Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner

You don't know from anxiety until you try to sub for a beloved and hilarious recapper on maybe the most continuity-obsessed show in the history of television. Especially if your Rob Thomas obsession started way before the show did, with Rats Saw God in the summer of 1999, only to find out he was responsible for Cupid a few seasons earlier. Thanks and a much-love chest-bop salute to Couch Baron for a dream come true. "Don't Fuck Up" is the watchword, Jacob.

We open on Veronica cuddling down with Duncan at the Presidential Suite, very much enjoying tonight's screening of The Big Lebowski and talking along with the dialogue. Duncan is so unimpressed and bored and trying to make out, and it's striking how unsurprising it is that Veronica loves this film. And that Duncan is bored by it. Duncan finally just up and tells her to "stop being the Dude." (Take out the capitalization from that last quote, and you might learn a thing or two about their relationship.) Veronica laughs: "What, Stoner Bowler Guy doesn't do it for you?" Duncan thinks, "Logan doesn't smoke pot, he does coke," but points to him for saying aloud, "A little -- only because I like the way your lips pout when you do Guy Voice." Mm-hmm. Veronica responds adorably, and they commence making out.

Which is the international Batsign for Logan to show up out of nowhere, yelling about "where's my martini" and being generally interrupty and abrasive. Duncan stares and looks worried, and you already know this scene is going to play the Duncan/Logan relationship again, and Veronica's going to feel weird, like she's eavesdropping. And so shall we all. Logan plops down on the couch, whinging that Duncan's watching The Big Lebowski without him, and Duncan placates that he didn't know when Logan was coming home. The math of Veronica goes like this: about 60% awkward-interrupted makeout, 20% happy to see Logan because he's awesome, and 10% confused as to whether this has anything to with her. She tries to be all middle-child and starts the movie up again: "You just missed the supermarket scene." There's a knock at the door, and Logan smarms, "There's my room service." I assume he means Kendall? Yes. Gross. As he crosses to the suite door, he continues: "Seriously though, I was reading Third Wheel: A Beginner's Guide? And we should come up with, like, some kind of codeword, for when you guys are feeling frisky and don't wanna be disturbed." "Like 'scram'?" asks Veronica, and Logan grins beautifully as he delivers the most in-your-face Couch Baron/Wing Chun shout-out yet: "I was thinking 'awkward.' But 'scram's good. Or 'amscray.'" ["Woo! Although Logan said it wrong; it's breathier, higher-pitched, and more sing-songy. Still, woo!" -- Wing Chun] Duncan gives Logan the sarcastic "um, okay" fingers, but I can't really read Dunc's or Veronica's face. Are they irritated because Logan's there at all? Because that's pretty harsh. Normally, I think the people Logan comes into contact with are a little soft on him, but -- dude, he just walked into his house, and the temp went down 60 degrees, and he hasn't even said anything balls-out awful yet. Maybe it's just general awkward vibe, which you know Logan's been pokin' pokin' pokin' since he moved in. Poor screwed-up, gorgeous kid.

So basically, Duncan clarifies further, the victim is "between seven and ten," and his parents are psycho. Veronica: "That'll narrow it down." And we haven't even gotten to the Neptune-is-fucking-effed-up jokes yet! Veronica notices that Meg asks the CPS agent in one email whether one of the "books" would be helpful, and Duncan explains that the boy's parents "make him write these admonishments over and over, hundreds of times." Stuff like "I was bad, I deserve to be punished," but I'm more interested in how Duncan managed to learn the word "admonishment." He says that Meg stole one of these Admonishment books, and Veronica identifies Step One: "Get the book." Which is actually Step Omega, but we'll get to that. Duncan points out how the funny thing about Meg's house is two-fold: there's always somebody there, and everybody in it hates both their asses. The only time Duncan could even go over there was Sunday, while Meg's parents were at Church Group. Dear America: when that qualifies as a red flag, something's gone wrong. Like at the top. Veronica says that, in the meantime, they'll need to make a list of Meg's clients. Duncan -- narrowing things somewhat because the emails specify a male child, aged 7-10 -- gets to listing: the Fullers have a son, as does Mrs. Hauser; the Martins have twin girls; the Goodmans.... Veronica's impressed, although by Meg's workload or Duncan's powers of recall I cannot say, and Duncan...I don't know if he's ribbing Veronica because she's so objectively amazing, or because he's vastly forgotten to whom he is speaking: "I think they call it a part-time job? It's when you do this thing called 'work' and strangers pay you, instead of the Allowance Fairy?" "Ah, the Allowance Fairy" is the best Veronica can manage either way. "Meg's parents are big on the not-being-spoiled thing," Duncan says, and does a very good, wistful read here that shows his continued and very sweet investment in the comatose Meg, while Veronica gives it space and respect. It's a pretty cool moment. Then she says, "Well, the Goodmans don't need a babysitter, now that Gia's back...I'll make [the others] trust me long enough to get a writing sample, and then we'll steal the book to compare."

