Lost in the Movies

Veronica Mars - "Spring Break Forever" (season 4, episode 1)

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 Rob Thomas; directed by Michael Lehmann): In the spirit of "something old, something new" (a phrase whose implications our protagonist is determined to avoid), Veronica Mars deftly mixes familiar faces with updated-for-2019 references. From the opening scene in which Veronica brazenly assaults a smart house and earns a cool six grand as her reward to the conclusion in which the sight of a newly fatherless young girl reminds the thirtysomething detective of the vulnerable teen she once was and the quasi-orphan she nearly became, we are navigating good old Neptune through clear eyes, wizened by experience but freshly attuned to the present moment. As the episode title suggests, it's peak tourist season in town; the show's familiar social dynamic, the hardworking middle class vs. the entitled 1% (or, in Mars terminology, the 09ers), plays out against this backdrop. Small businesspeople like bar owner Nicole Malloy (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and motelier Sul Ross (Brad Morris) are eager to maintain the cashflow produced by party-hearty spring breakers (although not unethically eager, as Nicole demonstrates when she saves an unconscious young woman from a lecherous patron). And cleanliness-obsessed (or perhaps property value-obsessed) elites like Dick Casablancas, Sr., everyone's favorite white-collar criminal/father of a mass murderer, seek to "beautify" the town by chasing away the grubby tourist trade. Meanwhile Keith is hired by shopkeeper Hu (Francois Chau) who wants to maintain his small base of low-income clientele despite the rats being mysteriously released into his grocery store. A smallscale challenge (as are - for the moment - Keith's memory lapses which become evident as he initiates this investigation), cases like this aren't going to keep the Mars family business afloat.

Then comes the big bang. A devastating explosion in the lobby of the Sea Sprite, the shabby if serviceable inn of choice for beach-bound students, kills Sul, arrogant law student Jimmy (Mark L. Young), cheerfully nerdy Gabriel (Rudy Martinez), and Tawny Carr (Chanel Marriot), the fiancee of Alex Maloof (Paul Karmiryan), who is the little brother of Arab-American U.S. Representative Daniel Maloof (Mido Hamada). We meet Daniel and his mother Amalia (Jacqueline Antaramian) at the hospital where survivors are being treated. This scene not only introduces us to Chief - Neptune no longer calls for a sheriff, apparently - Marcia Langdon (Dawnn Lewis), who appears much more well-intentioned than the Lambs but inspires little confidence in the congressman. It also delightfully re-introduces Cliff. Elated by the cash crop of injured individuals, the amoral lawyer strolls through the ER, handing his card out left and right. A darker version of this cheerful-to-be-alive-and-profiting-from-pain persona is revealed south of the border where Alonzo Lozano (Clifton Collins Jr.) dispatches an informer for cartel head El Despiadado (Marco Rodriguez) while smilingly spouting his deterministic philosophy. His storyline dovetails with our central case when his boss' ex-wife Silvia (Alanna Ubach) convinces the powerful drug dealer to avenge her nephew Gabriel's death. Alonzo and Dodie Mendoza (Frank Gallegos) hit the road with a generous cash allowance and a promise they can keep everything they don't spend - as long as they deliver the bomber's head on a platter. Back in California, the Maloofs hire the Mars family to find out who maimed Alex, destroying his promising athletic career, and, very secondarily as they make clear, killed the woman his family did not want him to marry. Wounded like Alex, albeit to a much lesser extent, is Penn Epner (Patton Oswalt), a garrulous pizza delivery man; wounded emotionally if not physically is Matty Ross (Izabela Vidovic), Sul's daughter whom Veronica sees wandering the wreckage after they take the case. Something about this figure calls to her, and as Veronica's voice returns on the soundtrack to bookend the episode, she remarks, "There was a girl. And I started to care about the girl. And if you know anything about what I do, that's never good."

