VMI 2.17 Plan B transcript
Hear this episode at VMIpod.com/2-17
Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode contains murder, violence, and offensive language.
A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:
Logan wins Woody Goodman’s essay contest! And the prize is a really boring-looking job at the mayor’s office, spotting Woody in the gym and sorting the mail.
...but then he finds creepy secret video taken from within Woody’s house!
He also gets to plunge the detonator to explode Shark Field
With Thumper inside, chained to a urinal by some angry Fitzpatricks after, at long last, something goes Weevil’s way.
And it’s the school Sadie Hawkins dance, and what are school dances for if nobody kisses someone they weren’t supposed to be kissing, WALLACE?!?
JOY: Having some fun with the ladies — at least that ones that survive, I’m Jenny Owen Youngs.
HZ: And is it me? No, it's the tater tots. No, it’s me, Helen Zaltzman.
You’re listening to Veronica Mars Investigations Season 2 Episode 17: Plan B.
HZ: All Veronica Mars episodes are very packed, but this one is somehow packed without it seeming chaos. All of it, to me, was like fun and exciting and purposeful.
JOY: Smooth.
HZ: Well, fun except for the Fitzpatricks, I hate having to watch those bad people.
JOY: Yeah, they're not the best.
HZ: And Woody, because he's gross, but that seems deliberate.
JOY: Love seeing, for the freedom essay winner announcement moment, Mrs Murphy is playing a very patriotic video with like a flag waving and then there's like the Capitol building -
HZ: And "America The Beautiful" is playing.
JOY: Oh, yeah. And Logan is announced as the winner, and then, just like all essay contest winners inevitably become, he is immediately surrounded by women. Women cannot get enough of essay contest winners.
HZ: "Oh my god, you're going to intern at the mayor's office for a week. So cool! Want my number?"
JOY: Did you notice that in this essay contest-winning scene, Logan is wearing a plaid blazer that is downright professorial, over a brown ringer tee that has orange rings, over an orange tee?
HZ: He loves to layer, Jenny. It makes him feel a little safe and cocooned in this world that he has just no one to love him in.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: Then Veronica marches up to Logan and quotes Easy Rider, which he seems to have quoted in his essay, maybe plagiarised in his essay, and she's like, "Well, you made me watch Easy Rider last summer." He also made Hannah watch Easy Rider the other day.
JOY: He's got a move, and it's Easy Rider.
HZ: Outside, Weevil is walking around just holding an apple with a bite taken out of it. Like the fallen from the Garden of Eden, and his Garden of Eden was being at a lunch table with the PCHers. He looks over and Thumper's the one holding court, and it propels him right back to Flashback Land, a year ago, when he was the one with his leg up on the table, telling them all some bad gag about algebra, and Felix was still alive with a big Elvis bouffant.
JOY: Yeah, that's some good hair.
HZ: You know, in flashbacks we all have great hair, Jenny.
JOY: Well, not Veronica.
HZ: Felix fantasises about a life as a trucker, married with a couple of shorties, and Weevil's like, "Well, you haven't had a girlfriend longer than a week." I wondered why Weevil picked up that point when, at the time, Felix is a junior and there's not a particular rush to form a committed relationship to crank out the shorties when you're 17. Is there?
JOY: Well, you've got to have a period of courtship before you can pop the question. He's burning time. He's going to be a senior next year.
HZ: And then we join Wallace and Veronica at their lunch table. Jane comes up, kisses Wallace, sits down and just immediately starts talking, not even like, "Oh, hi, am I interrupting?" Just straight in there, banging on about the Sadie Hawkins Dance, which is being run by the Future Business Leaders of America because dances are the best fundraisers, right, Jenny? The best!
JOY: No, is she okay?
HZ: You know your instinctive dislike of Jane a couple of episodes ago? I thought you were wrong, but judging by this episode you were right.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: She's just annoying, and a bit of a basic.
JOY: Yeah, not my fave.
HZ: Although Wallace does do her wrong.
JOY: Wallace does her wrong, but, you know, he's got to get out of there. She also refers in this scene to Wallace as an "all-hands Nubian prince".
HZ: Is that more or less awkward than Wallace saying, "You work it, girlfriend"?
JOY: Unknown.
JANE: Thinking of asking some special boy?
VERONICA: I'm flying solo for the foreseeable future. I'll be working it, though.
WALLACE: You work it, girlfriend!
VERONICA: Taking keepsake couples photos. What about you? Anyone on your radar?
JANE: Well, I've got a dilemma. I'm torn between this sweet band dork and this all-hands Nubian prince.
VERONICA: Oooh. Tell me more about this band dork.
HZ: And then Jane tries to go into Wallace's cake without even asking. His untouched cake.
JOY: Oh my god, you can't take the first bite of somebody else's cake.
HZ: Although if you're worried, Jenny, about her only eating melon, she's shown intention to eat cake.
JOY: OK.
HZ: Veronica luckily has an out, because Weevil's there beckoning Veronica with his head.
WEEVIL: I need your help.
VERONICA: If I had fifty bucks every time someone said that...
WEEVIL: Look, I know it's a drag being you and -
VERONICA: No, seriously, I'm gonna need fifty bucks if you expect me to keep listening.
WEEVIL: Well, I'm banking on curiosity getting the better of you.
HZ: And it does. Of course she can't resist.
JOY: Of course it does.
HZ: Ah, and hasn't it felt such a long time since we saw this dynamic play out? And I love it so much.
JOY: Yeah, I missed this. This is great. Love to see Weevil and Veronica.
HZ: A lot of things this episode where I was like, "Oh my god, I've missed this." He needs Veronica to prove that Thumper murdered Felix, and to deal with the Curly-Moran-being-beaten-up-by-Weevil-video problem. She says, "Oh, shocker," but instead of doing the shocker hand gesture, which the lads demonstrated in the first episode of the season, she does the scout's honour hand.
