Showing posts with label Veronica Mars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Veronica Mars. Show all posts

Thursday, November 17, 2016

My favorite new show: Sweet/Vicious

Picture this:  a tiny blonde sorority girl and a tiny non-blonde tech whiz girl joins forces to fight monsters on campus.  First thing you thought of was Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Buffy and Willow, right?  Well add this to the pantheon:  MTV's new scripted series, Sweet/Vicious, about Jules (sorority girl) and Ophelia (drug dealer/hacker) who team up vigilante-superhero-style to take down the frat boy rapists at their college.  This time the monsters are people but that doesn't not stop our heroines from kicking all kinds of ass.  It's like if Veronica Mars teamed up with Buffy, minus the superpowers. 

To my great surprise (I mean, it's on MTV for hell's sake), I really like this show.  The first episode just aired on Tuesday but the first three episodes are available on demand.  It's funny and heartbreaking and very clear in its message opposing sexual assault against women.  And in the trying times that are now, it seems especially important.  I do not condone violence perpetrated against people but there is something imminently satisfying about watching young, entitled rapists getting the shit kicked out of them.

Image result for mtv sweet vicious

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Season's greetings

Since I am still resolutely avoiding finishing out the True Blood recaps, all I've got for you a premieres list of new and returning television shows in which I will be indulging.  Clearly I have too much time available to watch television.  (Also, judging from the length of this list, I better buckle down if I want to get through at least one Farscape season before regular t.v. starts up again.)

American Horror Story - 9/14 and I have no idea what this season's theme is (ridiculous show)

Gotham - 9/19 and yes, I am going to give it another shot although it may have to go

The Good Place - 9/19 with Kristen Bell, a resurgent Ted Danson and pretty good initial reviews

New Girl - 9/20 although I may take this off the list and just catch up on-demand

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - 9/20 although I will be mourning Agent Carter for the duration

Last Man on Earth - 9/25 which Mr. Mouse watches with me (yay!)

Luke Cage - 9/30 (on Netflix) can't wait can't wait can't wait

The Flash - 10/4 and I hope they crossover a LOT with Supergirl

Arrow - 10/5 and I've forgotten where we left off story-wise but don't imagine it much matters

Supergirl - 10/10 and I will be paying close attention to the stunts because Jessie Graff kicks ass!

Legends of Tomorrow - 10/13 but this is another bubble show for me and is totally on probation

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - 10/21 and my new favorite, now that I binged S1 this summer

The Walking Dead - 10/23 and yes, we will be picking up the grim recapping right away

There are a couple other shows (on SyFy? Falling Water?) that I don't know much about other than marginally intriguing trailers, so we'll see how the season shapes up.  Mr. Mouse will be complaining that Better Call Saul and Fargo aren't back yet ... we'll add those in when they get here.  What will you be watching?

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Mini movie review: Veronica Mars

A long time ago, we used to be friends, Veronica Mars television show and I.  And then it got cancelled.  And then Kristen Bell and Rob Thomas raised a ridiculous amount of money on Kickstarter and made a Veronica Mars movie, just for the fans.  When released this past spring, the movie only showed at one theater in my state, and that one about an hour's drive away ... so I waited for it to come out on DVD.  (I'm a fan but I'm not a crazed fan who's gonna drive an hour.)  I did watch all of S1 and S2, and several episodes of S3, of the original television show before I watched the movie so I could refamiliarize myself with the characters, quips and story lines.  I finally sat down to watch the little Veronica Mars movie that could and embraced it with open arms.  It was like getting together with an old friend: familiar and fun and friendly, but not exactly the same.  The dialogue was not quite as clever as in the t.v. show and the movie seemed like it was going through a checklist of everything it wanted to hit.  But still, spending time with Veronica - who is still as flawed as ever - and her cohorts was really a good time.

