Date of airing: October 17, 2006 (The CW)
Nielsen ratings information: 3.12 million viewers, 1.9/3 in Households, 1.4/3 with Adults 18-49, 1.3/3 with Adults 25-54
written by: Phil Klemmer, John Enbom
directed by: Harry Winer
Veronica is making both friends and enemies these days, making life more interesting for her at Hearst College – as if high school never ended for her. She is only a couple of weeks into her next level of higher learning and she already has a reserved seat at the Dean’s office and a few favors she can call in from him (and vice versa). Principal Clemmons might be gone (and I kind of miss him), but his character was replaced by Dean O’Dell , and this episode was hopefully not the only time Veronica was sitting in his office and the two were making "deals." How long will it take for Hearst to lose their mascot and for Dean O’Dell to “hire” Veronica to bring it back again? How long until O'Dell gets accused of committing the rapes and Veronica has to prove his innocence?
And let me tell you, the way VERONICA MARS has been a crazy show throughout all its life, the latter is not even an impossibility for the writers. I am almost certain that they were talking about it in the writers' room, making a pros and cons list, and figuring out that way who the rapist should be in the end. And I would love to know the pros and cons list for Dean O'Dell, especially after Veronica got into his good and bad graces with this episode.
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| Weevil hates answering the phone. |
The episode was good enough, although I felt a bit cheated by
Veronica’s bout of jealousy and paranoia she felt when dealing with
Logan. Three episodes into the season and the writers were already doing
a bang-up job in preparing their separation. Maybe they
wanted to test out whether Logan and Veronica could live with dating
other people, and if it is being accepted by the audience, who might at
this point be wholly in love with Veronica and Logan together, yet
did not realize at this point that this is a drama television show and
you cannot tell a good story without a little bit of conflict between the
two major love birds of the show. Not to mention that Piz is right there and the writers made sure that he and Veronica have some sort of chemistry for the two to be dating for a handful of episodes.
It is a shame though that Logan and Veronica were prepared for a separation – their relationship at the end of the first season was sort of short-lived and it definitely did not survive the summer hiatus, and now that the third season has started, it is almost like the writers could only begin telling Veronica or Logan’s story by having them not be together. Besides that, Veronica acting this paranoid seemed out of character for her. I guess it is easy for her to track her boyfriend when she has the ways and means to do so, but damn if this does not make her a terrible girlfriend Logan should think twice about being with. I am surprised Logan was not yelling at her for not trusting him. No, he, in fact, showed up at the library to talk a little bit of sense into their romance and then made out with her like it is the ending of a Hallmark Channel romance novel for television.
Meanwhile, throw your eyes at Armie Hammer before he proclaimed himself to be a fan of cannibals, and who played a desperate college football wannabe star in this hour, losing an important playbook that essentially turned him into a dead man without a scholarship. I did not even get why Kurt had to take the playbook in the first place, let alone the athletic staff at Hearst allows (or turn their backs on) students to take playbooks and catch up on learning the plays they were destined to play. I do not even understand why no one was particularly worried that an opposing team member got close to Kurt and stole the playbook in the first place. I mean, it would be my first worry, but here was Kurt, angry and fuzzy about losing his scholarship, and here was his girlfriend Trish (an early-2000s blend of Michelle Branch and Shannen Doherty), turning this story into something involving her loser artist ex-boyfriend.
Granted, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS premiered with the third
season of VERONICA MARS, so the writers might not have realized that
football-themed stories are a "go" on broadcast television, but Kurt’s
story was made for a show like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and not VERONICA
MARS, especially in a convoluted way like this. In addition, Kurt’s back story seemed more interesting than the actual
premise of the episode. He tore his ACL at the end of his senior high
school year, so the fear of losing your scholarship due to an injury you
pulled while still in high school is quite dramatic. FRIDAY NIGHT
LIGHTS went there with Smash Williams during its third season, but VERONICA MARS
did not even touch the story. No, it had to be about the playbook, a loser artist, and me still being creeped out watching Armie Hammer work.
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| There is a lot of violence going around at Hearst College. |
In the meantime, Keith had a new assistant for an episode, and holy cow did he do the wrong things to his new hire. I knew that Weevil would be asked to do some staking out as Keith’s new right-hand man, but making Weevil’s second job be related to child abuse? I have no idea what Keith was thinking here (he had to have known that Weevil has a short fuse), let alone if it was really a good idea to have Weevil get deep into the job of being a P.I. during his first few days. It is almost like Keith was running Weevil straight off a cliff and all Keith wanted was for the kid to get back into the joint. I cannot even believe that Veronica did not have a problem with the way Keith was using Weevil as an assistant. This whole story was weird and out of character for the show, making me wonder if the new network has something to do with this story, or if it really was just a desperate attempt by the writers to somehow have Weevil back in the show, even if his story was pretty much told already.
