We are getting SO CLOSE to the season finale! This is one of those episodes that was entirely designed to drag things out juuuuuuust a little bit more, so let’s just dive right in.
Highlights
- Veronica is helping Weevil with his math homework. Weevil asks Veronica some questions about who she thinks killed Lilly, and Veronica basically just says that she knows it wasn’t Abel Koontz. Mr. Mars shows up and his awkwardness forces Weevil to leave.
- Logan’s sister, Trina, wants Aaron to be part of her boyfriend’s movie. In fact, without saying so outright, she basically says that she already promised him that Aaron would do it. Aaron says he has no interest in being in any more movies, and that’s that.
- Logan’s mom’s will is read. In a completely not shocking turn of events, she left Logan everything. Within a day, Trina is asking Logan for a loan, which he denies.
- Mandy, a girl at school, loses her dog, Chester, while she was babysitting one night. She puts up fliers and asks Veronica for help. After initially saying no, V’s conscience gets the better of her and she relents, helping with fliering and making some calls. They end up at Animal Control, where they talk to some employees about Chester before leaving.
- Wallace informs V that Weevil was caught breaking into the Kane house the previous night. So she goes down to the Sheriff’s Office to see him, and also chats with Deputy Leo, who clearly wants to keep dating her. Leo says Weevil came in with a pen, among other things, the day after V had lectured him to always do his math homework in pencil and he left with one of her pencils.
- Logan catches Trina sneaking home with a black eye and a limp. He asks her about it and she says that he’s wishy washy and doesn’t care about her. Which is… all defense mechanisms. Clearly. And I think Logan knows it too.
- Mandy gets prank called at school by a guy she used to have a crush on, telling her they found her dog and then laughing about how excited she got. And then Veronica says my favorite line of all time, in the whole show, in all of pop culture.
Do you want people to leave you alone, or better yet, treat you with respect? Demand it. Make them.
-Veronica Mars
- But not long after, they get a real call from a guy who works at Animal Control who also goes to school with them saying that someone found Chester, but it’s not good news. He was on the side of the highway, and they had to put him down. They give Mandy his collar back as she cries.
- Celeste Kane shows up at Mars Investigations to demand information from Veronica about where Duncan might be. She’s ridiculous, and V says that she knows Celeste hates her, and Celeste says that she doesn’t HATE her, she just hates the SIGHT of her. Which… wow, lady. You’re a toolbag. Anyway, Mr. Mars comes back and kicks Celeste out, but V agrees to help her anyway.
- V is walking Backup in the park and notices that there’s a bulletin board that used to be covered in fliers for bands and stuff like that but is now completely covered in lost and missing dog fliers. So she takes them all down and starts making calls. She realizes that the only dogs that have been returned to their owners have had high rewards attached. The owners offering no rewards don’t get their dogs back.
- Logan shows up at Mars Investigations with a first name and a script and asks V to help him find the name of Trina’s boyfriend. V works her magic and finds him almost immediately, and learns that he’s knocked his prior girlfriends around too, and they have restraining orders and what not. So Logan calls his dad, who says that Dirtbag Dylan is coming over for dinner tonight to pitch him on the movie. This is after he watched Trina cover her black eye with makeup, mind you.
- V sets up a scheme to figure out who is returning the dogs and collecting the money, and a bunch of Latino men end up talking to her in Spanish and describing a busty naked lady and a cowboy. But then at school, she sees a van with those mudflaps with the busy lady on them and a bumper sticker for a rodeo. Ding ding ding! It’s the guy who works at Animal Control!
- Dylan and Trina arrive at the Echolls home, where Aaron is grilling. He asks to hear more about the role, and Dylan skeezes his way around for a bit before Aaron starts talking. Aaron says that his mom used to get knocked around by his dad, and he always knew the signs – the makeup, the lies, the secrets. And that’s the kind of damage that he uses to inspire his characters, you dig? Dirtbag Dylan is like “sure, man,” and then Aaron starts beating the shit out of him. Trina half-heartedly tries to step in, but Aaron takes his belt off and is just whipping the guy with it.
- Logan and Veronica arrive at the Echolls house, thinking that Aaron didn’t know that Dirtbag Dylan had been beating on Trina. They witness the beatdown, and Aaron asks Logan to escort Dirtbag Dylan out of their home.
- After witnessing that display, V is like “hot damn, this is the guy I want to be with” and she and Logan make out some more. First, Logan asks some questions about Lilly and Weevil, and talks about the guilt he’s felt for starting to move on. V asks to keep their new relationship a secret for now, and Logan agrees.
