Veronica Mars Episode 1–Pilot
Recap:
A cult favourite in the U.S., Veronica Mars has finally made the trip across the border to Canadian television. The premiere on CTV was a divine combination of what network drama presents at its best: a marvelous blend of quality writing, acting and directing, only to play second to a solid, original story arc.
As the episode begins we see the typical suburban high school. Neptune High, to be exact, set in the wealthy town of…You guessed it, Neptune. The scene is familiar; students sprawling to get to class, cheerleaders doing their pep thing, parking lot lined with oh-so-expensive cars, with oh-too-young drivers. Over the muss, our gregarious young heroine narrates.
This is her high school, and this is her town. A town she claims is devoid of a middle class. If you live in Neptune your parents are either millionaires or they work for millionaires, the latter of which Veronica holds membership to. Her father was once-sheriff of this shiny suburb, but now runs his own private investigator business. She has taken to employing herself as her father’s pseudo-assistant exploring the mysteries Neptune has to offer.
As Veronica pulls into the school in her modest LeBaron, she sees a crowd around the school’s flagpole. Detective eye alert, she immediately investigates. Making her way to the centre of the crowd, she sees a young boy, seemingly nude, strapped to the pole. Silver tape covers his decency, and matches the paint that scrolls the words “SNITCH” across his chest.
Whispers and murmurs in the crowd abound do not intimidate the young Mars. There is talk that if he is cut down, the hero will be the next to share his fate. The fearless Mars moves forward regardless, she is all too familiar with the Neptune High’s class divide; it leaves no victims behind. With a bit of snark and sharp (she carries an army knife) she coaxes the crowd with a mock-enthusiastic “Go Pirates” and proceeds to cut the boy down.
“You’re new here, huh?” she asks the boy. “Welcome to Neptune High.”
The school bell leads us into English class, with rows of students listening semi-attentively to the teacher about An Essay on Man, by Pope. Veronica dozes near the back row seemingly unaware of the discussion. The teacher calls on her to analyze the reading, at which point she pops her head up, zips out a know-it-all answer, and plops back down.
“Life’s a bitch until you die” Veronica analyzes of Pope’s writing. Spunky, smart, and bold, she has endured the bitchy side of life, and continues to as she walks the halls of Neptune High.
Waiting at her locker after class are Principal Clemmons, a deputy from the town’s sheriff office, and his little dog too. Random locker searches, Veronica explains; a means through which Administration is trying to the keep the war against drugs waging. They aren’t so random, however, as Veronica knows exactly when and to whom they’ll happen even before Principal Clemmons does. A detective at heart, she is in the know about everyone’s business.
“Veronica Mars, this should be good,” the Deputy chimes. The Deputy’s dog barks at her as she opens her locker.
“Buster!” she admonishes, only to have the dog obey. She knows him and the authority all too well. Having a dad play as sheriff for this town hasn’t left her unidentified to anyone.
She opens the locker to reveal a whole bag of well, nothing, and leaves the Principal and his pals disappointed.
Next, Veronica walks us to her lunch hour. Sitting at a table alone in the quad, she gazes at the wealthy kids nostalgically. They have their lunch delivered, and pay for it with a Gold card, while she picks away at her Tupperware-housed meatloaf.
She used to be one of them, she explains. Her family didn’t meet the minimum rich requirement, but her Dad was the sheriff and that had a certain cache. It didn’t hurt as well, that her used-to-be boyfriend was Duncan Kane, son of Jake Kane, billionaire owner of Kane Software.
Flashbacks of a long-haired Veronica invade the screen; she and Duncan are walking down the school hallway in an embrace. One day last year, she recalls, Duncan ended things without so much as a warning. Another memory leads us to Veronica smiling at Duncan in a school hallway, but we watch him as he harshly turns away, as if he didn’t see her.
Back in her own time, Veronica’s gaze shifts to another boy, who sees her looking over at his group. He hops into Duncan’s lap as to imitate Veronica’s longing for her ex. Duncan plays into the charade for a bit, but pushes him off after he doesn’t relent.
This is Logan, Veronica states. His father makes 20 million a picture. In par with almost every school, and every network drama about teens in high school, Logan plays the “obligatory psychotic jackass” of Neptune High.
