Episode 6: Hi, Infidelity
This one starts in Dean O’Dell’s office, where he’s giving Claire shit for faking being raped. Apparently, Veronica took the evidence to the alternative newspaper, since Nish refused to print it in the regular paper. O’Dell expels Claire and tells Nish she’s done as editor of the paper. Nish swears she’ll get back at O’Dell and Veronica. As Veronica’s leaving, she runs into Wallace, who’s next to see O’Dell about cheating on his engineering test. Wallace’s prof says he was reluctant to even accept Wallace in his class, since his focus is split between academics
and basketball. Mindy, Dean O’Dell’s young wife, comes in with his lunch (all very healthy, of course) and tells him to go easy on Wallace. In criminal justice class, Professor Landry singles Veronica’s paper out as the best of a crappy lot, which instantly makes her a pariah since everyone hates a teacher’s pet. Landry invites her to lunch and tries to talk her into going all in for criminal justice, even offering to be her faculty adviser.
At home, Veronica tells Keith how excited she is about Landry’s offer and Keith seems a bit jealous that she’s found someone else to look up to. Keith gets a call from Harmony (the woman whose husband turned out not to be 
cheating), who invites him to a noir film festival … just as friends, of course. At Hearst, Veronica is called in to see Landry’s teaching assistant (Tim Foyle), who tells her another student turned her in for plagiarizing her paper. She insists she’s innocent, but Tim shows her a paper online that’s almost identical to hers and says their plagiarism program flagged it. Tim says she’ll have to tell Landry, who gives her three days to prove her innocence. She’s in a pretty crappy mood, so Piz invites her to go bowling with him … just as friends, of course. Wallace and a few others will be there too. Speaking of Wallace, he has the chance to drop the engineering class that’s giving him so much trouble, but decides to stick with it. Things don’t get any easier for him when his basketball coach gives him a chance to be a starter, which is rare for a freshman.
In Landry’s class, Veronica stands up and asks who accused her of plagiarism and a snotty guy named Jeff Ratner admits it was him. He says
he’s a “common man” type of guy, so he loves exposing a teacher’s pet as a cheat. He really seems to believe Veronica cheated and that he was right to expose her. She talks to Wallace and, after giving him a pep talk on his dilemma over sports and academics, asks where he bought the test that got him in trouble. He tells her about Max and she goes to see him. They find Veronica’s paper online, supposedly posted a year ago by someone named Rory Finch.
In Sociology class, Logan gets in trouble for writing a test past the deadline and pulls the old “do you know who I am” routine with the TA. When the TA 
says he doesn’t know him, Logan shoves his paper in the middle of the other tests and leaves. Mercer gets a big laugh out of that when Logan tells him about it. Veronica invites Logan to go bowling with Piz, Wallace and the gang. She also invites Parker, hoping to get her mind off being raped. Keith and Harmony have fun at the noir festival (Keith: “It’s great to talk to someone for whom Bogart isn’t a verb.”) and she reiterates that she and her husband are basically married in name only these days. She and Keith don’t kiss good night, but they do hug rather awkwardly.
Veronica checks out the student files at Hearst (using Weevil’s maintenance keys) and gets caught by O’Dell. She makes up a lame excuse about looking
for a missing earring and O’Dell buys it. O’Dell is hanging out there to stay away from his wife and smoke, drink, and watch boxing on TV. He says he does this any time his wife is out at one of her numerous charity meetings and swears Veronica to secrecy. He’s so distracted by the boxing that he doesn’t even notice her looking at the files. She finds Wallace in the library and he tells her he took a zero on the test on which he cheated, but he can still pass if his marks are high enough on the rest of the tests.
Veronica tells Wallace there’s no Rory Finch in the student files, but she 
tracked the online posting of the paper to the Neptune Grand Hotel … three days after her paper was turned in. So she’s in the clear, but she still wants to know who set her up and maybe get some payback. When Piz invites Wallace to go bowling later (mentioning how he kinda implied it wasn’t just going to be him and Veronica), Wallace says he has to study. At home, Keith is on the phone with Harmony and Veronica is a little bothered that he’s planning to hang out with her again, but Keith insists they’re just friends.
