY: That's all he does.
HZ: A big crowd gathers outside the door, enjoying the sound of these two titans of menace smacking each other in the face, to the soundtrack of ‘Idiot Walk’ by The Hives. Clemmons and two security officers arrive very fast, and they break up the fight and march the two of them out, hopefully to sexy detention.
JOY: And, nice.
HZ: Obviously, I don't condone violence, but I am pleased that these two are kind of on the same page again. They both want to find out who murdered Felix, and they both want to punch a face.
JOY: And they're finding strength in the places where their their desires overlap. Great!
HZ: Also teaming up this episode are Mac and Cassidy, who I gather have not met before, but they seem to hit it off immediately when Cassidy comes up and asks if he can hire Mac to build a website and a logo for a business that would work as a Fortune 500 business, so I guess his Future Business Leaders of America work is stepping up.
JOY: They're in love so fast, Helen.
HZ: They meet at the Neptune Onlyplace too, for Mac to show Cassidy what she built. Flash animation, because it's 2005, or a sleeker version, which they both prefer.
JOY: Hooray, thank God.
HZ: Mac's wearing a henley -
JOY: Very nice, Mac.
HZ: - and flirting awkwardly.
MAC: Phoenix Land Trust, Inc. Cassidy Casablancas, CEO.
CASSIDY: Nice. I would totally trust this company with my money.
MAC: And it'll work wonders with the ladies. Chicks dig scarves and acronyms.
CASSIDY: Good to know.
MAC: I'm a giver of info.
JOY: Never did I think I would see a combination of web design and flirting. It just feels new. Feels new to me.
HZ: Not the only time that Cassidy visits the Neptune Onlyplace this episode because earlier he has met Kendall there, even though they share a house.
JOY: Oh yeah, what the hell? Well, maybe he wants to meet away from Dick's prying eyes.
HZ: The house is huge. It's got columns inside!
JOY: That's true.
HZ: Maybe he just wanted some coffee, and to choose a cake from a tray of cakes?
HZ: Simple pleasures, Jenny.
JOY: Who among us can say they've never wanted such a thing?
HZ: He tells Kendall off for selling off Richard Casablancas's possessions, such as his $15,000 watch.
JOY: Yeah, I would wait to sell my $15,000 watch. Personally.
HZ: Cassidy has bigger business plans.
CASSIDY: I'm using my trust fund to start a real estate business. I've already found some office space downtown, and I've drawn up a prospectus, if you'd like to take a look at it.
KENDALL: What's this got to do with me?
CASSIDY: I'm sixteen. I can't meet with investors, I can't sign legal documents. Now, this is where you would come in. You would be the face of the Phoenix Land Trust.
KENDALL: Gee Cassidy, I didn't think you liked me.
CASSIDY: I don't. But I find value in your desperation.
HZ: Her wage will be $1,000 a week.
JOY: Plus commission. Thank god, because $1,000 a week, while great, it doesn't seem like it's up to par with Kendall's... The quality of life to which Kendall has become accustomed.
HZ: Yeah. $50,000 a year is a salary that would be well within her reach if she got a job. And to be honest, the hustling kinds of jobs seem like they take up a lot of effort for the outcome.
KENDALL: Look, kid. I have worked very hard to over the years to avoid working. Now you want to give me a job? I know nothing about sales.
CASSIDY: Sure you do. That's all you know. Now look, you'll be salaried $1000 a week, plus commission that you'll see outlined there.
KENDALL: Big D is gonna get through this eventually. It's sweet what you're trying to do. Your dad would be so proud.
CASSIDY: If you want this little arrangement to work, try not to patronise me.
KENDALL: Sir, yes sir! So, when do I get my first cheque?
HZ: I'm starting to get a little annoyed by Kendall as well. I relished her in the first few episodes, but she really grosses me out in this episode because she also re-ups on the moves she's trying to put on Duncan. She shows up at the Neptune Grand in a low-cut red dress.
KENDALL: Someone request turn-on service?
DUNCAN: I'm pretty sure it's called turn-down service.
KENDALL: Oh. Well, who would want that?
DUNCAN: Logan's not here.
KENDALL: Loosen up, Richie Rich, okay? I've been in both your beds, I've earned the occasional drop-by.
HZ: I do feel very uncomfortable in these scenes, because she's just really trying to make this happen, even though Duncan is showing no signs of interest or invitation. Cockblock Duncan is doing some great work this scene. He's also got the robot baby, which, judging by Kendall's face, is her kryptonite.
JOY: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, she hates the fake baby.
HZ: Duncan likes the fake baby. Foreshadowing. Very comfortable with it.
JOY: She does say, though, "I've been in both your beds," referring to Duncan and Logan, so does that feel like confirmation of what we were recently wondering about as to whether or not Kendall and Duncan boned in that one episode?