JOY: A welcome change to hand gestures.
HZ: It felt like when Liz Lemon tries to do something cool and it fails.
JOY: Ha! Helen, my brain broke in this scene. Why was Weevil beating up Curly, and... What?
HZ: Oh, well, OK: Weevil and the other PCHers got an anonymous call - and you know that anonymous calls must be taken as gospel truth - that Curly had been the one to send the bus off a cliff to get back at Cervando for hustling Liam Fitzpatrick out of a few grand of drugs money. Now, it makes so little sense that the Fitzpatricks would commit mass murder and not get their money back, rather than beating up Cervando and forcing him to work for them so they make more money out of him, but, I'm sorry, anonymous caller has said it, which means, in the flashback, Weevil is beating up Curly, demanding info. Curly's like, "It wasn't me," while Thumper's filming on his flip phone. But then a car's headlights come on and the bikers all scoot off, and Weevil scoots back to the present and explains he doesn't think Curly did it either but he was trying to save his life. By giving him a beating, it means the other PCHers weren't grabbing him and throwing him into the sea.
JOY: Do you ever think maybe Weevil's behaviour in this group points in the direction that maybe he shouldn't be in the group? He's always like trying to keep them from going too far, it feels like.
HZ: What, you think he's not committed enough to acts of violence?
JOY: I think maybe his commitment is waning.
HZ: Well, you know, he's been out of the group for a bit and he's changed. But the group is also formed by the leadership, isn't it? It's influenced by the management style. Weevil had one way, like, "Go and throw some shirts around in the store to get what you want."
JOY: Ha, oh yeah.
HZ: And the other's way is like, "Throw someone off a cliff." And what could be the in-between, Jenny? Throw a shirt off the cliff?
JOY: OK. Solid compromise.
HZ: Mr Wu! What a treat for me this episode. Mrs Murphy, Mr Wu, some of my favourite irritable teachers.
JOY: Yeah, almost a full line-up.
HZ: I mean, I do miss my favourite favourite irritable teacher, the one who had his car put on the flagpole. A true legend of being over this shit. Maybe he has left? Maybe that was enough for him to be like, "I'm gonna go on indefinite paid mental health leave."
JOY: That actually would make a lot of sense.
HZ: I've got a lot of headcanon for these people, Jenny.
JOY: So I'm seeing. Mr Wu's class is a great place for Wallace to chat up Jackie.
HZ: It's nice because we learn a bit more about Jackie and her backstory.
JACKIE: When my mom started getting wrinkles around her eyes and she could see the end of her modeling career coming, her new career became landing a wealthy man. Single wealthy men like to travel, they like to party, they don't like kids hanging around. I was pretty much alone from age eleven on. Being alone now kinda feels like being back to normal.
WALLACE: Well, we should hang out. Even Superman would leave his Fortress of Solitude from time to time.
JACKIE: I'd like that.
HZ: And only after learning quite a lot does Mr Wu interrupt their not-at-all-quiet conversation, and also really obvious because she's sitting behind Wallace so he's rotated his head like an owl.
JOY: Fully turned around. Mr Wu, can't you see that something important is going on here?
HZ: You can only see if you give a shit, Jenny.
JOY: Oh, right.
HZ: Out in the hallway, Mac and Beaver stare at a very shitly-painted banner for the Sadie Hawkins Dance, and it's font salad, and then the main feature of it is not the text giving you the information about the dance, it's just like this big painted floral tree bough, in the way. It's as badly designed as the websites on this show.
JOY: No offence, Mac. Should we mention for anybody who's unfamiliar that the Sadie Hawkins Dance, the premise of the Sadie Hawkins Dance, flying in the face of heteronormativity, demands that girls ask boys? This, of course, doesn't take into account same-sex couplings, non-binary folks, people living outside of heteronormative standards, but that's what a Sadie Hawkins Dance is in case you're wondering.
HZ: And we don't have them in Britain either. I also think at school, if there were dances, there was not the expectation that you would have to ask somebody. Cassidy is angling for an invitation from Mac, which is pretty cute. Have you noticed Mac has a lot more conventional hair, no streaks? Maybe that's because she got a boyfriend.
JOY: Yes, that really is happening, isn't it? When you're in love with computers, you get streaks, and when you have a boyfriend, you don't.
HZ: Outside school, Veronica is scuttling to catch up Logan, and he's kind of a bit rude and calls her a pest, but she's just trying to ask him questions that maybe she should have asked him last summer when they were still going out and he was charged with murder, about the night Felix was killed.
JOY: Yeah, and he doesn't care. So he can't, as my friend Helen would say, be arsed to care now that it no longer concerns him who killed Felix.
HZ: Arselessness. He does remember - and again, maybe this would have been relevant information to the police investigation - that the 911 caller was a Mexican man driving a San Diego seafood truck with a "How's My Driving?" sticker.
JOY: Damn, that's a lot of info, bro.
HZ: Yeah, for someone who was like, "I can't remember, I was badly beaten up and also drunk and pretty fucked up. Can't remember anything else, but I remember the fucking bumper stickers, including the phone number on it."
JOY: What? Over at Woody Goodman's office:
HZ: He's on the phone to someone who's angry about something that Woody says Father Fitzpatrick has, "Blown way out of proportion, and property values will bounce back." Like, what? What's that?
JOY: Interesting.
HZ: Is it? It's probably some incorporation bollocks. Don't try and make me care! The voters are going to decide, but it's worth interrupting that call to tell him that Logan is here.
JOY: Is this woman, Bev, one of the America's Next Top Model people who got scooted onto the show?
HZ: Correct.
JOY: I saw her and was like, "That woman is too tall and too stunning to not be from that show."
HZ: She is the very beautiful mayoral assistant, and she is Furonda from cycle six of AMTM, and she's good in it as well, I thought.
JOY: Yeah. I love when she tells Logan that, when he has to sort some mail, she's like, "I've got a letter opener you can borrow." I thought that was pretty nice.