Just then, Keith comes in with an invite to the Sheriff's Department Fundraiser-slash-Bachelor Auction, which features Lamb being very, very smarmy on the front. Keith makes a bad joke about them selling Lamb by the pound, but I don't know, it's Veronica Mars, so this is probably a Two Gentlemen Of Verona joke. He grins at Duncan: "She got you working now, too?" Duncan smiles cutely. I miss Wallace.

Kendall is snippy with Beaver, and wearing a hideous sweater with shiny crap all over it. It looks like she made it herself, while doing drugs with Donatella Versace and Bjrk. Dick tries to sneak a peak up her skirt, of course, as the Casablancas lawyer explains that Big Dick's disappearance means all assets are frozen, pending his Boatloads of Trial. "The verdict's in," Cordelias Kendall: "Dick's off drinking mai tais" and "getting fanned...with $100 bills!" The boys have a trust fund, but can't touch it until their twenty-first birthdays (Dick "woo!"s), but Kendall doesn't have any separate accounts or property in her name. "I'm their mother. Can't I have some of their money?" The lawyer explains that the only remaining trustee is Beaver's biological mother, so Kendall's screwed. "So what I supposed to do?" she snits. The lawyer shrugs: "What you did before." Thongs and jumping around? Can do. Have been doing, matter of fact.

At the Fuller house, the very intense Mrs. Fuller indicates Sabrina Fuller's newest framed awards and says that, already, in her first semester, Sabrina is finding she "flourishes in academia." Mrs. Fuller has a pretty detailed schedule for tonight's babysitting, including a five-minute window between each activity, and a thirty-minute period to start with baking cookies and getting to know little Edwin. Mr. Fuller and little Edwin enter. Mrs. Fuller cites "that boyfriend of" Meg's for the No Boys Rule: "This isn't Inspiration Point." After the Fuller parents have gone, Veronica asks Edwin what he wants to do, and his reply is, "We're supposed to make cookies." Edwin's wearing an argyle sweater, which I think means he has Type IV Fake Disorder.

Later, Veronica watches Edwin read from a huge book while voicing over how freaky he is: washes his hands voluntarily, colors inside the lines, does not speak ill of IT. He looks over at the clock, whose second hand is sweeping 12, and rises to replace the book on the shelf. "May I please color now?" Uh, yeah? Veronica's phone rings, and she tells Duncan things are going "disturbingly well." She's already nabbed some of Edwin's homework for their writing sample, and she's planning to "snoop after he goes to sleep...which should be in exactly thirty-four minutes." Duncan says he finds it hard to picture Veronica babysitting, which it is, because she hates all people but I'd imagine especially tiny ones. Instead of taking this as a compliment to her prickliness, she goes the girlfriend route: "Maybe because it's such a Meg thing -- you guys did it so much!" Good, good acting here: instead of making it an "I'm sick of Meg" moment, it's a "I have respect for your girlfriend in a coma." Duncan is...regretful? Awkward? Confused?

Logan knocks on the Fullers' glass door and Veronica jumps. Duncan wonders if she's all right, and she blows him off: "It's just a really big bug. I'll call you back." At the door, she hisses, "I said 10:30!" She stops by the dining room to check on Edwin, whose crayon box prominently reads "JOSHOLA," which I assume is an adorable inside joke. Veronica tells Logan what she's scared up -- in the five seconds between Sex Ed class and her arrival at the Fullers' house -- about his witness. Dude's name is Tom Griffith, and he's a "well-respected plastic surgeon." Logan scoffs because "there are no respected plastic surgeons," but gets confused when he sees the guy's picture in the file. (Girlfriend is thorough!) That's not the guy from the bridge, he contests, and -- even though she knows what's coming -- Veronica narrows her brows: "You said the whole night was a blur." He lied. Of course. She gets kind of aaargh, but Logan clarifies: "I didn't want the guy found! I didn't know what he was going to say...I knew I was free and clear if they never found him." Makes sense, if you're down with Logan Logic. Veronica hears the Fullers return, and throws Logan out as he's yelping, "I need your help! The guy's lying!"

"Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon, and wise too late. Ben Franklin." This is actually how I fell in love with Logan to begin with: the daily phrase. I still think it's one of the most telling parts of his character: not only the things themselves, which always point toward qualities I admire, but just the impulse to do it at all. That's a boy I'd like to meet. Veronica's voicemail message to Logan? "The good news is, I'm perfect the way I am. The bad: your plastic surgeon is a mensch." Just then, the mensch -- who was supposedly off fulfilling some professional duty -- takes off in his car. Piqued, Veronica follows him.

Dick enters the pool area (stupid A&F t-shirt du jour: "Going Commando") and tosses a shopping bag at Kendall: "Don't say I never gave you nothing." Kendall's impressed that it's not on fire. Which is funny, because it contains total shit: she pulls out a maid's outfit. "That's what you'll be wearing when you dust my armoire," Dick says, managing to make "armoire" sound filthy. You know, with all the HoYay! that goes on in Neptune, the best of all possible HoYay will be when Dick turns out to be the gay Casablancas brother. That will be a good day on more levels than I can currently count. Dick exposits that Mamablancas signed off on the trust-fund thing. Trust Dick to see it as horribly, and probably truthfully, as possible: it's because she's gotten used to life sans Dick and Beaver (50% right, babe), and doesn't want them around or living with her. Beaver's heartbroken, of course, Dick says, but Dick personally sees it as "a chance to bond with my new mom!" He hugs Kendall, and she looks horrified.

Dr. Griffith is at the cigar store on Ocean Avenue, because in Neptune that's what doctors do: smoke cigars, play golf, run sex cults. Veronica waits a while, getting more and more grossed out about the whole "You're beautiful, I have to go" lie, and then heads inside. She asks the dude for a Cuban cigar, for her dad, and things are irritatingly business-as-usual, and behind her is a sign written by a crazy person all about CEDRIC THE PIPE EXPERT and how he's at the shop from 10-3 on Thursdays to teach about pipes. I picture Cedric as a nineteen-year-old in a tie-dyed shirt, but then, I'm from Austin. And knowing this show, Cedric's probably some stoner dude from the alternate teaser for 1-17 who had a line which ended with a word that rhymed with "pipe." See how intimidating to recap? There's a pipe glued to the sign. Well, not a pipe. A picture of a pipe. Heh.

Gia answers her door all flipping out and weird. I don't know if she's supposed to seem unglued, or if the actress is still making choices, but generally Gia makes me really uncomfortable and skeeved out. Some of her lines are funny, and I thought she was especially excellent after the crash, when she was neither obnoxious nor self-conscious but managed to sell a pretty difficult line, but...I don't know. I wouldn't want to hang out with Gia in real life, because she would make me nervous, and that would make me tired. She also looks a hell of a lot like Thelma's new ghostly lesbian girlfriend on Hex, of whom I'm kind of jealous because she will never love Thelma like I do, so maybe it's crossover anxiety. Also, does Veronica ever just, like, hang out and watch TV or anything? I know everybody that watches this show must ask that at some point, but I've never really thought about it: today she's had a doctor's appointment, visited a cigar shop, and now she's at a slumber party --all in service of the two cases she's working. For somebody who's all prickly and take-no-crap, she's certainly spending a lot of time on other people. Well, she's kind of letting the whole "bus crash meant for her that ended the lives of several people" thing slide this week, but come on: wouldn't you? Every now and then wouldn't you just kind of ignore that shit for a few minutes? ["She did watch The Big Lebowski, so it's at least happened...once." -- Wing Chun]