Veronica Mars is definitely a movie for its fans.  We got to see almost everyone from the show: Veronica, Keith, Logan, Wallace, Mac, Dick, Weevil, Gia, Sacks (poor Sacks), Cliff, Vinnie, Leo, Madison, Celeste Kane and Piz.  There were definite shout-outs and call-backs: Leo said he thought he'd heard that Veronica was working for the FBI (which had been the idea for a possible S4, with a time jump); Dick asks if Veronica has had work done because her boobs look bigger (she retorts that his boobs are bigger - but Kristen Bell's really are because they filmed not long after she gave birth); Dax Shepard (Bell's real life husband) has a cameo as a sleezy guy trying to pick her up at a club; Veronica and Logan still have hawt chemistry (Team Logan, btw); they use the original theme song from S1 and S2.  I'm sure there are more but you'll have to pick them out for yourself.

It's really an impressive little bit of a movie, blatant fan service aside, but there were a couple of things that distracted me (and should have been easy to catch/fix). The uniform that Logan wears when he meets Veronica at the airport is way too big for him and should have been tailored - he looks ridiculous.  Keith gives Piz some grief for not sleeping on the couch when he comes to Neptune ... and yet Piz and Veronica are apparently living together (and have been for some time) in NYC when the movie starts so I find that objection unrealistic.  Finally, Veronica has apparently just finished law school and is preparing to take the bar exam.  But it's also ten years after her graduation from high school.  This would make her 28 years old.  Graduate from high school at 18, four years of college (22), three years of law school (25).  Even if she takes a year to study for the bar, or if she took a year off after transferring from Hearst College to Stanford, I still find it highly unlikely that someone as driven as Veronica would just now be taking the bar exam and interviewing for jobs - the timeline doesn't sync up for me.

But that's not why you watch the Veronica Mars movie.  You watch it because you loved the television show and want to spend more time with these clever, complicated characters.  And when it's all over, when they've teased you with where they could go if they ever did another one, you sit there, crossing your fingers and hoping for more.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Two quick things

First, why doesn't Jason Dohring have a regular gig on a television show?  I had DVR'd Lie To Me, which I've never before seen in my life, only because he was on it - and he was awesome as a charming psycho- and sociopathic psychology grad student, totally putting ol' Tim Roth through his paces.  Sure, JD is perhaps specializing in bad boys, but jeez, give the kid a break.  Someone give him a full time job!

Also, via USA Today's Pop Candy blog, I learned about Mari-Kari, an animated web series on FEARnet.com starring Shannen Doherty as twins.  Mari is a perky, pretty, not-too-bright elementary school girl and Kari is her dead twin who defends her dimmer sister in gruesome and hilarious ways.  Two new episdoes every Thursday in June.  I am totally hooked.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

This just proves I have fantastic taste

Have you all seen this list: Pajiba's "Best 20 Seasons of the Past 20 Years"? [Ed. note: technically the question mark should be inside the end quotes - I know this - but the title of the list is not in fact a question and I didn't want to confuse the hoi polloi.]

Of the twenty television series on this alphabetically listed list, I adore (and have gone on at some length about my adoration of same) numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 17 and 20. That's half of them. I have watched in some seriousness (but was never completely smitten with) numbers 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 18. And I have 5 and 15 sitting in my DVD queue. The only two shows on the list that I have no connection with whatsoever are the Larry Sanders Show (#9) and Murder One (#10) - apparently I should check these out.

I'm going to take this as yet another sign that I prefer to watch the good stuff ... and should keep writing about it.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Vindication is mine!

Thanks to Whedonesque for giving me the heads-up about this list: Empire Online's 50 Greatest Television Shows of All Time. I will grant you that this list seems to have been compiled by British sci-fi fanboys (Deep Space Nine but no NYPD Blue? Come on!) but if you take the list completely out of context and just as is, it justifies my taste in television. I present as evidence the following:

#2 (of all time, mind you) is my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right behind The Simpsons

#5 is Lost

#9 is The X-Files

#13 is the fabulous new Battlestar Galactica (which I'll recap when I have a spare decade)

#14 is Firefly - "... it had Nathan Fillion, whose presence officially makes anything 27% better."