HZ: And I also wondered, did Logan miss school for this internship?
JOY: Oh, yeah. Or is this like an after-school situation? Maybe that's why everyone's like, "Wow, cool," because you don't have to go to school.
HZ: It seems odd to miss a week of school in your senior year...
JOY: ...for this.
HZ: He already misses a lot of school, being questioned over crimes that he's implicated in. Woody seems a little bit aghast to see that the intern is Logan, spinning around in a chair in his slacker t-shirt. Surely he would have known who the intern was by now, especially as he read the essay. Did he not read the essay because that's boring too?
JOY: Maybe Bev read all the essays?
HZ: Ah, Bev. No wonder she's over Logan before she's even have to deal with him. He has to swear on a Bible to do this fucking internship, and then his first job is to sort a box of mail into pro- and anti-incorporation. What a prize. What a prize!
JOY: If you want to blow up a big stadium, sometimes you've got to sort a bunch of mail.
HZ: We know that Bev's good because Keith Mars turns up and she seems pleased to see him.
JOY: Hey, we're all pleased to see Keith.
HZ: Keith's less pleased to see Logan. And Woody's got the need for Keith to investigate Terrence Cook in order to clear his name, but they're interrupted by Logan who already, in the time that conversation took, I don't know, under a minute, he's opened the post, found the DVD, and watched it.
JOY: And found a way to watch it. Like what did he even watch that on?
HZ: It's 2006, so probably the computer. But would he have a computer when he's sorting mail?
JOY: What, Bev's computer?
HZ: Maybe he got his portable DVD player out to watch Easy Rider with Bev.
JOY: Oh, probably, OK.
HZ: But thought, "I'll just watch this creepy DVD first of footage taken inside Woody's house, showing the family having dinner."
JOY: It starts at the end of this hallway, right? By the front door, and comes down this hallway with some Little League photos and some other pictures on the wall, and then a shot of the family having dinner, which is so fucking creepy.
HZ: Keith Mars will investigate. And then, this is a great episode for the Loganicas, because Logan and Veronica are on a car stakeout at the seafood company with the vans. The driver appears, and they go out and confront him, and he's like, "Nah, I'm the wrong guy."
JOY: Yeah. He's like, "Even if I was the right guy, gosh, I've got a wife and daughter, and, you know, PCHers drive up and down my street all day, so I'm definitely not going to say anything. Leave me alone." Interesting.
HZ: Although Logan could probably have been like, "Well, I'm rich enough to buy you a house somewhere else to get me out of this." But then is that witness bribery? Forget I even suggested it. Veronica is so busy this episode because next she's walking and talking with Weevil, and learning that Molly Fitzpatrick is Weevil's suggestion as to the link between Felix and the Fitzpatricks.
WEEVIL: The Fitzpatricks were using that plastic surgeon to pin Felix's murder on Logan. You know what that says to me?
VERONICA: That we need tougher immigration laws?
HZ: What does that joke mean?
JOY: I don't know what that joke means.
HZ: Is it that the Fitzpatricks's Irish ancestors shouldn't have been allowed to immigrate?
JOY: Yeah, this is a weird line.
HZ: It seems tenuous.
JOY: But Weevil thinks maybe Molly's family found out about Felix somehow, and that would have been a pairing of Capulet and Montague proportions. You don't want to see, or they don't want to see, somebody from their side falling in love with somebody from the other side, so perhaps they wanted him dead to end that relationship. Just a thought.
HZ: There's not much basis to this except for the fact that they're bad people, and kind of controlling and arbitrary. Is there any reason that they wouldn't want them to be aligned? I mean, it's sort of like a useful connection between sides of the drugs industry.
JOY: Helen, I know that you're a reasonable, level person, so perhaps ancient feuds don't really register with you, but just trust me. Column A hates column B, and there's to be no mixing, and death is the punishment. The end.
HZ: Well, that makes total sense. Of course.
JOY: OK.
HZ: Pinning this all on it. In the hallway, Mac needs Veronica's help, although Veronica immediately manages to make it about herself.
MAC: This serves as a pre-emptive apology for the conversation that's about to take place. Beaver and I occasionally, you know, make out.
VERONICA: Mmm. I made out once, back in the day. I think he had me pinned up against a woolly mammoth.
MAC: So not that I'm an expert in this sort of stuff, but four months, typical high school boy, there should be some...under the...bra action, no?
VERONICA: Let me consult my Idiot's Guide to Wanton Behavior. Basically, you're asking me because I'm the sluttiest person you know?
MAC: Um, ‘slutty’ is your word choice. Mine was ‘worldly’.
HZ: Why would you ever ask Veronica about this? And she proves in this conversation why she's not the person to ask, because she defines sex as slutty. Any kind of understanding of sex equals slutty. That's immediately where she went.
JOY: She is who she is, you know.
HZ: Back outside, another of the things that I've enjoyed so much about this show is back this episode, and it's this noir of Weevil and Molly Fitzpatrick. Adversaries, but also allies. And he plants a yellow plastic truck by Molly, who's eating lunch, and I was briefly confused because we fairly recently had that episode which had all of those yellow toy school buses, so why not get a red truck or something? He found it in Felix's shop locker, is his story.
JOY: I'm having a hard time imagining Felix having a little toy truck in his shop locker, but that's just me.
HZ: Molly maybe is too mired in grief to have that thought, Jenny.
MOLLY: Felix got stabbed on the bridge. Nobody in my family was even there. It was Logan Echolls, or it was a PCHer. Doesn't much matter to me which - same scum, different wardrobe.
WEEVIL: You know that plastic surgeon, Dr. Griffith?
MOLLY: Yeah.
WEEVIL: Strange, isn't it, that the key witness was some guy under your uncle's thumb? What pisses me off is that I think loving you cost Felix his life. Seems to me you never gave a damn about him.
MOLLY: I loved him!
