Veronica Mars S01 E04 – Effort

Previously: A long time ago we recapped an episode in which Veronica discovered that a classmate’s missing father wasn’t so much “missing” as cut off.
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The Wrath of Con

Sweeney: Veronica welcomes us back to Neptune by face nomming Troy outside her door at the end of a date. Before leaving he nonchalantly mentions homecoming, but in a we’re-too-cool-for-homecoming kind of way. Veronica goes inside and asks Keith what he thought of Troy – asking if he ran Troy’s license plates. Keith plays it cool, insisting that he has no idea what is inspiring this line of questioning, waiting until she’s almost in her room to drop the, “It’s time for me to meet this boy,” bomb. Veronica resists, but loses this battle.

Lorraine: I love that his sticking point is that that Troy is cutting into daddy-daughter time, and they don’t do things together anymore. A PARENT! WHO WANTS TO SPEND TIME WITH HIS CHILD!

Diva: This was the first of many moments in this episode where I felt the desire to award Keith some Eyebrows of Non-Negligent Parenting.

Sweeney: He deserves so many. I’m so confused by a television parent trying to request more time with their child. It’s a strange sight.

Too high on the newfound goodness of her life (and awesomeness of her father) to feel defeated, Veronica goes into her room and falls on her bed and into a Lillyback.

Lilly is good friending that Veronica shouldn’t have gone homecoming dress shopping without her. (I mean, obviously you don’t hit the mall without your Mean Girl BFF in tow. That was a rookie longhair!Veronica mistake; shorthair!Veronica would never be so foolish.)  “Why do you even have this? You are not a yellow cotton dress. You’re like, red satin. You’re strapless red satin,” is a favorite Lilly moment of mine. Lilly also takes this opportunity to inform innocent longhair!Veronica that they will be ditching the dance, and assures her that remembering the fun they have for the rest of forever will be way worth a little grounding.

Present!Veronica is still in bed, her expression a little more melancholy, looking like yes, the grounding was worth the memories of the fun they had. I hate when dead BFFs get all tragically foreshadowing like that.

Lor: If I die young, you’ll have a whole blog to reinterpret as tragic foreshadowing. You’re welcome.

Diva: Here lies Lor, who died as she lived: asking for more brain bleach because TV characters were being awful.

Sweeney: At school the next day Wallace is doing his office aid gig with Kyla Pratt from Disney Channel’s The Proud Family. Is it weird that I associate her actual face with a cartoon character? (L: NOPE. MY FIRST THOUGHT TOO.) Kyla Pratt is a hot mess and dropping files all over the place – files that Wallace spent a short eternity alphabetizing, but he’s got a big adorable crush on KP, so he brushes it off like it’s whatever. He assures her that everything’s fine and she responds by bursting into tears, hugging him, telling him that she really screwed up. Wallace’s inappropriate-response-to-your-feels lovestruck grin during the hug is almost baby panda levels of precious.

KP’s got a serious problem and Wallace is going to come to the rescue. By which he means hanging out in the girls bathroom with Veronica. I love this because his nonchalant attitude to being in there is equal parts, “Damn, you’re serious about this crush,” and “Wallace is actually that chill.” Our girl KP is kind of a moron because she fell for a Nigerian prince style scam. (L: You mean they don’t want to marry me? D:)  A supposed trust fund kid named Carl whom she’s never met emailed her to ask for an advance on some trust fund money he was about to come into. KP gave it to him and now she’s screwed because he obviously didn’t give it back. Wallace keeps dropping, “We’ll get him!” assurances so Veronica’s in, partially for Wallace’s sake but also clearly for the 10% recovery fee she’s attaching to this job.

The bell rings, making them all late for class. Veronica puts on her best perky voice and leaves a message at the number “Carl” gave her, saying that “Amber” got his message and thinks she can helps. She changes her voicemail to reflect her new alter ego and heads to class. (Except out in the hallway tons of other students appear to still be running to class, so apparently tardiness isn’t all that well monitored here.)

Come on now, sugar!

Veronica, Logan, and Duncan are in newspaper listening to/watching the morning announcements on TV. Degrassi did this too. I’m jealous of schools where this is a thing! TV in class! I think it’s meant to remind us that this is a public school with a whole lot of rich students, because private school isn’t a thing in Neptune. The mention of the dedication of a Lilly Kane Memorial Fountain catches Veronica’s attention. She and Logan exchange “we used to be friends” looks. (L: Hey, when did they used to be friends?) (D: A SHORT WHILE AGO! Wait, that’s not right. #snowproblems)

In the halls, Veronica is anxiously working up to the meeting-my-dad bomb, but Troy doesn’t register the severity of this situation to Veronica’s liking. She warns that he’s intense, but Troy promises that he “gives good parent.” He also confirms that they are, in fact, going to Homecoming.

