Date of airing: January 25, 2006 (UPN)
Nielsen ratings information: 1.62 million viewers, 1.3/2 in Households, 0.7/2 with Adults 18-49
written by: Rob Thomas
directed by: Rob Thomas
And with this episode, Duncan is the father of a baby girl on the run from the FBI – if that does not make him a high-level criminal for future episodes, then I do not know what kind of plan he and Veronica hatched out together, just to guarantee that baby Manning will live a happy and carefree life. Although a question can be asked if baby Lilly will always live a carefree life, considering Duncan still has to take pills to stop his violent outbursts from happening, and always has to check behind him to see if he is being followed or surveilled by international government agencies.
But besides all that, I loved this episode for the predictable move of Veronica being the accomplice to Duncan’s great plan, as well as their story ending in somewhat of a happy end. I do not think it is too much of a spoiler when I say that this episode was essentially Duncan’s finale, which it thankfully is, since his relationship with Veronica has not developed to another level since the season premiere and was sort of stagnating over the past couple of episodes. And after Meg’s pregnancy and her death, the chances seemed high that Duncan and Veronica would break up and hate each other forever because of the secrets Duncan kept. But it turns out that the two loved each other, and that their love is considered "true love" (with Hurley's LOST lottery numbers added, for some reason). They supported each other, and they realized that their great scheme would not only break them apart for good, but also overcomplicate relationships with other people. Duncan will never talk to his parents or his friends again, and Veronica has fractured her special bond with Keith, all while the two teenage lovebird schemers were playing the Neptune police department and the FBI for the safety of a baby. Duncan and Veronica’s story came to a unique end here, but at least they said goodbye to one another, they loved each other, and they knew that what they were doing was the right thing. Not all teenage relationships end like this, so maybe we should all applaud that this particular one ended the way it did.
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| Veronica meets the FBI for the first time. |
That Veronica was an accomplice to Duncan’s kidnapping was pretty
much a given from the beginning – their break-up scene was already weird (thanks to it being too public and too loud in front of many witnesses), but
as soon as the FBI was dealing with Veronica and she was not losing sleep
over it, it became super obvious that there would be a scene in which
Veronica is revealed as Duncan’s right-hand woman in his mission to get baby Lilly out of the hands of the Manning family, and that there might
be a scene in which the two will have to deal with the law. That the
episode ended with Duncan’s trip to Mexico and Veronica pretty much
scot-free was still a surprise, but I guess she still had to pay
for manipulating her father, so I am hoping that from here on, her relationship
with Keith will, in fact, be troubled. Trust is a tricky thing, and once
lost it is difficult to find again. And because VERONICA MARS is a
show that always takes care of continuity within its narrative, there better
be a fractured relationship between father and daughter. Otherwise, Rob
Thomas would have to explain why his most beloved cult television drama
suddenly decided to jump the mini shark with this episode, which he both
wrote and directed.
I am also glad this episode did not turn out to be a flashback episode. After Duncan went missing and I started to realize Veronica was involved in everything (especially after the fake break-up scene at school), I thought that some of the questions raised would be explained by flashing back and telling the audience how Duncan and Veronica came up with the plan and what needed to be done next. Turns out Rob Thomas had trust in his viewers, and maybe he hated those kinds of explanatory flashback scenes himself, which definitely would have pulled the rug from under the episode’s story. Explanations were not needed for this hour – all you needed to know is that Veronica helped Duncan take his daughter out of the country, even if it risked her relationship with her father.
How they came up with the idea is irrelevant. All you got to see was how the idea got executed, and how well the idea turned out to be in hindsight. Veronica and Duncan were not only playing Sheriff Don Lamb and the FBI, but Veronica was essentially putting an explosive into her relationship with her father, which she obviously accepted to be an outcome of her plan, because Veronica saw that getting Duncan and baby Lilly out of the country was more important than cultivating her relationship with her father. Talk about a complex plan with an emotional fallout.
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| And they all ride into the sunset for a delightful ending. |
The rest of the episode was solid, too. Okay, it only involved Logan and Weevil teaming up to find out who is in business with the Fitzpatricks, but I kind of dug seeing them hang out together and solve a murder on their own. I have no idea if they asked Veronica to help out (maybe they did, maybe she said she does not have time right now), but the murder of Felix happened to be a great plot device to bring two under-utilized characters together and have them deal with their own problems instead of asking the titular character for help.
And then there
was Wallace, whose return to Neptune was explained by his cowardly to
face the law after a hit-and-run in Chicago. That might be the beginning
of a character arc for him, or it might just be the excuse the writers
brought to have Wallace come back after being absent for four episodes
and most of a fifth one, so that there would be an explanation for his return to Neptune. Because, really, who would want to come back to this hellhole of a town in California?