WEEVIL: No, I loved him! And you know how you can tell? 'Cause I'm the one who cares enough to keep trying to find out who killed him.
HZ: In a classroom, a bunch of guys whisper about a busty girl walking slowly up the aisle, going between Jackie and Wallace's desks.
JOY: These are some boobs that they put in this show. I don't know what to... This is so weird. Is this not so weird? With everything else that's already crammed into this episode, they're also gonna cram those boobs in?
HZ: Yeah, it's really odd because this girl is supposed to be, I guess, just a target for male desire, established because Wallace is ogling her, and there's this bunch of four guys, and the guys are going, "Hey, Charlie, look at that girl, did you see that girl?" Then they're like, "Charlie" - who's a special needs student - "Charlie, ask Jackie to the dance," even though I thought Sadie Hawkins was supposed to be girls asking guys? And Jackie uses her powers for good, and she gets up and she asks Charlie, and he says yes.
JOY: I love this.
HZ: I also love Jackie's shirt. It's the only shirt I think I've ever loved in this show.
JOY: Could you describe it for us?
HZ: It's fairly plain in colour, like cream, but then it has these big sleeves with like a lot of sort of tucks on it so it sort of looks like a mediaeval thing in the sleeves whilst combining the convenience of a t-shirt. Wallace is flirting, right? I do like them as friends, but he is paying a lot of compliments. We see Logan again in the mayor's office and it struck me that he fits right in because everything is beigey-brown.
JOY: That's really why he won the essay contest. They were like, "He goes with our decor."
HZ: They just photoshopped all of the students into a picture of the office, and the one that they couldn't see got the internship. And he also, he finds a stamp of Woody's signature and looks like he's just thought of a plan.
JOY: Oh, how handy.
HZ: But he's interrupted by Woody being creepy.
JOY: Helen, why? Helen. Helen! Helen!
HZ: Did you want to return to the sweat room of Lamb, Jenny?
JOY: Why on god's green earth does this show refuse to show me anybody doing reps that I would like to watch doing reps? Why is this our fate? Here's a list of people that could do reps at any point on the show: Wallace; Cliff...
HZ: Cliff would be hilarious. Cliff would do it in like a white undershirt and some massive blue boxers and black business socks. And a tie.
JOY: And that would be fine. I would like to watch Lilly Kane do some reps...
HZ: Oh, yeah. Alicia doing reps.
JOY: Oh hell yes. Weevil...
HZ: I don't think I'd want to see Weevil doing reps. It just doesn't seem like his thing, like he'd rather be alone whilst he's exercising.
JOY: Oh, OK, well whatever Weevil wants, obviously.
HZ: He seems to have body insecurity to me. That's how I read the way that Weevil dresses in all those clothes that swamp him.
JOY: Helen, that's just how things were in 2006.
HZ: Do you know what, though, Jenny? What is good about this scene is that we have Logan clothes bingo: pond argyle!
JOY: This is a thick episode for Logan wardrobe bingo, for sure.
HZ: And then they have this conversation that seems rather inappropriate for an intern.
WOODY: You know, looking at you reminds me of the good old days, when I was young and ripped. Betcha have some fun with the ladies, huh?
LOGAN: The ones that survive.
JOY: Oh god, and then he squeezes his biceps.
HZ: Argh. Is that ever appropriate in a workplace setting? With a junior?
JOY: I've had a few internships, and no one, nobody's ever squeezed my bicep, Helen, I'm happy to say.
HZ: Wouldn't dare. Not without permission. And I know you didn't want to go to Lamb's special sweat room, Jenny, but did you ever want to go back to the River Styx? Because I did not.
JOY: No, I feel like I've had my fill of this wretched place, but here we are again. Molly, not the best detective on the show, trying to sniff around, get some info...
HZ: Playing with her yellow truck all sadly; being shouted out by her uncles to bring them beer because she's their servant. God, I hate these people. I know that you're supposed to, but I also hate that they've given me them to hate rather than someone more interesting to hate.
JOY: Yeah. More interesting to hate would be nice.
HZ: Like I love to hate Lamb because there's a bit more of a pull where sometimes he's funny, sometimes he's right, like with the Manning parents. Mostly he's just an antagonistic arsehole. But these people are just brutes.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Fuck 'em.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Dislike.
LIAM FITZPATRICK: Don't you dare cry for him. After all the things he said he did to you? You were his whore! He did not care about you! You were just the dumb blonde piece of tail he shot his mouth off about to all his buddies. How he plugged the good ship Mollypop.
JOY: They say that Felix said he "plugged the good ship Mollypop".
HZ: That's not a song that I wanted to be put into my head.
JOY: No, also, I don't know, man, it just feels undercooked. Like if you're going to do something like this, like, go for it. Do your research.
HZ: They've already been obscene, and this therefore seems like quite a gentle, playful reference for them to backtrack to. But they've already called her a whore, and it's my plan never to call one of my niblings a whore.
JOY: I think that is a good plan.
HZ: Can't imagine a circumstance that would necessitate that. But someone else says "whore" this episode and it's Weevil, at Veronica's house, right at the moment Keith opens the door.
JOY: Oh, the timing.
HZ: Veronica has to pretend, unconvincingly, that they've been studying Caligula. Nice choice. But no time to sit around and study Caligula, because she and Weevil are busy, busy, busy. They're off to Lamb's office.
LAMB: Look up Eli Navarro. There's gotta be something outstanding we can book him on.
WEEVIL: Well, if I did it, it's outstanding.
LAMB: Still picking winners, huh, Veronica?
VERONICA: I told you: when I start picking losers, it's all you. We were just in the neighborhood, thought we'd drop by, solve a murder case for you.
LAMB: Well, bonus points for bringing the perp along.
HZ: Oh my god, the truck was a bug? I love that. I was excited. For some reason I had not seen it coming, but obviously every object in this whole series has a bug in it.
JOY: Has bug potential, yeah.
