Monkeys, Sluts, and Canadians, Oh My!

OK, yes, I’ve been a tad negligent. I haven’t posted in a while, and I haven’t kept up with the new episodes of Heroes and Studio 60 that came back after the winter hiatus. They were fine. I’m skipping them. On to Veronica.


Episode 3-11 Show Me the Monkey
Recap
First of all, Mac is back!! The show has been in a bit of a fight with HBO over Tina Majorino’s schedule since Big Love landed, so her presence on the Hearst campus has been patchy. Apparently her cover is that she’s been busy working for OIT at Hearst, and we meet her this episode in a lab that has been vandalized and in need of a monkey-finding detective. Who ever could Mac recommend?

As Veronica takes the case and begins infiltrating “those Phat People” (People for Humane Animal Treatment, duh)—Keith simultaneously begins looking into the Dean’s murder. Did I mention that we’ve lapsed six weeks since Veronica was almost raped and the dean shot? Yeah, so time flies. Anyhoo, the Dean’s death has been bizarrely ruled a suicide, and the widow needs her life insurance…you know the plot device. Keith realizes that the Dean didn’t drink his 40-year-old-Scotch and Veronica adds that the suicide note left on the Dean’s computer coincidentally matches the note she offered in the Plan a Perfect Murder assignment in Landry’s criminology class. In-ter-est-ing… Further, Landry is cagey and combative when Keith attempts to use his sleuthy mind tricks to elicit a confession (ever set a car on fire--or something--for a woman?). Landry knows Keith--it is Neptune, after all--and walks away in a I-wrote-a-book-too kind of huff. Keith takes the case, and our second mini-arc of the season begins.

Highlight #1: V, Mac, and Parker posing as sorority girls with a certain penchant for Ted Nugent lookalikes. They scam him into wearing a pink "Meat is Murder" sweatshirt. Golden.

Highlight #2: Mac and Veronica hosting Canada for the dorm’s Around the World party. The décor: a picture of a moose, frequent use of the word “aboot,” and Barenaked Ladies blaring. I myself may have included a Molson Ice, but V represented Canadia in a nutshell if you ask me.

The cute and harmless-seeming prez of PHAT comes to Canada and is seriously digging Mac’s cakes, and all is hunky-dory until he tries to kiss her: the trauma of having your high school boyfriend lock you in a hotel room before blowing up a plane and committing suicide appears to have had some minor after effects on Mac’s ability to trust men. Huh.

Mac’s caution may be warranted, however, when we learn that the missing rats (monkey’s friends) are in Dreamweaver’s bedroom. Fear not! It seems like Mac may actually get some after all, as V figures out that one of the researchers got attached to dear #25 and stole the monkey himself. Profound statement of the episode: “Things are harder to kill when they have a name.” So #25 is transformed into Oscar the Monkey and much like in the Neverending Story, we learn that renaming something has the power to change the world. Oscar gets to live and Veronica returns the check and keeps the secret. Monkey lover.

Mac’s smoochin’ on the porch by the end of the ep. But there’s more, not-so-wholesome smooching going on elsewhere in Neptune. Dick has convinced Logan to quit moping and go surfing, where they meet up with Easter Egg Ass Chip and the three of them do some surfer skanks who aren’t too ugly. Logan’s bathing beauty is figuratively (if not literally) wiping her chin as she coos “I can’t believe I just did that with Aaron Echoll’s son.” Man, Logan you can’t win for trying. Even sluts don’t respect you. Meanwhile, in the food court…

V and Piz have an enlightening talk about the futility of college hook-ups, and Piz feels a connection while V drives to the Neptune Grand for a (reconciliatory?) tryst with the sullen OPJ. Does this mean Rob Thomas is really going to let LoVe rule? Somehow, I doubt it.

Parting thoughts
I think this episode was one of the best of the season. The last four or so before the hiatus definitely established an upward trajectory in their quality, and I'm glad to see that's continued in the new mini-arc. I read in an interview with Rob Thomas that he especially liked this one, though the network didn't, and was glad it was the first show back after hiatus. Veronica was much more the V I like to see: funny, quick, and excited about solving mysteries. I don't want her to be Miss America and I certainly don't like perfect heroines, but I have trouble seeing a lot of how she's behaved this season as anything but mean. Thomas refutes this in the interview, but in any case the writing and acting in this episode kept the wit and snark on the sunny side of evil, much to the show's benefit.

I wonder if it might be a tad soon to have a botched reconciliation between V and Logan, but the trailer for next week looks interesting. Apparently Logan's trip into the sexual underworld will have some consequences, and the stakes of that are certainly higher when he's with V. We'll see. I just don't want more insecure girlfriend bullshit.

Having Mac back is an amazing improvement, but I have to say, I hate that this season we have Wallace, Mac, or Lamb but never more than one at a time. The Wallace-Veronica chemistry is sorely missing, but the additions of Piz and Parker are deec.

The big question: who killed Dean O'Dell? The wife and her criminology-knowin', perfect-murder assignin' lover are clear (read: obvious) suspects. We know that Veronica's perfect murder of Lamb was posted on the internet, so anyone could have read it and followed it like the Anarchist Cookbook. That leaves anyone, including LuckyTim, who knows the papers were posted online. The Lilith House girls are also prime suspects, but something tells me that Thomas and Co. are going to leave the feminists alone for a while now that the rape plot is over. At this point I don't even have a guess.