He walks off so that she can brood about how she already lived the dream, and everything else is a cheap reminder. In the Lillyback, Veronica, Duncan, and Logan are waiting for Lilly to come out at the Kane house. She saunters out in a tit-showcasing, glittery gold number which Celeste dislikes. Lilly responds by adjusting it to show a little more boob (“How many braless years do I have left?“) and then posing for adorable pictures before heading off for the night. (D: This was the scene that made me fall in love with Lilly. She looks like Marilyn Monroe, and I giggled forever at the “braless” line.) Veronica has a video camera, though, instead of a photo camera, because she was on that memory-capturing game. Or for plot reasons.

Veronica’s memory is interrupted by Wallace, who wants to make sure they’re going to save the day. That’s Veronica’s phone’s cue to ring with a call for Amber. “Carl” wants to meet that day. Operation Proud Family is rolling.

Lor: I’m super curious to find out how many of our commenters are going to be all, “what the hell are you guys talking about?” THE PROUD FAMILY, DUH.

Diva: It’s not just the commenters – I never watched the Proud Family!

Sweeney: Ooh, you missed out. The Disney Channel late-90s-early-2000s oeuvre is practically mandatory viewing.

The hallway cam zooms past them to Logan, watching Duncan gather VHS tapes from his locker. His dad asked him to make a tape of Lilly for the memorial and those aforementioned plot reasons. Logan volunteer-begs to take over the project and Duncan agrees.

Diva: This was the first time Logan is depicted as having a shred of humanity. More, please!

Sweeney: At a park somewhere, a very curly-haired Veronica is playing the part of Amber, meeting Carl, who comes across as smarmy and full of shit as one would expect. KP watches from the parking lot and says that this guy isn’t the same Carl she met, though he had the same ugly bag and clothes. Wallace listens but also offers his Bond-like contribution of planting a tracker on the dude’s car. You know, because Veronica’s well-adjusted, totally normal teenage life includes ready-access to GPS trackers and knowledge of how to affix them to vehicles.

Amber!Veronica starts to get her checkbook out and “Carl” reminds her that the terms of his frozen accounts require that this magic money scheme be executed with cash. They agree to meet tomorrow.

Veronica, of course, follows him. He goes directly to a theater where his headshot is conveniently posted out front.

Diva: My favorite VVO thusfar: “And where do con men go when they’re done conning for the day? To a funky, bohemian theatre for an avant grade staging of a Beckett play, naturally.”)

Sweeney: I left it out because Beckett makes me twitch. Being forced to attend a campus production of Beckett with my grandparents while supremely sick and hungover was one of many low moments on my 22nd birthday. I hold Samuel Beckett personally responsible for my suffering.

Moving on. Carl has scribbled in a television appearance on a show called “Duped” on his resume because being on a TV show isn’t sufficient justification to print a new resume?

Lor: Ugh. Effort.

Sweeney: She waits outside for him for hours, based on the day-night change (perks of being a high school student and a detective is that there’s always homework to do while you wait!) and finds that he was also “duped” because he thought this was an actual TV show and was stupid enough not to question that not even the actor would be alerted to the location of the hidden cameras. He’s super pissed that he’s not getting those SAG Points, but he gives Veronica the number of the people who hired him.

The phone number was for a payphone at Game Land that doesn’t accept incoming phone calls. Wallace explains that it’s a gaming cafe and cute little Veronica won’t do a lot of blending at this sausagefest. “So I won’t blend,” she retorts, before strutting into Game Land in slow motion, wearing a schoolgirl uniform and a bobbed black wig.

She has to hand over her ID to play. She spots the high score board and sees a name that resembles the domain name from the email address, which is a bit lazy. These guys had the smarts to come up with this little plan but didn’t have the smarts to send their emails from a domain that didn’t directly link back to them? This is an elaborate scheme to bypass the rather basic step of doing this from a Hotmail account.

Lor: Seriously, Sweeney. EFFORT.

Sweeney: Regardless, Veronica signs herself up to be on this guy’s team and joins the game. She finds him in the game and starts shooting him, eventually offing his character, successfully goading him into standing up in a hissyfit because she’s on his team. She waits a bit and then goes back to the ID-collecting dude, getting him to let her dig through for her own ID, giving her a chance to swipe Grrrant’s as well.