HZ: Why am I so naive? I know I've been distracted lately, but... And good for Molly. Although Lamb points out something Lo has often pointed out, that illegally-obtained recordings are unfortunately not viable evidence.
JOY: But it can serve to point Lamb in the right direction if he decided to do a little police work, but that's never really been his thing.
HZ: No. But he does say “There's less I can do, trust me.” So he knows himself at least. Lamb knows Thumper's nickname, so presumably they've had a lot of interaction. On their way out, Weevil has another plan.
JOY: Patience is not one of his virtues, he tells Veronica.
HZ: Oh really? I think he's waited quite patiently. It's been several months since his friend was murdered.
JOY: So Keith comes back to Woody's office, right? To show him something about the video. He notes that it's dark outside the window, and then they pass the clock on the wall in that hallway with all the photos, and it's 5:30pm, which means that it's got to be in November or December when the days were short and this is way before the incorporation talks started.
HZ: Which means we don't have to talk about incorporation anymore, as it's not actually relevant to any of these things, right?
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: Yes!
JOY: So Keith says, "We've been barking up the wrong tree. Do you have another tree?" And Woody's like, "I don't know, let me think about it." OK.
HZ: And then he puts a big cigar in his mouth because I feel like they're being a bit more obvious now that Woody's kind of a prick. Like in a sort of real schmoozy prick way, where he's like, "Hey, Keith, hi, great to see you, hi," but it seems insincere.
JOY: Right, right, right. Oh my gosh, it's time for the school dance, it's time for your favourite, Helen, the school dance. Krysten Ritter, Gia, is annoying the living shit out of Logan, so that's nice.
HZ: They're taking ticket money, right? It's such an implausible thing for Logan to be doing, helping, or even being, at this dance.
JOY: Yeah, maybe that's also part of his internship? Like the winner of the essay contest also gets to take the tickets at the school dance?
HZ: What happened to Dick and Gia? Because that whole thing was sort of seeded over several episodes, and they were raising a robot baby together on the robot baby episode, but did Madison get in the way? Like did he get back together with Madison for a bit before the Lamb thing? Or did it happen between him and Gia, but offscreen, and then she wasn't that into it after all because he is a disgusting, terrible person?
JOY: Yeah, but she has her shortcomings, too. I think Madison probably got in the way because it seemed like, up until the Lamb situation, stuff was alive to some degree with Madison.
HZ: Right, yeah.
JOY: Charlie and Jackie are being very cute.
HZ: It's a little condescending, hot girl does a guy with disabilities a favour. Charlie's mum brings Charlie along to Jackie, and Jackie grabs him and introduces him to Veronica straightway for a photo.
JACKIE: Veronica, this is my friend Charlie and, uh, his mom.
VERONICA: Hey. Hey Charlie, how did you snag the sexiest girl in school?
CHARLIE: She asked me and I said yes.
VERONICA: Ah. Well, we always want the bad boys.
JOY: OK, now time for everyone's favourite school dance beverage: chloroform! Hurray.
HZ: Aw, Weevil's skipping the school dance, is he?
JOY: That's right.
HZ: To chloroform Thumper in the dark outside the Fitzpatrick church.
JOY: He makes his own fun. He steals Thumper's cash bag. How about that?
HZ: And then says, "Enjoy confession," to him and leaves, but he's already unconscious, so that's really just a rhetorical flourish. Back at the dance, it keeps cutting between couples with a sort of "zhwoom" noise in between. At first, Cassidy and Mac sway in each other's arms, and then zhwoom to Jane and Wallace.
JANE: I'm seventeen years old, and my mom decides that last night was the perfect opportunity to give me the sex talk. ...Wallace?
WALLACE: Yeah, uh, my lecture was one word: don't.
HZ: But he's not really listening to Jane because he's watching Jackie laughing with Charlie. But then Jackie and Charlie stop dancing because Charlie's mum takes him home, and she kisses him on the cheek goodbye, and then walks out, and Wallace's eyes just walk out with her, leaving his body just indifferent to Jane, and he's like, "Go and get me a drink, I'm thirsty," and then runs out after Jackie.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he kisses her on the mouth, Helen.
JACKIE: Easy, boy, don't you have a date? I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.
WALLACE: So are you saying you don't have feelings for me?
JACKIE: Wallace, the girl you're trying to make me right now is the girl that I'm trying really hard not to be. So knock it off.
HZ: Is this really the first thing we have seen Wallace do that is quite bad?
JOY: Well, he kept it to himself when his fancy basketball teammate hit someone with a Hummer and drove off, so that wasn't the best. But this is, I think, the first thing where there's like a clear... We see it on screen and we're like [gasp], but also we're not gasping too hard because Wallace and Jackie should be dating, they're so cute, we love it.
HZ: Jackie is so great this episode. Her character in the back half of the season, it's like a different person. Maybe during the break, when she wasn't in at all, Tessa Thompson went to Rob Thomas and was like, "Just give me something to do other than being a bit of a shit."
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: "Stop making me wear like five different costumes at once." So Jackie says no to Wallace, Wallace goes back in, Jane angrily is leaving because someone called Kate saw the kiss and has already reported it even though Wallace has been outside for like 30 seconds, so Kate's already been outside and come back, found Jane, told her, Jane's got her stuff to leave, and she's clearly got a bit of a worry about Jackie. She said, "She's always around you, always hanging on you," even though in this episode we've seen that it's Wallace who has kind of been flirting with Jackie. It doesn't seem like she's being that flirtatious with him back.
JOY: Mm-hmm.
HZ: Nonetheless, she forgives him, and they go back into the dance.
JOY: I mean... Yup.
HZ: And Wallace says, "It's just a weak moment." Is that just because Jackie said no? And so he was like, "Well, that avenue's closed, so let's go back to this one."
JOY: Meanwhile, Cassidy and Mac are departing, and Mac is wondering if they can leave the dance and instead go to bonetown, but Cassidy is deflective.
