Force times mass times acceleration. Things are moving forward at a rapid pace, as evidenced by the focus on cars (Veronica’s stalled car, Duncan’s abandoned car, Aaron driving Veronica home, Keith driving to Tijuana in his race to find Duncan and collect a reward). We are moving quickly toward two huge conclusions (Who Killed Lily Kane? and Who Raped Veronica?), so this episode could have been one of two things: place holder or palette cleanser. Rob Thomas assured that it was the latter. The main theme of this episode, as is so aptly encompassed in the episode title, is the policy of choosing to return fire with fire in a nuclear scenario. Nobody wins in that scenario, but a choice still needs to be made. There are several choices to be made for all of the featured characters, reflecting, no doubt, the incredibly difficult choices that lie ahead for Veronica as she struggles to figure out these two central mysteries.
Strangely, for someone who seeks out the truth, Veronica claims that “secrets are hot” when she is making out with Logan. This only holds true for their relationship at that moment; we see several secrets unmasked, and all of them serve to pour ice water on those involved.
*Veronica hiding out from Dick and Beaver Casablancas; her face is sad and anxious, definitely not turned on by sneaking out of the Echolls home.
*The fact that Carmen’s sex video involved a popsicle is a tidy little metaphor for both Tad and Carmen’s relationship being iced as well as Carmen’s reputation.
*Keith secretly takes out a notice in the paper to find Lianne so he can put his marriage on ice and start fresh.
*The prostitute “revealing” herself to a “john” who turned out to be a undercover police officer.
*Veronica’s secret bug in Clarence Weidman’s office not only could potentially chill Keith and Alicia’s relationship, but could spell the end of Wallace and Veronica’s friendship. Alicia would certainly have reservations (as she did when Veronica and Wallace first became friends) about her son being involved with someone who would ask him to do something so dangerous.
*The big reveal, by Tad, that Logan was the one who provided the GSB at Shelley Pomeroy’s party, a drug that causes euphoria and loss of memory, chills Veronica with its implications.
Veronica’s offhanded remark about her school’s “crumbling infrastructure” could be applied to the episode as a whole, as the metaphorical building falls apart around each relationship. Perhaps the saddest irony is Veronica watching Keith and Alicia dancing to “Our Love is Here to Stay” only to be yanked apart (potentially) by Veronica’s interference, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.
Carmen very obviously serves as a mirror for Veronica in this episode. Weevil refers to her as a “neighborhood girl,” so her popularity, like Veronica’s, is dependent on the whims of her ‘09er boyfriend. Her reputation is being threatened by something she can’t remember she did, at Shelley Pomeroy’s party. Unlike Veronica, whose drama seemed to have been played out for a crowd, Tad is presumably the only witness to her ice follies. Her reputation is still salvageable, at the cost of her freedom. Or she can create her own nuclear warhead and bomb Tad’s future. Or break up with him and spend the last two years of high school in hell.
After 20 episodes, Veronica’s choice would have been clear: raped, abandoned by her mother, unsure of her parentage, and still grieving over the loss of her best friend, Veronica has both a lot of rage, and a lot of good reasons for it. She is already, in her own mind, living in nuclear winter. Tad does nothing to engender sympathy: privileged, obsessive, and controlling, he wants things the way he wants them, and damn the consequences. Weevil had it right (as he didn’t when he did the same thing to Wallace); Tad is scum.
Carmen chooses a different path; the one in which she can live with her own actions. She had no control over what she did at Shelley’s party, but Veronica does offer her, with the revenge scenario, a chance to take control of her actions. To make a choice she didn’t have before. There is no doubt, with the focus in previous episodes on pyrrhic choices, that Veronica, in the next two episodes, is going to be faced with similar choices. It’s likely that those choices involving those responsible for her rape and Lily’s death will be both shocking and painful. Will she take everyone down? Or will she find a middle ground between mutually assured destruction and total victimization?
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