The ID lets her know he’s a student at San Diego State University, which is a total party school. (My brother goes there!) She trolls the campus and finds the date/time of a party in Grrrant’s residence hall. The game plan is to have Wallace pose as a highly coveted prospective freshman in the math department. Veronica manages to work in some subtle, “Sooo, do you like KP?” questioning, and it’s sort of a running Snark Squad thing to flail when our beloved characters are being good friends to each other. Less words, more flail. Wallace scoffs at the idea of anyone buying him as a nerd, but she insists that he’s already been bought. Veronica posed as an admissions counselor, asking if it would be all right to have this kid at the party. Plus, the nerdy glasses look cute on him. (D: +1. I even wrote that in my notes.)

As they are leaving, Veronica goes back to her desk to grab her cell phone, but a homecoming picture grabs her attention and pulls her into a Lillyback. The four of them (Veronica, Lilly, Logan and Duncan) are in the limo playing a game of truth or dare. Logan dares Lilly to kiss someone in the limo which is a stupid dare, but a totally believable horny teenager move. Lilly kisses Veronica instead, to remind us that Lilly was so! totes! wild! Duncan pops champagne all over the limo, because #richkids and Logan chases him out, so that Veronica and Lilly can share a laugh at ALL THE FUN MEMORIES.

Once again, Veronica’s Lillyback has distracted her from actual humans around her and Wallace pops his head back in to tell her to get going. Being haunted by your BFF really makes life awkward.

The party at SDSU is a total drunken shit-show and I’m confused as to what exactly Veronica told them. Even if she’s posing as a student, she’s posing as one there on administrative duty. We had an actual roommate fight my senior year because I had a freshman friend who was the resident to one of my roommate’s RA friends. I don’t even understand what is happening right now, with all the red Solo cups out in front of this “admissions officer.”

Veronica, being not an actual admissions officer, has bigger shit to worry about. She casually gets everyone they interact with to talk to her about her new friend Grrrant. Basically, they’re geniuses and they have a really intense security system and also probably drug dealers.

V makes up an excuse about people throwing roman candles down a stairwell to get the RA away from his desk and master key. Wallace, meanwhile, is awkwardly pretending to know things about math. “Oh you’ve asked me an either/or question? Both. Yes, yes, both. That sounds smart, right? Right.”

Lor: I can’t even take how adorable Wallace has been so far. His little nod after his, “I know this is gonna sound weird,” line is so cute, I want to pinch his cheeks.

Sweeney: As soon as Veronica goes in their dorm room an alarm starts beeping at her for a code. A few seconds later a full alarm goes off and both Grrrant and the dude she sat next to at Game Land get text messages and rush to their room.

Diva: It was around this point that I realized Grrrant is also the musical theater geek from Gilmore Girls who was also in Into the Woods on Broadway, so I had a little nerdy squee over that. 

Veronica plays drunk, stupid, and giggly, saying she just opened the door, no key required. Before the dudes can get to arguing about how anyone got in there they spot the headshot of their most recent “Carl” pinned to the cork board behind them. Wallace walks up and V stumbles off like she’s getting sick. “I don’t feel so good, Papa Bear.”

At school the next day, they talk shop and Veronica teases Wallace over the cartoon hearts in his eyes when he sees KP at her locker, but he won’t rise to it – saying there’s nothing bad about that crush before going to talk to her and use actual words. A good crush, indeed.

Veronica spots Logan in an empty classroom working on the Lilly memorial video. He’s sassy and rude to her in part because they used to be friends, you see, and also because he’s frustrated with the “frosty, water-colored” videos the Kanes provided. He says Lilly would have hated that.

Lillyback time, of course! The gang is on the beach with their champagne and Veronica’s video camera. They’ve moved on to Never Have I Ever and Lilly is appalled that V has never gone skinny dipping. Logan calls Duncan out on camera for jerking it in the bathroom after watching cheerleading tryouts. Duncan sets himself up by saying, “I’ve never seen my parents having sex” with his sister present. Stupid move. Lilly’s reenactment of their parents’ boring sex is traumatizing for Duncan, but he brought that on himself. (D: Also, it was hilarious. And seemed pretty accurate.) Lilly goes after Veronica for being a virgin, but she words it in awkward and grammatically incorrect way: “I’ve never not had sex.” SO YOU’VE BEEN HAVING SEX FOR ALL OF ALWAYS? WUT? Veronica is appropriately confused, but she drinks anyway. Duncan hesitates because he’s embarrassed, but then he joins her and Veronica swoons.

Back in the present, Veronica takes a long look at struggling Logan and smiles so that we can all be entirely certain that it wasn’t a coincidence that Veronica has home movie Lillybacks in the same episode that Logan is making a Lilly video.