#15 is Heroes

#21 is Angel (it seems as though some Whedon-fans compiled this list, no?)

#31 is Deadwood - "The word fuck and its derivatives are used 2,980 times throughout the show's three seasons." That's an average of 82.7 times per episode. Hee.

#48 is Veronica Mars

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Next time, on Friend Mouse ... ?

I'm at a bit of a loss these days: this was initially conceived of as a television recap blog, and yet there's very little television out there to recap right now. I still have Lost, thankfully, but Heroes isn't coming back until the fall, from what I hear.

This is what I've been able to glean as far as post-writers' strike new episodes with regard to the shows Mr. Mouse and I watch (there's a more comprehensive list here):
  • How I Met Your Mother - returns March 17
  • CSI: Las Vegas - April 3
  • My Name Is Earl - April 3
  • The Office - April 10
  • Scrubs - April 10

As I mentioned above, Heroes is gone until Fall 2008, as are Pushing Daisies and Chuck. Friday Night Lights is seemingly done as well, but the bad news there is that NBC has not committed to renewing it for the fall season. Lost is switching back to its later time in late April: Thursdays at 10 p.m. Eastern time (boo! hiss! I already stay up too late to get those recaps posted!). Battlestar Galactica is due to come back soon but I haven't seen Season 3 yet and don't want to get ahead of myself.

In the meanwhile, all the television shows out there on DVD will be my salvation. I'll finish up Firefly because that's a quick and easy job; I have Veronica Mars S3 sitting in the cupboard - still wrapped in its cellophane! - and I'd like to finish what I started there, way back when it was actually airing.

Other than those, I'd be more than happy to listen to requests from folks - I only did Deadwood because my friend Glenn insisted that I would love it and should move it up my rental queue posthaste (thanks again, Glenn!). I've been hearing good things about The Wire but don't know anything about it. So tell me, what else will I love?

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Baffled, I tell you

Mr. Mouse was working late tonight so, rather than watch My Name Is Earl and The Office without him (I don't like to do that as those two shows are on the very short list of shows we both like to watch), I thought I'd give Smallville a try.

I haven't watched Smallville for years and years ... and all the reasons why came back to me in a rush. What an steaming pile of poo that show is. The acting is bad, the writing is bad and there's no suspense. The only things going for it are a bunch of pretty people and the continuing popularity Superman has as an American icon. I cannot believe this drivel is still on the air - who is watching it? When I think of all the intelligent, well-written, GOOD shows that have gotten the axe ... I'm just bewildered by it all.

Best part of my evening's television-viewing: seeing Ellsworth (actor's name: Jim Beaver) guest-starring on Supernatural. I love Ellsworth.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Veronica Mars: “The Bitch Is Back” – airdate 05/22/07

Logan tells Veronica what he saw, handing her a disk. When she insists that she has not had sex with Piz, he says, “You were naked, I just assumed.” Shaken, she throws him out and watches the video. She gets to Piz and Wallace’s room just as they are returning from the infirmary. Piz is in bad shape (cracked ribs, face a swollen mess) and Wallace is seething. Veronica asks Piz if he recorded them. Piz - “I’m sorry, I’m on some morphine here … what?!” - denies it. Wallace wants to kick Logan’s ass; Veronica says she’ll deal with him. My theory: it’s The Castle who set up a bug to record Wallace and when they got bonus Veronica/Piz footage, they ran with it. At the hotel room, Parker is a wreck: nothing says you’re still in love with your ex like beating up your ex’s current boyfriend. She stands as if she’ll splinter if she moves, and breaks up with Logan. Me, I don’t care, and Logan scarcely notices that she’s in the room. Veronica gets off the elevator as Parker gets on. Parker sniffles, “He’s all yours.” Veronica snarls, “Trust me – not why I’m here.” She is furious with Logan, saying that Piz is having trouble breathing. Logan is incredulous and reminds her what he’s learned with her over and over: that someone always has to pay ... and this time it shouldn’t be him. Veronica spits that they cannot be friends with each other – he is out of her life forever. Logan looks shattered, as he always does when his best intentions backfire. He can’t believe that he fucked up again.

