halgia

Yeah, the client is terrible. They're both secret-rich, so it's okay that they love each other! Gag. The investigative stuff was decent, though. I'm with stacey here: I never really disliked Alicia that much; her wariness of Veronica seemed completely reasonable, though of course incorrect. But, Veronica copying Meg's files? The fuck. She has no reason to think that it's anything other than a secret diary or something, no reason to think it's connected to the bus crash or anything, no inkling at all of the stuff a little later in the season, no reason to get it at all other than just "ooh information, gimme" – it's a complete breach of the privacy of someone she's feeling guilty about putting in a coma.

This was a good one. Future business leader man's choice to postpone early retirement exclusively out of moral fiber is way sad, though he's a little creepy anyway. Selling the iPod switch was pretty impressive. Poor Cassibeaver: rarely does disliking your stepmom bring your whole life down.

I don't remember the rest of this season very well, but thus far I don't completely hate Jackie during her Wallace interactions, though obviously she was terrible to Veronica/Duncan. It's nice to see how Wallace is capable of solo greatness when properly motivated. Agree that Ari Graynor is great, though the little brother and mom were drawn with a bit of a broad stroke. The whole "you look different" thing is pretty silly. Duncan remains boring, and his attempts to cheer Veronica up made him worse. Veronica was pretty impressive in going from pissed-off at the convenience store to "I'm kind of macabre" fake-happy. Investigating and manipulating people i guess is good for distracting yourself...just like she did with Lilly the first time around.

Krysten Ritter! Steve Guttenberg! Charisma Carpenter! This ep does a really good job moving all the pieces from S1 aftermath to set up for the new mystery; Lisin's right that it is actually a lot like the pilot but much less clunky. The town-at-war setup seems perfectly believable, as does Logan and Veronica's breakup, and yeah Duncan is super boring but the fortune cookie is sweet and the she-wasn't-on-the-bus scene felt real. I also really liked Weevil's initial antagonism but then coming back to give Veronica a ride — maybe she kind of convinced him that Logan really didn't do it, he's not exactly innocent of sleeping with rich kids himself, and besides he's a giant teddy bear anyway.

Whoof. Somehow I had forgotten the resolution to the main mystery until right before it got revealed here, and maaaaaaan. What an episode.

Agree that this one is great; not a lot to add. And obviously it's still megagross, but I'm down with Duncan's druggedness relieving most of his culpability there.

Yep, definitely fillerish but fun. They do a good job of making you simultaneously mad at Logan and feeling kind of sorry for him in the last scene. It's a little silly how much Veronica can get away with in school, though. She has a reputation, both with students and teachers, but she can just stroll into class talking on a cell phone like a valley girl and nobody thinks anything of it? And the teacher isn't at all suspicious when navyface doesn't says the cell phone in the drawer isn't his like two minutes after Veronica picks hers up from the same drawer?

I agree about Veronica's "demand respect" monologue to Mandy – it seems kind of out of character to her and a little victim-blamey to criticize the little guy for getting picked on. I liked the telling a bully he's awful part, though it is kind of fan servicey. The dog story is also as a whole pretty fun, especially the Deputy Leo raid right after she dumps him. It's much more grounded and believable than the whole ATF bomb threat bullshit from the week before, which is a good thing for this show. I liked Logan's part of the Trina storyline, but the whole "That's Amore" bit made me really uncomfortable. Yes, obviously boyfriend is a mega creeperface, and it makes sense that Aaron would react that way, but the soundtrack in particular and also Veronica/Logan's reactions made it seem like the show approved of beating the shit out of someone as a valid reaction to that kind of thing. It actually sort of reminded me of the way The Sopranos would treat these super-violent scenes, but that show had a much more complicated relationship with its characters' and audience's relationship to violence where a scene like this could be both cathartic and exhilarating to watch but also have an additional layer of criticism underneath it. That's completely lacking here, and like I said it makes me squirm a little.

The kiss is great. Home Improvement boy is awful; I remember this mystery as a standout bad one from the first time through, though this time around I kind of liked the journalism part of it. Laughed at Mac's "youbuntu" vs "OS ten" debate where they used some of the right words but not at all in the right way.