SDSU. Veronica is telling her dad there’s a World’s Greatest Dad trophy with his name on it for helping her out. (He does have a good grip on the lead for Traumaland’s Parent of the Year, after a mere 3 appearances in 2013!) He takes backup upstairs to where the RA lets him in, because he’s posing as a DEA agent (you know, because they also happen to have a DEA jacket lying around in their endless supplies) (my family has a big ass costume box with far less excuse, so I’m not actually questioning this) and claims they suspect Grrrant of growing marijuana. He pokes around a bit and sneakily leaves a bug on a high up shelf. Grrrant says he needs a warrant and Keith says there’s nothing there to get a warrant for and shows himself out.

FYI: if you want to hold Keith’s criminal behavior against him in weighing how much he deserves those Sandy Cohen Eyebrows, you’re going to have to take this one up with us in 2015. 

Diva: By the end of this season, Keith will have enough Sandy Cohen Eyebrows to build an entire empire out of eyebrows. Cara Delevingne can be his eyebrow queen. Also, Keith brings their dog along to be the DEA agent’s drug-sniffing dog, which I found hilarious and adorable.

Sweeney: At some tables nearby, Veronica does homework while listening to their mostly boring conversation. She eventually hears them punch a code and matches the button tones to the tones on her cell phone to figure out their code. She gets back to work.

A little bit later she wakes up to a phone call letting her know Troy has arrived at her home, where she is definitely not.

Cut to said home, where Troy’s “good parent” efforts are struggling. Keith asks if they’re going to stay at the dance the whole time and Troy echos Lilly’s earlier, “The whole point of going to the dance…” only he gives the parent-approved finisher of, “is to go to the dance.” Keith says he assumes this means Troy won’t mind that he canceled his reservation at The Four Seasons, which is Veronica cue to enter, just a few seconds too late and too eager for minigolf. Too eager for Troy, anyway. But fuck that kid. I’m amused. Keith is too.

Lor: Oh, totally. Joke’s on you, Troy!

Sweeney: The next day at Mars Investigations, Veronica has Keith phone Grrrant as an admissions counselor. Grrrant is reluctant at first, but Keith says they really want to land this student and promises tickets to the premiere of a new Matrix game. Free shit is always the tickets to winning the hearts and minds of college kids. And twenty-somethings and bloggers and other broke people.

Neptune High School. Veronica drops her Homecoming Lillyback tape off with Logan. He brushes her off, like a dick. Granted, making a video of your dead ex-girlfriend would be a feels-inducing activity for anyone and you don’t want people to see you with your hayfever, especially if you have a broody bad boy routine to keep up.

Lor: Related: Jason Dohring gives A+ sad panda face. It’s seriously impressive. He can look like his dog just died, all the time. Talent.

Sweeney: It’s an art.

Wallace heads off with Grrrant and his literal partner in crime. Veronica VOs the highlights reel from all the boring surveillance audio she listened to as she breaks into Grrrant’s dorm and sets about searching for the money. Grrrant’s developing a really kickass game and they’ve managed to bypass the need for investors with a successfully executed Nigerian scheme, meaning that their game will make them millions of dollars.

Veronica dismantles their hard drives, texts Wallace that she’s almost done and leaves a note taped to their monitor. She doubles back for the bug Keith planted and notices wires running along the ceiling. It’s then that she realizes there is a safe with backups she missed. She steals an energy drink and sits down to do some plotting and scheming.

Wallace and Grrrant arrive at the empty premiere. Wallace says he feels so DUPED. Before they get a chance to process this comment, their phones go off with text messages for the alarm on the backups. They race back to their dorm, confused as to how that’s even possible, given that the main alarm never went off. They ain’t scurred though.

Cut to them arriving in their room to find their computers dismantled and their safe replaced with energy drinks, because Veronica flooded it.

The note V left them is the text of their scam emails, only she promises to return their hard drives in exchange for the cash. They meet in the park where Amber met Carl, cash in hand. While the boys dig through a garbage can for their backup drives, Veronica explains to Wallace and KP that she handed over information on them to the FBI’s anti-fraud division. She walks ahead of them and KP stops to kiss Wallace.

Lor: RECOVERED MONEY IS SO SEXUAL.

Sweeney: At her car, Veronica stops to unfold a flyer for the Lilly Kane Memorial, so that she can finish out her Lillyback. This one begins with the gang arriving back at the Kane Estate the following morning. Duncan sees that they’ve called the cops, which a horrified Veronica corrects as the much more terrifying, “They called my dad.” Lilly’s decided that this makes it the best dance EVAR.

