Thursday, June 29, 2006
Life On Mars
Veronica Mars, Living TV, 8.00pm
Previously on Veronica Mars: so far this season we've established that Veronica and Logan dated over the summer, Veronica and Logan broke up, Duncan broke up with Meg and got back together with Veronica, much to Meg's chagrin. Meg's bitterness led to Veronica missing the bus back from the field trip, which led to her salvation, as the bus plummeted off the cliff on the way home leaving a comatose Meg the only survivor. Veronica managed to acquit the deceased driver of suicide charges, but the mystery of what caused the bus crash remained at large. Logan is nailing Dick and Beaver's new stepmother Kendall, and was almost caught in the act by the Casablancas family (leaving Beaver to later discover a suspicious condom wrapper). Wallace developed the hots for attitude-laden transfer student Jackie Cook, Woody Goodman groomed Keith to run against Lamb in the sheriff's race and a body washed up on the beach with VERONICA MARS scrawled on his hand. Now, in preparation for episode 4, let's briefly catch up on what happened last week.
In order to pad out her college applications, Veronica joined Future Business Leaders of America, taught by Mr Pope. The guest speaker at the first class was one Large Penis Casablancas (and we know the character's name is Big Dick, but seriously - don't expect us to believe that the character isn't entirely driven by the size of his manhood: everything about him screams "I am entirely comfortable with the raw magnetism of my heterosexuality, and were I to discover that my trophy wife is banging my son's best friend, I would put it down to her being a screaming whore rather than any shortcomings I might have in the bedroom.") Present in class: Veronica, Duncan, Logan, Cassidy, Dick and others. As usual, Large Penis ignored Cassidy's existence entirely. Large Penis gave the class the lowdown on REITs - we missed a large amount of the business guff but we gather that it stands for Real Estate Investment Trusts, and basically involves a consortium of people buying a share of property - such as an office or a hotel - that they haven't seen. Shortly after class Beaver (and just so you don't get lost, we'll be using the names Beaver and Cassidy pretty much interchangeably) caught up with Veronica and hired her to trail Kendall, since there's a clause in the pre-nup that says she can't cheat on his father. Y'know, just go alongside such old-fashioned conceits as "marriage vows". Veronica, learning her new-found business skills, bartered him up from $500 to $1000 for a picture of Kendall kissing someone else (kissing! Oh Beaver, you're so naive), but before she could put the plan into action, Deputy Sacks called her down to the sheriff's office.
In the office, Sheriff Lamb questioned Veronica (ineptly, as usual) about her relationship with one David "Curly" Moran - which turned out to be the name of the guy who washed up on the beach. Veronica, upon viewing the photos, realised that she'd met Curly before - lighting candles at the bus crash memorial when she was there with Jessie. Meanwhile, Keith invited Alicia (Wallace's mother, who he's dating) to join him for some single-parent hanky panky on a book signing tour he was due to do in Chicago (remember the book he wrote on the Lilly Kane murder? You do? Good).
Veronica began her research and discovered that Curly was a movie stuntman fallen on hard times, and that Kendall was a Laker Girl fallen on hard times, until she met and married Large Penis Casablancas. She trailed Kendall to the gym and snapped her meeting with an unidentified man, whom she then took to a cheap hotel. Veronica showed her pictures to Beaver, who wasn't satisfied because there was no physical evidence of an affair. He did however spot something that Veronica had missed - that Kendall and the stranger swapped gym bags at the juice bar. Veronica hatched a plan that involved Beaver loading Kendall's favourite songs onto an iPod shuffle. Just like Miss Marple used to do.
Wallace tried to broker peace between Jackie and Veronica - Veronica, for her part, invited Jackie to join her and Duncan for a private screening of the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, so that they could stare at Colin Firth instead of reading the book, which suited Jackie fine because Jackie appears to be allergic to all books printed before 1987. We don't feel the Jackie hate that a lot of people do, but seriously: she needs to stop dissing the classics. The next day, Veronica headed to the garage where Curly worked to hunt for clues. She found no reason why he would have had her name scrawled on his hand, but she did find a bunch of autographed pictures in his box o'crap, one of which was signed "All these years still on The Long Haul" from Aaron Echolls.
Back at FBLA, Mr Pope launched his stock market investment game for the class, showing them his own portfolio investing heavily in the Casablancas corporation. He informed the class that due to his astute investments, he was due to retire in nine months and buy an awesome yacht - which would have been ready earlier, but they'd had to reseal the hull twice. This prompted Logan to comment "Didn't plug her right the first time, huh?", which in turn prompted a series of tiny hamsters to start spinning on their tiny wheels in Duncan's head, and just two weeks later he realised that Logan had insulted his sexual prowess, and went all DONUT MAD! DONUT SMASH! and engaged in some fisticuffs with Logan. This led to a heart-to-heart (well, sort of) in the nurse's office, where Logan revealed that his anger wasn't related to the snatching of Veronica, but to former best-friend Duncan being AWOL all summer while Logan was on trail for the murder of Felix and desperately needing some friendly support. Duncan, perhaps reasonably, responded that he had been absent because Logan's father killed Duncan's sister. Logan pointed out that he hated his father just as much as Duncan did, and a truce of sorts appeared to be in the offing.