HZ: Yeah, and it's sad because, especially then and especially in the kind of culture of this show, people were so bad at talking about male sexual discomfort, I guess, because like men are supposed to always be up for it, right?
JOY: Right.
HZ: So there's more going on. But there's also just this lack of communication between them. Neither of them really deal with it well, because maybe not many people were then, in their environment. Back to your favourite partnership, Logan and Gia.
JOY: Oh my god, she will not. shut. up!
GIA: For a friendship to work, you have to be completely honest, which is something I have absolutely no problem with. But you - you run from the truth.
LOGAN: Only when it's chasing me. GIA: Do you know what I think? I think you use sarcasm and anger as a way to keep people from getting too close to you.
LOGAN: You know, I DO. But it doesn't always work.
HZ: Luckily, Veronica just comes up and grabs Logan by the arm to go and dance, and Gia's left alone, and they slow dance, and immediately you're like kapow! The Loganica chemistry is back.
JOY: Yep, there it is.
HZ: Kiss! Kiss!! They don't though.
JOY: Kiss!
HZ: I thought Veronica was planning to stay single a while, but come on, here we go again.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, get back on the merry-go-round. Thumper has been set up with the Fitzpatricks because he says he got chloroformed and the money got stolen, but then one of them goes and checks his bike, and it's just like sitting... If you were gonna tell this tale, why would you just leave the money on your bike? The Fitzpatricks are not the best critical thinkers.
HZ: I think quite a lot of the people in this episode have made some strange deductions. Like the PCHers earlier, where they're like, "Anonymous call? Let's kill someone."
JOY: Right. And in the daytime, at school, Jackie has a very cool silver jacket, but she's face-to-face with Jane, which is less cool.
JANE: You know Jackie, I used to think everyone was wrong about you.
HZ: Jane is so unfair. The show made us wrong about Jackie by making us think she was a jerk and a philanderer, whereas actually she's been shown to be very principled and quite measured in her actions. Boo! Justice for Jackie.
JOY: Justice for Jackie. Handcuffs for Thumper. He's getting chained up in a men's bathroom somewhere.
HZ: Yeah, a lot of urinals. I know you love it when I say your-eye-nals, not urine-als. Your-eye-nals!
JOY: Wow. Wow. Helen, never stop.
HZ: Your-eye-nals! Urine-als! Your-in-uls. No, I'll stop.
JOY: This is interesting. Woody swings by to tell Keith, "Oh hey, wow, isn't this wacky, the gardener made the DVD, my wife fired him for killing her flowers and, woops, he just confessed, and I'll just need that DVD back, nothing weird about this, thanks Keith!"
HZ: "It's because he really wants it back, and I figured I had this obligation to get it back to him after he confessed, and like, you know, there's no digital copies, right? Just, you know, just give me that DVD, Keith, and no I'm not looking itchy and sweaty, no no no. It's perfectly normal to ask for this DVD." Veronica watches them shake hands on the way out, and Woody says, "Veronica's such a good kid, coming in on your lunch period and helping your dad." The clock above Veronica clearly shows that the time is 3:25, and there's light coming in through the windows, for once, so presumably it's 3:25 in the afternoon, but even if it's 3:25 in the morning that is also not lunch period. Is this a subtle clue to show that Woody is just full of shit?
JOY: It's very possible.
HZ: Increasingly the vibe. If so, admirable bit of gentle indication of this. Keith tells Veronica to hold his calls and he shuts himself in the office and studies that video again.
JOY: Because he ripped it, he's got it on his frickin' computer.
HZ: Of course he has, because he was having to fucking analyse it.
JOY: He's Keith. Seems like Veronica talked to the reluctant witness's wife, and now he's cooperating?
HZ: Yeah. Do you think they cut scenes for time because so much is already happening?
JOY: I think they did. Yeah, I think they must have, because this seems like out of nowhere.
HZ: But the good thing is that it means he goes to Lamb's office with her and confirms that he saw a PCHer stab another PCHer then put the knife in Logan's hand, and identifies Thumper's red bike with a black spider on the side, and Lamb's like, "I know the bike, I mean, I know the guy by his nickname, so I've got this," and you're like, ah, fucking finally, this whole like "who killed Felix?" thing is getting some resolution. I'm ready. I was ready for this plot to be wrapped.
JOY: Yes, we're almost done.
HZ: A lot of school lunch table action as well this episode.
JOY: So much school lunch. Once again, we're at these frickin' tables and Jane is like giving Jackie the stink eye, and Wallace is -
HZ: Giving Jackie the love eyes.
JOY: "It's not her fault, I kissed her," and then he says he still has feelings for Jackie, and then he breaks up with Jane and then he goes to Jackie -
HZ: Straight away!
JOY: - and he's like, "Hey, can I sit here?"
JACKIE: You can't sit here, Wallace. Do you not see that?
WALLACE: Why not? I'm free now. You know I like you. There's nothing stopping us.
JACKIE: If you sit here, it proves that I'm the man-eating bitch who snatched you from one of the sweetest girls in school. I won't have that. Now go, Wallace.
HZ: It's unfair, this reputational damage that has been wrought when she's really done nothing wrong. And also, I really feel like the obligation towards Jane was Wallace's. Also having lunch to the side are Mac and Cassidy, sitting in awkward silence until she puts her tray aside and they have this conversation that goes south really fast because it's insecurity versus insecurity and these failures of communication.
JOY: Yeah. Oh, you guys.
MAC: I don't know what I'm doing either...
BEAVER: Look, I know what I'm doing.
MAC: I'm not saying you don't.
BEAVER: Well, yeah, it sounded like you were.
MAC: I'm saying I don't. So if you don't either, or, or you feel nervous, or -
BEAVER: We have to stop talking about this.
MAC: Veronica says all guys move at different speeds, and that this could just be -
BEAVER: Wait, you talked to Veronica about me?