A boy breaks Veronica’s gaze at her past life. It is no other than the flagpole snitch himself, ready to eat lunch with his heroine. She snaps at him, asking him just who said he could accompany her. She then realizes just what she’s done; she isn’t that girl anymore, perhaps never was. She yields, telling the boy (named Wallace) that he can sit wherever he pleases.
Trouble is not far away however, as a heavily-leathered boy approaches with a gang and grudge on the mind. He is the flagpoler himself, angry at Wallace because of his snitch status. Wallace attempts to ease the tense situation, telling the bully, a biker named Weevil that he gets it; that they’re even. Weevil angers forward.
“You get what?” he asks. “You get that you’re a dead man walking?”
A stagnant Veronica pops to life now, telling the boy to leave Wallace alone. Weevil is the stereotypical token bully-type of the show. He is a leather-clad Latino biker, who comes fully equipped with bad attitude and motorcycle to compensate for his lack of acceptance. He also does not take well to people who talk back. Veronica, however, continues to coax him. Weevil combats with the classic sexual banter, explaining the only time he lets women talk back o him, is when they’re connecting on a much “deeper level”. Even then, its more “Oohs and Ahhs,” he proclaims. Veronica sparks back with other gang members now entering the dispute, as Clemmons shows up and intervenes.
The gang dissipates, as Clemmons mildly asks, “Veronica Mars, why does trouble always follow you around?’
That is the ultimate question of the series, which, continues with Veronica probing Wallace about what got HIM into trouble with Weevil, of all people.
Wallace flashes back to the night he was working at the local Sac-n-Pac, when some of Weevil’s buddies came in and started pocketing beer into their jackets. The surveillance got them on tape, but Wallace pushed the silent alarm. The two members only offered a dollar in reimbursement for their goods, pushing Wallace to see if he’d fight back. By that time, the sheriff had arrived and took the boys into custody.
The sheriff, a hasty man obsessed with his own authority, came into office only after Veronica’s father was relieved from his duties. He grills Wallace asking him whether the two boys paid for what they took. Wallace looks around, and notices that Weevil’s biker gang has arrived, adjudicating his every move. Figuring he’ll pay much worse if he snitches in front of everyone, he lies and tells the Sheriff that the boys paid for the beer. The Sheriff reprimands him, telling him derisively that he shouldn’t have pushed the alarm if they paid. Wallace claims it was an accident, while the Sheriff orders his men to take the boys away.
“You need to go see the wizard,” he says. “Ask him for some guts.”
Back in the present, Veronica jeers at the Sheriff’s comment. Something about his statement has hit home with her.
As she enters her small apartment complex later that day, her mind returns to memories of the past. Standing at the edge of the pool in the middle of the complex grounds, she remembers.
Music is playing, and there is a party is going on. Duncan Kane is in the pool and approaches her through the water.
“Hey baby,” he yells up at her. “It’s our song.”
Beyond Duncan, there are a dozen kids around Veronica’s age. One of them is Logan who has his arm around the once lively Lilly. They yell out “Happy Birthday Veronica!” as an older woman walks forward with a cake.
“Mom?” Veronica yells out, as the she flashes back into reality.
An elderly neighbour is calling out for some help with her groceries.
Later on, Veronica pulls up at her Dad’s office, surprised to find Celeste Kane’s car parked out in front. Celeste is Duncan’s mom, and as Veronica quips, hates her just as much as she adores her son.
As she enters the office, we are introduced to a modest workplace. It has a small couch, painted-glass windows, and a filing area. At the end of the office there is a door with “Keith Mars” on it. Veronica heads towards it, ready to eavesdrop on Celeste’s reasons for being there. As she pokes her head in, a man enters the office from behind her.
With a file and suitcase in hand, Cliff McCormack, lawyer extraordinaire addresses Veronica. The two obviously know each other; Cliff makes off-hand comments about just how the cases in this office somehow always get solved, though Keith Mars is always off chasing bail-jumpers Veronica claim that her and her father are simply efficient, though Cliff seems to know better. He conveniently leaves the file for his latest case on “V’s” desk, asking her to take a look at it if she has time.