Forget it, Veronica - it's Neptune.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week, concluding with the Hulu revival. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (premiered on March 8, 2014/written by Rob Thomas & Diane Ruggiero, story by Rob Thomas; directed by Rob Thomas): Bonnie DeVille is dead. Who? A huge pop star who attended dated Logan Echolls for years, she was once known as Carrie Bishop (Andrea Estella, replacing Leighteon Meester on the series) - the gossip girl whom Veronica once helped take down a teacher that had an affair with her friend Susan Knight (Christine Lakin). This callback to season one's "Mars vs. Mars" is one of many times that Veronica Mars the film draws deeply upon details of Veronica Mars the series. It's the best kind of fanservice, elegantly nesting callbacks, inside jokes, and familiar faces inside a tight feature thriller plot that could theoretically get by fine without them. This is, of course, very much a film for fans. They clamored for it beforehand, they funded it by setting Kickstarter records, and they likely made up the vast majority of its generally small but profitable audience. A brand new viewer could watch it without seeing the series - hell, they could even walk in late after the opening explanatory montage - and still understand the basics, but they'd miss well more than half the picture. And what are those basics?

A young lawyer is pursuing a prestigious corporate law job in New York. The interviewer Gayle Buckley (Jamie Lee Curtis) asks her about her past, as a teenage private eye from a California beach town, involving multiple cases ranging from dognapping to murder, as well as her own sex tape circulating the internet. She handles their inquiries gracefully and is offered the job; this as well as her healthy love life, recently resumed with a young man she dated in college, indicate a promising future...but her past quickly comes back to take a bite. The death of a famous musician, and the charging of her ex-boyfriend (meaning both the lawyer's and the musician's) sends her home to help the suspect - whom she hasn't seen or spoken to in nine years - pick a good defense lawyer. But she gets drawn back into her old life in numerous other ways, attending a a disaster of a tenth high school reunion, investigating curious connections of old acquaintances to the murder, helping out her father and an old friend who are both attacked, and eventually vindicating her ex (no longer just her ex after she hooks up with him and her present boyfriend dumps her) and finding the real killer. The law firm passes on her when she fails to return their calls, and she decides to stay behind and re-join her father's investigative practice, back to her old ways (which she compares to an addiction) after she came so close to fully leaving it all behind.

Of course, fans - Marshmallows as they've been called since that term was used in the pilot back in 2004 - know that this young lawyer-turned-private eye is Veronica Mars. The victim she's investigating is the aforementioned Carrie Bishop, her ex is Logan Echolls (now an Air Force officer and veteran of Afghanistan), her New York boyfriend is "Piz" Piznarski, her father is Keith Mars, and the old friend who's attacked is "Weevil" Navarro. (The killer, in perhaps the weakest element, is Stu "Cobb" Cobbler, an entirely new character played by Martin Starr, who doesn't make much of an impression). What's more, the bratty Neptune alum humiliating Veronica at the reunion is Madison Sinclair, the killer's associate whom Veronica surveills to uncover the crime is Gia Goodman, the celebrity snoop who assists her in exposing their conspiracy is Vinnie Van Lowe, the carjacked rich woman who fearfully shoots Weevil when he tries to help her is Celeste Kane, the lawyer who comes to Veronica's help when she's arrested for snooping on crazed Bonnie superfan Ruby Jetson/Della Pugh (Gaby Hoffman) is Cliff McCormack, and the San Diego cop who turns up some helpful information for Veronica - along with some light-hearted flirting - is Leo D'Amato. And, with no real relevance to the plot but an absolute need to be part of the experience, Wallace Fennel (now a high school coach), "Mac" Mackenzie (now a well-paid if ashamed Kane employee), and Dick Casablancas (still a cheerfully crude surfer dude, but now with a new medical license for pot brownies) also appear. After the reunion melts down into the playing of Veronica's sex tape, Logan and a dozen others brawling at the bar, the sprinklers soaking everyone, and Veronica finally punching Madison in the face, Principal Van Clemmons even pops up to tell Veronica it's been awfully boring since she's been gone.

