VM Ranked - S1E18

I’ll be drinking moon juice with President Jonathon Taylor Thomas, I won’t be writing you no paper check. —John Mulaney

It’s here: the best episode of all time. (note: unproven) Like the pilot, this episode packs in a TON of story, so this recap is going to be a long one.

Before we dive in, a quick recap of where we are in the season arc:

Abel Koontz for sure did not kill Lilly Kane, but took the fall in exchange for the Kane’s paying a giant settlement to his estranged daughter, while he died of cancer in prison. Lilly’s time of death was falsified, probably with help from Clarence Wiedman, and Jake and Celeste definitely lied about where they were on the evening of Lilly’s death. Duncan has some sort of obscure (invented) epilepsy that causes fits of blind rage, two of which were witnessed by others: Logan saw Duncan try to throttle his dad, and Carrie Bishop’s friend’s boyfriend saw Duncan brought into the ER screaming Veronica’s name. Keith found Duncan’s soccer uniform in the laundry the night of Lilly’s murder. So as of right now, all signs are pointing to Duncan as Lilly’s killer.

Oh, and also Veronica might be Jake Kane’s illegitimate child.

Characters (+3)

• Logan (+1)
• Mac (+1)
• Corny (+1)

Guest Stars (+4)

• JONATHON FREAKING TAYLOR THOMAS playing Ben, an ATF agent, as a combination of Christian Slater’s JD from Heathers and Johnny Depp’s Tom Hanson from the original 21 Jump Street. If you don’t know who JTT is, that’s probably because you’re too young to have watched Home Improvement, on which he played the most charismatic of Tim Allen’s three kids. INCREDIBLY FUN FACT: Caz Truman, ex-boyfriend of Sabrina that we just saw in the last episode, played the oldest son on Home Improvement. What a small world Hollywood is. Anyway, JTT is so iconic in this episode that he gets two guest star points. (+2)

  

• Theo Rossi as Norris Clayton; he went on to play Juan Carlos ‘Juice’ Ortiz in Sons of Anarchy (+1)

• Joey Lauren Adams as Ms. Stafford; she was Amy in Chasing Amy. (+1)

Story: 5/5

We start off strong, with the cold open revealing that Keith is dating Wallace’s mom (Alicia). There is a literal record scratch.

Mrs. Dent, the usual journalism teacher, is on maternity leave, and her place has been taken by Renee Zellweger lookalike and pep-squad advisor Ms. Stafford. There’s a very sweet and easy-to-miss moment at the start of journalism class, in which Veronica and Logan’s eyes meet and he gives her the tiniest smile, then slides over to sit next to her. This moment is interrupted by a fire drill – the “third one this week” according to Duncan.

Ms Stafford suggests that Veronica investigate the fire drills and write an article about it for the paper. Van Clemmons claims it’s just “district policy,” but Veronica instantly smells a lie. Her interest is peaked even further when a bunch of police dogs walk right by Corny, who has a bag of weed stuffed down his pants. If they’re not drug-sniffing dogs, what are they sniffing for?

Veronica decides to investigate in earnest. This involves her doing an comedic impersonation of Ellen Roush from the district to trick Clemmons into admitting that the school has been getting bomb threats, and he’s brought in the bomb squad. Veronica goes ahead and puts this in the school paper, causing school-wide panic and getting herself and Ms. Stafford a dressing down from Clemmons. Veronica is visibly angered by Clemmons’s derision of Murphy’s pep squad credentials and decides to double down on her investigation.

Meanwhile Veronica and Wallace are both unhappy about their parents dating, but Wallace is even more unhappy when Veronica points out that when her mom gets out of rehab, the relationship will end. Wallace is 100% in the right here when he says that Veronica is treating his mother as a placeholder, who’s going to get dumped as soon as Lianne, the alcoholic who dumped Keith, decides she’s ready to come back. Veronica makes Wallace promise not to tell his mom that Lynne is returning, though it’s not clear why she feels she has to keep this under wraps. Why is she trying to surprise Keith with Lianne’s return? Seems destined to backfire. Wallace tries to tell Alicia anyway, but she doesn’t want to hear it. The following day at school, Veronica still utterly fails to understand why Wallace is mad, and asks him to do yet another favor.

Veronica seeks out Mac to help her with a computer problem, and finds her in the computer lab arguing with a guy we’ve never seen before about the merits of Ubuntu versus Mac OS X. Most of this conversation is complete gibberish even to me, who was present for the heyday of the Linux Bro, but I’m fully on Mac’s side here when she says “I know what I like! And I like what I know!”