Veronica asks Logan if he knows anyone at the hotel who can get info on guests and he introduces her to Tina, a hot blonde who works at the front
desk. Tina confirms that Rory Finch has stayed at the hotel a few times, always paid cash, and left only a PO box for an address. Veronica asks her to text if Rory checks in again. She and Logan head to the bowling alley to meet Piz and the gang, but of course there is no gang, just Piz. Veronica and Logan realize what Piz was up to, but they play it pretty cool. Parker shows up too and assumes Veronica arranged a double date with her and Piz. Parker is initially pissed off, but gets into the game … and into Piz, who’s completely oblivious.
Later, Logan mentions that Horshack and Rafe (from the prison experiment) both got kicked out of class because Horshack was taking 
Rafe’s test for him, even after Rafe tormented him so bad. A bellhop shows up with their room service and it’s Ratner, the guy who accused Veronica of cheating. She thinks it’s a hell of a coincidence that Ratner works there and the fake paper was posted from there. Ratner denies being Rory Finch and Veronica wears to get him back for screwing her over. The next day, Wallace oversleeps and shows up late for practice. The coach assumes he was partying, but he was just studying. Veronica hints to Piz that Parker likes him, but he says she’s not his type, heavily implying that Veronica is.
Wallace’s studying pays off, as he does great on a practice quiz. Parker asks Veronica if they could just “drop by” Piz’s radio show tonight and Veronica
(who doesn’t want to tell her Piz isn’t into her) agrees. At the radio station, Piz still isn’t interested in Parker, but she loses interest in him when mercer (who also does a radio show) shows up. No, Parker’s not hot for Mercer; his aftershave triggers a flashback to the night she was raped, which totally freaks her out. Veronica says she’ll snoop around while Mercer’s on the air and uses Weevil’s keys to get into Mercer’s room. She finds electric hair clippers, like those used to shave the rape victims’ heads.
She goes to tell Sheriff Lamb about Parker recognizing Mercer’s aftershave 
and he mentions that when the cops found the cash box from the robbery at Mercer’s “casino”, there were a couple vials of GHB in it, the same drug used by the rapist. At Hearst, Wallace tells his coach he wants to take the semester off to concentrate on his studies. The coach tells him he can keep his scholarship, but he probably won’t see any playing time all season if he misses the first semester. At the Neptune Grand, Tina gives Veronica Rory Finch’s room number, so Veronica figures maybe it wasn’t Ratner who posted the fake paper after all.
Veronica sees her father on a date with Harmony and gives him shit, but he insists it’s all innocent. When Veronica knocks on Rory Finch’s door, Mindy O’Dell answers, which confuses the hell out of her. Things get clearer when
she runs into Professor Landry heading toward the room. As she’s leaving, she calls him Rory Finch and he responds, confirming her suspicions. Harmony tells Keith she got a room at the hotel and he’s tempted, but he decides he’d rather not be the “other man”. Keith tells her he isn’t sure whether he’d regret taking her offer or not taking it, but ultimately decides not to. On the way home, he gets blindsided by another car; he’s fine, but it crystallizes things for him and he goes back to the hotel to bang Harmony.
The next morning, Veronica’s surprised to find out her father didn’t come home all night, but she has a pretty good idea where he was. At Hearst, she gives Tim the proof that she didn’t plagiarize her paper and asks him why 
he posted the fake paper, knowing she’d follow the trail to “Rory Finch”. Tim won’t admit he posted the fake paper, but speaking in hypotheticals he admits he worked his ass off for Landry before Landry pushed him aside to make room for his new protege, Veronica. Tim says he kinda did her a favour, showing her what a dick Landry really is before she fell too far under his spell. Veronica notices Tim has a whiteboard full of evidence about the campus rapes. He mentions Ratner and she feels bad that she planted a bunch of stuff from the hotel in Ratner’s car and called it in so he’d get fired. In the cafeteria, Logan tells Veronica Mercer’s been arrested for the rapes and asks her to help prove his innocence. Logan says he was with Mercer on the night one of the rapes occurred, but he can’t tell her where they were or what they were doing.