Veronica corners Dick and finds out that Chip Diller sent him the email with the video. Ryan Hansen is really fantastic in these final episodes. As Veronica stalks across campus with everyone pointing and laughing at her (“and I’m back in high school,” she voice-overs), Weevil offers his help. She says she’ll probably accept. Chip is easily intimidated by her and tells her he got the video from Dominick. Veronica finds Dominick (who looks like he’s about 45); he doesn’t know her and foolishly is not intimidated. She cuts off all his credit cards and gets Weevil steal his rims. Chasened, Dominick gives her another name: Gorya Sorokin. This guy (who only looks 32) is not only not intimidated by the tiny blonde, but is pretty lewd and scary in his own right, and she settles for bugging his room. A-ha! I was right: The Castle is behind this.

Ack -another side ponytail. Veronica grills Wallace a little and he ‘fesses what he knows about The Castle (not much). She asks him to go undercover and get some pictures for her. She then talks with Nish (the former school newspaper editor/strident feminist) who had written an article about The Castle –the members are said to be the richest and most powerful men in the country - and who is involved in an attempted lawsuit for discrimination: The Castle won’t admit women. When Wallace is picked up, Veronica follows the car to a self-storage warehouse. Wallace goes inside, is told to strip down and put an electric dog collar on. In front of a video camera, he is grilled about the incident in Chicago when the homeless man was killed. When he tries to lie, another pledge in another room is zapped by the collar. The screams are pretty awful.

Veronica gathers Wallace up when he finally staggers out. Although he didn’t get her any pictures, he’s deduced the identity of another pledge, and she plans to follow this kid until he leads her to The Castle. In the food court, Veronica and Piz are heckled; Piz tells her to let it go and that karma will take care of those guys. Veronica: “Oh yeah – I’m going to run him over with my karma.” Hee. Dick congratulates Logan on the magnificent beating he gave to Piz. Logan says that Piz wasn’t the bad guy and looks sad. At night, Veronica follows the pledge to a mansion; she scales the wall and sneaks in through the dog door to try for a money shot. She is startled to see an enormous (and icky) portrait of Lilly Kane on the wall.

The mansion is Jake Kane’s and he is the putative leader of The Castle. Gorya gives Jake the recorded confessions from the storage units and Jake transfers them to a hard drive on his desk. Our girl is almost caught, but steals the hard drive. The next morning, Keith is at the mansion as Jake tells him that the stolen hard drive contains five years of research and intellectual property worth gazillions. Clarence Weidman is there and he’s still scary. Keith finds a thread caught in the dog door. The neighbor has security footage of the backyard and, as Keith recognizes his daughter as the thief, he collects the DVR as evidence. On his way out, Keith asks the security guard for a list of license plates; the guard is one of the fired deputies and refuses to help. [See? What did I tell you about the continuity?] Unfortunately, the guard does not have a grudge against Weidman and gives him the list. Mac and Veronica use a supercomputer on campus to try to decipher the hard drive’s password. Keith finds Veronica’s snagged sweater in her laundry. When he confronts her, she is too embarrassed to explain what is going on and runs out. Jake Kane has a full-on hissy fit when Weidman tells him Veronica took the hard drive. It seemed a little over the top, actually, but I suppose he still holds a grudge for helping Duncan escape with his love child. As Keith is giving a pre-election interview, Jake, Weidman and the DA burst in and accuse Keith of hiding evidence against Veronica. The reporter is quite interested by all this. Back at the lab, Mac and Veronica are still trying to break the password. Keith tries to call Veronica; when he can’t reach her, he goes into the Evidence Room and erases the DVR with the Veronica footage. He looks so sad.