The case involves a stripper, Loretta Cancun, who dances at the Seventh Veil. She’s been arrested for vandalism–took the bat to a washing machine that ate up her quarters, and now Cliff has to get her out. Cancun has claimed that the Seventh Veil has an interesting way of keeping their liquor license, despite their lax ID policy. This could be something that will save her from the charges. Cliff leaves, despite the fact that Keith is still occupied, knowing Veronica has this one covered.
The door to Keith’s office opens, and Celeste comes marching out.
“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Mars. I don’t like you,” she says.
She, however, does add that there is no one that will be as persistent in her matter as Keith will, and this qualifies him for the job. Casting an unpleasant gaze at Veronica who sits observing the interaction, she leaves the office.
Sure she’s a bitch, Veronica quips. But Keith did almost send her husband to prison, so the behaviour is fairly warranted. Veronica catches her father’s gaze, and asks a million questions with her silent look. With a simple hello, he walks obliviously into his office.
Later on as they eat dinner, (a meek Kraft dinner in familiar Tupperware) Veronica hassles her father about why Celeste Kane was in their office. He, wanting to shield Veronica, makes cover-up talk about school and her grades. Eventually he relents, letting Veronica know that Celeste thinks that her husband is having an affair. Late nights, motel matches, that sort of thing. Veronica is glad her father has taken the case; despite their relationship with the Kane family, they need the money.
A phone call interrupts dinner, and Keith must leave suddenly. One of the bail-jumpers he’s been trying to track down has just been sighted outside El Paso.Veronica promises him a ticket, and rental car by the time he reaches the airport and his destination, as she quickly opens up the laptop. Her dad leaves in a flurry, but reminds her NOT to do anything with the Kane case. Given their relationship with that family, he doesn’t want her meddling. Veronica is, after all, her father’s daughter, and he is fully aware he won’t be able to prevent her from snooping.
“Veronica…” he says, semi-authoritatively, “…When you go after Jake Kane, you take Backup.”
By the time her father has landed in El Paso, Veronica had already tracked Jake Kane from his house to his office at Kane Software. Streaming video was invented and perfected inside these walls, and by the time the company went public, Jake Kane had made a billion dollars. Everyone down to Kane’s secretarial ranks shared in the wealth, which made Jake Kane Neptune’s most loved man. Veronica had no quibbles with him either; Duncan Kane was her first love, Lilly Kane (Duncan’s sister), was her best friend.
As Veronica narrates we flash into a memory.
It is a pep squad carwash, in which Lilly, and a year-younger Veronica are participating. Lilly is bouncing with energy, and claims she has a secret. As she begins to tell Veronica, the two are hushed by the event organizer, asking them to get to work.
“Later,” Lilly promises.
These are the last words Veronica ever hears from Lilly.
Later on that night while Veronica and her father are driving home, Keith receives a call on the radio. There is a disturbance at the Kane estate.
Arriving at the mansion, Keith instructs Veronica to stay in the car. Veronica obeys, until she spots a wide-eyed Duncan sitting in the family foyer overlooking the backyard pool. Veronica runs to where he sits, falls to her knees and asks him what the matter is. Duncan, in a catatonic state, does not answer her pleas.
“Where is Lilly?” Veronica asks only to have Duncan gaze out to the pool yard. Veronica follows his gaze to find police and forensics surrounding the area. As she walks to the poolside she sees “the disturbance”.
A murdered Lilly Kane lies wide-eyed and lifeless beside the water. The left side of her head sports a fatal gash.
Keith pulls back his daughter, behind a grieving Jake and Celeste.
Veronica tugs us out of the flashback. Everyone knows this story, she claims. It made the cover of People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight; the town was flooded with journalists. Everyone remembers reading about Lilly’s murder, and about the bungling sheriff who accused the wrong man of the crime. That sheriff, was Keith Mars.
Back again to the present, Veronica watches Jake Kane knock on Room Six at the Camelot Hotel. Why would Jake Kane be at a motel at 3 a.m.? It seems as if Mrs. Kane may be on the right track about her husband’s indiscretions.
