Date of airing: March 29, 2005 (UPN)
Nielsen ratings information: 2.33 million viewers, 1.6/2 in Households, 0.8/2 with Adults 18-49
written by: Diane Ruggiero
directed by: Michael Fields
If you learn anything from this episode, let it be the lesson that secret affairs you have ruin marriages. Not just one, but most likely two. While Veronica was investigating the disappearance of two school mascots, the writers decided to sprinkle in some flashback scenes of her meeting with her mother in Barstow, and all of a sudden, the show has been enlightened by a much more elaborate backstory, which could make things a little more interesting for the remainder of the season.
While Veronica has not stepped closer to who might have killed Lilly Kane, her talk with her mother definitely led her to a few potential alibis, in addition to the potential fact that Keith might not be her biological father after all, and that Jake, as soon as he has given a paternity test, might have to pay a couple of millions to his newest heir who happened to be the result of an affair. Who knows, maybe that affair never ended and had always been going since their high school days (when they were crowned king and queen during prom), and if there is the slightest amount of truth to that theory, then the lives of the Kanes and Marses is a lot more complicated than we could ever imagine. Leanne always lied to Keith, and Jake always lied to Celeste, but at one point, Celeste learned about the affair (maybe on the night of her daughter’s murder?), and Leanne decided to give it all up, run away, and become an alcoholic. Damn, stuff is getting real now. Even if the writers' decision to pack all of that into flashback scenes during a mascot episode seemed more than a bit weird.
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| Neptune High's basketball star has an unexpected pet to take care of. |
Still, this was quite a solid episode. The writers continued their method of
letting Veronica solve her high school cases in-between scenes, and
once more her private investigations are thematically and stylistically
different from the rest Veronica is going through, whether it is her own
life with her own love interests, or the Lilly Kane murder investigation and
where that has brought her up to this point. The school mascot
investigation was fun to watch, and I fully enjoyed seeing
Veronica experience her days as Betty from Riverdale (I have not watched a
single episode of RIVERDALE yet, but even I knew that Veronica’s Betty
backstory could pretty much have been the series premise of the CW
show), while also sort of enjoying the fact that her best friend Wallace might be a really bad (but fun) dude. But compare all of that with
the other half of the episode, you could not be blamed when thinking
that both stories come from different episodes. This is a bit of a
problem the show has, but it is just a minor one, even if Veronica’s
Neptune High character connections still have not made it to the other
parts of her life, the writers continued to keep them fully separate
(which makes me wonder why they decided to do that).
The rivalry with Pen High expanded the Neptune, California universe a little bit, and now that VERONICA MARS has been able to reuse some of the already established guest characters (mostly Meg, who has appeared in her third episode, and Mac, whom I am still waiting for her third appearance), there is a slight chance that the writers did in fact plan to branch out a bit and expand the show’s neighborhood, going “international” by leaving Neptune ground and going somewhere where it is dangerous, and a criminal is waiting to be apprehended by either Veronica or Keith. Unfortunately though, not all of the Pen High story was that interesting. I can understand the feeling and sense of rivalry when it is all about sports, but when the characters turned out to be more interested in the kidnappings of each other’s mascots, I could only start warming up for the initial eyeroll. It is a good thing the mascot premise was kept on the downlow, even though I really did not need the revelation that the goat was housed in Wallace's friend's van. There was the first eyeroll, and it was followed by the threatening video by number thirteen, who apparently found it more important to make a cash load of money than maybe making a good standing on the basketball court and maybe impress some potential scouts that might be sitting in the audience.
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| Every time the story is about Mom, it's cry-time. |
Meanwhile, Veronica shows Clarence Wiedman who the boss is, and I really enjoyed seeing Veronica play with the party on the other end of the bug in her room. And you know things are getting more serious after both parties have started bugging each other, even if the writers missed explaining why Wiedman was interested in finding out where Leanne Mars was. Maybe Wiedman was tasked by Jake Kane to find the woman, because Jake could still be in love with his high school girlfriend. Maybe something more sinister is behind it, especially when one of Veronica’s voiceover narrations teased that Leanne might have been threatened by Wiedman as well, and Jake’s alibi on the night of the Lilly Kane murder might have something to do with all of this.
Those are certainly open questions in
need of some answers, but I can say I am happy that most of the backstory was illuminated by a spotlight. Now that we know the extent of Jake and
Leanne’s affair, and that Keith is more a victim of those lies than
Celeste has ever been, you can rhyme yourself some things together, and
you can start rooting for who is supposed to be Veronica’s biological
father. Was that still an open question in the writers' room by this
point of the show, especially after Veronica shredded the paternity test episodes ago?