Turns out that Linux Bro is important to the plot. He tells Veronica that he has information for her about the bomb threats: he saw Norris and “the new kid Ben” (JTT!) throwing exploding tennis balls at stray cats. So far the only thing we’ve seen of Ben is him telling the English teacher that he didn’t read The Brothers Karamozov because nothing matters when we’re all going to end up “six feet under.” His buddy Norris thought that was real chuckalicious. Ben and Norris like to dress in black and camouflage, so you know they’re bad news. Wallace, in his role as office aid, also knows that Clemmons made Norris turn his t-shirt inside out, because of the slogan on the front: Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.

This reminds Veronica of some graffiti she’s been seeing around: KillEmAll.net. She asks Wallace to steal Ben’s file, while she checks out the website, which turns out to be an extremely early-2000s site complete with satanic imagery, a devilish laughter mp3 and a countdown clock. 46 hours 15 minutes till what??

Ben doesn’t have a school file, turns out – odd – but Wallace (who seems to have forgiven V even though she hasn’t even apologized) gets Norris’s instead. He’s got a history of bullying, but one time he defended Veronica against some 09ers who were spit-balling her so how bad can he be, really? Anyway, he hasn’t caused any trouble since middle school. She goes over to Norris and Ben at lunch, pretending to do a poll for the school paper. This is lifted straight out of Heathers, and Ben’s response (“wow, how vital”) is pure JD. She asks them to choose three people to share a hypothetical bomb shelter with, and Norris chooses “Bruce Lee, Joe Strummer, Sam Kinison.” Veronica just happens to know that all three of these people are dead, while I had to look two of them up to find out who they evern were (lead singer of The Clash and a super annoying shock comic, respectively.) For some reason, Norris and Ben think it’s really funny that he chose three dead guys?

For reference: Bruce Lee, Joe Strummond, and Sam Kinison.

Later that day, Veronica overhears Norris fighting with Ben. Norris is accusing Ben of talking about nothing but “guns and death and heavy metal music and bombs stuff like that.” Haha. Anyway, Norris says that if Ben doesn’t cut it out, he can’t hang out with him anymore, and Ben storms off. Veronica follows him, first to the Camelot Motel and then to a garden supply store where he buys a shit ton of fertilizer. Veronica photographs him loading it into his car, but then is distracted by a phone call from Logan, warning her that he told Duncan about her investigation. (Kinda late, there, Logan, since Duncan already freaked out at her about it - see the plot section, below - but I love that you called.)

But while she’s distracted, Ben, aka “Teen Kazinksi,” hops into her passenger seat. Veronica, ever the quick thinker, drops her phone down the side of her seat without hanging up, and says really loud and awkwardly, “OH MY GOD WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING.” Logan hears Ben tell Veronica to start driving. Veronica continues to lead the conversation, getting Ben to tell her where they’re going – the Camelot.

And when they get there, guess what? Logan’s beaten them there. He jumps out as Ben drags Veronica to his room, and punches Jonathon Taylor Thomas STRAIGHT IN THE FACE. Repeatedly. This is truly some Obligatory Psychotic Jackass shit (the title Veronica gave Logan back in the pilot) but I love it.

While he’s busy doing that, Veronica picks up the ID that JTT dropped and tells Logan to stop. Turns out Teen Kazinski is a federal agent.

The three of them go into Ben’s hotel room to talk. Logan would clearly like to do some more punching, and JTT insists that he leave the room. Ben tells Veronica that he works at the ATF monitoring internet traffic, and Norris has been maintaining a website that was “troubling” – KillEmAll.net. He’s also been sending emails to other students with “red flag” words – bomb, gun show, retribution, Columbine. (This is just a few years after the Columbine shooting, remember.) The ATF thinks that Norris is the ringleader of a band of “like-minded misfits who are waiting for his signal to attack.” (I don’t think that this was probably intended to be funny at the time – school shootings aren’t funny, after all – but the way JTT says this line just cracks me up.)

Ben denies the cat killing accusation, but says it would make sense if Norris were doing that kind of thing on his own. Ben’s just waiting for Norris to slip up so that he has some grounds to arrest him, but so far Norris isn’t cooperating, and now Ben has pushed him too far and Norris won’t talk to him. So can Veronica please infiltrate Norris’s house to get some evidence? It should be easy, because Norris has a huge crush on Veronica.

Veronica talks her way into Norris’s house on the pretense that she needs his expertise in stolen weapons to help her with a case. Norris proudly shows off his weapons and his wifi — his dad’s a programmer at Kane software and they were one of the first families in the country to have wireless internet! It’s hard for me to remember that far back, but I guess it was still relatively noteworthy to have wifi. Veronica finds absolutely nothing in his house, and Norris is perfectly nice and even invites her to a Kurosawa retrospective (though she is understandably grossed out when she finds his porn).