Back into a flashback, Veronica walks into the school library. A couple of students are at a computer and call her over. On the screen she sees a video from the crime scene of Lilly’s murder. Six weeks after her killing, someone from the Sheriff’s department leaked the tape. Streaming video capabilities made it available to the public on the internet. Keith Mars, then-sheriff took the blame, while someone made millions.
Veronica is distressed to see students watching the video and as she walks away teary-eyed, she runs into Logan. Glassy-eyed himself, he lashes out at her for being part of the family that accused Jake Kane of killing his own daughter. Logan, in all of his jackass-ness, is a boy who sorely misses his girlfriend.
“What’s the matter with you people?” he asks Veronica about her family.
She doesn’t respond.
In the coming weeks Veronica’s father would be voted out of the sheriff’s office for his persistence that Jake Kane was Lilly’s killer and the loss of income, status and rumors around town would force her mother to abandon her family without so much as a goodbye.
In the weeks after her father’s removal from the force, Jake Kane is exonerated and a man name Abel Koontz is charged for Lilly’s murder. Koontz, a former employee at Kane Software, was fired in the development stages of the streaming video project. His confession was directly related to the fact that both Lilly’s shoes and backpack were discovered on his houseboat. Despite this evidence, however, both Veronica and her father remain convinced he is not the killer.
As Veronica flashes out her recollection, she hears motorcycles approaching. Weevil and his gang have caught up with her, wanting retribution for the spat at school. Weevil’s gang attempts to harass Veronica, but Backup jumps out of the car, onto one of the bikers. Another boy approaches, and Veronica tazers him in the middle of the chest. The bikers back down, afraid of what she will pull out next.
“Backup, chill!” Veronica coaxes, ordering her pet dog to yield off one of the boys. She is ready to make a deal; if Weevil and his gang leave Wallace alone for one week, she’ll make sure that the gang members involved in the Sac-n-Pac robbery walk free. Weevil agrees, offering yet more sexual advances towards her. He claims the only reason she cares about Wallace is because she “lays the pipe really well.”
In the last year or so, Veronica has garnered herself quite a reputation as the school seductress. The irony of it all, however, is that she doesn’t even remember how, or to whom she lost her virginity.
Veronica flashes us back to the night that gave birth to the rumors of her promiscuity. She crashed a party at Shelley Pomeroy’s a few months after Lilly’s death to prove to everyone that their backstabbing and rumors didn’t affect her. All of her former friends were there; Logan, Duncan, the people who had made up her core group of peers until Lilly’s murder. As she stumbles through the crowd trying to remain immune to the many stares and whispers, someone hands her a drink. According to Veronica it was a standard rum, coke and roofie. The drug causes her to enter a haze, and she eventually stumbles to the pool area, which is lined with distinctive lanterns in star and cube shapes.
Veronica passes out on a lounge chair, and awakens the next morning in a strange bed inside the home. Her white dress is wrinkled, and her panties, are on the floor. Slowly, but surely, Veronica puts the pieces together. She has been raped by a stranger and cannot recall the events of the night before. She sits sullied at the edge of the bed, as the realization of what has happened hits her. A single tear falls down her face.
The scene melds into one of Veronica walking brokenly out of the pool house at dawn. Her hair is messy, her shoes grasped in one hand, and the look on her face is morose.
“I never told my father,” Veronica narrates. She isn’t sure what her father would have done with that information. But it doesn’t’ matter, she insists. She is no longer that Veronica.
Veronica breaks out of her memory, as we watch Jake Kane exiting Room Six at the Camelot. He turns back to say a few more words to the person inside the room. Lifting up her camera, Veronica snaps a few shots of the woman in question. The only thing visible, however, is the woman’s hand on the door.
The next day Veronica is walking across the parking lot at school, only to have Logan pull up next to her with his hunk of yellow SUV. In the passenger seat is Duncan who looks distantly out the window on his side. As Veronica walks, Logan requests she join in on their surf-instead-of-school adventure for the day. He promises her Duncan will take his shirt off, and asks her how that’ll make her feel. Duncan is not amused and tells Logan to shut up. Logan, however, continues, pulling out a flask. He asks Veronica if she wants any, and about her mother, who has been AWOL for months.
