Over the last couple weeks I’ve become more and more convinced that Nish is behind the whole serial rapist thing. Yeah, they showed a picture of some guy who was with Claire a few hours before she woke up in the park but there’s no way it’s going to be just some random guy (who, if he’s actually the rapist, thought it would be a good idea to use his credit card to buy condoms while with his roofied victim in a convenience store). Not to mention, now that they have his photo, it would make for a pretty anti-climatic conclusion to the arc as we sit around and wait for some person to recognize the picture so the guy can be arrested.
Seeing as this arc is supposed to last us roughly one third of the season, it should be getting wrapped up within the next few weeks. So we’ve almost certainly met the perpetrator by now. Of the guys we’ve been introduced this season or who were already on the show, there aren’t really any good choices from a dramatic perspective. Pretty much all of them would either by A) anti-climatic (example: Dick Casablancas is a jerk, an almost entirely unsympathetic character AND his family has a history of villainous acts. Yeah, that’d make for a big shocking reveal) or B) nonsensical.
On the other hand, it actually makes a lot of sense from Nish to be the rapist. First, we learned back in “My Big Fat Greek Rush Week” that Nish seems to be more interested in printing the juiciest story possible rather than worrying about any of the possible the consequences of that story. And as stories go, you can’t get much bigger or attention grabbing than the ongoing story of a serial rapist.
Second, being the editor of her school’s paper while covering something this big has got to be a great boost for any future career in journalism. She is probably one of the few people on campus who has actual benefited from these crimes. The rapist even seems to be going out of his/her way to make for the best possible story. The whole business with Claire being singled out by the ‘humor’ newspaper in last week’s episode only to become the next victim, for example, is bound to stir more controversy and direct even more attention on to what is going on at the school.
And, if these rapes are being planned out for the sake of a story, it would be easy for Nish to plan things out in order to optimize that story. Tonight we learned, from an article in Nish’s paper of course, that all the rapes occurred on nights when the Pi Sigs were involved in parties. It wouldn’t be hard for Nish to find out when these parties were occurring and adjust her plan accordingly.
The beauty of the head shaving part is that Nish doesn’t actually have to rape anyone (which, when she’s exposed, I’m sure she will mention in an attempt to rationalize and minimize what she has done). If a woman wakes up nude, with no memory of what happened the night before and a shaved head, it is only logical for her to assume she was raped (even if some of the physical evidence may be missing), especially now that everyone knows the modus operandi of this serial rapist.
I will admit the writers for Veronica Mars are pretty good with the misdirection. And, after I first came up with my theory last week, tonight’s episode seemed to be just piling on the hints (for example, immediately after Veronica tells Parker she’s going to find out who raped her, Nish knocks on Parker’s door). Due to the nature of Veronica Mars I’m not sure if the hints seemed more plentiful because I was actively looking for them, or if the writers wanted us to start to suspect Nish. I feel fairly confident that it was the former however and that Nish is the rapist (though probably without the literal rape part), or at least she’ll have orchestrated the whole thing.
Of course, if Veronica starts getting suspicious of Nish next week then she’s almost certainly innocent (for dramatic purposes we can’t suspect the perpetrator (or we have to have our suspicions reasoned away so that we stop suspecting them).
