Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 38 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Veronica Mars...
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.21.2004
Veronica eats mac and cheese with her dad, which makes me like her even more. She wants to talk about the fact that Celeste Kane was there, but he ignores her, asking about school and waxing poetic about processed cheese. Sigh. You know, I'm sorry to have to say it, because I like this show so far and there's really very little that seriously rubs me the wrong way, but I really don't like Colantoni as her dad. More on that later. Anyway, Veronica manages finally to get the story, which is that she thinks Celeste's husband is seeing someone else, and he took the case because they need the money. Veronica's happy he did. A call comes in, which sends her dad off to Texas to try to catch some guy on the lam. Veronica tells him she'll take care of the travel arrangements, and he warns her not to do anything on the Kane case. She assures him that she won't, and he says he'll be back in one or two days. Moving in just a little too close for familial comfort, he tells her to bring backup when she works on the Kane case. Dude, if you're that concerned about backup, you might try, you know, backing up. That's your daughter there. Anyway, he leaves.
Veronica, in her car. VMVO tells us that she followed Jake Kane to his office, where "streaming video was invented and perfected." Boy, if that's true, it's a Jake Kane action figure I want. When the company went public, everyone in it became millionaires, even the secretaries: "He's beloved here. Half the people in this town owe their fortunes to him." Action figure. Seriously.
Flashback. Bring It On-style car wash, except without the shirtless guys. Boo. Long-haired Veronica hangs out with a pretty girl, who it turns out is her best friend Lily, who's also Duncan's sister. Grandmaster Melle Mel's "White Lines" plays, which seems incongruous at best, but maybe they know something I don't. Speaking of which, Lily happily tells Veronica she's got a secret, but they're told to get back to work before she can reveal what it is.
Cut to a flashback that evening, where Veronica tells us she was picking up dinner with her dad when they got a call that there was a "disturbance at the Kane estate." Veronica looks worried, and when she sees a somewhat catatonic-looking Duncan nearby, she gets out of the car despite the fact that her dad specifically told her not to. She goes over to him and asks him what happened, but it's like he doesn't even see her. When she asks where Lily is, though, his face starts to break, and the reason is that Lily is lying on the ground nearby next to the pool. Laura Palmer lives again! Ooh, poor choice of words. Veronica's dad looks grief-stricken as the VMVO tells us that Lily's murder made the cover of People, and that the town was flooded with journalists. Veronica comes over to the body and loses it as VMVO tells us, "And of course, everyone remembers reading about the bungling local sheriff who went after the wrong man. That bungling sheriff was my dad." Yeah, that's kind of overkill for getting booted from the popular crowd. You could get booted from the leper crowd for that one. This does bring up a complaint, though, that I believe was mentioned on the forums: in an earlier flashback, Veronica told us that Duncan broke up with her with no warning, but given all the information about her dad, and assuming that the breakup happened afterward, as seems logical, the possibility of its happening had to have occurred to her. I mean, when you think people who seemingly wrongfully try to jail your dad for your sister's murder, it's not usually alongside the term "father-in-law." However, someone else on the forums suggested that Duncan broke up with Veronica before the murder. While I think there are a couple of points in the episode that contraindicate that, I wouldn't rule it out, and it would make the story more interesting in some ways, so I'm interested to find out one way or the other. But in the present, VMVO tells us that something's up with Jake Kane, as we see him go up to the second floor of a seedy-looking motel and enter one of the rooms. Veronica's parked way too obviously for a stakeout, it must be said.