MAC: No, I mean -
BEAVER: What did you say to her?
MAC: Nothing. It was more about me, I just, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing something wrong.
BEAVER: Well, you weren't. But you are now.
HZ: He goes off and Mac sits there reeling, because what did she do wrong when he says she's done something wrong now? Just raising it?
JOY: Trying to communicate? And he says, "Good luck getting laid," as he huffs off.
HZ: Rude.
JOY: So cruel. Chekhov's hard hat guy from the previous episode, making another appearance to do a very brief sweep through - what even fucking part of the stadium is this, where this motorcycle is chained up?
HZ: The dark spot. The bike is heavily chained-up to make it difficult to take out the building quickly, so he rushes to Woody, who's outside with a group of people and a press pack. They're all waiting for the stadium to go, and Woody's like, "Ugh, if it's going to take 30 minutes to get the bike out then just fucking leave it. We've got TV."
JOY: Yep.
HZ: Did his checks not also show a Thumper?
JOY: I guess not. I guess they only checked the dark areas and not the big, well-lit rooms where people are chained up in plain view.
HZ: Yep. Or people might be there, using them for the intended purpose of urination.
JOY: Oh, right. One last piss before it all goes down.
HZ: Exactly. Veronica is at home watching this on TV and is like, "Keith, Keith, time to watch the detonation!" What an event.
JOY: I love the detail that Logan pushed the plunger, the explosion plunger, down with one pinky extended. I don't know if you noticed that. Very proper.
HZ: He's on incredible form this episode, now released from the murder worries. He tips his little hard hat. Cut to Thumper inside, in chains, with his mouth taped shot, and he hears the explosions, and then we see the stadium collapse, which is actually footage of the Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, which was demolished in February 2001. Nicely done, show. Very smart.
JOY: Nicely done, show.
HZ: Because I wouldn't have imagined they would have the budget to blow up a stadium, given that they don't even have the budget for the cast not to share shirts.
JOY: Seriously. And then Weevil goes to confession. Bless him, Father, for he has sinned.
HZ: Then fade to black, with the sound of children cackling. Why?
JOY: Ha! Unknown.
HZ: Well, what a ride. And there's a real complexity of crimes in here, I think, so let us go now to our resident legal expert Lo Dodds for today's LoDown.
THE LODOWN
JOY: Lo, if Helen was running a drug scam behind my back -
HZ: ‘If’?
JOY: And I needed to fairly incapacitate her so I could steal her cash bag and then hide it, could I just buy chloroform at, like, the store?
LO DODDS: From my understanding it's not a product that you can buy as a consumer, but it is still used for lots of purposes. Universities, schools use it, hospitals use it.
JOY: So you have to be like a laboratory or something? You have to order it from your lab supply catalogue?
LO DODDS: Right. You can go and buy it if you have a valid reason to buy it. But it's really funny, when I tried for research purposes to buy chloroform -
JOY: For "research". For everyone, Lo just did big air quotes. I'm nervous.
HZ: “Just to research whether it would make my children sleep better at night.”
LO DODDS: Yeah. If you go to Amazon or Wal-Mart and search chloroform, there were reviews for like apparently a liquid that maybe has some chloroform in it, doesn't... I don't really know whether it's really chloroform, but there are reviews from people who are attesting to whether or not it works, and so there are people saying, "It doesn't work," and you're like, for what? What did you use it for? My kidnapping? And then another lady was saying that she wanted to use it to put her cats to sleep so that she could cut their nails.
HZ: Wow.
JOY: Oh my god!
HZ: I get it.
LO DODDS: That seems excessive. So, yeah, I am unclear as to what you'll be charged with if you possessed it for some non-valid purpose.
HZ: We see Weevil beating up Curly Moran, but if he's beating up Curly Moran to stop him being murdered by someone else, is it less bad?
LO DODDS: I don't think that this would hold weight with a prosecutor. Like, "Oh, I beat him up so that my gang that I am in charge of wouldn't murder him," seems like a stretch. I mean, he's going to get, yes, he's going to get charged with assault and battery. He's also going to get special gang enhancements in California for doing that as part of a gang. So I don't know that that defence is really going to do anything for him. Although it does make me think that that might be a pattern with Weevil, because when he came up to Logan on the bridge and Logan was like, "What could you possibly do to me?" He's like, "I'll think of something." And like, you kind of wonder, because Weevil already knew what was happening, whether he similarly was like, "I'm going to beat up Logan and make it look good so that they won't try to kill him."
JOY: Right.
HZ: Thumper dies in the stadium. Who is culpable? Because Liam Fitzpatrick and Danny Boyd chained him up, but Weevil landed him there, but Logan pushed the detonator, but the city didn't check to see if there was someone chained to the urinal, but Woody Goodman had a stupid essay contest that meant Logan could press a detonator. Who's responsible for this death?
LO DODDS: OK, so backing up,:Weevil, assault and battery against Thumper at the church.
JOY: So you're saying chloroform is assault and battery?
LO DODDS: Yes. Yes, I'm saying chloroform is...
JOY: Taking notes for future use.