So the film's primary appeal is this checking-in-on-friends aspect, but it delivers an involving mystery too. Bonnie was electrocuted in a bathtub, her first music video featured ample water imagery, and her last album was called "Confessions." Veronica realizes that Bonnie was haunted by the death of her friend Susan on a boat years ago. Gia, Dick, Cobb, and others had all been there too - mostly 09ers partying the night away - but the lower-class Cobb was their drug dealer and ultimately the blackmailer who would hang Susan's overdose, and their disposal of her body, over their heads (using the secret to procure money, sex, and favors). Obviously inspired by the Natalie Wood drowning scandal, and the rumors that have swirled around since 1981, this plot offers many key elements of the Veronica Mars mythos: celebrity, crime, class tensions. Meanwhile, Keith is nearly killed (and poor, mustachioed Deputy Sacks is even less lucky) in a cover-up of corrupt Sheriff Dan Lamb (Jerry O'Connel) - less the comic incompetent like his dead brother, more the purely venal overlord. And when Weevil is shot, the cops plant a gun in his hand, following up the scene where Keith and Veronica watch police brutalize local Hispanic youths; the already divided, oppressive community of the series has become nearly dystopian in post-recession America.

It's this as much as anything that pulls Veronica back in. She may frame her proclivity for detection as a personal flaw, an embarrassing social stigma, a self-destructive addiction, but it's also clear that she's called to justice rather than comfort. New York offers the opportunity to service an elite and pat herself on the back for escaping her troubled past; but Neptune offers something more important, and she recognizes this in her memorable closing line. "I convinced myself winning meant getting out. But in what world do you get to leave the ring and declare victory?"

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week, concluding with the Hulu revival. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on May 22, 2007/written by Rob Thomas & Diane Ruggiero; directed by Michael Fields): Eager to get revenge for her surveillance and exploitation, Veronica unleashes her wrath on the scummy men who passed her video around. It turns out that the reason she was spied on in the first case is, of all people, Wallace. Not on purpose of course, but since his athletic performance got him recruited into "The Castle," a legendary, exclusive secret society, he was being watched by existing members. Piz being his roommate, and Veronica being - at this point, pretty fully - Piz's girlfriend they simply got caught in the crossfire. Who could have expected that the weird guy trailing Wallace in the library, in what seemed to be the most minor of minor subplots, would lead to Parker dumping Logan, a hospital visit for Piz, Wallace undergoing sadistic shock treatment, the unveiling of a century of elite secrets, Veronica's privacy and personal reputation unfairly destroyed, a scandal that may remove Keith from office and even place him in prison, a possibly permanent rift between Veronica and Logan and, hell, maybe even (someday) Logan's murder?! On the bright side, Veronica and Nish get to patch things up, Veronica and Weevil get to steal a douchebag's tires, and Logan eventually apologizes to Piz for brutally assaulting him. And Gorya "Gory" Sorokin (Matthew Alan) the vicious son of a Mafioso - this time a much more deserving target - also gets demolished by Logan, although the consequences could be, well, consequential. We'll take what we can get.

The initiation for "The Castle" pledges is held at a grand Neptune estate that Veronica doesn't recognize. She parks outside, hops over the gate, squeezes through the doggie door, and hides behind the curtain. A middle-aged man enters his office with a college student and uploads video files onto a heavily-guarded hard drive. The videos are of pledges forced to confirm their gravest secrets, to be used as implicit blackmail keeping the entire tight-knit elite group in line for the rest of their lives. Veronica realizes whose home she's in when, tiptoeing past the room where the pledges are gathered, she comes face to face with a creepy painting of Lilly Kane. The Kanes are back in Neptune and Veronica is going to be in a lot of trouble. So is her father; he quickly realizes that the break-in he's been called to investigate was her doing. A thread from her sweater was caught on the doggie door and the neighbor's security system shows someone who looks a lot like her trespassing next door. As Jake and Clarence demand that Keith turn over the DVR that he confiscated, the sheriff has a decision to make - as if he really had a choice. At risk of losing his job and worse, he destroys the only evidence that can confirm Veronica's theft. Veronica, meanwhile, has used Mac to crack the drive's password and returns it to Jake in exchange for him letting the matter drop. He will, for his part, but it's too late for Keith. The district attorney has brought him up on charges of obstructing justice and the scandal is front page news, on Election Day no less!