- V goes back to the Sheriff’s Office to talk to Deputy Leo about ending their relationship. He takes it decently well, and she’s appropriately self-deprecating. And then she asks him a favor, which he agrees to.
- Deputy Leo, Wallace, Mandy, and Veronica ride up on the Animal Control office. Leo does his deputy thing, they get in, they say they’re looking for some dogs or something. Wallace finds this back room that they’re trying to hide by saying it’s where they keep the dogs who have contagious diseases. And inside! They find! All the missing dogs! Except Chester isn’t there. So while Deputy Leo is cuffing the manager guy, Mandy is tasing the guy they go to school with, and it’s truly glorious.
- At the end of the adventure, V asks Deputy Leo about the pen that Weevil was found with. Leo said it was a girly, pink pen, and Veronica flashes back to when Lilly got that pen. You could send messages inside it. And she suddenly knows what Weevil was looking for.
- Veronica and Mandy find where they sold Chester and get him back for Mandy.
- V confronts Weevil, who readily produces the pen. But he won’t tell her if he found anything inside.
Episode Mystery
This was kind of an interesting episode. It’s set up without a mystery at all, because we don’t know the dog-theft ring is a thing until about halfway through the episode. So we have that in the back half. And in the front half, we have this other whole entity that builds to a conclusion in the back half that becomes super important in the upcoming episodes. And that’s, obviously, what’s going on in the Echolls household.
I have so much I want to say, but I’m going to save it for the season finale. If you’d like a preview, you can check out my (for some reason, fairly popular) post titled Logan Echolls and the Cycle of Abuse. And I’ll be back to discuss the fucking L A Y E R S to all of that after the finale episode, I promise!
Overall Mysteries
- Who killed Lilly Kane?
Here’s what we know! It wasn’t Jake Kane. It wasn’t Abel Koontz. It wasn’t Weevil. Are the Kanes protecting Duncan? WE DON’T KNOW YET!! But it sure seems like it.
- Who raped Veronica?
No progress made in this episode. I SWEAR THIS IS A THING.
- Where is Lianne Mars? [solved in Episode 16]
Sucking up V’s college fund at rehab.
- Who is Veronica’s father?
No progress in this episode. However. When Celeste confronts Veronica in Mars Investigations, it appears that SHE believes Veronica is the product of Lianne and Jake Kane.
- Is Lynn Echolls dead? [solved in Episode 15]
Yeah, she is. 😦
What Aged Like a Dairy Product?
Oh man, I mean, the fashion, especially when it comes to both Trina and Mandy. But there were a lot of problematic things in this episode that the creator just plays off as “noir” when really… they’re super problematic. The way that Aaron Echolls beat Trina’s boyfriend without any fear of consequences, for one. I’m not saying that’s not accurate – think about Chris Brown for a second. He’s a KNOWN abuser and he’s still making music and people still love him. BUT we don’t have to SHOW that stuff on television, you know? And if it had been present day, that dirtbag would have sued Aaron Echolls for millions after a beatdown like that. So that’s changed too.
I’m getting worked up because these last episodes are so good but also so terrible and we’re getting close now.
What Aged Like a Fine Wine?
Veronica’s words that I quoted earlier in the post.
So this week, something happened in Congress that was sexist and misogynistic and terrible. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez – AOC – was called a “fucking bitch” by a fellow member of Congress. And he did the typical entitled white dude apology – I’m sorry if you felt a way, such bullshit – and everyone thought that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. AOC went on the Congress floor and said that she was not raised to take abuse from men. I wasn’t either, and I wrote about it on Facebook where I definitely credit my parents for raising me to take nobody’s shit. And I can say with certainty that Veronica was raised by Keith Mars to definitely not take abuse from men. And that’s really what that quote is. What did AOC do on the Congress floor? She DEMANDED the respect of her fellow Congresspeople. She’s going to MAKE them respect her. And that’s really why that quote is my favorite and is as evergreen as anything I’ve ever heard on primetime television.
Rating
A reminder of the rating system:
- Red = I couldn’t even get through this episode because it was so bad
- Orange = Pushed through, hated everything
- Yellow = Opposite of enjoyable, but had some bright spots
- Green = This was mediocre!
- Blue = A solid episode!
- Purple = Television at it’s finest, 12/10, must watch repeatedly.
This is a really well-done episode. It’s so well-done that parts of it make me angry, almost, because I know what’s coming. But you can’t deny that, even with kind of a stupid mystery in the episode, this is when the show is at the top of its game. I’m giving Season 1, Episode 19 a BLUE rating. And the best is yet to come.
Stay safe out there, Marshmallows.
Snark & Squee 