At the Pride and Prejudice evening, Jackie wound Veronica up. A lot. Okay, moving on: Veronica followed Kendall to the gym and in another of her spot-on bimbo impersonations, managed to not only switch Kendall's iPod shuffle for the camera-loaded iPod shuffle Beaver had loaded all of Kendall's music onto, but also to skip on the playlist so Kendall wouldn't notice the switch. That Veronica - she thinks of everything! Veronica trailed Kendall to another meeting, which was held at the shaddy Sandpiper hotel. Realising that she'd heard that name before, Veronica flicked through the glossy Casablancas corporation brochure she'd been given in the FBLA class and realised that something was rotten.
Veronica followed Kendall's Mystery Man to the courthouse, where she discovered that he was actually the County Assessor. A visit to Mr Pope allowed Veronica to gain some information on real estate fraud - again, we're fuzzy on the exact mechanics of the scheme, but it turns out that Kendall and Large Penis were bribing the assessor to okay the Casablancas Property deals on behalf of the people who couldn't view the properties in person, in order to stimulate more purchases and artificially inflate the value of Large Penis's company. Veronica urged Mr Pope to sell his stock because she planned to blow the whistle on Large Penis, but the entirely ethical Mr Pope pointed out that this would mean selling his dud stock to an innocent person and refused, thus dashing his hopes of yachts and early retirement. Boo!
Meanwhile, in Chicago, Keith and Alicia were getting frisky in the hotel, but on the way to their room a man appeared to recognise Alicia and called out to her, addressing her as 'Cher'. Alicia played dumb, but Keith still seemed suspicious. The chap in question went to the front desk to get the 411 on Keith and Alicia, and revealed that he was an officer of the law. Later in the show, he followed Alicia back to Neptune and looked set on hunting her down.
It was karaoke night at Java The Hut, and Lars was ineptly wooing a girl called Jeannie in song form. He was promptly upstaged by Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Dandy Warhols (who perform the show's theme song) singing 'Love Hurts'. If you think this sounds like bizarre filler, you'd sort of be right, but we're only mentioning it because this isn't the last you'll hear of it this season. Elsewhere at Java, Veronica got the camera-laded iPod shuffle back from Beaver and showed him the pictures it had taken - one every fifteen seconds. Veronica was about to explain why the assessor was only signing documents and not ripping off Kendall's skimpies with his teeth when she was called to assist a customer - who turned out to be Jackie, who was there with someone who was Not Wallace. Needless to say, the Veronica/Jackie truce was short-lived. Upon returning to Beaver's table, Veronica discovered he had scarpered, upon viewing pictures on the laptop of a shirtless Logan about to do the deed with Kendall. Veronica tried to phone Logan to warn him, but since he was - guess what? - doing Kendall at the time, he didn't get the call.
Beaver took the photos to Large Penis, who completely wigged when he realised that Beaver had hired a PI, because he knew that this meant his highly unconstitutional business practices would be revealed. He ran out of the office, instructing people to shred all of their documents, and flew off in a helicopter leaving a nonplussed Beaver behind. So now we can look forward to the amazing adventures of the Casablancas Boys and their Bikini-Toting Stepmom. Boy, they put the fun in dysfunctional!
Veronica paid a visit to Casa Echolls and happened on a towel-clad Logan emerging from the shower. A heated discussion ensued, where Veronica grew increasingly snotty about Logan's failure to take responsibility for his actions. She accused him of being a living cliché - a spoilt rich boy with an unquenchable thirst for danger - and stormed out. On the way out, she spotted one of Aaron Echolls's old movie posters on the wall for a movie called The Long Haul, featuring a signature stunt where a truck plummets from a bridge - a stunt co-ordinated and performed by one David "Curly" Moran. Nine different varieties of wigged, Veronica headed to the Neptune Grand where she tearfully confided to Duncan that she believed the bus crash was intended to kill her. While we sympathise, let's hope Veronica drops the All About Me attitude before she turns completely into Phoebe Halliwell, eh?
Tonight in Neptune: Veronica is hired to trace a woman's so-called cheating fiancé, but Veronica believes the transgressions are figments of her clients imaginations. Meanwhile, we discover exactly what connects Burly Cop to Alicia and Wallace, and Meg's sister has a plea that needs Duncan's help. See you next week!
By Steve :: Post link
:: 
::
6 pop-up comments
:: Discuss on messageboard
6 Comments:
Don't get too excited. The second season is really quite shit compared to the first.
By 
, at
9:03 am
I liked the second series. Kendall is ace.
By , at
12:01 pm
I'd still convert for Logan.
By 
creepylesbo, at
12:41 pm
Veronica Mars is shit!
By , at
10:38 pm
Wowwww.. so much writing...
By , at
1:27 am
The second season of the show wasn't anywhere near as good as the first, this is true. However, it still pisses on most other shows from a great height.
Those of you who don't like Veronica Mars or are offended by the updates, feel free to apply to the usual address for a refund.