Gia makes Veronica take off her shoes because her mom's a germophobe, I think. ["Or Canadian. It's what we do, so we don't track the snow in." -- Wing Chun] Gia yells, "You brought your sleeping bag! That's so cute!" Veronica's response: "I like to have the option." Veronica, it wasn't creepy until you said that. Now it's like, "I'm sleeping on the floor unless dinner is very expensive." "Don't judge me for my Ninja Turtles," she jokes, which is awesome, because in an informal poll I just conducted, 99% of people had that same sleeping bag, and probably still do. It's also awesome because you know Veronica loved the Turtles. I bet she said her favorite was Michelangelo, but it was actually Rafael. Gia goes through some pretty intense business while this short interchange happens. She: hangs up Veronica's jacket, puts each of Veronica's articles in a separate labeled basket, and moves some screens around to reveal more baskets and a shoe area. The creepiest part of this is how the baskets are the top are labeled "Father" and "Mother." (For some reason that freaks me out: "Gia's Clothes Which Flatter The Countenance.") "Whoa, somebody likes their label maker!" jokes Veronica, and Gia's breezy, as she always is when somebody brings up the total freakiness of her family: "At least we know where to find everything." Voice-over: "Yeah, like, 'The anal psychos are located right about here.' Great -- they kill their guests and steal their shoes." To be fair, Veronica has reason to be paranoid about freaks stealing shoes, Abel Koontz. Hearing teenage-girl giggles from elsewhere in the house, Veronica's voice-over continues: "Please tell me they kill their guests." Hee! Gia covers Veronica's eyes, and the camera, and lacunas us into the scene as Veronica thinks, "My Spidey sense is tingling. Something bad is happening."

Behind the door, there's fucking "Pon De Replay" by Rihanna playing, which qualifies as "something bad happening," far as I'm concerned. There are also, like, eight hot chicks in their underwear doing weird shimmies and giggling and looking at Veronica in a strange way that suggests that they are the brides of Dracula. Even weirder, the camera gets product placement-based confusion and we have to watch a few seconds of the video for that song. The upshot of this scene is, you now get to read Salon.com all day for free. Veronica has a bijou panic attack, because she hates people, but mostly because this girl stuff is beyond her ken, and most of all because somehow her life just became some kind of adolescent Xander leg-cramp Porky's fantasy.

Kendall rolls off Logan and tells him how perfect their lovin' was, and then goes completely porn-creepy like she, too, is at Gia's. You know how you think phone sex is like? It sounds like that: "Baby, oh, it feels so good to be with you! I just wanna be with you all the time!" Logan advises her to "pick the richest guy in the hotel suite" if she's looking for a sugar daddy. Ouch! Kendall actually has the gall to look shocked. "I'm sorry, did that hurt your feeling?" I love Logan. Kendall, though, is horrified: "Doesn't this mean anything to you?" It does, he protests: "It means I'm getting laid, and I owe your village a goat." This cracks even Logan up, and he proceeds to put his drawers back on under the covers. Kendall lies that it's clearly grown into something more over the past few months, and Logan points out that her romantic notions have an indirect relation to her bank account: "It's like science!" He explains to her the obvious point that his friendship with Dick, while it speaks poorly of him, does make him privy to the Casablancas facts as they happen. Changing tack, Kendall points out that Logan's got a pretty good setup going, sex-wise, and asks if he would prefer going back to grab-assing with "cheerleaders who've just mastered missionary." She threatens and threatens to withhold, and Logan laughs it off. "Bessie, when the milk stops being free? I stop drinking it." Kendall wonders, for the second time, what she's "supposed to do." Whenever you have to ask somebody else that, you've already given up way too much ground. "Frankly, my dear...you know the rest." I'm no fan of the "...and you know the rest" approach to exit lines, but it's Logan: he sells it. Kendall sighs and leaves, and...runs directly to Duncan's room.

Duncan has the disproportionately developed pectoralis majors of a former fat kid. I call this the Jeff Corwin syndrome -- hot, but with history. Kendall disrobes and asks Duncan to scratch her back, offering her very finely manicured nails for a return of the favor. What? When you talk all weird and "I've got an itch" like that, it makes it creepier than if you'd just said, "I'm a little low on cash and I'd like to do it with you in exchange for money. Whaddaya say?" Duncan's...intrigued? Scandalized? Into it?

