Veronica Mars Reviews: Season 3, Episode 5

Veronica Mars S01 titleEpisode 5: President Evil

This one starts with Veronica showing Claire the ATM photo of her (totally wasted) with the mystery dude who probably raped her. Claire doesn’t recognize him, but says he made her max out her ATM card that night. Veronica points out a crest or logo on the guy’s shirt, but neither she nor Claire can make it out. Veronica goes to criminology class and gives a presentation using Weevil as a guest speaker. The students seem to like Weevil’s stories and his swaggerWeevil in Veronica's class and he tells how he got into the gang life and says even though he’s trying to go straight now, he sometimes misses it. After class, Veronica thanks him and he admires her necklace (which was Lilly’s) and she brushes plaster dust off his shirt. She mentions she’s meeting her boyfriend at the Venetian, the illegal casino in one of the dorms. When Weevil finds out she’s seeing Logan again, he’s not too thrilled because Logan treated Lilly like crap when they were dating.

At the office, Veronica sees a Porsche parked in front of a fire hydrant and comes in to complain about entitled assholes. Turns out the entitled Veronica meets Mindy O'Dellassholes are Keith’s new clients, and it gets better … it’s Dean O’Dell and his (much younger) wife, Mindy. After taking her foot out of her mouth, Veronica leaves them to their business. Meanwhile back at Hearst, Wallace finds himself in over his head with some heavy math in his engineering courses, but it’s too late to drop the class. Veronica blows up the ATM photo and reads the logo on the due’s shirt: Camp Waterloo. She looks it up and phones, pretending to be a former camper organizing a reunion. She cons them into sending her info on all the campers for the last few years, but it’ll take a while.

When O’Dell and his wife leave, Keith tells Veronica they hired him to track down her deadbeat ex-husband because their son (and O’Dell’s stepson) is dying and wants to meet his birth father before it’s too late. At the dorm casino, Veronica shows up dressed like Meg White (it’s Halloween) and getscasino robbery a hell of a surprise when two dudes wearing masks (Nixon and Carter) come in and rob the place with guns. Not only do they take all the casino’s cash, they rob everyone of their money and jewelry, including Veronica’s necklace. The campus cops show up, but nobody believes they can do much to help. Logan shows (naturally he’s dressed as Jack White) and Veronica tells him what happened. Sheriff Lamb comes in and takes over, but Veronica’s not too confident in him either. She says it doesn’t matter because she has an idea who did it.

Wallace is still worked up over failing his engineering test and his friend Mason drops to tell him not to worry so much and come out on the town. Weevil disappointed Veronica suspects himKeith calls O’Dell to tell him he’s found the deadbeat dad (Steve), who seems to eke out a living doing voice-over work. Keith has a plan to get him in the same room with O’Dell and Mindy. Veronica goes to Weevil’s place and accuses him of being one of the casino robbers. She noticed plaster dust on one guy’s clothes and thinks it’s a hell of a coincidence that the place was robbed just hours after she told Weevil about it … and he saw her wearing Lilly’s necklace. Weevil says he had nothing to do with the robbery and points out this might be why she doesn’t have many friends, since she never seems to trust the ones she does have.

At the office, Veronica (along with Keith’s lawyer friend Cliff) helps set up a ruse where they pretend they’re an agency for voice-over auditions to lure Steve there. It works and O’Dell and Mindy confront him, but it turns outSteve falls for the fake out they lied to Keith about their motives. They want Steve to donate bone marrow to save their son’s life, but Steve isn’t interested, saying Mindy never wanted him to be a father to their son before, so why should he start now. Steve takes off, leaving Mindy devastated and O’Dell really pissed off. At Hearst, Weevil sees Logan talking to some girl, but before he can make anything of it, Sheriff Lamb shows up to search Weevil’s car. He finds some jewelry from the robbery inside and Weevil is arrested, which Logan thinks is funny, although Lamb reminds him that he’s an ex-criminal too.

Veronica goes to see Weevil in jail to ask about the necklace and Lamb tells her Weevil used one of the stolen credit cards to order a pizza last night. Weevil insists he didn’t do it (although when the pre-paid pizza showed up Danny the fanboy helps Veronicaat his door, he ate it) and Veronica says she’ll look into it. Mason shows up at Wallace’s dorm with a couple of girls looking for some fun. Wallace says he has to study and Mason gives him the name of a tutor who he says is the best. Veronica goes by the pizza place to check things out and meets Danny, who goes to Neptune High and is a total Veronica Mars fanboy. He looks up the order to Weevil’s place and says it was legit. Danny says tracking the order can only be done bu the manager, who isn’t there right now. Since Danny is such a fan, Veronica has no trouble talking him into imitating the manager over the phone to get the info. Turns out the order was placed from a computer at Hearst … right next to where Weevil was doing his dry-walling.