When Mac finally breaks the password, the hard drive contains dirt on about eighty years of Castle members: business leaders, congressmen, etc. They watch a bit of Gorya’s “confession” and realize his family has Mafia ties; Veronica thinks she may just let him keep his secrets. She does, however, give the list of Castle members to Nish. Nish says, “You’re going to make some very powerful men very unhappy.” Won’t be the first time, says Veronica. In the food court, Logan tries to apologize to Veronica, but she’s not having any of it. Gorya comes up and says some really nasty things. When Veronica doesn’t react, Logan moves to go after him. She stops him, saying that Gorya is “connected.” Logan muses that he wondered why she didn’t rip him a new one. He watches Gorya walk off a ways and then beats him up anyway. Pretty much all Logan has gotten to do in the last 80 minutes is beat people up. Veronica has a little half-sad, half-satisfied smile on her face. Logan apologizes, fairly sincerely, to Piz as he leaves; Piz looks from Veronica to Logan and back again, and there are some really complicated emotions swirling among the three of them. At the Kane mansion, Weidman lets Veronica in (“So you’re the butler now?”) and she returns the hard drive to Jake. He says he’ll have her arrested; she retorts that if he does, the members’ confessions will go public. “And leave my dad out of it.” Jake bemusedly he tells her it’s too late for that.

Veronica goes home. Keith has made gumbo and asks her no questions. They are both melancholy but it’s clear how much they love each other. In the morning, the front page of the paper says that charges have been filed against Keith for tampering with the evidence. Veronica cries, and goes to vote for her dad for sheriff.

Damn you, CW.

Veronica Mars: “Weevils Wobble But They Don’t Go Down” – airdate 05/22/07

Veronica and Mac are waiting in line to pay for their fro-yo. They are discussing Piz’s issues with Veronica leaving for the FBI internship: she’s annoyed that he’s mopey about it, but admits she would be annoyed if he weren’t mopey. Mac thinks she ought to let Piz know that she will miss him too. In front of them, a girl gets her student ID confiscated. Weevil – oh how we’ve missed you! – has injured his leg on the job and is talking with an HR flunky about his worker’s comp claim. The actor playing the flunky was the paranoid bookshop owner in Angel S4 (“Magic Bullet”). Back in Piz’s dorm room, Veronica is wearing some really strange overalls/suspenders as she flirts with Piz. This leads to some chemistry-free foolin’ around which has me squirming with horror. The campus police have gone to Keith regarding the fraud with the fake student IDs; the two students who were nabbed pick Weevil out of the lineup.

Weevil, who has been fired, uses his one phone call to call Veronica: “I need a bail bondsman and a PI, and you need a 21st century answering machine!” She goes to the jail and they work out that he is being framed. The only people who know he is an ex-con are the students in her Criminology class. [This double-episode does a really lovely job with continuity, wrapping up as many loose ends as possible and answering questions we might otherwise never know because the damn CW has CANCELED THIS SHOW.] At the bursar’s office Veronica gets to flash her shiny new PI license and learns about the mag-card machine used to code the ID cards. Wallace notices that he is being followed by some student and is slightly weirded out by this. Another mag-card machine is found in the empty locker next to Weevil’s and, after Veronica does some interviews, it turns out that he has no alibi.

Veronica keeps Wallace company while he works on his airplane in the aerodynamics lab; he mentions that he’s being followed. They’re very cute together – it’s like old times! Veronica asks Wallace’s professor about the mag-card machines; he refers her to a grad student, saying the technology needed to code the machines is unbelievably sophisticated. Piz invites Keith to be in a pre-election radio show to rebut Vinnie, mentioning the available 4,000 college votes. Keith tells Veronica that only Weevil’s prints were found on the mag-card machine. When Veronica meets with the grad student, they discover that all his research has been stolen from his files. [Hey! These acts are really short. And there are really a lot of commercials in between. Stupid CW.]