Veronica goes to the polls to casts her lone ballot, exits into the wet street, and heads into the horizon as "It Never Rains in Southern California" plays and the show ends on a melancholy, ambiguous note...for now.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week, concluding with the Hulu revival. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on May 22, 2007/written by Phil Klemmer; directed by Jason Bloom): Weevil is in trouble again; several students allege that he was the one who sold them mock-student IDs with fake credit on them. This time even Keith believes he's being set up but in his role as Sheriff Mars he has to recognize the case against him is pretty strong. Veronica quickly determines that Weevil could not have programmed the machine that produces student IDs. When she discovers that a number of students associated with the charges against him are part of an Aspen ski club, she records them offering her a deal and then reveals the recording, demanding that they let Weevil go. They do but Keith - listening carefully to the conversation - tells Veronica they haven't really confessed to anything. She agrees, but got what she wanted out of the situation, mostly, since Weevil has been freed. He calls her to say he couldn't find the additional machine they claimed to have stashed away but we, and only we, see that he's lying: in his lap as he chats with Veronica is one of the machines. Could the Mars clan be wrong about the ex-con's reformed ways? Keith of course has much more going on than Weevil's case. The sheriff's race is drawing closer, in both senses, and Piz invites him on his live radio show to rebut Vinnie. It doesn't go well; a slick Vinnie hammers him particularly hard on the bar-busting issue and Keith is stiff and uncomfortable in the debate.

Aside from these storylines, Wallace is trailed by a mysterious stranger (Nathanael Johnson) who claims to be offering him membership in an exclusive society called The Castle. But the biggest drama is saved until the end. Veronica's romance with Piz has blossomed into something more serious than she originally intended, and she wants to let him know she'll miss him in Virginia this summer. They kid around in his dorm room before hooking up. Then, somehow, a video of this encounter circulates on an email chain. Dick, who has been struggling all episode with his familial demons and even goofily tries to make amends with Mac, pops up next to Logan with a laptop and casually wonders if Veronica knows she's all over the internet this way. Logan's eyes narrow; he already didn't like Piz, sarcastically clashing with him at the beach earlier, but now he has a real reason to hate him. As Piz records his show, Logan storms into Piz's booth to attack him. Punches are thrown - and this is no scrappy tussle but an all-out brutal brawl as Logan connects repeatedly to Piz's face, bloodying himself in the process. Piz gets off a few defensive shots but is mostly battered. A bruised Logan appears at the Mars Investigations office, prepared to inform Veronica about...something. And there, presumably for the last time (until 2019), an episode of Veronica Mars leaves us with a cliffhanger.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week, concluding with the Hulu revival. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on May 15, 2007/written by Jonathan Moskin & David Mulei; directed by Nick Marck): The school year is almost over. Veronica has been accepted into the FBI program (despite her inside connection getting sentenced to prison). Piz has his choice of internships: Pitchfork Media in New York or a more humble but convenient opportunity in Neptune radio. Max faces explusion and Mac has to decide if she's ready for a summer of sensual sloth or if she needs to get both of them back on track. Logan and Dick are going on a four-month surf trip to South America...at least until Parker pushes Logan to give more consideration to their relationship. He invites her along too but the whole plan is derailed when "Big Dick" Casablancas (yes, that's how he's billed) shows up in Dick's room. Having turned himself in, he's facing a mere year in prison but he wants to spend the months beforehand making amends with his estranged son. The usually affable Dick flies into a rage, blaming himself and his father for the death of - and the many deaths caused by- Beaver. "We used to have competitions to see who could make him cry," he spits at the corporate criminal - but after letting it all out he tells Logan that he will spend the summer with his dad after all.