HZ: I think she's talking up the time when she just got into his bed and tried it, because he really doesn't seem like someone that feels any obligation to her, but I feel Duncan himself would act like that if they had had sex.
JOY: Right.
HZ: It's like when Veronica is like, "Oh, Celeste, what did you do, give birth on prom night and dump the baby in the bathroom?" And Celeste is like, "What? Does she make sense?" Rather than being like, "What?! This reference means something to me!"
JOY: "How dare you?"
HZ: Kendall offers Duncan a ride in Richard Casablancas's Maserati, which she will sell for half price.
JOY: She also offers accompanying "stick lessons", she says "the fun way". Hmm.
HZ: Look, he's not interested. He doesn't want to play gear-dick.
JOY: And even that does not persuade him.
HZ: No, he removes her from his lap, upon which she has planted herself.
KENDALL: Do they, like, chemically castrate you boys over at that school? You don't need Sex Ed. I am Sex Ed.
HZ: Thank god they are interrupted by the Echolls siblings.
JOY: Never been so happy to see Trina Echolls in my life.
HZ: Seriously. And then there's this great face-off between the two of them.
KENDALL: So is this your much older sister I've heard nothing about?
LOGAN: Oh yes, where are my manners? Kendall Casablancas: Trina Echolls. Rode hard, meet put away wet.
TRINA: Hmm, I'm guessing she's the wet one. Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got places to be.
KENDALL: Where? Is there a club where you, Dedee Pfeiffer, Joey Travolta, and Melissa Rivers all meet for drinks?
TRINA: There is. I don't think you'd like it, it's twenty-one and over. We're hitting an after party at Chuck E. Cheese, though, if you're free. OK, well, I need him in bed by 10pm sharp. He's got school tomorrow.
HZ: Kendall is off form, because Trina Echolls's burns are way better than Kendall's in this, and she condescendingly squidges Logan's face. So she's won this round.
JOY: Hah! Yes.
HZ: The episode briefly stops in on some long-running plots. One is that Veronica finds a dead rat in a bag in the freezer at Mars Investigations. Keith explains he found it taped under the bus seat, and Veronica's like, "It's a message for me, I'm the rat," and this is very self-centred of Veronica, because if this really was a message for her, what an incredibly long-winded way of receiving it. Because the bus was blown up before she could get it, and fished out of the water, and it relied on Keith going burrowing around the bus illegally.
JOY: Dude, yeah. Veronica, no.
HZ: Very self-centred.
JOY: Also, Keith, what the fuck are you doing hiding evidence in a freezer of a refrigerator that you share with your daughter? Just a thought. Did you think that she wouldn't notice?
HZ: Yeah.
JOY: Have I told you that my mom used to save birds in the freezer? If a bird would fly into one of our windows and die, she would save it in the freezer for some reason.
HZ: Was she hoping that they would be reborn after three days?
JOY: Possibly? When I was quite small our dog killed a baby raccoon and I was really upset about it, and so then, as a response, my mom had the raccoon taxidermied.
HZ: No!
JOY: For my birthday.
HZ: Oh god.
JOY: And I think she might have had some designs for the birds being taxidermied, but in, at least in our state, like songbirds, you couldn't get songbirds taxidermied I think at that time. I don't know why she kept doing it.
HZ: Wow.
JOY: In any event, what a tale.
HZ: When do you think she got rid of them?
JOY: I don't know, because it wasn't just like one bird, or like it wasn't like a bird, and then another bird, and another bird. They didn't accumulate. There was only ever one at a time. I should ask her about it.
HZ: Yeah, I'd love to know.
JOY: I don't know. Maybe she's doing spells or something.
HZ: Did I tell you already about the family friend who lived up the street and had a dead badger in her freezer?
JOY: Uh... what?
HZ: I feel like I've told you that already. Maybe I didn't. She was quite an eccentric person, and she saw a dead badger at the side of the road one day and took it home and put it in the freezer, and then she'd get it out and put it in a baby chair at children's parties.
JOY: What?
HZ: Just be sitting in the middle of her sons’ birthday parties.
JOY: What?!
HZ: We didn't have Chuck E Cheese in Britain, so we had slowly defrosting roadkill.
JOY: Wow.
HZ: The other plot taken out of the deep freeze is Abel Koontz, but only briefly. The hospital calls Veronica to pick up his things, because I guess no one else is connected to him. Although wouldn't his ex-wife be the person? And what's Veronica going to do with Abel Koontz's things? Add them to her costume and props collection?
JOY: Probably just, yeah, integrate them into the existing situation. But I think that because she brought him into the hospital, she might have been listed as his point of contact or whatever?
HZ: But while she's walking down the corridor, she sees Meg's room is unguarded. She goes in, she looks around all those beepy monitors.
