Date of airing: December 7, 2005 (UPN)
Nielsen ratings information: 3.42 million viewers, 2.4/4 in Households, 1.4/4 with Adult 18-49
written by: Russell Smith
directed by: John Kretchmer
Might there be a possibility that I almost cried during the final minute or two? Oh yes, there is a chance. Hearing that Meg died after she was able to give birth to a baby daughter was already one heck of a way to end the episode, but concluding it for real with a Veronica/Wallace reunion was super touching. I did not even realize how much I have missed Wallace since he went to Chicago with his bio-dad, but to be honest, the previous few episodes have not changed much from when Veronica was able to discuss her life with her best friend, and that kind of makes me think about how useless Wallace was as Veronica's best friend. Her character arcs were working without him. She got the answers without his help, even if she sometimes mentioned him and that she would have loved having his assistance.
Sure, she was missing her best friend for four episodes and 41 and a half minutes of the fifth episode, but it is not like Wallace has always been a mainstay in Veronica’s life and she could not function without him. Then again, it is great to have Wallace back, because now the writers can continue the notion of two teenagers of the opposite sex who are nothing more than always best friends to one another. There is never any romance between Veronica and Wallace, there is never a hint of them being love interests to each other – they are just best friends. It is something other television writers could learn from VERONICA MARS.
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The episode was both intriguing and not good. Veronica as the juror foreperson was a funny thought, but seeing her go through a case under the actual eyes of the law was an interesting look at what Veronica could be able to do when she has some real means of doing her work, when she has the opportunity to get deep into her work as an amateur sleuth. Yes, she only needs one or two friends to help her out (Wallace and Mac), and other than that, she has the charm that brings her forward in her investigations, but damn, have police assistance, official files and reports, and maybe even witness testimony, and Veronica could save a teenage hooker all day long and send two white boys from rich families to prison for the crime they committed.
On the other hand, the juror case did go through a few stereotypical and nonsensical moments, beginning with the one mysterious juror holding out at the beginning, which leads to more and more jurors changing their initial votes to send the two white boys behind bars. Even more so, the guy on the opposite end of the table, the rich and racist dude across Veronica, had to be a dick about all of it – angry that he could not do his rich-people job of defrauding people, angry that he had to spend his Christmas time in a crummy room with eleven other people, even angrier that a blonde high school cheerleader decided to hold everyone “hostage” just to acquit a teenage prostitute. The story made me wonder whether you could do something with a hung jury that has an obviously racist and biased jury member. The guy opposite Veronica seemed to have a problem with women and Hispanics, and in a case that involves violence against a Hispanic member of society, it might not be a good idea to have someone so biased on the jury.
The case itself was conveniently breakfasted in this episode, with an entire scene full of exposition to tell the viewers what the case is about, instead of having multiple scenes set in the courtroom (I sense budget cuts). Not to mention that it was illogical for the case to be "solved" in the jury room, with Veronica spearheading the discussion, when all of that could have been part of the actual trial. The fact that it was not (especially the twelve minutes it took between the shooting and the suspect with the gun running away) makes me think that a) the trial was a farce, and its lawyers were not up to the job and you should never hire them again, and b) the story itself was not thought through in the writers' room. It was not even written well, as the characters were talking about acquitting and convicting the characters involved, without properly explaining who was supposed to be acquitted and who was supposed to be convicted. The rich juror was tensely telling Veronica that he was never going to convict, but he barely mentioned that he did not want to convict two rich white boys. The other jurors barely said that they wanted to acquit, and when they did, they were never talking about the teenage hooker at all. The script for this episode needed a few more drafts to make the case more concise.
And let's not forget that there was some jury tampering going on. Veronica was approached about the case twice, so the lawyers for the two white boys who were now convicted had every reason in the world to have the case thrown out if they found out that Veronica was a jury member tampered with. And here is a big question: Who put the articles of Carnell Myles on her computer screen? Was it Keith, and if so, why would he care about the case? Was it Mac, and if so, why would she care about the case? And if either of the two put the articles on Veronica's screen, how did they know what the jury members were deliberating about and that it needed the attention of Carnell Myles? This episode makes no sense.
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Meanwhile, the B story with Keith becoming Neptune’s own Robert
Mueller or Kenneth Starr for a few days to investigate the theft of the
Aaron Echolls/Lilly Kane sex tape was solid enough, but a little boring midway
through, as it did not seem to affect the characters much. Keith was
neutral about the whole thing, Logan did what he had to do, and Leo
was not punished for it, besides having to give up his job (tampering of evidence – that should mean prison time for cute Leo). At the
end of the day, the only thing the theft of the tapes did was put a new
premise into the Aaron Echolls legal drama, and give the killer an
opportunity to be sent packing, simply because the sex tapes were the greatest
evidence against Aaron. But now they are gone, and it looks like witness testimony will not do it for some reason.
I hope the disappearance of the tapes in this episode was just the beginning of a much larger arc that overcomplicates Logan’s life, and he will have to live with the fact that Aaron gets acquitted himself, only because Logan decided that the tapes should have never existed in the first place. It is quite the conundrum for Logan, and one he did not seem to be thinking about during this episode – something that could have leveled the story up greatly, but I guess there was no time for that.
