Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. Each day, I am covering every episode (and the film) including the brand new Hulu revival. I am watching this series for the first time, so there will be NO spoilers.
Story (premiered on July 19, 2019/written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Raymond Obstfeld; directed by Tessa Blake): And just like that, Logan's gone. A phone call from the Navy and he turns in his resignation as the congressman's bodyguard, effective immediately, and says goodbye to his girlfriend via voicemail (she can't answer her phone because she's in a strip club, natch). Before he departs - who knows for how long - he's already made an important contribution to the investigation(s), dressing in uniform to visit Daniel's blackmailer...17-year-old white nationalist Barton Netherfield, Jr. (Cyrus Arnold). Playing the part of a fellow traveler, Logan congratulates the teenager for "neuter[ing] that Muslim cuck...a Manchurian candidate taking his orders from the mullahs." Getting him to open up, Logan then forces him to delete all the video files, apologize to the congressman, and withdraw his threats. But the surly alt-right troll fires one departing shot: he has recorded a not-so-cryptocurrency transfer from Daniel into the accounts of two Mexican cartel members. This leads Keith and Veronica to sneak into Alonzo's and Dodie's hotel room, where Veronica snaps photos of the Carr brothers' IDs and Keith fakes a heart attack to distract the cleaning lady while Veronica sneaks away. But they aren't as clever as they think; the cleaning lady is, of course, Claudia, and when she returns home she tells both brother Weevil and boyfriend Alonzo that Veronica was snooping around (she also reveals that she's been fired for unrelated reasons; yet another small business is folding under the pressure of Casablancas' onslaught). Weevil, who predictably explodes at Veronica when he discovers what she did with Juan, is nonetheless clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of Alonzo paying her a visit.
There's another reason to be concerned about Alonzo's intentions: by episode's end, Veronica has a new houseguest. Matty skips out on her family's trip to Paris, decides to stay at her late father's now-defunct hotel, and is forced to temporarily move in with Veronica when the electricity gets cut. The season's closing narration haunts this and other sequences in classic noir fashion and it's hard not to worry about the fate of Veronica's "protegee." Incidentally, it turns out Matty's - and Penn's - suspicions are correct: in private conversation Big Dick and Clyde openly acknowledge that they hired Perry to plant the bomb at the Sea Sprite. It was supposed to go off in the middle of the night but that wi-fi disruption ruined the plan. It achieved its aim regardless ("shit happens," as Mr. Casablancas puts it). Yet notably the two don't claim any knowledge of the other bombs, and Dick apparently wasn't involved in killing Perry, though he presumes (it's never quite confirmed) that Clyde was. This suggests that, as I speculated a few entries ago, copycats are all attacking Neptune for varied reasons (looks like Nicole is probably guilty of the neck-bomb after all, without any potential ethical discrepancies, and I'll bet one of the murderheads planted the volleyball bomb to make things more interesting and/or extend the shelf life of their theories).
Certainly, Keith and Veronica are casting their net wider. An open file subtly (but eventually overtly) left by Leo on his desk leads the Mars family to look into some old "accidents" that occurred during spring break, to determine if there's a pattern. A boiler explosion, a potential hazing-gone-wrong (Veronica's return visit to Pi Sigma goes as swimmingly as you'd expect)...are these all somehow connected? The show is simultaneously opening up new mysteries, getting its detectives up to speed on various subplots (leading us to realize how far ahead we are in some areas), and resolving questions we thought might be reserved for the finale. And then, of course, there's the ending. Following a tension-relieving (and, it's hinted, nearly infidelity-inducing) party session with Veronica, Leo, and Nicole, good old Clarence Wiedman shows up at the Maloofs' door to offer his services but Daniel tells him he no longer needs a bodyguard. Clarence, however, isn't just here as a cute cameo; his timing is impeccable. The elevator doors open to spit out Tyler Carr, who opens fire on the congressman. Clarence takes him down and we're left with the image of Daniel bleeding out in shock, wondering if not just his life but his reputation has been saved by Clarence's good aim (dead men don't talk), or if both have been assassinated at the same time.
My Response: