Thursday, June 22, 2006
Life On Mars
Veronica Mars, Living TV, 8.00pm
Why, what's this? Could it be a hastily-assembled regular feature idea with an indifferently photoshopped accompanying picture? We decided that, rather than bore you all by previewing Veronica Mars every week to remind you how brilliant it is, we'd run a weekly recap of the series so far to keep you all fresh for the new episode showing each week, because it's quite the dense show and if you're not paying attention, you might not keep up. So sit tight and buckle up as we take you on a rundown of the series up to episode 2-02: 'Driver Ed'.
So, in the season premiere we established that it was Logan at the door, that Logan and Veronica dated over the summer but broke up due to his involvement in a turf war with the PCHers, after which Veronica got back together with Duncan, who dumped Meg to be with her. Some students of Neptune High went on a school trip, and on the way back the bus crashed leaving the driver, Naima from America's Next Top Model and five students dead. Meg, somewhat improbably, survived, but is in a coma. Veronica was plagued with guilt/relief/guilty joy that she wasn't on the bus due to a series of coincidences. Then Jessie Doyle, daughter of bus driver Ed Doyle, appealed to Veronica for help after her father's hand in the deaths of six people turned her into a social outcast, and the insurers refused to pay her impoverished family because they suspected suicide. Veronica, ever aware of how it feels to be the underdog, agreed to help Jessie. Woody Goodman, meanwhile, announced to Keith that he's running for County Supervisor (the equivalent of mayor) and that he wanted Keith to run against Lamb in the upcoming elections for sheriff.
New girl Jackie Cook, daughter of baseball legend Terrence Cook, arrived in town and her snotty attitude at Java The Hut did not win her a new friend in Veronica. At school, however, her foxy sassiness enraptured Wallace, who mounted a campaign to win her heart. When an anonymous bastard pranged Jackie's father's Porsche (which Jackie wasn't meant to have taken), Wallace stepped up to display all the mad sleuthing skillz he picked up from Veronica last season and identify the culprit.
Logan, meanwhile, nailed Kendall Casablancas. There isn't much more to be said there, aside from Big Dick, Little Dick and Beaver almost catching them in flagrante delicto. Big Dick invited Logan to join him and Little Dick at the shooting gallery later in the week, given that Logan is living alone, what with his mother being dead and his father being in jail. Beaver, who wasn't invited on the outing, or, we suspect, any Casablancas family outings ever, groused about staying home and knitting. Poor Beaver.
Veronica's sleuthing lead her to a convenience store where Ed Doyle bought his last meal - a Slurpie and a bag of peanuts. When attempting to establish why he'd bought a St. Christopher medal and thrown it away immediately, Veronica realised that it wasn't a grand gesture of giving up hope - he'd been trying to make change for the phone and had bought the cheapest thing to hand. Under the guise of applying for the part-time receptionist job at the sheriff's office, Veronica conned Deputy Sacks into giving her a room ostensibly to fill in her application form, but really to make enquiries on the sheriff's authority to discover who Ed called. Upon returning to the office, Lamb was appalled to discover that Veronica had been left unattended in the office, but she'd already garnered the information she needed and covered with some trademark snark. (Our favourite quote of the episode: "I'm just stuck on the last question: why do I want this job? Be honest with me: would I sound like an enormous kissass if I said it was to be close to you? No, really, why DO birds suddenly appear every time you are near?" Heeheehee.)
Meanwhile, Duncan seemed entirely unbothered that his ex-girlfriend was in a coma, which upset Veronica. Whether this was one of Duncan's epilepsy-induced moodswings, or whether it was just him shutting down into RoboKane mode, we're unsure. Wallace turned sleuth adorkably and narrowed his search down to a hot blonde in a green car. Sadly he discounted all his leads at school (but discovered that Jane Kuhne is entirely warm for his form), but discovered during a shift at the Sac-n-Pac that the paper left on Jackie's car (crucially not giving any insurance info, just being left to keep up appearances) was from a reporter's notepad. He identified the culprit as a reporter working undercover at school to get a story on the bus crash from the inside, and upon some crafty confiscation of the offending vehicle's sparkplugs, got the insurance info for Jackie, who was finally impressed.
Lamb raided the Doyle household for evidence and found an apparent suicide note on Ed's computer, and so closed the case. Veronica went to the house of the final call that Ed made, and the woman who lived there claimed (in front of her husband) that it was a wrong number. Later, out of the husband's earshot, Veronica asked why a wrong number call lasted four minutes, and the woman confessed that Ed was planning to leave his wife and children for her, but had called to say he couldn't do it. Veronica introduced Jessie to the woman to bring about some closure. This triggered an epiphany in Veronica, who didn't want to live a life full of regrets, so she promptly headed to the Neptune Grand for some Donut Sex. They were postcoitally disturbed by some loud shagging noises from the next room, which Veronica discovered upon leaving the room were at least half produced by Logan. She tried calling the room's phone to identify the female voice, but was cut short when Duncan woke up. Back at Casa Casablancas, an asleep-in-front-of-the-TV Beaver was cruelly awakened by his returning father, and upon picking up the spilled popcorn from the floor, discovered a condom wrapper under the sofa.
Keith told Woody he wasn't going to run for sheriff, but upon leaving the office heard Jessie begging Lamb to reopen her father's inquest now that she had proof it wasn't suicide. Lamb, as usual, was being an uncooperative jackhole and refused to reopen the case, which lead to Keith getting a thinky face and informing Woody that he'd changed his mind. As the episode closed, a dead body washed up on the beach, and as Lamb and the police team investigated the scene, they discovered the words "VERONICA MARS" scrawled on the man's hand in marker pen.
Phew! So after all that (and we can't believe how much we just wrote), get ready for episode 2-03, 'Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang', where Beaver hires Veronica to investigate who Kendall is cheating on his father with, and Veronica wonders exactly why her name was written on a dead man's hand.
By Steve :: Post link
:: 
::
0 pop-up comments
:: Discuss on messageboard