LO DODDS: His intent, it's really the physical act of attacking him and then drugging him, and, as we already saw in the last episode, drugging someone in order to commit a felony is also a felony. So he drugs him with chloroform to temporarily deprive him, I guess he didn't actually steal the - I don't know how much was in that bag. But, yeah, I don't know that you can make the connection, the leap to murder, from there. So I don't think you could charge Weevil for what the Fitzpatricks eventually decided to do to Thumper for stealing the money. And Weevil's definitely going to argue that his intent was not to have Thumper murdered by the Fitzpatricks, regardless of whether or not that's true. The Fitzpatricks are solely going to be responsible for the murder of Thumper. However, the city is going to face some liability for that, because you have its negligence in the sense that you have a duty to protect the people surrounding the stadium, to do the explosion or implosion properly, to clear the inside of the stadium, to check for people, and I'm sure they had signs, I'm sure they had blockades, I'm sure they made announcements, and so, you know, at that point, before they found the bike, they could argue, "Hey, we did everything we were supposed to do." Right? So when Thumper's heirs discover that he has been murdered, they're going to say, "Yeah, but the minute you found the bike, that was a breach of your duty, because at that point, you clearly saw that someone had breached your security, had been inside the stadium, had intended to chain up this bike so that it would be blown up, so you're definitely liable for the bike. And the fact that you didn't do a final check after you found the bike..." And let's be honest, it's not like he was hiding, it's not like they shoved him in a pipe or something. He was in a bathroom in a stadium, like, you'd think you'd definitely check the bathrooms. He was right there out in the open. So when they find his body and they're going to see that he was just in a bathroom, or in the rubble of the bathroom, I don't know whether they would find him or whether the explosion would, you know, destroy everything completely, but, yeah, the city is going to face some negligence. Logan is not going to face anything. He had no duty to secure the stadium or make sure that there was no one in the stadium.
HZ: Logan has to swear on the Bible to do this job. I thought you were supposed to keep religion and state separate in the United States of America?
LO DODDS: Yes. You're supposed to keep religion and the state separate in the United States of America. You do not have to swear on a Bible -
HZ: To do an internship with the mayor.
LO DODDS: You don't have to swear on anything. The Constitution says that you will support the Constitution, so you have to generally swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, but that explicitly says that there shall be no religious test for any sort of congressional appointment or judicial appointment or the executive branch, so for the ridiculous temporary intern deputy mayor, he wouldn't have to swear on a Bible. People have sworn on the Koran, they've sworn on the Constitution itself, and one councilwoman I know swore on the Dr Seuss book Oh The Places You'll Go. So you can swear on anything.
JOY: Whoa. So are you saying that if Helen and I get called as witnesses in an upcoming trial, that we could request to swear on a text that matters to us instead of the Bible?
LO DODDS: You can ask to swear on nothing. Teddy Roosevelt was sworn in on nothing because they didn't have a Bible handy.
JOY: The hell?
HZ: When I did jury service, you had the choice to swear on the Bible or just on a kind of non-religious version of that oath, but it was printed out sheets in a plastic folder, which seemed non-ceremonial to me. But maybe that's just Bible-normative.
LO DODDS: I would swear on the Constitution. Like, if you're swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution, if I was in any situation where that was occurring, I'd probably just swear on the Constitution, since it seems more appropriate.
HZ: On the Neptune Constitution.
LO DODDS: The Neptune Charter.
JOY: Well, that was illuminating. Now we know everything.
HZ: I've never seen more clearly. Do you have any favourite lines, Jenny?
JOY: You know what I love? I love when Weevil and Veronica go to Lamb's office, and Lamb's kneejerk reaction is to say, "Look up Eli Navarro, there's got to be something outstanding we can book him on," and Weevil says, "Oh, if I did it, it's outstanding." Hell yeah! Taking pride in his work.
HZ: There were a lot of lines I really, really relished this episode, but I'm going to choose the bit where Gia says to Logan at the dance, "I think you use sarcasm and anger as a way to keep people from getting too close to you," and Logan, just dripping with sarcasm that she probably misses, just says, "You know, I do." And how do you rate this episode overall, Jenny? There's so many of my favourite things.
JOY: Yeah, action-packed. There's a dance, kisses that aren't supposed to happen, break-ups, turn-downs, big explosions, letter openers...
HZ: ...Agent Molly, good Jackie, pond argyle! An actual laugh-out-loud moment for me when Veronica tried to do the stinker and instead did the scout's honour.
JOY: Ha!
HZ: Lamb being kind of an arse, but also getting shit done for once so that we don't have to sit through it again.
JOY: Yeah, I will happily give this episode - it was a blast to watch, no pun intended - four and a half out of five reps performed by anyone I want to watch do reps.
HZ: I really liked it. I hate having to see the Fitzpatricks, I hate even having to consider incorporation being important, but I pretty much loved everything about it. I think the episodes that have really been successful this season, which is a very up-and-down season, are the ones like this where the single episode plots are kind of part of the long arcs, and I suppose this one was like finishing the Felix murder plot rather than, "Here's someone you've never met, and let's give them something to do that takes three days." So I'm going to give this 4.7 toy trucks with bugs in them.
JOY: Nice. Your fave. You love a good bug. Well, jeez, I guess that's this episode of Veronica Mars investigated.
HZ: Case closed.
JOY: That was Veronica Mars Investigations Season 2 Episode 17: Plan B.
HZ: Watch season 2 episode 18 and join us next time to investigate it.
JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @VMIpod.
HZ: The website, where the show where the show takes tickets for the Sadie Hawkins Dance, is vmipod.com.
JOY: I’m Jenny Owen Youngs, and you can hear more of my speaking voice on my other podcast, Buffering the Vampire Slayer. You can hear my singing voice by going to jennyowenyoungs.com and checking out all the many records and songs I have made over the time that I've been on the planet. And you can cheque out the new song that I just dropped a couple weeks ago called ‘Follow You’ available exclusively on my Bandcamp.
HZ: I walked into the kitchen the other day when my husband was playing some music and I was like, “What is this amazing song?” And he was like, “It's by a little artist called Jenny Owen Youngs.” And it was your new song!
JOY: How dare you, Helen? How dare you!
HZ: I dare with the great pride and joy as you deserve. I'm Helen Zaltzman. You can hear my other podcasts Answer Me This and the Allusionist in the places of the Pots.
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Ian Steadman for the transcript.
HZ: The music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs.
JOY: The sheriff of this town is Hrishikesh Hirway.
HZ: Until next time: who’s your daddy?
JOY: Who is your daddy, Helen?
HZ: Well, he's a someone who has settled a grudge with the gardener, and there's nothing weird about it. Nothing to see here. Don't look at the DVD.
