I thought about that one too, but the Lilith girls have already shown themselves rather inept at staging crimes (the fake rape). I assume had one of them done it Veronica would be able to figure it out before the first commercial ;)Ah, but they–and I’m lookin’ at you, butch chick with the nose ring–don’t need to be clever, since a “perfect murder” blueprint has been posted on the web, courtesy Professor Sleazo. That little fishie is bound to turn up in the next mystery cycle (though possibly as a red herring).
Yeah, there wasn’t any significance to the particular word used, other than that it was random and odd. I liked that each use of the joke fit the respective characters: Logan’s response was sardonically wiseass, whereas Piz’s was just cheerful and geeky.
I’m pretty sure the Mexico alibi was for Claire’s “rape.” Logan wouldn’t even have known Mercer until after school started, would he? So they wouldn’t have been taking trips to Mexico together until then.
Also, just a few episodes ago, during the “Veronica is suspicious Logan’s cheating on her,” her suspicions were fueled by Mercer talking about the upcoming trip, saying “I don’t know how much ‘surfing’ we’re going to be doing.” That was this season, and therefore after school started.
The Mexico alibi was for Claire’s “rape.” It’s not a problem for the storyline.
The trip Mercer mentioned was a different trip entirely. I think they said the motel fire happened August 13th, which was before the semester started.
In Keith’s list of the bars visited by the man who was with Mrs. O’Dell in Saccramento, he mentioned a couple including Oilcan Harry’s, which is a popular gay bar in Austin. There are a ton of references to Austin things in the show, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the band last night was an Austin band. I didn’t recognize them, but I was never into the (massive) live music scene there.
I liked that scene. Okay, “like” isn’t the right word, but watching him prepare to do violence took the rapes out of the abstract and made what happened to those women more real. The scene was creepy and intense, and I felt for those women like I hadn’t before.
I was just reading the Television Without Pity recap (link goes to the relevant page of the recap) of last week’s episode, and the recapper made an important point:
Makes sense to me. Two of the rapes were faked, but obviously several others were legit. The moral of this story: never cry wolf.
Looks like our girl did well in the ratings yesterday!
A bit too late for the full back 9, but still good news nonetheless. 
I really liked this episode. I admit to not being able to remember all of the minor characters and plots points from every episode so so there were a couple of things that flew past me. The M&M working together was a nice twist.
I didn’t quite get the part with Veronica in bed. Did I miss a scene? I know she ran to the girls dorm room to help her, and apparently she took her place in bed but… did she get there before the rapist? It seemed like she had a bag over her head which would imply she got there after the rapist in which case he would have had to have left the room at some point for her to do the switch. Or was I just seeing things and she only had the blanket covering her head?
Still not sure what to make of the whole Mexico alibi thing. Love that Logan got himself in jail on purpose. Wonder what he will do in there with M&M.
And why the hell didn’t she inform anyone of her plan? She should have has back up already on the way.
The band singer looked a lot to me like Joss Whedon, who does work on the show. I think he had a cameo in a past season too. I wonder if it was him and if he was really singing.
I love the three mysteries per season set up. That’s working really well. I think they should do the same thing on Lost and all other arc shows. I don’t think we’re seeing enough of Mac. I like geekboy a lot but I’m not sure he’s right as a boyfriend for Veronica, which is where they seem to be heading with him.
I like the set up for mystery arc number two. Is there going to be a big break until the first episode of the next arc? I guess in addition to the wife, the professor, and the feminists, the TA might be a good suspect since he was just pissed about his own run in with infidelity and he indirectly led to the hotel confrontation. I have a feeling the Sheriff will waste a lot of time arresting either Keith who was with the Dean the night of the murder, or our poor paroled maintence friendwho discovered the body.
This is exciting news. I wonder, if we throw a party to celebrate, would Our Girl show up for cake and ice cream? And ogling, of course. Lots and lots of ogling…
I think we won’t see new eps until January at least. I already checked my schedule and saw next week is a repeat. I hope that doesn’t kill the momentum.
Veronica got to the room first, stashed the intended victim in the closet and got into the bed, pulling the covers over her head, to ambush the rapist. The timeline’s a little funky but not impossible, especially if Mercer dawdled or stopped by Moe’s room for some reason.
She didn’t inform anyone of her plan for the same reason that she never seems to inform anyone of her plans, which is because sometimes Veronica does unbelievably stupid things. Which usually I’m OK with from a story perspective, characters doing incredibly stupid things sometimes because lord knows I do incredibly stupid things sometimes, but on VM it drives me batty because it’s so damn formulaic! Veronica acts smart 90% of the time but amazingly the 10% of the time where she fucks up it’s almost always in a season finale (or like last night, mini-finale) and she falls right into the tired old “damsel in distress” routine and it pisses me off! S1 climax, she gets herself locked in a fridge and has to be rescued by Keith. S2 finale she gets herself shocked into submission by Beaver and Logan has to rescue her. Last season she gets trapped in the River Stix and Logan has to rescue her again. Earlier this season she gets drugged and Logan rescues her again. She ends up back in River Stix and Vinnie has to bail her out. Last night she gets herself drugged again, but at least this time it’s not a man who saves her.