Gia introduces Veronica to her little brother Rodney Goodman, who's apparently unaware of the softcore going on in the other room: he's totally focused on the thank-you notes for his recent birthday. This is the definition of "mental torment": writing thank-you notes while hot, half-naked teenage girls touch each other a few feet away. Veronica says hello, but Rodney just curls into himself like how people eat in jail. Gia: "He's a little weird, but sweet." That's the pot calling the kettle that, dude. Gia weirds out about whether she should or should not mix the two bowls of chips together, but she's not sure if that's too edgy and out-there, and she wants to belong, and then Rodney accidentally knocks a -- very fucking awesomely designed -- glass bowl of water and envelope-sponge onto the carpet, and then flips out. Gia seems to find it not that big a whoop, and Rodney starts rubbing at the white shag. Gia: "He's a little intense." Veronica snags a thank-you note, apparently as indifferent to the fact that this will likely cause Rodney to commit suicide as she is to Gia's Dick-endangered virtue, and we're at what, three for three, sample-wise.

Back in the den, the girls compare their half-naked bodies and touch each other and are half-naked, giggling and jumping around. Lord. Ratings rock. Veronica, being congenitally sneaky, finds Woody outside the room whispering, "Rodney! Your mother's going to be home soon, and I'm going to have to tell her about this. You know the rules!" Woody Goodman notices Veronica watching this effed-up scenario and jokes that they're not ogling, and then takes Rodney and the thank-you note stuff out of the room. Gia runs up asking if Veronica knows how to do dreadlocks. My heart weeps for you, V.

We rejoin Veronica in hell, girls nattering on and on about subjects like "Pizza Is So Great" and "One Time I Ate A Whole Pizza" and "Pizza Has One Thousand Carbs." Gia yells, "I think I just heard my mother!" and for a sec I think she's scared of her too, but it's, I guess, because of the big-ass bottle of liquor she's hiding in the couch. Gia then makes a funny face. Mrs. Goodman is, in fact, home, wearing another ugly-ass sweater-vest with shiny crap on it, and is putting her shoes in the shoe closet in the shoe place marked "Mother," I assume. Still creepy! Veronica comes out further from the den, and watches Woody notify his wife of the spilled water, in an intense and sketchy fashion. She stands before Rodney for a second, and then he walks out and she follows him into another room. Veronica looks worried and weirded out. Woody, alone, walks in the opposite direction, to another room, and then slams the door. ["Was it another room? I thought he was leaving the house out the front door." -- Wing Chun] Veronica jumps and looks bothered by all this. Me too. To sum up: Woody and his wife apparently sleep in separate rooms, Rodney's got some kind of Mom-induced OCD, she rules the house with an iron fist that brooks no water-spilling, and Gia is oblivious/implicated/exempt. I hate this family and I'm not even sure why.

Logan's flipping around on the TV when Kendall comes out of Duncan's room, making sure to wipe her mouth where Logan can see. You have no idea how close I came to titling this recap "A Six-Month Follow-Up Trip To The Dentist." I don't actually think they did anything, because it's Duncan, and the only interesting things he's ever done were (a) kill his sister; (b) sleep with his other sister; and (c) go off his meds, become a Ghost Whisperer, and learn to fly. None of which stuck. Watching Kendall leave and clearly not having any feelings about it, Logan asks, "Ever think about just getting a job?" She turns, and it's nice because she doesn't come off as ashamed, or embarrassed, or weird about it: "This is my job." Whoa. I kind of respect her, now. Duncan? Not so much.

Now they've moved Nubilipalooza out to Gia's pool, and Madison is talking about how Pretty Woman is her favorite movie (it's one of my top three, as well), and that Vivian is her hero. "She's a hooker," notes Veronica. "Only because she had to be!" whines Madison. "She's a hooker!" repeats Veronica, hilariously, and then Madison goes to a stupid place, pointing at Veronica's chest and sputtering, "You should put a tattoo right here, so people will have something to look at." Good one, moron. She gasps and laughs long enough for Veronica to gear up: "So, Gia, how are things with you and Dick?" Again, Gia's useful but not so much a friend friend. "Dick?" gasps Madison. "Like, my Dick?" If every episode of this season has a Dick joke like that, I could die happy. Gia's like, "You dated Dick? How weird." I guess she's too close to the situation, or she'd have picked up on how they're perfect for each other. Dick and Beaver arrive, yelling about the "panty raid" and "spin the bottle," and Veronica -- fearing, I assume, that the twins'll be arriving shortly in their red Fiat Spyder -- takes off.

