a pointless blog
gathering moss
The lower the score, the worse you've been.
1.8 Like a Virgin
Score: 16
Characters: 4
A great lineup of some of the less common best characters!
Cliff (+1)
Mac (+1)
Dick (+1)
Backup (+1)
Story quality: 4/5
The purity test episode! Some fabulous characters are introduced in this episode--most notably Mac, an icon, and also Wallace's mom, Alicia Fennel. Also introduced is Meg, who is fine. An online "purity test" is going around school and everyone's taking it. Then some mastermind sets up a website that allows you to buy other people's test results--complete with their answers to every question.
Total mayhem erupts at school, where boyfriends, girlfriends, and best friends buy each other's scores and find out what "slutty" things everyone has been doing on the down low. Wholesome Meg and Veronica both score really low. Thing is, neither of them took the test. So who posted scores for them? And who's profiting off the nosiness of the student body?
The subplot features Alicia's difficulty with their tenant, who is refusing to pay his rent and acting increasingly unhinged. Keith offers to help, but Alicia--who works at Kane Software--has preemptively decided that she doesn't like the Mars family. She's heard nothing but bad things. Keith helps anyway, scaring the tenant into moving out.
Plot relevance: 5/5
Veronica lies her way into a prison interview with Abel Koontz. Turns out he wasn't fooled, though--he knew exactly who she was all along, and just wanted to taunt her. When she confronts him with her evidence that he can't have been the murderer, he asks her if she wants to know exactly how he bashed her friend's brains in. But the real stinger is when he tells her that Keith is not her father.
"Look in a mirror. Are you the product of a schlubby sheriff? Or the KING AND QUEEN OF THE PROM?!?!"
Of course, this idea already occurred to Veronica in the last episode, but you could visually see her pushing it down (Kristen Bell is such an amazing actress). Now that it's all but confirmed, Veronica breaks down.
Iconic lines/memes: +5
"I failed criminal law, and I still know that can't be good."
"Sometimes people find it very difficult to say no to me."
"Wow, that's really criminal of you."
"Check out the le BaROHHHN" (I always pronounce le Baron that way now)
"Overstepping is your main form of transportation."
Cringe: -2
"Meg never got kicked out of summer camp for waking up in the swim coach's cabin." Lizzie, that was a crime. The swim coach should have gone to jail. Your parents suck. (We'll learn a lot more about that in season two.)
There's a lot of slut-shaming in this episode, and while Duncan at least points out the double standard of villainizing sexually active women while lionizing men, even the characters we're supposed to like seem to feel that slut-shaming is okay as long as the woman actually deserves it. Nobody's arguing that it would be fine if Meg had done all those things. She’s only worth defending because she didn’t do them. Even Veronica refers to Lizzie as "oversexed." Gross, Veronica.
Outfit of the episode
Plaid flared pants, fuchsia top, and a pink blazer with a hot pink belt. We only get a brief glimpse of the entire ensemble as Veronica chases Meg down a hallway.
Also - man, were people really wearing their clothes this tight in the 2000s? And exposing this much midriff? Meg's skirt looks like it's falling off. It all looks really uncomfortable to wear.
And finally, shout out to Veronica looking super uncomfortable in Meg's cheerleading uniform.
Song of the episode
"Don't Let it Get You Down" by Spoon. It plays in the parking lot as Mac drives away in her brand-new VW Bug convertible, and Meg tells Veronica that she should be nicer to people.
Anachronistic reference of the episode
VD. Even in the 90s we weren't calling it VD (venereal disease, for those of you too young for that acronym). We called them STDs, sexually transmitted diseases. That term has been overtaken by STI, apparently during the 90s if you believe the internet, but I didn't notice the transition until well into the 2000s. Anyway, point is, nobody said VD in the 1990s OR the 2000s.