“Now there was a woman who could drink…Hey, what’s she up to nowadays?” Logan asks. Duncan has had enough. He pulls Logan by the shoulder and tells him sternly to leave Veronica alone.
“She used to be fun,” Logan says, as he drives off leaving Veronica behind.
Veronica flashes back to the morning she realized her mother had left their family. A month after her father lost his sheriff status, Lianne Mars split for good. The only thing she left behind was a unicorn music box, and a note promising she’d be back for Veronica one day. A blue-toned memory shows Veronica discovering the box, and watching the unicorn spin as she opens it.
At lunch hour, Veronica sits at her table with an apple and a notebook. Wallace arrives and accompanies her, informing her that she should hear what this school says about her. Veronica is no strangers to the rumors surrounding her existence. She claims that if Wallace is wary of what people say, he shouldn’t be sitting with her at all. Wallace disagrees; he’d rather sit with the chick that cut him down from the flagpole, as opposed to the majority of Neptune High-ers who were staring and laughing at him. In Wallace, Veronica has found a true sidekick. Plan in mind, Veronica smiles and asks Wallace if he wants to know how to get that P.C.H. biker gang off his ass.
In the next scene Wallace and Veronica are in the art room, asking their friend Corny for a small favour. He looks through a notebook she has handed him mesmerized, telling her he’ll do it. The audience does not know at this point, what Veronica has asked. It is evident however, that thought Veronica is outcast in the rich-kid clique, she still has friends in the right places, willing to do favours for her.
While Corny does his “thing”, Veronica downloads the pictures from the night before at the Camelot. She narrates, telling the audience that her favourite hobby is photography. In her room, we see a wall-length board lined with surveillance pictures, post-its, and other clue-like remnants reflective of a budding detective. She transfers the photos onto her computer, and zooms in on a license plate to a car parked a deck lower than where Jake Kane was standing last night. The plate on the car may give an indication as to just who Kane is having late-night rendezvous’ with. Veronica prints out a picture of the plate, and pins it on to her clue board.
As Veronica does homework late that night, her father returns from his bail chase.
“Who’s your Daddy?” he asks, which indicates the case went well. Veronica admonishes him, she hates when he says that. Despite that, they have $2500 in their pockets and a box-free steak dinner to look forward to.
During dinner, Veronica brings up Jake Kane’s night time excursion with a mystery woman. She explains that she didn’t end up getting the money shot, because the woman never stepped outside, but she did manage to get a snapshot of the license plate. Presenting the picture to her father, she awaits his response. Keith takes a glance at the photo, and immediately hardens.
“You stay away from Jake Kane,” he says.
Keith immediately makes the decision to drop the case, and tells Veronica he’s going to let Celeste know as soon as possible. Not grasping just what has set Keith off, Veronica questions him as to what was so disturbing about the picture. She begs him to tell her, but he firmly tells her to back off and leave the case alone. He walks off the patio in a huff.
Later that evening, Veronica puts phase one of the Saving Wallace project into motion. She is parked outside the Seventh Veil, which is crawling with night critters. In front of the club, she sees a vehicle from the Sheriff’s office. Taking out a handy camcorder, she starts recording. So this is how they keep their liquor license. Phase two of the plan, will begin tomorrow.
The next day at school, Veronica and Wallace are hurrying up a flight of stairs. They reach the end of a hallway that has a row of lockers. Logan stands at one of them, accompanied by a deputy and Principal Clemmons. He opens up his locker to find a cherub bong; the type of thing that could be used to smoke marijuana. Corny sculpted it, and Veronica pulled the strings to have it placed in Logan’s locker. While Logan is being taken away, he spots Veronica, who feigns innocence, and yawns dramatically when he tells her that their feud is long from over. Phase two, is now complete.
Veronica drives Wallace to the sheriff’s office after school so he can complete phase three. They have rigged the cherub bong that was found in Logan’s locker with mild fireworks, which, at the switch of a remote control, should light up inside the evidence room.