On Piz’s radio show, things go badly for Keith as Vinnie insinuates that he doesn’t care about underage drinking in campus-adjacent bars. Wallace confronts his stalker and it turns out the Hearst College secret society, The Castle, has tapped Wallace for membership. Wallace is alternately creeped, worried and proud. Veronica and Weevil retrace his steps, trying to discover how the people framing him might have gotten his fingerprints. On a stop at a dorm room, they discover that some boxes that he touched when working on the sink are now missing. One of the roommates living in this room is in Veronica’s Criminology class. A suspicious Veronica manages to get a photo of a photo of the roommate with a group of friends.

Upon closer inspection of the photo, Veronica picks out the roommate, the grad student and the two students who identified Weevil. Logan [finally!] is on the phone with Parker when Dick staggers in, wanting to talk about Beaver. Logan tells him that they’ll go surfing to get Dick’s mind off things. At the beach, Veronica, Piz, Mac and Wallace test Wallace’s plane; the surf boys are there too. Dick: “Why is this wetsuit like a cheap hotel? No ballroom.” Hee. Piz says that flying the plane is bringing out his inner nerd and Mac asks, “Wait, you have an inner one?” Hee again. As the plane stalls out, Wallace wants some alone time with it, so Veronica, Piz and Mac join Logan and Dick at the fire pit. Dick takes Mac aside and apologizes for being, well, a dick to her and his brother. Back at the fire, it’s truly awkward, and Logan is an asshole to Piz. On campus, Veronica manages to track down the rest of the group in the photo. They bring her to a room in the library where they are all waiting. She smiles.

The group of students tries to bribe her and she sneakily records them. If charges aren’t dropped against Weevil by the next day, she’ll take the recording to the sheriff. She calls Weevil with the good news. He thanks her, and the camera pans down to the third mag-card machine he has collected from the students’ lab. Looks like our boy will never, ever learn. In the meantime, Dick receives an email with a video file; he shows it to Logan, and it’s Veronica and Piz, in Piz’s room, foolin’ around (chemistry-free, of course). Logan completely wigs. He rushes to the campus radio station, pulls Piz out of his show, and administers a horrific beat down. Poor Piz can barely defend himself; Logan is a wild man. At the Mars PI office, Logan staggers in, his hands in shreds. “Veronica, there’s something you should know.” Oh, Logan, this will go badly for you, I just know it.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Veronica Mars: “I Know What You’ll Do Next Summer” – airdate 05/15/07

I’m a little torn here, but my gut feeling is if this is what we can expect as to the caliber of the mystery-of-the-week episodes from here on out, then they might as well cancel VM and let us remember her glory days with fondness. I don’t mean to belittle the social issue they presented, but jeesum, I could have solved this mystery myself.

Chez Mars, Veronica is studying for her PI licensing exam, while Piz is reading Soldier of Misfortune, a book written by Hearst student, Apollo Bukenya, a former child soldier from Uganda. The book is causing a huge sensation – movie deal! increased social awareness! – and Piz gets the first on-radio interview with Apollo. Keith is worked up because there’s been a rash of ‘09er home burglaries [Sacks’ first name is Jerry? Since when?!]. Piz gets a summer internship at an NYC internet music something-or-other; Veronica is thrilled for him, but he thinks the East Coast is really, really far away from the West Coast. In the meantime, Veronica gets a 95 on her PI test!

Veronica gets a call from Kizza, a Ugandan refugee purporting to be Apollo’s long-lost father. She poses as a Hearst College newspaper reporter and arranges an “interview” with Apollo. Wallace is skeptical, thinking that long-lost relatives always show up when someone is about to come into a lot of money; Wallace also warns Veronica not to break Piz’s heart. Keith thinks the Kirkpatrick clan is behind the home burglaries. Parker finds out that Logan has planned a summer-long South American surfing trip with Dick [um, it’ll be winter in that hemisphere during the No. American summertime, so I’m not sure that surfing’s the best idea, but whatever]; she is put out that he didn’t think about being away from her for three months. Veronica manages to obtain some proof [her word] that makes Kizza’s claim look legitimate. By the way, Parker and Logan STILL have no chemistry.

