Veronica attends a very dark party.

1.17 Kanes and Abels

Score: 19

Characters (+5)

Logan (+1)

Dick (+1)

Vinnie van Lowe!!!!! (+1)

Aaron Echolls (on TV) (+1)

Backup (+1)

We’ve got a new high score! Story takes a back seat to the main plot this week, but we get the triumphant introduction of Vinnie Van Lowe. Stellar cast and great writing make this the best episode yet.

Story: 5/5

Sabrina, an egregiously stuck-up 09er, is being harassed by her ex-boyfriend, or so she believes. It’s super annoying, because, like, it’s midterms and she has to get straight-As in order to win the Kane scholarship! Which she doesn’t even need since her family is clearly rich. But anyway, these pranks keep interfering with her precious study time. She hires Veronica to make it stop.

Sabrina’s ex is Caz, who claims he loves her so much he’d jump off the roof for her, which is odd considering he was one of Meg’s potential suitors just a couple episodes ago (he’s the one who threw a beer on her). He doesn’t do himself any favors by circling Sabrina’s block in a beat-up pickup truck, but he claims he was just trying to protect her.

Speaking of the Kane scholarship, Veronica has to go to an “achiever dinner” at the Kane house. She’s only a junior, but she’s such a good student that she’s already in the running for next year’s scholarship. Jake Kane seems totally shocked to see her, like he didn’t even bother to read the names of the kids he was inviting over to his house.

Why is this party so dark?? Nobody can even see their food. Why do the Kane’s live in this super-modernist mega-mansion with no overhead lighting??

Also at this dinner are Sabrina, of course, and Hamilton Cho, a senior who was joking about Sabrina with Dick in an earlier scene. He just happens to be next in line behind Sabrina for the valedictorian spot and the scholarship.

Veronica spends the party imagining different Lilly-murder scenarios featuring each of the Kane family members. She also follows Lilly’s ghost out to the pool, where the body was found. Duncan joins her there and says that it’s “kind of nice” to hang out in Lilly’s murder spot. Sure, Duncan, that’s a normal thing to say.

Veronica is on the trail of Hamilton Cho, who works at his dad’s Chinese-pizza fusion restaurant. He got into Oxford, but he can’t afford it—unless he gets the Kane scholarship. He complains about how many privileges Sabrina has had: AP credit for a trip to Rome, tutors, her mom is the school board president, etc etc. Meanwhile Hamilton has to fit his studies around his pizza-delivery duties. But when Sabrina’s next problem arises (a car alarm that won’t stop blaring), Hamilton is still at the pizza restaurant, studying. (Interesting that Cho—clearly not an 09er—is chummy with Dick. Maybe Dick is more open-minded than we’ve been lead to believe. Or maybe he really likes Peking duck pizza.)

Veronica discovers that the car in question belongs to an ex-wife of Vinnie Van Lowe, the town’s other (much less ethical) P.I. What follows is one of the best scenes of all time. Veronica goes to Vinnie’s office and sells some spirit week cookies and a spirit pin to Vinnie’s mom, who is also his receptionist. She also gives Vinnie a pen. The pin and the pen are both secret spy devices. Vinnie clocks the pen, and, in what might be the best scene of the entire series, uses it as a fake microphone as he hangs out the window and serenades Veronica with Hall and Oates “Private Eyes” with the lyrics changed to “Veronica Mars, I’m watching you,” complete with pelvic thrusts and ass slaps. It’s golden.

The pen was just a decoy, though. The spirit pin Veronica sold to his mom has a mic and a camera, which captures Vinnie telling his mom to “get Jim on the horn,” and his mom asking him if he’s ordering a pizza even though he just ate a sandwich. Veronica realizes who hired Vinnie to sabotage Sabrina: Jim Cho, Hamilton’s dad.

Jake Kane offers to split the scholarship between Hamilton and Sabrina, but Sabrina’s tight-assed mom refuses to accept that compromise. Instead she forces Hamilton to withdraw from the valedictorian race in exchange for not pressing charges against his dad. So the rich assholes win again.

Plot: 5/5

SO much plot development this episode.

Veronica tracks down Amelia DuLongpre, minutes before Wiedman arrives, and whisks her off to a motel (where, at one point, Clash of the Titans is playing on TV—a real-life movie staring real-life Harry Hamlin, but in this universe starring Aaron Echolls). Amelia hasn’t spoken to her father in years and thinks the millions in Kane stock she was given was an out-of-court settlement for Koontz’s lawsuit over streaming video. Veronica thinks it was a payoff for Koontz taking the fall for Lilly’s murder. To find out for sure, she’s going to hide Amelia until the settlement documents, sent by Amelia’s mother, arrive. (Side note—I don’t know how Amelia got into Loyola Marymount because she’s really as dumb as rocks. She doesn’t understand anything Veronica says to her.)