Veronica decides to try to get on Norris’s wifi from her car to try to get into Norris’s address book. Unclear what good that’s going to do — reveal his network of like-minded misfits? Doesn’t Jump Street (Teen Kazinski’s new nickname) already know who the emails were going to? How does he know they contain red flag words but he doesn’t know who the receivers were?? Anyway, I guess Norris’s programmer dad isn’t savvy enough to password-protect his network, because Veronica gets onto it fine. She then realizes that Norris’s neighbors can also get onto their wifi, and guess who one of those neighbors is? Linux Bro, who fed her the exploding-cats story.

Belatedly, Veronica realizes that Linux Bro has framed Norris and Jump Street is also setting him up to protect his flawless arrest record. (The fuckload of fertilizer she saw him putting in his car should really have been a tip-off but I guess maybe the kidnapping and kissing Logan drove that out of her mind.)

She gets to school early to warn Norris, but she’s too late — Ben, in his black fed suit, and a bunch of ATF agents jump out of a van to search Norris’s car. Ben opens the trunk to reveal the bags of fertilizer Veronica saw him buying. She calls Linux Bro to tell him that she knows he created false internet traffic on Norris’s wifi network to make it look like he was planning to bomb the school, because Norris used to beat him up in middle school. Linux Bro (real name: Pete) tells her the story of Norris stealing his lunch money every day for three years, and when he stood up for himself on his father’s instructions, Norris put him in the hospital, causing Pete’s dad to mock him. Sad story, but not an excuse to frame someone for attempted mass murder.

Fortunately, Veronica has all the photographic evidence she needs to break the story in the school paper. Ms. Stafford is hesitant, after her dressing-down by Clemmons, but gives Veronica the go-ahead. Norris is vindicated, and Ms. Stafford is fired.

Note: “pep squad advisor” is not a real job. A teacher who actually taught a real subject would advise the pep squad as a sideline. How much advising does a pep squad really need?

Plot: 5/5

This episode doesn’t have a ton of plot movement—it would be hard to fit in around all the stellar episode story. Still, I’m giving it full points for using a deft hand to strengthen our suspicions of Duncan’s guilt, while also providing the turning point in the Logan-Veronica arc.

Logan has told Duncan about Veronica’s murder investigation and Duncan is not taking it well at all. He refuses to look at Veronica and glowers angrily into the distance. Meg engages Veronica in conversation about her dad’s cases, and as Duncan scowls and listens in, Veronica explains how a man they’re looking for managed to make himself disappear: all cash, burner phone, forged passport. This will be important later.

Veronica finds Duncan in the journalism room and confronts him about his “really poor warm welcome or excellent cold shoulder," and Duncan freaks out at her for suspecting him of Lilly’s murder. He asks what his file says, and she tells him she knows about his “type IV” epilepsy. Duncan is justifiably angry that she’s been sneaking into his private medical files. When she tells him that Abel Koontz was paid off for killing Lilly, he realizes that she thinks he killed Lilly and his parents paid Koontz off. He yells in her face, freaks himself out, looks confused, and runs away.

Like, really runs away. Meg comes tearfully to Veronica later saying that Duncan withdrew $10k in cash and disappeared. No one knows where he is.

Iconic Lines: (+6)

• I gotta say, Veronica, I’m getting a little tired of doing you favors.
  (Love to see Wallace standing up to V.)
• Dream on, Jump Street.
• Oh, I will bust him. Be sure of that.
  (This isn’t funny on its face but it’s another line that makes me LOL when JTT says it.)
• Detention? Me? I think not, Mr. Clemmons. (clumsily throws throwing star into target’s hand) Try filling out that form left-handed!
• Earth to Mars!
  (I don’t think this is the first time someone has said this to Veronica, but I love it every time.)
• They will have to really speak sharply to me before I will reveal my sources.

Cringe: (-1)

• Veronica: And what, exactly, are you hoping to see [inside the apartment]? Our good china? The screening room?
  Leo: I wanted to get a good, long look at your bedroom ceiling. (Gross, Leo. She’s in high school.)

Song of the Episode:

A Momentary Thing by Something Happens. This is the soundtrack to Veronica and Logan’s first kiss. Logan and Veronica scenes always get the best songs.

Outfit of the Episode:

WHAT IS THIS. Lime green polo shirt under an argyle vest??? What is Veronica’s thing with argyle? I don’t remember argyle being this popular in the early 2000s.

Anachronism of the Episode:

Jump Street. As iconic as it is that Logan calls Ben this, that was an old-ass show in the 2000s (running 1987 to 1991) and wasn’t rebooted until 2012. Logan and Veronica would have been babies when it aired, and it wasn’t a big enough show to end up in syndication. On the other hand, Logan is often the one to reference old entertainment media, so maybe this is just a quirk of his character.