Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT What Are You Doing With That Pepperoni?
By Couch Baron | Season 2 | Episode 14 | Aired on 03.14.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.I hope you'll forgive me if I take my time here. You see, I don't really remember much about this show. There was something about a blonde girl and a bus crash, but that was way back before the 2006 Winter Olympics, when I didn't have rheumatoid arthritis and an impaired memory. Or did I? No idea, really. Anyway, I'll do my best. Corny gets jumped while delivering pizza. This apparently isn't an isolated incident: Ryan, whom you'll remember as the vengeful gay kid from "Ahoy Mateys," was also jumped while getting severely undertipped, and lost a list of the names of Neptune's gay students. Whoever has the list starts blackmailing the kids, threatening to out them if they don't each cough up five grand. Veronica takes the case, and doesn't even seem to mind that one of the gay kids is pep-squad member Kristin Cavallari from Laguna Beach. Kristin comes to Veronica all distraught that she's being blackmailed, but in the next moment, she outs herself on Neptune TV. I guess But I'm A Cheerleader is popular on Netflix. A couple of baseball players give Dick shit for making out with a guy, and before you know it, one of them is jumped in the manner of the pizza boys. Carmen from "M.A.D." shows up to give Veronica a clue, and this time, it doesn't involve sex acts and frozen desserts. Thanks to that help, Veronica figures out when another fake order comes in, and she catches the mugger, who's a PCH wannabe. He doesn't seem to know anything about the blackmailing, though, so Veronica figures that it was an inside job. She goes to Mac -- who, it turns out, set up the gay kids' chat room, and soon she discovers that the baseball player who was "jumped" is actually gay, and the blackmailer is Kristin, who wanted to out her girlfriend or something. I'll explain in the recap, but Kristin was kind of a screen suck, so moving on. Logan and Hannah are still syrupy-sweet, and Logan gets an invite over to her house, where he and Dr. Griffith have a little tête-à -tête. Griffith tells Hannah the bullshit about the bridge, so Logan counters by informing her that her dad's a cokehead and is in deep with the Fitzpatricks. You wouldn't necessarily expect that to work, but Hannah does some poking around at home and realizes that Logan is telling the truth. Veronica catches on to Logan's game with Hannah, though, so expect him to get an earful or six in the next episode. In bus-crash land, Cook doesn't remember what he did after leaving the baseball stadium. Veronica is surprised that Keith took Cook's case, but agrees to help with the investigation. Keith pokes around and finds out that Cook was at an Indian casino at the time of the bus crash. However, getting proof of this is a bit of a sticky wicket, since Cook owes the owner of the casino tons of money. But Keith does manage to uncover evidence showing that Cook couldn't have made the call that detonated the bus bomb. Cook can't let the information about his gambling go public, so he and Keith try bringing it to Lamb. Lamb isn't having it, so Keith blackmails him for blackmailing Cook. But Lamb realizes that Cook has too much to lose, and stands strong in the face of the threat. Damn, check out the balls on Lamb! (Oh, calm down, many of you.) Meanwhile, Veronica and Jackie get closer, leading to Jackie's showing Veronica her dad's collection of cars. But in the airplane hangar (not kidding) where they're housed, Veronica finds explosives and detonators. Time to put your bathing suit back on, Jackie. And oh, by the way, my hearing's going, but I think I heard my name mentioned in there. Funny. I don't remember ordering a pizza. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Before I get started: there was some confusion on the boards about the meaning of the title of the episode. I admit when I first heard it, I thought it was a reference to the fun kind of mushrooms, especially since one of my best friends used surreptitiously to refer to them as "pizza toppings." But I first heard the episode title about two hundred years ago (i.e., before the last break), so it's not surprising that things have changed. Actually, I believe Rob Thomas, er, "straightened" people out about that -- the title is actually an inside joke between him and executive producer Dan Etheridge. Without going into too much detail, if you remove the "ping" from the second word of the title, you'll be able to figure out the gist of it. I'd be worried about chipping away at your innocence if it weren't pretty likely that you...you know, watch the show.
A yellow station wagon pulls up on a dark street and double-parks. A rocking Dandelions song plays as an iPod- and pizza-delivery-uniform-wearing Corny hops out with three pizzas under his left arm. Boy, this place must do good business if it can still turn a profit after accounting for all the times Corny got the munchies. I bet his name's even on the spreadsheet. Anyway, Corny's having a grand old time until someone dressed in black appears behind him and tasers him in the neck. He wonders what he did to piss off Veronica before falling unconscious to the ground.
Neptune High. Veronica parks and gets out of her car, and then Dick pulls up next to her. He bangs her car with his door as he gets out, causing her to exclaim, "Dick! You totally nailed me!" Yeah, much like many of the posters, I don't buy that Veronica would leave herself that, um, wide open. Dick makes a crack about his New Year's party, and is unsympathetic about the fact that he scratched Veronica's paint. All the commotion about the car causes two baseball players to appear and advise Dick to frisk Veronica, since she could be "smuggling junk." Dick evenly counters that they're ones to talk, what with all the pitching and catching they do. And that's as close to the episode title as you're going to get. One of the jocks is the guy who made a big deal about dunking Jackie in the last episode, while the other is a wisp of a blond kid, who tells Dick that they're not saying he's gay "just because [he makes] out with a dude here and there." Yeah, but to borrow a phrase from George Costanza, it doesn't help. But speaking of Seinfeld, the fact that Dick's hair looks like he recently switched to a low-flow showerhead is enough to make me think he's still pretty firmly in the hetero camp.