Veronica tells Kizza to come to California and they’ll do a paternity test. Piz decides to take a different internship with a Neptune radio station which, while not as glamorous as the NYC one, is (a) in radio which he loves, and (b) closer to Veronica whom he loves. Keith meets with Liam Fitzpatrick and suggests that since Liam is working on his third strike, he might want to scale back on the burglaries. Mac and Max are blissfully in the middle of a “sex/nap/eat loop,” or, as Max puts it “Poundhog Day.” “Poundhog Day” is funny.

Apollo figures out that Veronica is up to something and she confesses that Kizza hired her. Understandably, Apollo is not happy about it. Mac and Veronica catch up about their various love-lives: Mac is worried about losing herself in her relationship with Max; Veronica is enjoying “Pizneyland,” saying that although “there’s no rollercoaster, [she’s okay] without the adrenalin and the nausea.” That’s my second favorite line from the episode. At the sheriff’s office, the 09er Homeowners’ Association is putting pressure on Keith; he discovers that all the burgled homes have the same security system. That’s a clue! Veronica – with the best kitty pen ever - is at the PI office when Kizza shows up. He agrees to a blood test, although she does tell him that the movie deal has fallen through for Apollo (i.e., no big check). Logan asks Parker to come with him and Dick to South America for the summer. She is very excited and squeaky about it, but his expression is ambivalent at best. Veronica, while attempting to track down Apollo, meets Zeke, another African student; he tells Veronica that Apollo’s book is a fraud, the stories he tells are not his (he was never conscripted as a child soldier), plus the advisor wrote it.

Wallace thinks that Veronica should not expose the book since the publicity it’s been generating is bringing a lot of attention to the social issue. Veronica finally finds Apollo and he reluctantly agrees to the paternity test. At the hotel, Dick is surprised to find his father waiting for him. Big Dick has turned himself in and will be going to jail – for a measly year – at the end of the summer. Dick says he’s got a surf trip planned for the summer; Big Dick thinks he should stay home for some father-son time. Vinnie stops by the sheriff’s office and Keith theorizes that he is in cahoots with the Fitzpatricks on the burglaries; Vinnie dares him to prove it.

After an hour of waiting for Kizza to show up for the blood test, Apollo tells Veronica that he used her to weed out the gold-diggers. He did write the book, it all actually happened to him, and everything that she found out was in fact “disinformation.” Keith then calls from work: Kizza’s rental car had stolen plates and he is being detained at the sheriff’s office. Apollo is reunited with the father he never knew and tough-girl Veronica gets a little choked up. Mac tells Max that she doesn’t want to break up with him, she just needs to slow things down a little. Dick has a powerful scene where he tells Big Dick how guilty he feels about Cassidy’s suicide and how both the Dicks are responsible. Logan calls off the surf trip entirely when Dick backs out in favor of time with his father. Parker is disappointed and says she’ll just go back to Denver for the summer; Logan doesn’t seem too disappointed about that. And Veronica gets accepted to the FBI’s summer internship program … Piz: “That’s in Virginia, right?”

Next time: the two hour season, and series-as-we-know-it, finale. Oh! My favorite line? When Vinnie refers to himself as “a walking big tent party.”

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Veronica Mars - "Un-American Graffiti" airdate 05/01/07

First of all, it's about damn time this show came back on the air. It horrifies me to think that the CW may cancel it or change it so substantially. Imagine this show without Keith Mars, without the interaction between Veronica and her father. I know that things have changed this year, that the supporting players get much less screen time than in the first two seasons, but a strength of this show has always been its ensemble cast working together, demonstrating their great chemistry. Second of all, speaking of chemistry: Logan and Parker have zero chemistry. I'll come back to that.