“We could get into a lot of trouble for this,” Wallace warns Veronica. This however, is all part of a well-drawn plan in her head, and every step is essential. Wallace flips the switch, and the cherub sparks and smokes up the evidence room. The secretary of the office, Inga, a Russian woman who Veronica knows well from her father’s sheriff-days looks up and notices the smoke coming out of the room. She quickly calls the fire department, who race there in minutes. Veronica and Wallace congratulate each other on a job well done, though, the audience, still has very little clue what has just happened.
Later on, we see Veronica entering a fire hall, lined with large trucks, and even larger men. She’s looking for one man in particular, who refers to her as “Smokey the Barely Legal.” Billy the firefighter is a comrade of her father’s from his days in the office he was one of the men who responded to the alarm at the sheriff’s building today. Veronica asks Billy if he made the switch, to which he responds “fait accompli” and hands her a package. Mission accomplished.
On cue with the viewers’ questions, Veronica tells the audience that there are still people in Neptune that adore her father, despite the debacles of the past. This comes in handy sometimes, as much-needed favours, such as the one Veronica asked of Billy, are fulfilled. What was that favour? We have yet to find out.
At her dad’s office later in the day, Veronica takes another look at the picture from the Camelot. She zooms in on the car one again, and enlarges the license plate. Picking up the phone, she calls the San Juan Capistrano P.D., pretending to be Inga from the sheriff’s office.
“Tony, it’s Inga,” she says with a thick accent. She quickly generates a story about how the computers at the office have gone down and she needs to trace a license plate from a “hit and run” last night. Tony agrees to it, and reveals something Veronica does not expect.
The plate is registered to one, Lianne Mars–Veronica’s mother.
As Veronica is pulling herself together, her father enters from his office. He asks her if she wants to catch a movie, but she responds by asking him just why they are dropping the Kane case. Keith then lies, and tells Veronica he ran the plates and it seems as if Jake Kane is participating in some sort of corporate espionage. The risk isn’t worth the money he reveals. Veronica then gets up and leaves the room, despite her father’s efforts to get her to movie-watch tonight.
Veronica heads to the sheriff’s office where she plans on sitting in at the preliminary hearing for the Sac-N-Pac arrest. She comes across Inga, who is delighted to see her. Inga claims she can’t remember the last time she saw Veronica, but that is a meeting Veronica recalls all too well.
A flashback takes us back to the morning after Veronica’s rape. She enters the sheriff’s office, and tells Inga blankly she needs to report a crime. In the office, she tells Sheriff Lamb of what occurred, and he condescendingly laughs it off.
“Is there anyone in particular you’d like me to arrest, or should I just round up the son’s of the most important families in town?” He claims he has not a shred of evidence to work with, but then again that never stopped the Mars family from charging forward with accusations. Veronica sits, obviously shaken. Her usually harsh, sarcastic exterior has been broken, and a tear slips down her face. The sheriff taunts her, and like Wallace nearly a year later, tells her to go visit the Wizard. Maybe he’ll give her some backbone.
Back in the present day we see Sheriff Lamb testifying at the Sac-N-Pac trial. He claims that when the boys were arrested they still had nearly 20 bottles of alcohol stuffed in their pockets. Veronica enters the courtroom, and makes direct eye contact with Lamb. She wants him to know she’s there. The sheriff claims that even though the defendants claim they didn’t steal the drinks, they have it on tape. The judge orders the tape played and what we see is not a convenient store robbery. An officer of the sheriff’s department is escorting a woman out of the Seventh Veil, and into his vehicle still in uniform. We watch as the woman lowers her head to his lap.
The judge questions Lamb about how he runs his department, and we see Veronica do a flaming gun motion with her hand in his direction. Defense lawyer McCormack asks for dismissal of the case which is granted immediately.
Later at the beach, Veronica sees Wallace. She tells him she has present for him, and hands him the surveillance tape from the Sac-N-Pac. Since Veronica has paved the way for Weevil’s boys to walk free, Wallace, with tape in hand, should also be flagpole-free as well. Veronica claims she had her own reasons fro helping Wallace out, but he declares that underneath that angry exterior, there is a young girl dying to just bake him something.
“You’re a marshmallow, Veronica Mars,” he says.