Finally, Wallace makes a big decision with an ease most of the other characers can't muster. He will go to Africa with an organization rehabilitating child soldiers. Veronica's case-of-the-week also involves this work: she assists Kizza Oneko (Babs Olusanmokun), a man who claims to be the father of Hearst student, ex-child soldier, and bestselling author Apollo Bukenya (Nelsan Ellis). Apollo is skeptical of Kizza's motives and arranges an elaborate ruse to convince Veronica that he did not actually write his memoir and is facing a massive scandal and the loss of a lucrative movie deal. This way he can be sure that if Kizza still wants the paternity test, he's not just looking for money. Even before the results come back, though, it's clear the two are long-lost family, and they embrace when the father mentions a book Apollo's mother used to read to him. This is Veronica's first official case as a licensed private investigator in her own right, settling into Keith's old office with ease (as long as she doesn't get caught using silly pens with fluffy cat tails). Keith himself faces a steep re-election challenge from Vinnie of all people, who is working with Liam and a crooked home security company to facilitate burglaries that will crash Keith's reputation. How can Keith beat a candidate who manages to win the endorsement of the Neptune homeowners' organization AND the very criminals ripping them off?

My Response:

UPDATE: Yesterday, apparently as a surprise, Hulu began streaming the entire fourth season a week ahead of schedule. This obviously completely nukes the timing I worked out for this viewing diary which was supposed to build up to the announced premiere on July 26. As such, I will no longer offer a marathon of new reviews next weekend (as originally planned). Instead I will continue to post season three episodes each day, followed by the film, and then I will release my revival viewing diary one day at a time as well, concluding this whole series on August 2.

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week; this will conclude just as the revival (which I will also cover) premieres on Hulu. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on February 27, 2007/written by John Enbom; directed by Michael Fields): Just six episodes later, we have another climax: the Dean's true murderer is found. And then found again. And again. When Keith turns the screws, Hank and Mindy turn on each other, declaring that it was the other one who killed the Dean. Veronica and Tim team up to vindicate their professor, and a very femme fatale shot of Mindy coldly donning shades as she collects her insurance payout leads us to suspect they're on the right path. They track down a woman (Dendrie Taylor) whom he encountered outside a convenience store at the time of the Dean's death. But his alibi falls through when they learn that Hank called her from a burner phone to set this up. By then Hank has been released and, like Mindy, he vanishes, but Tim's and Veronica's sleuthing, now turned against their professor, reveals that they fled to Mexico. And there Keith finds the shaken Hank on Mindy's boat, confessing not the murder of the Dean - Hank still firmly believes Mindy killed her husband - but to the accidental slaying of Mindy herself. Hank, of course, is arrested and charged with both crimes. And Tim, who learns from Hank's phone (ostensibly bugged by Steve Batando) that the professor had declined to recommend him to a colleague, is now promoted to teaching the prestigiuos criminology course with Veronica as his de facto T.A. It's almost heartwarming to see the two rivals come together like this, bonding over an investigation into their mutual mentor. Almost.

As Tim lays out the case against Hank for the hyper-curious class, something starts to dawn on Veronica. When she pulls apart her phone in her seat, she discovers a bug and realizes that Tim knew some key information he could have only learned by spying on her. It was all a set-up, every last bit: the initial suicide cover story, the incriminating evidence, the reliance on the two suspects turning on each other and clumsily trying to cover their own trails (it's actually Hank who switched the Dean's and Steven's keyboards), even the stumbling into Veronica's office at night and begging for her help. Veronica openly confronts Tim in the middle of his lecture, offering only one cold comfort for the perfect murder-plotter. At least the professor won't disrespect his intelligence ever again.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week; this will conclude just as the revival (which I will also cover) premieres on Hulu. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on February 20, 2007/written by Phil Klemmer & John Enbom, story by Phil Klemmer, John Enbom & Joe Voci; directed by Harry Winer): What a reversal! The Dean's supposed suicide is more clearly than ever a murder, while the Coach's murder turns out to be a suicide. Thanks to a peanut allergy, Josh escaped from jail and kidnapped Mason, whom he shows Veronica gagged and bound in the back of his car. But Mason's gun does not match the "murder" weapon, Mason is freed, and Veronica convinces Josh to meet with her again in twenty-four hours so she can help him flee the country. Cashing in his rare coin collection, he finds a DVD in a safety deposit box that he wasn't supposed to access until he was 21. On it, Coach Barry movingly tells his son that he's suffering from a fatal illness (information Keith tracked down earlier earlier in the episode) and that he's going to make his suicide look like a murder so that the family will be able to get his insurance payout. And so Veronica, initially unsure if she would set a trap and turn Josh in, helps another fugitive with a desperate family situation cross the Mexican border. It's a good thing her father finds out when he does because a few minutes later he might be professionally bound to turn her in or be complicit in a police cover-up: he's about to become sheriff again.

One of the biggest plot developments in the entire series occurs as part of of the Dean O'Dell case. Veronica realizes that the time of death was wrong: a gunshot was heard after Mindy's car had returned to the hotel, not while she was out. However, Weevil finds a shirt with Hank's initials stitched onto them in an old, non-working incinerator, pointing suspicion back in her and her lover's direction. Nor does her ex Steve come off clean; Lamb picks him up after his fingerprints are found on the Dean's keyboard, Cliff gets him out on a technicality, and then he breaks into the O'Dell house. Lamb, ever incompentent - tragically rather than comically this time - fires at his own reflection and then is blindsided by Steve before a deputy shoots him down. Lamb bleeds out as Keith arrives to call in medical care, and when the county commisioner delivers the news that Lamb has died in the hospital, Keith is assigned to be acting sheriff. In that capacity, with the full weight of the law behind him now, he confronts Mindy with the monogrammed piece of clothing and demands answers.

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week; this will conclude just as the revival (which I will also cover) premieres on Hulu. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on February 13, 2007/written by Joe Voci; directed by John Kretchmer): Despite dipping even further into death, the heart of the episode is with Logan and Heather Button (Juliette Goglia), a bright-eyed, hyperactive 11-year-old whom he's forced to babysit. They make quite an amusing odd couple, the college student (who's on the verge of failing his classes) barely able to get up from the couch, unshaven and perpetually clad in his bathrobe, peppered with questions and offered unsolicited advice by the cheerful, chatty little girl. She's there because Dick invited her big sister Melinda (Lisa Jay) to a party, which turns into a trip to Vegas, which turns into into a drunken marriage, which turns into a honeymoon, which turns into a miserable ride back to California. Heather seems unconcerned, maybe even relieved to have nowhere to be and nothing to do, and she quickly preoccupies herself with teasing out and attempting to resolve Logan's love life. When Veronica, looking into the Dean's case at the Grande, finds herself in the same space as Logan and Heather (how many awkward trips has she taken in that elevator?) the pint-size matchmaker can barely contain herself. Finally Logan snaps and makes her cry, before learning from Melinda's sister that Heather - who seems so infinitely delighted by life, thrilled with Logan's taken-for-granted luxuries and convinced that he's living the dream - is actually on Prozac and has experienced wild mood swings since her father left the family. Logan and Heather reconcile over ice cream and the next day he's sufficiently recovered enough to show up for school.

That school, by the way, has become murder central over the past few months. The students are safe now that the serial rapists have been apprehended but two prominent staff members have died: Dean Cyrus O'Dell and, now, Coach Tom Barry. And in both cases, the very family members who ask Mars Investigations to look into the case are prime suspects. Keith's investigation of the Dean's "suicide" proves definitively that Mindy's car left the Grande and that two men were arguing in her room that night (as we already know, given what we saw of an armed Cyrus approaching). Mindy resists his initial request to end the investigation, even chuckling about his suspicions of her, but he keeps pressing and she keeps insisting that she and Hank, and no one else, were in the room together all night (save for a few minutes when she went down to get a toothbrush, which Hank convincingly verifies). Finally she gets fed up and fires Keith but it's too late; after reading the Dean's heartfet recommendation letter for Veronica, he is committed to finding the real killer even if it's free of charge and unwanted by the fickle, evasive widow. Keith's other clients are Kathleen and Josh Barry (Tracey Needham and Jonathan Chase), desperate to prove that Josh didn't murder his dad after quitting the basketball team in rage. Veronica - who suspects Wallace's friend Mason of killing the coach and trying to pin it on Josh - sympathizes with the coach's son, even delivering concealed cookies when he's locked away in the sheriff's cell. Somehow she ends up handcuffed in Professor Landry's classroom, informed by Lamb that she helped Josh escape. Does Josh, or his cellmate, have allergies (the cookies look like peanut butter) that helped him stage a jailbreak?

My Response:

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week; this will conclude just as the revival (which I will also cover) premieres on Hulu. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on January 30, 2007/written by Diane Ruggiero; directed by John Kretchmer): Taking a break from selling cheat aids to Neptune's desperate students, Max (Adam Rose) has a strange case for Veronica. A while ago, he fell in love with a beautiful woman at ComicCon - they established a deep connection without ever sleeping together, and she left her contact information in his hotel room but when he returned the cleaning service had already come through. He never heard from her again, and then he received a text from a random number saying she'd given up trying to reach him and was about to get married. Veronica gets to the bottom of this quickly: Max's friends (Nathan Frizzell and Richard Keith) hired a prostitute to take his virginity and felt bad when he took it too seriously, so they sent the text themselves (from a co-worker's New York area code). Max is still determined to track her down and when Chelsea, actually Fiona, actually Wendy (Brianne Davis) shows up, to Veronica's surprise she really does seem to be truly in love with the nerdy young man. They spend the following night together but when she's forced to leave abruptly the next day (another sex worker shows up with a fake black eye, demanding she return) and Max forks over some money to help her, Veronica asserts that he's been scammed. They decide to blackmail a prominent judge, one of her top clients, but her madame (Jackie Debatin) intervenes to inform them that no, Wendy really did love him but really is deep in debt. Max pays the $10,000 she needs, but the spell is broken and he can't look at her the same way. So Wendy leaves him again, this time with a note and payment for Veronica's service - in folded cash notes she got from returning to her old strip club job.

Veronica's own love life becomes complicated again when she and Logan share secrets in bed: he admits to sleeping with the surfer girl, and denies ever visiting a prostitute. Later Veronica runs into good old Madison Sinclair - with a brand new hairdo and look - at Victoria's Secret. It turns out when she showed up at Logan's door for a booty call earlier in the episode, she did not expect to find Dick there, as Veronica assumed. No, she was looking for Logan, whom she'd hooked up with during the brief break-up. As Veronica frets about sex and lies, Keith explores possible suspects in the O'Dell investigation, focusing on the Lilith House members who egged the Dean's office and car the night before. Except it turns out his car shouldn't have been there; either Nish is lying about egging a Volvo or Mindy (who traded cars with her husband earlier in the day) chose not to mention paying the Dean a visit...right around the time he was killed. Maybe she found him dead (or even saw the killer), freaked out, and came to Keith hoping he could discover who really did it without exposing that she was there? No picture is forming yet - too many missing pieces.

My Response:

Veronica Mars - "Spring Break Forever" (season 4, episode 1)

Veronica Mars (the film)

Veronica Mars - "The Bitch is Back" (season 3, episode 20)

Veronica Mars - "Weevils Wobble But They Don't Go Down" (season 3, episode 19)

Veronica Mars - "I Know What You'll Do Next Summer" (season 3, episode 18)

Veronica Mars - "Debasement Tapes" (season 3, episode 17)

Veronica Mars - "Un-American Graffiti" (season 3, episode 16)

Veronica Mars - "Papa's Cabin" (season 3, episode 15)

Veronica Mars - "Mars, Bars" (season 3, episode 14)

Veronica Mars - "Postgame Mortem" (season 3, episode 13)

Veronica Mars - "There's Got to Be a Morning After Pill" (season 3, episode 12)

Veronica Mars - "Poughkeepsie, Tramps and Thieves" (season 3, episode 11)

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