We start off in the student center where Logan, at the front of the line, sees Veronica at the back of the line and buys her a coffee. They banter good-naturedly and he invites her to the birthday party he's throwing for Parker. Veronica looks as though she'd rather have a colonoscopy but doesn't rule it out. They're being grown-ups about the break-up, after all. Cut to an underage kid we don't know drinking at a bar, stumbling outside and getting hit by a car - this'll be the B story. Veronica, doing homework at the P.I. office, gets hired by an Arabic couple whose restaurant is getting vandalized - this is the A story. Veronica stakes out the restaurant and gets nailed by drive-by paintballers for her pains. Back home, Keith asks her about the college area bars and she confirms that it is tres simple to get served as an underage drinker. [By the way: the "Arabic" woman, Carole Davis, played an Italian lawyer on a Season 5 episode of Angel, and just recently played a mom who bought her daughter boob implants on Scrubs.]

Keith sends all the deputies on routine sweeps of the bars to check IDs; they come back having found nothing suspicious. Keith is, of course, suspicious. Veronica tracks down the paintballers and they are kids who paintball all passersby - no hate crime here - they're not the vandals. She does make them scrub off the paint splatters; she also rigs surveillance cameras over the front of the restaurant which record a guy wearing a team sweatshirt lurking about. Back on campus, Veronica and Mac are supercute together dishing about Mac's boyfriend (who does not have a whole lot in common with Mac - he makes her go hiking! in the morning!). Logan and Parker show up; Logan and Mac banter (displaying more sparkage together than Logan and Parker ever do); and Veronica, superuncomfortable, bails. But not before Parker elicits a promise to come to the birthday party. Fun! Since Mac has plans just prior to the party, Veronica tracks down Wallace and Piz and enlists them as her wingmen. And since another guy wearing that aforementioned team sweatshirt strolls by, she quickly gets a name for her lurker.

Her lurker is a student living in a Jewish frat on campus. As Veronica watches the house, someone else is taking pictures through the window. The peeping tom (peeping Nasir, actually) makes his getaway and Veronica discovers Amira, the Arabic couple's daughter, is dating the Jewish lurker. So, clearly, not a lurker, just waiting for his girlfriend. Amira says the peeper works at the restaurant, was supposed to be her arranged marriage, and will take the photos to her dad. Veronica finds Nasir at a 1-hour photomat and cons the photos away from the clerk. When she takes these to Amira, they are interrupted by Amira's father holding a photo that Veronica missed: a Jew? This is the reason we are being vandalized! In the meantime, Wallace and Piz go drinking, using the fake IDs Veronica gave them in the last episode eight million years ago. They're feeling no pain until Keith, having just been unsuccessfully bribed by the bar owner, busts them.

The restaurant has been vandalized AGAIN (what good is Veronica doing, really?) but Veronica tracks the vandal to his lower-middle class home. The guy's brother is a vet from the current war - not involved in the vandalism; Nasir was handing out anti-U.S./pro-Iraqi flyers and the vandal got one and followed him to the restaurant. When Veronica reports back to her clients, the husband wants to speak to the vandal but ends up not pressing charges. He does, however, report Nasir to the INS, and decides to meet the Jewish boy his daughter is seeing.

To keep from getting into trouble, Wallace and Piz assist Keith in a sting to uncover the crooked deputies who are not carding underage drinkers. Keith puts his don't-mess-with-me pants on and fires four deputies: "temporary sheriff," my ass.

The birthday party is at the hotel, of course. Max ("I sell college tests for money") meets Mac ("I sold high school sex poll results for money") and they hit it off very nicely, demonstrating much more chemistry than Logan and Parker have. Wallace tells Veronica that Piz has a crush on her and she should let him down gently. When she tries to do so, however, Piz finally makes his move and gives her a very sweet kiss. Veronica is floored and follows after him as he makes his "dramatic exit." They mack again in front of the elevator ... and the doors open to reveal Logan, who tries to make the best of it. But we all know that Logan wounded is much more interesting than Logan happy, so get on for the ride. Veronica is unsure of herself as he brushes past her - and that little moment there has more chemistry than Logan and Parker do - but she gets on the elevator with Piz. Apparently Piz is a really good kisser.