Back home, Veronica jumps into bed. Keith appears and notes that when Veronica leaves a sleepover early, he's supposed to put a trenchcoat on over his PJs and come pick her up, and she clarifies some things for him. 1) She's driving these days, and 2) She's not nine. "You'll always be nine to me," he sniffs, "Going on thirty." To be fair, she kind of still is. Keith smells the cigar store on her jacket, and then buries his face in it weirdly, and she asks if he'd like to be alone with it. Still not shying away from the whole "Who's Your Daddy" issue, are we? Keith bugs her about how they must have at some point talked about smoking (they did: "Don't"), and it gives her the opportunity to tell Keith the truth. Which always sounds like a lie when she does it. Well, most of the truth: she says she stopped into the cigar store to use the bathroom. He asks her to find other facilities time, because that particular store is notorious for drug trafficking and he tried to bust it like twenty times, back when he had a real job.

The night -- Sunday -- Duncan answers the Presidential Door wearing a black turtleneck, and Veronica makes fun of him: "No ski mask?" He protests that she told him to wear dark colors, and she draws the line between breaking and entering your ex-girlfriend's house on a Sunday night and "breaking into a vault in a James Bond movie." Duncan snurfles, "I don't do this every day," and I fucking miss Wallace. Veronica says that she prefers, altogether, private investigating to babysitting, and mentions that it's a "sad state of affairs" when you can't actually tell "which kid's being locked in the closet," even after several hours of observation, because "all the families are equally cuckoo." And you know she says "cuckoo" in the cutest way imaginable. Then they laugh the laugh of cruel irony coming toward them in a Mack truck because the whole "Trapped In The Closet" deal was just a light and frivolous off-tossed line, right? Right? Logan enters ("Poetry reading?") and then asks Duncan in a caring tone whether Kendall was "bugging" him yesterday. With a light negative response, Duncan's done with the subject, and not really in a guilty way -- but then, that's why Duncan's kind of scary sometimes. "Good, good," Logan continues, "Because, uh, when I saw she was in your room for a little while, I got nervous. I know how she likes to talk a guy's ear off." See, he doesn't really mean "talk" or "ear" there. Or really "likes," come to think of it. "She was just asking for my help with something," Duncan says -- again quite breezily -- but it's worth noting that this is pretty much exactly what Veronica said when Duncan caught her and Duncan coming out of the loo earlier, so, again, we don't actually know anything. I don't want Veronica to be sad, and I don't want her to end up with Logan, really, but I do want Duncan at some point to do something that makes you go, "Oh, snap."

Veronica and Turtleneck head over to Meg's house, where Duncan overexplains about how there's a key under the flowerpot, in a very Lost-exposition kind of way. They head up the stairs, just a-clompin' and a-bangin' like they're not totally committing the kind of crime where if the people shoot you they are in the right, and once inside, Veronica notes the total weirdness of being in Meg's room while she's comatose. Sweetly and subtly, Duncan adjusts Meg's teddy bear on the bed, and then -- exclamatorily and with much patter -- goes to her A/C vent. "Giving away Lilly's trade secrets?" asks Veronica, and Duncan (again with the too-much-talking disease) explains that Lilly actually got the vent trick from Logan, and anyway he represented it to Meg as his own invention. I guess you can't just go ahead and have eighteen different people with the same rather unlikely trick happening, so I don't mind the exposition salad there. He pulls down an old-school composition notebook, with the mottled black cover, and something secret and mysterious, which he hides on his person.

Veronica opens the book to a random Kecklered page reading "THE PATH TO GOD IS PAVED WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS." "People suck," Veronica says. And yeah, it's creepy. No youngster aged 7-10 should have to fill books with stuff like that, regardless of whether you're down with the sentiment. That's some kind of "We burned all our Amy Grant tapes in March of '91" kind of shit right there. She pulls out her writing samples and starts making the comparison in flagrante delicto. None of the three stolen homework assignments matches the notebook -- and then Veronica notices that the admonishments are in the handwriting of a little girl, and not a boy at all. Duncan -- like he's never once seen Veronica intuit like a champ before -- protests that Meg was talking about a little boy. She's smarter than you, dude. Let it ride. Hell, she's smarter than anybody. At Meg's bedside is a framed photo of the three sisters -- Coma Meg, Pissy Lizzie, and sweet little Grace. Resistant to the horror, Veronica disbelievingly asks the equally repressing Duncan whether it's possible Meg was covering with the whole "Not my family. I...have a friend with a family" thing. They sneak unstealthily across the hall to Grace's room, and Veronica immediately starts rooting through her closet for more notebooks. Which she finds, neat as pretty maids all in a row. Duncan's still...confused? Disgusted? Freaking? All of the above. There's a fumbling sound behind the wall, and Veronica makes the throw, opening a tiny secret door. Behind which is a very jacked-up little girl. "Grace?"

