Veronica Mars: Of Vice and Men

With the men in her life disappointing Veronica, she turns to her boy Wallace. But he’s out of town so she gets to spend some quality time with Piz in their dorm room. The mystery of the week is that the boys’ neighbor Sully is missing and his long distance girlfriend Meryl is sure that something’s afoul. With her dad seeing a married woman and her boyfriend refusing to tell her the alibi that will clear his friend of serial rape, Veronica understandably takes all the clues to mean that Sully’s actually being a coward and trying to break up with Meryl. When she apologizes for being wrong, Meryl kindly says that it’s okay, if she’d never been in love, she wouldn’t have believed it either.

Ouch.

It was a great episode and this little recap is in no way a substitute for watching, so I’ll just go over the highlights.

Veronica guilts Keith into breaking it off with Harmony. Yeah, she’s married, but this is the second relationship Veronica's ended for the poor guy.

Vinnie is working for the Fitzpatricks and Harmony’s husband (presumably in unrelated capacities) and it’s a good thing for the former, because when Veronica and Meryl end up in way over their heads at the River Stix (am I the only one who thought it was in a garage and not an actual bar with a store front last year?), he saves their asses. Liam, who we last saw murdering his older brother, is chilling as he dances around with our petite heroine, bouncing the air out of her like a gasping rag doll.

Veronica basically blackmails Logan into giving her Mercer’s alibi, which is that while they were in TJ, Mercer caught their hotel on fire and the boys fled before finding out if everyone made it out alive. Logan didn’t want to face V’s judging eyes or for his friend to face up for the crime he actually committed.

Veronica clears Mercer by finding out that his call-in radio show was on the air at the times of two of the other rapes and when she questions him about what was found in his room, he claims that he’s being set up. Also, both Chip the Suspicious Frat Prez and Dean O’Dell have a reason to want him off campus and out of the casino business.

After turning her back on her drink in the caf, Veronica gets GHB’d and finds herself wandering around campus. We see the rubber glove wearing rapist close in on her (I still say that could totally be Nish from the silhouette) but Veronica sets off her own alarm, alerting Logan, who was nearby looking for her. As he rushed to Veronica I couldn’t help but remember him using her to take body shots last time she was drugged. The moment nicely underlined the changes they’ve gone through since Season 1. Logan takes her home to her dad, where the men who so disappointed her prove that they’re the ones who love her.

Creepy news: The rapist partially scalped Veronica in the parking lot. And I’m guessing he/she didn’t use electric clippers since we didn't hear anything. Maybe it was the actual rapist, maybe a copycat out to scare V.

Interesting casting news: The dude who played Sully’s roommate also played Doctor Ben on Buffy. Either his career’s really not doing well or we should expect to see him again. Also, he was wearing a weird long wig.

Piz News: Still pretty damn adorable.