Logan sneaks a peek at Veronica’s laptop and sees that she’s investigating Lilly’s death and has files on everybody. Logan has been cleared as a suspect because he was out of the country, with two witnesses. Remember this for later! Logan wonders why Duncan never mentioned his “weird kind of epilepsy” to him--he's supposed to be Duncan's best friend! He describes a “blind rage” of Duncan’s he witnessed, in which Duncan attacked Jake. This was just after Duncan and Veronica broke up. Did the emotional turmoil trigger an episode of Duncan’s made-up disease? Also Veronica refuses Logan’s payment for her help looking for his mom, and they almost smile at each other.

Clarence Wiedman tries to break into the Mars’ apartment, really sloppily, and is caught by Keith. Wiedman thinks Keith is the one who snaked Amelia duLongpre out from under his nose, but Keith has no idea what he’s talking about. Keith realizes that this must be Veronica’s doing and confronts her. After lecturing her to be more careful, he shares with her that he found a record of Jake Kane making a phone call to Wiedman on the night of Lilly’s murder. His theory is that Jake called Wiedman after Lilly was killed, to do “whatever needed to be done” to obscure the facts of the case.

Clarence Wiedman somehow psychically deduces that the only call Amelia will take is from her boyfriend, so he tracks the boyfriend down so he can borrow his phone and call Amelia. He spills the beans about Veronica not really working for Abel’s lawyer, and that her father only has months to live. Amelia finalizes the settlement with Wiedman and disappears.

To make up for this disappointment, Keith lets Veronica into his safe, and tells her that the night of Lilly’s death, the Kane’s were doing laundry—suspicious for people with TWO housekeepers. He found Duncan’s soccer uniform in the dryer. Did Duncan kill Lilly in one of his “epileptic” episodes??

Iconic Lines: (+5)

• Why is it that the Caz’s of the world are forever in transit between romantic failure and the gym?

• I’m not an expert on the male mind, so maybe someday someone can tell me what it is about chrome, glass and fake black leather that are supposed to represent masculinity.

• Hall and Oates, Veronica. They wrote the song and now you’re livin’ it!

• I don't know if maybe you were looking for "pimp" in the phone book and just stopped at "PI"...

• Proust is still Proust, even at UCLA. (Fun fact: Hamilton Cho’s actor was an English major at UCLA.)

Cringe: (-1)

There aren’t any particularly cringey lines, as written, but there’s some cringey delivery. Amelia duLongpre's actress seems straight out of summer camp for the theater arts. But the best-worst dialogue belongs to this crazy lady who turns up in Keith's office early in the episode:

Settlement for me; bonus for you.

She jumps off the screen, and not in a good way. I'm actually torn about whether this lady should gain a point or lose one. But she's an off note in an otherwise perfect episode so I'm coming down on the side of "she's a detriment."

Outfit of the episode:

Pretty dull episode, clothes-wise. I’m going to call it a tie between the mini pink plaid miniskirt and cable knit cardigan combo that V wears to Vinnie’s office (which you can only really see as she's walking away), and the dress she wears to the incredibly dark party. I think it's plaid, and it has a weird flower on the shoulder. It’s difficult to get a good screenshot of this fit because THE PARTY IS SO FUCKING DARK.

Song of the episode:

Private Eyes by Hall & Oates, of course. They wrote it and now we’re living it!

Anachronism of the episode:

The closest thing to an anachronism in this episode is the TV in Amelia’s hotel room. It’s a vacuum-tube model with a dial for switching between its twelve stations. That TV was antique when I was in high school. It has to be from the 1970s. It’s meant to signify “cheap hotel” but it’s so old that it’s a little outside the realm of plausibility.

Trivia:

I looked up the raver in IMDB to see if he’s been in anything else because I love the way he delivers his lines. “He said we’d be rocking and ROLLing.” He has only two credits—Veronica Mars and All the Wrong Moves—but he was in TWO episodes of Veronica Mars. He played “clown” in the pilot. I have absolutely zero memory of a clown in the pilot so I’m going to have to go back and look for him.

Also, Sabrina and her mom have a brief exchange in Italian when Veronica comes over. This is what they’re saying:

Sabrina: If she stays too long I’ll lock her in the basement.

Mom: But she could open the good wine. It better be the attic.

Thanks, Reddit!

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