JOY: But, hey, there's two heart meters going.
HZ: Whaaat?
JOY: Isn't that interesting?
HZ: Meg's got two hearts? That's why she's such a good person.
JOY: Oh, no: she's so pregnant, Helen! She's so pregnant. And like, am I remembering correctly that her belly is just out? She just has an exposed belly?
HZ: She has an exposed belly with little monitor pads on it. Veronica, as established in this episode, terrified of babies. So she rushes out. At which point Meg's eyes flutter open! End of episode, but! They filmed an alternate ending where, after that, Meg's mom steps out from behind a curtain or something and smothers Meg with a pillow.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: And then Veronica comes back for some reason, takes the pillow off Meg's face, and then is apprehended holding the murder pillow.
JOY: What?
HZ: But apparently they never intended this to actually be the broadcast ending. It was some kind of ratings stunt, which I don't understand.
JOY: Yikes.
HZ: Were they putting things on YouTube at the time to get a bit of hype, YouTube being a few months old at this point? I don't know.
JOY: Maybe they were just counting on the crew to leak something.
HZ: Shit as the Manning parents are, murdering your own comatose daughter really feels like a big step.
JOY: It seems a little far, even for them.
HZ: But what a lot of business.
JOY: So much business, and speaking of business, speaking of business, we should probably check in at this juncture with our southern Californian marshmallow and resident legal expert Lo Dodds for the LoDown.
THE LODOWN
JOY: Lo, thank god you're here, we have questions, you have answers, we assume. Hello.
LO DODDS: Hello.
JOY: Please help us.
LO DODDS: I'll do what I can.
JOY: I am interested in what you can tell us about the legality of leaving a baby in a high school bathroom at a prom. Do the biological parents face consequences? Is the school liable in any way? And also, is there a statute of limitations, since we're like looking back on this 25 years after the fact?
LO DODDS: First of all, California has safe surrender laws. So if you have a baby and you cannot take care of that baby within 72 hours of that baby's birth, you can drop it off at a fire station or a hospital, no questions asked, which is why it is even more horrible that the then-vice principal, now principal, did that, because he could have easily just dropped it off at a fire station.
HZ: Where would you put it at a fire station?
LO DODDS: Well, first of all, fire stations are usually always manned.
JOY: And how.
LO DODDS: Wow.
JOY: Helen, Lo, I'm over here in a fantasy land dreaming up a movie that I want to watch where an adorable baby is dropped off at the doorstep of a fire station manned by numerous broad-shouldered, rippling hunks, who just never had to deal with a child before. They don't know how children even work. How do you take care of this thing? But then, over the course of the movie they learn that the real fire station was the baby they learned to love along the way.
LO DODDS: Yeah, I think they made that movie with John Cena just recently.
JOY: Oh, great. OK.
LO DODDS: Well, just like hospitals and fire stations, there's generally people there. They could ring the doorbell and walk away, wear masks, like nobody's going to question. We do have, that's the reason we have those laws, is because people do get put in that situation, and so Principal Moorhead, failure to provide and abandonment is what he would have been charged with, so I don't know what the statute of limitations on that is considering the child was safely taken in and safely adopted. Statutory rape, I don't know. Was she not 18?
JOY: It's all very mysterious, shrouded in the fog of time.
LO DODDS: I think I kind of assumed that she was 18 at the time, and so the the real scandal was him having an affair with a student, and we all know what happened to Adam Scott when that happened. It doesn't look like you face any liability. He just got fired, right? Because she was 18.
JOY: Yeah. Just send him to the next school.
HZ: If she was giving birth during senior year, then the affair would have begun nine months earlier and she was probably under 18, right?
JOY: Mathematics.
LO DODDS: It's possible. Yeah. I don't know what repercussions they could have for him now. The statute of limitations for statutory rape is up to three years, so I don't think Principal Moorhead might be in trouble for that at this point.
HZ: Now, a couple of episodes ago, you were talking about the problems Keith was making by breaking into the evidence garage to poke around the school bus.
LO DODDS: Yes!
HZ: And then in this episode, we find he's actually stolen some of that evidence because there is a dead rat in his freezer.
LO DODDS: This is so bad.
HZ: Is there a different consequence for stealing evidence, not even just compromising it?
LO DODDS: We've seen this over and over in the show. Evidence tampering, you can face liability for that, but obviously the most important factor here is that it will make it exceedingly hard to prosecute the person responsible for the bus crash, because Keith has tampered with the evidence. And the fact that he removes it is really bad. So it's one thing he breaks in there and they say, "OK, well, we now have to disclose this to the defence attorney, we now have to say, 'Hey, there was a break-in, but we don't know what was taken, we don't have any evidence that anything was tampered with,'" but that can create reasonable doubt during that later criminal trial. But Keith taking the evidence away and putting it in the freezer is even worse, because now you want to go, "How are you going to put it back? How are you going to explain the fact that it didn't decay appropriately?" Now it really does look like it was planted. It really does look like it wasn't supposed to be there. I don't know what the fuck Keith is doing.