This is the first one with Vinnie, right, or at least more than a cameo, right? So good. Sabrina is the wooorst. I was going to say that Neptune is maybe a little overpopulated with awful rich people and noble poor people, until I remembered I was going to make the opposite complaint a few weeks ago with Mac (her biological family are these wonderful rich people and her new family is gross poor people), so I guess it's not so unbalanced. :) And yeah, it looks like now finally Veronica and Keith are finally going to just fully cooperate on this stuff, which is good. Keith probably would have told Amelia about her father's cancer right away, though, which would have made all of that for nothing regardless. You'd think that maybe the stomach cancer plus the "patent settlement" would have been something that should have come out in trial, but I suppose that if you want to plead guilty to something there aren't necessarily that many ways for people to stop you.... The title ("Kanes and Abel's") kind of bugs me grammatically, but I guess it's the Kanes and Abel's family, not plural Abels, so it makes sense. It's cute, as with many of the titles, anyway.

This was fun. I loved that Veronica is the one making Wallace's spirit packages or whatever, and the goat / parrot stuff was good. We also got to see some of what Wallace is doing in all those episodes where he barely shows up. That said, Veronica blowing all her savings for her mom's rehab suuuuuuucks.

Yeah, Meg+Duncan's not great. The sketch also wasn't super recognizable, but (a) Duncan is the blandest person ever and (b) it's based on a shopkeeper's impression of some kid who bought flowers from him a few days ago. I didn't mind the main mob storyline much though, it was kind of fun to see just straightforward detective work for most of the episode there. The resolution was a little lackluster though. Alyson Hannigan does a great job being very hateable as Trina...contributing to by far the saddest bit about Logan's mom. By the way: OH MY GOD I JUST REALIZED THAT DEPUTY LEO IS SCHMIDT FROM NEW GIRL. I was wondering where I knew him from and thought it was just remembering him from the first runthrough.

I agree with Lisin's reading of the end with Mr Rooks – in his world, why would any (attractive, young) woman help him except if it was because she liked him? Also, the argument that texts can be faked if you swipe the sender's phone is a little silly - are they saying that Carrie somehow supposedly stole Rooks's phone repeatedly outside of school hours months ago? Not that it's probably not easy to put texts onto your own phone with a fake sender, but that wasn't at all what they argued. I also agree that this one felt like it put Veronica and Keith much less at odds than the cult episode, which was a little strange for the title. The dye pack was fun. Also agree that it's really good to see how any one person, even Veronica, is super vulnerable to being biased by who they like or don't like - which is why Mars Investigations can't run all the law enforcement in Neptune. :) Also: as a megafan of Adam Scott, I found him surprisingly unlikable here, even before we found out the accusations were true. Maybe that was just me being colored by remembering "oh yeah, this is the one where Adam Scott's a child molester" at the start of the episode, though. Oh! And the kid who shot the jump footage was the most adorable thing ever, how excited he was about his war movie and stuff.

"We used to be friends. A long time ago." Poor Yolanda. Seeing a dark side of the Lilly gang in flashback here, though it is kind of understandable on her part too. Liked the utterly confused hotel employee when Veronica steps in as the customer experience manager or whatever. It's 2005 alert: "She can see you. The pinhole at the tip of the screen is a camera."

Yeah, he has plenty of reason to act out since. I'd believe Logan might have still been kind of a dick and mostly kept around because of Lilly (who wouldn't have cared about that so much if he was fun), though. Liked this one; the Veronica/Wallace friendship is so much fun. The whole Triton stuff, though pretty silly, is totally believable for that school. Who was it who stuffed her in her car trunk, though? Rick and some buds we never saw unmasked? Because though I guess the Tritons sorta have motive and we're meant to think it at that point, no way would Duncan go for that, and to be the only sinister thing we see them do. Also, the fact that Rick's locker is right under the mystery locker seems way too obvious; they should've picked up on that right away. I guess Veronica is rocking a mega-ultra-SD card to be able to take all-day movies on her DSLR in 2005.

Yeah, the baby-switch makes no sense, though it's still heartbreaking for Mac. And, if you haven't heard this: http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/360/switched-at-birth. My other main takeaway: that's some pretty serious soundproofing on the glass door in that bar. I've been way behind on this because work was crazy the last couple weeks, but will hopefully be able to make some headway now. But: up until this point, I had been enjoying the episodes but always kind of wanted to watch Buffy instead, since I'm on my first watchthrough there (and the similarities are, uh, pretty pronounced). The end, though, reminded me that oh yeah, though none of the case-of-the-weeks are THAT great, the season arc gets really exciting soonish. On to the next one....

