OPEN CASE:  Veronica Mars

 

Season 3

Episode 6

 

HI-INFIDELITY: Enemies Lists

By Spring Summers – 12-NOV-2006

 

This episode is full of images of rivalry: 

  • Boxers in a ring
  • The mention of Rocky vs. Mr T
  • Keith teasing Veronica about being jealous of her new professor-mentor, and asking if he could “beat him in a fight.”
  • Wallace & basketball teammate Mason competing to be starters
  • Veronica and her TA competing to be Landry’s Star Pupil
  • Veronica letting hotel clerk Tina know that Logan is HER boyfriend
  • Logan letting Piz know that Veronica is HIS girlfriend

 

We get two mentions of Richard Nixon, a man who saw his world in terms of friends and enemies, if there ever was one.  The images of rivals are contrasted with images and mentions of friendship – Parker becomes a friend to Veronica, Tina is Logan’s friend, Veronica isn’t just a friend, she’s a GIRLfriend, Veronica wonders if Keith & Harmony are truly “friends,” and Horshack and his “torturer” – they seemed like enemies, but Logan says Horshack was trying to help his supposed nemesis on a test.  So they must be friends, huh?

 

So people pair off and and face off in this episode, and it’s all set against a backdrop of cheating:  Cheating on tests, and cheating on spouses.

 

The most notable thing to me, about the episode, is that when it comes to figuring out whom to trust and mistrust, whom to think of as a friend or an enemy, we learn that there is no black and white.  “People are crazy,” says Logan.  Yep.  And people are emotional and unpredictable and you have to do your best to tell a copied paper from a real paper, or an Evil Wallace from a Regular (i.e. Good) Wallace, despite THEIR crazy, and despite YOUR crazy.

 

There are several mentions of “the rules,” and “the policies” as the Dean expels Claire, Wallace has to face the music, and Logan’s TA attempts to be quite the stickler for the “drop your pencils” rule.  Tina jokes, “This isn’t illegal, is it?” when looking up info for Logan & Veronica.  People try to codify behavior; they try to help themselves identify the good guys from the bad guys in this crazy world, by that set of rules.  And the rules do help, some.  But is Logan really a cheater, just because he took ten extra seconds to finish a sentence on his test?  And even trickier:  Is Mrs O’Dell the Bad Wife that we see in the hotel room, the one who is sleeping with the prof?  Or is she the Good Wife that  we see bringing her husband a healthy lunch, the one who seems to genuinely care about, and go out of her way to protect, her husband’s health?  And trickier still:  Is Keith really a cheater – one of the bad guys, Evil, morally bankrupt Keith - because he gave in to his intense attraction to Harmony, right after a life-threatening experience?

 

Who deserves to get a zero, get expelled, get fed to bears, or to burn in hell?  If only they were all, as Keith says, “like Peter Lorry.”  Much easier to tell the good guys, from the bad guys, in the movies. 

 

PIZ:  “Is the rest of the world crazy, or just stupid?”

 

Oh, they’re a bit of both, no doubt.  They are.  We are.  And here’s another thing about people – something that’s underlined by repeated mention of the word “free” and repeated images of people making choices:  People get to choose.  Wallace chooses Mechanical Engineering.  Veronica chooses the T-shirt; Piz has chosen the bowling shirt.  Piz does not choose Parker.  Adults have freedom of choice – they make decisions about when to be sticklers like the TA, and when to be merciful, like Wallace’s coach.  Like mechanical engineers, they have to weigh their elasticity against their tensile stress.  And they can choose whom to let into every aspect of their lives, and whom to expel entirely from their lives, and who gets to be somewhere in between.

 

And what about progress on our central mystery:  Who is committing the campus rapes?  We see constant rivals Veronica and Don Lamb come together to compare notes.  Both decide that Mercer is a very good candidate for Perpetrator of the Year.  But . . . is he the perp?  Is there an Evil Mercer, lurking beneath the friendly exterior?

 

Certainly, this episode’s images of duality suggests that our perp is not going to look like Peter Lorry – like the movie serial killers that Veronica mentions in her TA’s office.  Our perp, we’re being told, does not have “BAD GUY” written on his forehead.  That doesn’t narrow it down very much, does it?  I have no idea who it is.  I would say every male we’ve seen, with the exception of our long-time regulars, is a possibility – the Dean, the TA (Tim?), Horshack, Rafe (the “torturer”), Mason (the basketball player), Piz, Chip (the frat guy), Ratner, Charleston . . . I can’t think of them all.  But right now, I have no stand-out suspect.

 

And what is Logan hiding?  He provides Mercer with an alibi for a rape that occurred over the summer, and he certainly seems to be telling the truth – i.e., Mercer’s not guilty; Mercer was with Logan.  But he says he “can’t tell” Veronica where he and Mercer were, or what they were doing.  Hmmmm.  This could be innocent:  Logan is being a good friend, and protecting some personal secret of Mercer’s, perhaps.  Or this could be about some past manifestation of Evil Logan:  Was Logan up to something in the wake of his traumatic experiences of last year, something that he’s ashamed to tell Veronica about?  Is he worried that she would break up with him, if she knew about whatever unsavory thing he and Mercer were doing?

 

Also – what will happen with Keith & Harmony?  They are a pretty hot couple, and I wouldn’t mind the addition of Harmony to the cast . . . but it’s not going to work unless Harmony comes clean with her husband, and soon, and begins divorce proceedings.  Unlike her husband, she wasn’t able to overcome temptation.  She owes him honesty, now.  If Keith keeps up this affair in secret, I think it will take a grave toll on him, and on his relationship with Veronica, and her respect for him.  I doubt he’ll let that happen.  So Harmony will have to make a break with her husband, or I think that the relationship will quickly be over.  Because Keith – despite his indiscretion, he’s still Regular Keith.

 

I have no answers to these question, but it looks, from the trailer, like next week will be pretty exciting – we may get, or come very close to getting, some of our answers.

 

***

______________________________________________

 

Please join in the discussion of this review at the Soulful Spike Society Message Board. Go there NOW!

If you enjoyed this review and are reading it from outside the Soulful Spike Society website (www.soulfulspike.com), then click the logo below to access the S3 in a new window. There you will find more great reviews, analyses, fanfiction and a link to our marvelous message board.