They get out of the limo and Lilly makes a big show of stumbling around for her mother’s benefit, but calls bullshit on the fact that Celeste is only mad at her and not Duncan. “I know you Lilly – any trouble this family has ever had, you’ve been at the root of it.” Duncan steps up to take the blame, but Lilly goes back and makes out with Logan just to spite her parents before following them inside. Duncan has to get dragged back in from his cute little goodbye wave to Veronica.

Diva: Fuck Lilly’s mom. Now I think SHE’S the murderer. Because she’s mean, and bad at sex.

Sweeney: “Bad at sex” is the most compelling reason I’ve ever heard. Definite murderer.

Neptune High. The orchestra wraps up “Wind Beneath My Wings” before Celeste begins the talking portion of dedicating the memorial fountain. Duncan unveils the pretty little fountain and Logan pushes play on the video. It begins with parent-approved music and footage of little kid Lilly doing cute little kid things. Some of it is clearly actual childhood footage of Amanda Seyfried, which is a nice touch. Then guitars kick in and we get homecoming!Lilly talking to the camera in the limo. Shots of them popping champagne are mixed with goofy kid!Lilly. It ends with Lilly sitting in the sunroof looking down and saying, “You love me, don’t you?” Jake Kane breaks down and cries. Guilty or not, Dad tears always get me. Even fictional dad tears.

Lor: It was such a good breakdown too. It started with a smile, melted into a sad laugh, and finally, the man tears. Oh, the man tears.

Diva: I didn’t enough know Jake Kane was human until this point, so yeah, awesome feelings breakdown.

Sweeney: Veronica and Logan exchange a quick smile and the crowd disperses. On the edge of the crowd, Felix tells Weevil it’s time to go and we see Weevil wipe his eyes. (D: I DIED. YOU GUYS, I DIED OVER THIS. I AM DEAD.) He’s sad that this is all it takes to meet the episode quota in your contract. Also probably because of the video and more Lilly seeeeecrets.

Homecoming night. Veronica and this year’s crew — Troy, Wallace, and KP — are in a limo headed for the dance. (Gotta celebrate that crime-solving in style.) She makes the driver pull over along the Pacific Coast Highway. Troy gets really anxious because he now has the appropriate fear of Keith Mars. She gets out and tells Troy he has to stay there. Wallace saays he stopped trying to figure her out Day One. She walks out to the water, ditching her little red dress in the sand and heading into the water to check “skinny dipping” off her list. End credits.

That couldn’t have waited until after the dance? Now she’s going to be all covered in saltwater and sand and that sounds miserable.

Lor: OKAY, RIGHT? And she spent some time on that hair and make-up and hair. WASTE OF EFFORT.

Sweeney: Pieces of this Mystery of the Week feel a little contrived to me. The domain name thing feels extra-laughable. The flashbacks also feel a lot more forced than they did in previous episodes. That said, they’re probably my favorite flashbacks, because they’re the most telling of the group dynamic that constituted Veronica’s former life. This was about meeting the gang. These flashbacks were a little less story-flow significant because they weren’t introduced to reveal or explain anything other than character history which is both their strength and weakness for me. (But with much more emphasis on the strength column.)

Diva: But as the resident Snow, I loved these flashbacks. Until now, I didn’t really have feelings about Lilly as a character, only Amanda Seyfried as an actress, but these flashbacks are what made Lilly lovable to me. It might not have been plot-driven, but the character development that they showed was really necessary to make me care about these people. I, for one, needed to see the four of them all hang out together as besties to really understand why they were ever friends in the first place, and how far they’ve come since. 

Sweeney: An excellent point. Sometimes it’s hard to assess how this comes across to a first time watcher, but yes, you’re absolutely right in that it was essential to get to some of these character establishing flashbacks. Up to now there were so many other things to reveal with Lilly’s appearances, so it was important to make sure we saw how close they all were both to have feelings for them and to contextualize how disconnected Veronica became. It’s one thing to have her say she used to be part of the in-crowd, but it’s another to see how close they were.

This is similar to some of my Firefly endgame comments, but: This one is not even a contender for favorite episode of the season, but I love every single episode of this season so anything that doesn’t make the top third of the rankings will be a total grudge match for me. Plus, “I don’t feel so good, Papa Bear!” is a favorite quotable moment. And I’ve always wanted a reason to tell someone that they’re not a yellow cotton dress but strapless red satin. One day.

Lor: Note to self: bring yellow cotton dress to the next Snark Lady trip.

 

Next time: Troy, Logan, and another friend head to Tijuana for the night and Troy’s dad’s car gets stolen on the way home. Find out if Veronica saves Troy from military boarding school on Veronica Mars S01 E05 – You Think You Know Somebody.