Yep, this one was fun, and Duncan's iced tea is great.

Cults! Happy cults! Though Rain's "I couldn't even begin to explain" what the ultimate cash crop is doesn't make any sense at all. Poinsettias. That's the whole explanation. I didn't dislike this one as much as you did. Having them a little bit at odds makes Veronica's decision to shred the test that much stronger, I think. Even though I just said yesterday that I was glad the thing at the end of the last episode wasn't too spelled out, I still really liked the sequence at the start where Veronica's working through it in voiceover.

Wow, my ability to type (and proofread) on my phone is apparently far worse than I thought it was. Whoops.

Yeah, yay Mac and also Keith's badassery. Also: Abel Koontz bombshell at the end. I was pretty happy with their level of trust with the audience here; they didn't have a reminder about who the King and queen wee this ep, did they? And nothing explicit about how oh that's mean she dated her brother / etc, though they did have some relationship-with-Duncan reminders that didn't strictly need to be there. I also liked the reminder from Meg (and Mac) that though Veronica used to be at the center of the school and is now completely sidelined, that doesn't mean people don't sill pay attention to what she's doing.

Yeah, this one was fine. The flashforward initially (not having remembered the plot of this one) seemed like a boring trope, and I'm not sure the switcheroo entirely made it worth it. The surprise when that happened was decent, though. The whole Weevil/Logan storyline is nice in showing that they're kind of pretty similar people in different circumstances, but it wasn't my favorite either. I think the Weevil/Lilly stuff is getting a little heavyhanded now; could have done without the flashback where Weevil gets teased about it and just had the tattoo. Also, the whole Lilly "what are you going to do without me?" bit was a little silly, but it does kind of nicely highlight again how she was what made that group interesting.

Yeah, it's a nice move to have Wanda be the resume-padder and Duncan the one forced into it who at least seems to come off good. Duncan's pretty boring at this point, but, well, he's on antidepressants now right? The stuff with Logan was a little weird, though; I guess the he's-awful to oh-his-dad-is-awful-too deal is fine, but it's a little much. Liked the forcing his dad to give away $500k though. Snarlyface (vice-?)principal man is great. Loved "I'm lying, you know I'm lying" with Veronica and her dad at the end. Also, second episode in a row that's all DRUGS ARE BAD. That's cool.

I don't know, it seems like the point was to convince his dad that the car actually got stolen (maybe)? If Troy just leaves his dad would report the car stolen and the cops would be looking for it with Troy in it...just like they will once the school calls him and says that Troy never showed up. Yeah, doesn't really make any sense. Whatever. Agree that the Veronica/Keith relationship is the best part, and kind of the whole point. The bit with her mom was fine too. (But: her mom was all "I won't tell you whose letter got to me so you don't know who it was" while calling Veronica on the phone she gave her. No caller id to know which phone it was?)

Mike Schur talked to the AV Club about how that was an explicit goal of theirs (question: "What other new combinations of characters would you like to see in future seasons?"). He got the math way super wrong on how many possible combinations there are (he said there are 3,628,800 combinations of two out of 10 characters, when it's actually 45...), but nevertheless they do definitely do a good job of that. Also, totally agree that the Jake/Rosa interaction was great and novel.

I liked this episode too; the main plot is fun, loved the minifridge entirely full of the same soda / energy drink / whatever, the Lilly stuff (limo flashback, tribute, skinny dipping tribute) is all great, and yeah, go Wallace! Veronica also busts out three very different, pretty serious disguises this ep, which we haven't seen much of before. The gaming and math stuff were both pretty hardcore eye-rolly, though. I remembered from the first time through the magical TV where somehow multiple people can each be playing in first-person without any split screen, but I had forgotten "What's your thing? Chaos theory, PDEs, joint estimation?" (Chaos theory being the barely-a-thing thing that non-mathy people latch onto, PDEs being the basically the most boring possible topic ever, and is joint estimation [is that what he said?] referring to jointly estimating parameters? Because that's statistics, not math.) On the Weevil-is-a-softy front: the only time we see him here is him tearing up after Lilly's tribute.