Veronica and Wallace are goofing off on the beach, when they notice Logan lounging on Veronica’s LeBaron. They approach him and notice three other guys, as well as a crowbar in his hand. He tells Veronica that her little stunt with the cherub bong cost him his T-Bird, which she will just have to pay for. He takes the crow bar and smashes in one of her headlights. Veronica doesn’t give him an apology, and he crushes another one of her headlights.
The revving of engines approaches, as Weevil and his gang join the action. He steps in and accosts Logan, saying the only vandalism that occurs in Neptune, happens through only him.
Veronica has done Weevil a huge favour, thus making a most-intimidating ally out of him. Weevil takes the crowbar from Logan and smashes in Logan’s buddies’ car. He tells them to head for the hills. Logan, however, must stay behind and apologize. Weevil takes a few swings at him when he refuses, as Veronica watches on uncomfortably. At the third punch, she asks Weevil to let him go, claiming she doesn’t want his apology. Logan stumbles away as him and his buddies speed off.
Weevil asks Veronica about the surveillance tape, which he heard has just gone “poof.” In gratitude, he offers a full body service….of her car from his uncle’s body shop. She however, wants an apology, not for his sexual innuendos, but for what happened to Wallace. He refuses at first, but Veronica is quick to inform him that Wallace holds the only copy of the surveillance tape, and could easily “do the right thing” with it. Weevil then relents, apologizing and asking for the tape back.
“No,” says Wallace, as him and Veronica walk away.
Driving down the street at night, Veronica tells the audience that when she woke up that morning she had just one person in the world she could count on. With the information she just learned about her mother and her father’s ease in lying to her about it, she no longer feels that way.
She waits outside the office, until her father leaves. Inside, she opens a secret safe her father has kept for off-limit documents. She’s known the combination for a while, but has never needed to use it. Opening it up, she sees an accordion file filled with papers. One of the files is the investigation of the Lilly Kane murder. Some of the files, she claims are only a few months old.
It turns out Keith has been doing a little investigating of his own.
The photo Veronica took from the Camelot is also in the file. Veronica leaves us with a series of questions.
Why was her mom at the Camelot with Jake Kane? Why is her dad investigating Lilly’s murder when the confessed killer is already on death row? Why…did her father lie to her?
Later, her father walks into the office breaking her out of her reverie. He wonders why she’s back, and she claims she left some books behind. He tells her he’s rented the Southpark movie for her, knowing it’s her favourite.
“Who’s your Daddy?” he asks again. “You are,” she says with utmost confidence. Though we know, she is shaken. Claiming she has to make a stop before she gets home, she exits the office, only to leave behind the unicorn music box her mother left her on the desk. It plays its staccato tune until Keith, picks it up and closes it.
Veronica stops off at the Camelot and knocks on Room Six, waiting for an answer. No one comes to the door. She feels she once knew what tore her family apart, but is sure she no longer does. She vows that she will find the true reason, and bring her family back together.
“I’m sorry is that too mushy?” she asks. “You know what they say Veronica Mars, she’s a marshmallow.”
Review:
Despite being the first episode of a series, (which can historically be quite bland) Veronica Mars presented a wonderful blend of intrigue and bold storytelling for a freshman outing. This episode seamlessly juggled at least three main mysteries (Wallace’s flagpole incident, Jake Kane’s late nights and Loretta Cancun vs. Seventh Veil) while educating the viewer about last year’s going-ons in Neptune. The writing is snappy; typical of the smart-teen-drama trend we’ve seen in the last few years, but what sets the show apart almost immediately is that it knows exactly where it’s going.
The Lilly Kane murder gives it a directional story-arc, which as it unfolds, should be quite pleasing. In addition, this is the first series in a while where we have a young woman in the lead who does not possess any sort of unearthly super power, but deals with the dark reality of her everyday life with only the power of her brain.
The blue-toned flashbacks and Veronica’s voiceovers allow us to understand the girl behind the detective. Much as her tough exterior would attest to, she internalizes nearly everything, and a key to her thoughts is essential in sympathizing with and following her quick mind in solving Neptune’s mysteries.
A classic whodunit in the form of a teen drama, Veronica Mars hints of exquisite promise in the weeks to come.