HZ: What's he planning to do with it anyway?
LO DODDS: Exactly.
HZ: Just try and resuscitate it so it can talk about what happened?
LO DODDS: Yes, so it can tell the truth. Is he going to send it to like an independent lab and have it come back and be like, "Aha! I've got this!" And you want to go, no, it's totally inadmissible now.
HZ: "It's definitely a dead rat."
LO DODDS: That's a real problem. I have no idea why Keith does that. But we have so many instances in this show of the two of them just playing fast and loose with the rules of evidence.
JOY: What if the rat could be resuscitated, Frankenstein-style, and then help Keith out with his chilli surprise, Ratatouille-style, and we have a banging kids movie, horror classic mash-up, and maybe better chilli? Just a thought.
LO DODDS: The possibilities are endless. Maybe it's the killer.
HZ: It's the only place to keep it out of trouble.
HZ: Jenny, I feel like there were quite a lot of good lines this episode, scattered amongst the wreckage. Any that, in particular, you will be writing in the yearbook?
JOY: Yes. Signing your yearbook, I shall say, "Remember that time Ms Hausers said, 'Now find a partner, pick a baby,' and then Veronica said, 'Oh, aren't we supposed to have a shot of tequila first?'" Yes, Veronica, you have to have at least one shot of tequila before you have sex with Duncan.
HZ: Speaking of Duncan, I liked when Kendall turns up in high seduction mode and says, "Someone request turn-on service?" And Duncan just immediately punctures it by going, "I'm pretty sure it's called turn-down service." So not even noticing that seduction is supposed to be happening and rebuffing it, just genuinely like, "No, you've got that word wrong. Let me help."
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Let me help you, I'm very helpful."
HZ: Aw. And how was this episode overall for you, Jenny?
JOY: I don't know, man. I don't care about Lianne. I don't love seeing Trina. The only thing in this episode for me is Weevil and Logan teaming up and then getting in a fistfight. So for that, I can give it two and a half frozen rats jammed in the back of a freezer.
HZ: That is low. It's a bit of a caper, isn't it? Where something leads to another in a very kind of rushing way, so that it's just better not to think too much about it, just go with it.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Oh, and there was Clemmons in it. I liked Clemmons scheming.
JOY: True.
HZ: Even if the scheme was a bit of a roundabout one to get the result he wanted. So for that, and for Clemmons going “Hmmm” I will give this three robot babies.
JOY: That's three too many. Ugh.
HZ: But I was very glad that Veronica came to no harm this episode, and was not in peril. Just celebrate that, Jenny.
JOY: Definitely. I'm celebrating.
HZ: You seem it, seem partying hard with your bag of rat.
JOY: Hurray. Well, that was this episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
HZ: Case closed.
HZ: That was Veronica Mars Investigations Season 2 Episode 9: My Mother, the Fiend.
JOY: Watch season 2 episode 10 and join us next time to investigate it.
HZ: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
JOY: The website, where the show lives but still gets its laundry delivered by mom, is vmipod.com.
HZ: And on that, you can find transcripts of each episode and links to our merch and social medias as mentioned, and the cards that Jenny is designed to help keep all of the awful residents of Neptune distinct from each other.
JOY: Let us just remind you, just in case this episode reignited or ignited a new passion in your heart, whose name is Weevil, that amongst our merch is a beautiful pin designed by listener Danny Mooney that will allow you to pledge allegiance publicly and proudly to Weevil.
HZ: Truly spectacular. I'm Helen Zaltzman and you can hear my other podcast The Allusionist at theallusionist.org. I recently got into the history of the word ‘pornography’. Answer Me This is my other podcast, and we just released a pay what you want album called Home Entertainment, which is about ways you can homely entertain yourself, and that's available at answermethisstore.com.
JOY: Helen, thanks for doing some investigative journalism into pornography for me. I'm Jenny Owen Youngs, and you can hear more of my speaking voice on my other podcast, where I talk about a different petite blonde protagonist, Buffering the Vampire Slayer. And you can also hear my jams, the music that I make, over at jennyowenyoungs.com.
HZ: This episode was edited and mixed by me, Helen Zaltzman. I'm tired.
JOY: Helen is so tired! The music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
JOY: The show is distributed by PRX.
HZ: Until next time, I must ask: who's your daddy?
JOY: And I must counter: who's your daddy?
HZ: Well, I was hoping he's a movie star, but he just seems like some guy with a big tie and a tiny globe.