So Weevil could still be a suspect, but the computer is at a hub with lots of activity (including the campus security office), so the dust could’ve gotten on anyone passing by. Veronica finds gum on her chair and notices a kidLamb and Sanchez question Keith chewing the same colour gum, but when she confronts her, the kid mouths off and heads into the security office. At Keith’s office, Keith and Cliff are having lunch when Lamb comes in with a Los Angeles detective who says Steve is missing. Sanchez knows Keith finagled his way into Steve’s apartment a few days back, so that makes him a suspect in the disappearance. Cliff does the lawyer thing and Lamb and Sanchez leave. Keith makes a call and finds out Jason O’Dell was discharged from hospital, so he figures O’Dell and Mindy kidnapped Steve to get the bone marrow they need for Jason.

Keith goes to Hearst to confront O’Dell, who says Mindy took Jason and Steve to a clinic in Mexico. Keith brings up the fact that once they’ve gotten theatre department not amusedSteve’s bone marrow, the smart thing to do would be to kill him so he can’t file charges. Keith says he’s going to Mexico to find them and O’Dell insists on coming, saying he can keep Mindy on the phone long enough to track her down. Weevil calls Veronica to come to jail and tells her one of his fellow maintenance guys found the masks and guns used in the robbery in a dumpster. Weevil says the guns weren’t even real, they were prop guns. Veronica checks out the theatre department, who are in full Shakespeare mode. They have no use for prop guns and point her toward the film department, with whom they have some kind of big rivalry. Is that a thing at colleges?

Wallace goes to see Max, the tutor Mason recommended. Turns out he’s less of a tutor and more a guy who sells copies of tests with or without the answers. Being an honest guy, Wallace just takes the test as a study aid. Veronica checks out the film department and finds they’re premiering aWallace buys the test answers short about a robbery … with the robbers wearing Nixon and Carter masks. The director tells her their prop truck was stolen and later found by campus security, but the prop guns and masks were missing. Meanwhile, Wallace isn’t making any headway with the test alone, so he goes back for the answers. In Mexico, Keith gets a call from Cliff who tells him his own investigator has tracked Mindy and Steve to a San Diego hospital. So O’Dell has been leading Keith on a wild goose chase, which really pisses Keith off.

Wallace writes his test and the prof is immediately suspicious of how well he’s done. Veronica drops by to see Harrison, one of the campus cops who Harrison admits his guiltshowed up after the robbery. She has her dog Backup with her for protection and accuses Harrison and his partner of being the robbers. They knew about Weevil’s criminal record and figured setting him up would be easy, especially since Weevil was dry-walling right across the hall from the security office. She says she doesn’t even care about the money and other stuff, she just wants the necklace back. Harrison admits he’s guilty, but can’t get the necklace until tomorrow. Too bad for him, because Veronica is wired up and the cops come swooping in.

In San Diego, Keith is ready to bust in and stop the bone marrow operation, but O’Dell swears they aren’t planning on killing Steve and says he and Mindy will gladly go to jail as long as Jason is okay. O’Dell asks Keith whatsnotty kid wearing Veronica's necklace he’d do if it was Veronica’s life at stake. At Harrison’s place, Lamb doesn’t find Veronica’s necklace, but he does find enough stuff from the robbery to put Harrison away. As Veronica gets ready to leave, a school bus drops off Harrison’s daughter, the snotty kid from outside the security office. She starts giving Veronica shit for getting her dad in trouble and Veronica sees she’s wearing the necklace, so she rips it off the girl’s throat and drives away.

At Hearst, Wallace gets busted for cheating on the exam, while Weevil is released from jail downtown. Keith comes into Lamb’s office with Steve, who claims he was away camping and had no idea anyone was looking for Veronica finds out who the mystery guy ishim. Lamb doesn’t really buy it, but he has no choice but to clear Keith of any wrongdoing. Steve tells Keith he pretty much owns Mindy’s ass now and she can’t harangue him for child support any more. Keith knows Mindy signed papers to that effect and notices Steve is driving her Porsche now. Veronica finally gets the info from Camp Waterloo and there’s only one Asian dude who went there who’s from Southern California. She and Logan go to the guy’s house and meet his roommate, but when Veronica mentions Claire, he says the guy their looking for is Claire’s boyfriend. Funny she didn’t recognize him in the photo.