Commercials, during which it is ascertained that there's no place for a "Trapped In The Closet" joke in this entire recap, even with the pants-shitting midget humor it would provide, because by law you're not allowed to bring an R. Kelly joke within fifty yards of a little kid.

Back to the closet: "It's okay. It's okay, Grace." Grace has crazy bags under her eyes and looks like hell. "They can tell if the door was open! They're not going to believe me!" she screams. Not about to deal with that crap, Veronica just promises to get her out of there. Grace isn't done freaking you out, though: "Daddy said I'm not ready!" Oh, I do not like this. Duncan's like, "Grace, you remember me, right?" Veronica nods. "It's Duncan, Meg's friend. Remember?" Gets worse: "I don't wanna be tested! Daddy said I'm not ready!" Veronica dials up a hot cup of cops and Duncan tries to chill Grace out. If it were me, I'd get him the hell out of the room, based on what I just heard. The light comes on, Veronica gasps, and Duncan jumps directly in front her like Spider-Man. Mr. Manning comes in with a baseball bat, and asks Grace politely to come out of the tiny room where he's been keeping her and go downstairs to her mommy. He screams at Duncan and Veronica to hit the deck, and yells to his wife to call the Sheriff.

Lamb arrives, and Mr. Manning starts in immediately, all innocent about how he "just came home from church," and Veronica starts yelling that they were trying to help Grace. Mr. Manning talks over her the entire time about how she's a filthy lying whore, which kind of came out of nowhere, even though the Mannings are confirmed Veronica-haters, and definitely adds to the "I Can't Believe It's Not A Sex Cult" feeling. Veronica's yelling that they're abusing Grace and keeping her locked in the closet, look at the books they make her write in, and Mr. Manning actually takes a step forward. Lamb stops him, but since it's Lamb, he immediately steps up to cuff Veronica and Duncan. As he's doing it, Veronica whispers intensely at him: "There's a small room inside the closet that he had her locked in. Move the clothes." Have you ever had that nightmare where the guy has you held hostage and you're trying to tell somebody what's going on while not arousing your captor's suspicion? I love it when movies and TV shows play on that, because it's such an awful, scary feeling. Especially if you don't have any meth or your copy of The Purpose-Driven Life handy. He drags them away -- Veronica still valiantly eyebrow-talking toward the closet -- and down to the cop car, then back up for Mannings' statement. I'm starting to think maybe that whole pull Meg's plug reference when Lizzie gave Duncan the laptop wasn't so funny.

Upstairs, Mr. Manning -- stupidly, he stayed up there instead of going down to the living room or something -- immediately starts talking about how he wants the m prosecuted blah blah blah, and how they may have stolen from him, but Lamb proceeds directly to the closet. Mr. Manning yells that Lamb has no right to poke around, and he's the victim here, and Lamb interrupts him: "It's funny -- I heard my father give that exact speech once." Now, I don't know precisely what that means, but in my head we pan across the hallway and see Lisa Rinna quietly drinking a cocktail, because that's the last time I felt this slapped by something like that.

Lamb drives Veronica and Duncan down the block as a weird, spacy Air song plays. I like the texture it gives, like how that loud and not-precisely-right song was playing when Veronica and Weevil stumbled across the bus crash. At first you're like, "What?" but if you just give in and take it on, it becomes this whole new experience you've not had before. Something specific and real that you'd only get on this show. I think they made up the technique, at least the way it's used on this show. And as a fair-to-middlin' fan of Air, I know the lyrics: "Holy girl, don't get up for running/Stay..." Whoa. Lamb stops the car, uncuffs Duncan and Veronica with nary a word, and drives back toward Meg's house with his lights going.

Cut to the Mannings, with Grace, in the kitchen, where apparently they like to hang out with all the lights off, and Dad's casually reading a newspaper in the noir. He looks out the window, and Lamb's parked outside the house. So cool. I'll bring the teargas and extra riot batons, and Lamb? Hold my iPod a sec, because I'm going in.