I don’t expect an 18 year-old to be able to handle every dangerous situation. But I do expect for someone as smart as Veronica to learn from her past mistakes.
Joss Whedon does not work on the show, although he is a fan and has stated in the past that he thinks VM is one of the best shows ever on TV.
Joss Whedon did guest star last season (in the episode “Rat Saw God”), but that was not him on stage.
It was, I have found out, Austin based band Diamond Smugglers, a Niel Diamond cover band. Who’d a thunk it?
Yeah, Veronica does dumb things some times. Still, I thought that was a very satisfying mini-finale. I’ll miss the Dean, though.
I’ll have to agree with you. The writers are great at creating reasonably complex and interesting characters, but once the bad guy is revealed, he suddenly becomes a cliched, mustache-twirling mastermind.
Mercer’s sneering soliloquy wasn’t as bad as last season’s Evil Beaver (his complete reversal of personality at the last minute was almost silly), but I’d like to see some bad guys in the future with a little more depth to them.
The show certainly borrows its stylization from the Noir genre, but I’ve always thought the best Noir fiction attempts to blur the lines between good and evil, not enforce them. See the movie “Brick” for a completely different take on the blending of Noir and high school drama. It’s much darker and more stylized than I’d ever want VM to be, but it serves up a decent murder mystery while steering clear of the Evil Mastermind syndrome.
Anyway, I thought last night’s resolution was still terrific – right up there with the last two. I’m beginning to warm up to the idea of multiple arcs per season – it really does feel like we’re getting three seasons in one (although I have a feeling Rob Thomas might have settled for two, considering how long the current arc took).
It appears that a lot of what has been happening in the first nine episodes has been a setup for the second arc – the Dean’s cheating wife, the “Perfect Murder” paper, the persnickety TA who set Veronica up to learn about the professor’s philandering, the feminists with motive to kill the Dean – and probably a bunch of other details that seemed insignificant at the time they were revealed. I have high hopes for the next mystery, and I’m glad VM is finally starting to pull in the ratings. Let’s hope everybody who tuned in for the quasi-finale will continue to stay tuned as the plot thickens…
Bye, Ed Begley Jr. 
I know it goes against the nature of the series a bit but I’m starting to wish Veronica would just get a gun. I mean, it’s like she gets in violent confrontations with well armed people who have murderous intent once a week!
Shame about the dean, he was an interesting character that I felt like had a lot more mileage in him. Naturally the killer won’t be any of the people with obvious motive, means, and/or opportunity. I’m going to put money on the guy who pressured the change to the vote as the killer, presumably because the scam was going to be revealed.
She called in a bomb threat to the dorm so that the cops would show up and evacuate everyone, but Deputy Sacks blew it off with a “we get a ton of those around finals time, let campus security handle it” (or words to that effect). Not sure why she thought a bomb threat was the way to go over just telling the truth though.
Several times in the past, “This is Veronica Mars, and I have vital information about a rape!” has been mocked and then ignored by the Neptune Police. I guess she was in a hurry and didn’t come up with a better plan, but pulling the dorm’s fire alarm also would have stopped everything. On the other hand, that would have made the rapists leave too, so they wouldn’t have been caught that night.
I re-watched the episode last night.
Kudos to those who realized that Veronica called in the bomb threat, as an oblique way of calling for backup. I didn’t realize that at first viewing–in fact, I was a bit confused by the deputy Sacks scene–but on second viewing it becomes obvious.
I also caught the fact that Roni knew it was Mercer before she got to the room, because she heard the radio show tape glitch just before she left the party. That went by too fast for me the first time.
Taken together, those facts show that she was on top of the situation. She figured the cops would come out for the bomb threat, and that one quick taser shot would be enough to subdue Mercer. Things just went awry when he didn’t go down and she lost her handy dandy jolt-o-matic, and with Moe then showing his colors.
I was concentrating so much on the rape resolution that I didn’t bother with the Dean’s death on first viewing. On second look, I noticed one or two interesting things:
When O’Dell’s visitor–and presumed murderer–shows up, he’s standing in his office, looking at the egging of his windows (obviously meant to place the Lilith House girls on the scene). But when Weevil finds him in the morning, he’s sitting at his desk. Clearly, he and his killer spent some time talking about stuff. I think that rules out any of the feminazis, since as young hotheads any of the them would be less inclined to sit for a spell with the man she’s about to murder. So the egging was either unrelated or a setup.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Let’s all ponder, and maybe we can get the jump on the next arc.
Accepting that TV isn’t the real world, what has O’Dell done that warrants killing him? Who gains by his death? I’m not seeing a reasonable motive from any of the possible suspects.
Wasn’t the bullethole in Dean O’Dell’s temple, like a suicide? I know he was murdered, but the position of the body seems to imply that not only was he sitting there talking with his murderer, but the murderer got up close to fire the shot. He appeared to have powder burns on his temple around the wound. Maybe he was unconscious or nearly so, allowing the killer to shoot him and have it look like a suicide at first glance.