Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Saving Karen...Not So Much
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.09.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.We open basically where we left off last week, and learn that the last thing Parker remembers is a sorority party. The first thing she does is blame Veronica for being so close to the rape and not stopping it, so Veronica steels herself to catch the rapist at all costs. We are in business, y'all, especially when Veronica takes a position at the college paper, and lucks into an undercover assignment trying to discover whether the sorority had anything to do with the rape. The next thing you know, Veronica's wearing a floral dress and infiltrating hell, '50s-style. She gets invited to a party that night, and manages to avoid getting drunk or busted by Dick. That douchebag Chip from "The Rapes Of Graff" is around as well, but nothing of note happens at the party other than Veronica spying a suspicious-looking camera. However, her fake-drunkenness leads to her getting a "safe ride" home, and she and her boss at the paper put two and two together and surmise that someone might have taken advantage of the safe ride situation. Before you know it, Veronica's asking Moe, Piz's RA, why he didn't tell anyone that he drove Parker home the night she was raped. Turns out, though, that a sober female RA was along for the ride, and she backs up Moe's story. Veronica heads back to the sorority house, steals the den mother's keys, and infiltrates the secret room to discover...lots and lots of pot plants. It turns out the pot was just to treat the pain caused by the den mother's cancer, but the story gets printed regardless, and the den mother and her professor supplier get busted, and Veronica loses the friendship of a genuinely nice girl. Well, writers aren't here to make friends. Veronica does make some reasonable progress on the rape front, though. Speaking of Parker, her mom comes to take her home and tell her how immature she is and how it was such a mistake to let her go away to college. Fun lady. Mac spends the episode wrestling with her internal conflicts, but when she sees the wig Parker's mother picked out for her, she cracks, telling Parker that she shouldn't leave and that, from now on, Mac will have her back. Aww. In lighter news, Wallace and Logan's Sociology professor gets them to participate in some sort of Abu Ghraib master-and-servant battle-of-wills exercise. Guess who's in the submissive position? Some guy gets way too into playing a guard, especially picking on some loser kid. Logan outwits the bully, but Wallace, in turn, outwits Logan. Logan ends up streaking the Sociology class, and I should really start reading spoilers so that I know when to cover my ears against the East-Coast-wide "EEEEE!" Finally, Cormac comes after a weary Keith in the desert, but gets caught in an animal trap. Nice Army training, dude. Liam appears and demands to know where the money is. Cormac seems to be telling the truth as he says that most of it was missing, but that doesn't impress Liam, who puts a bullet in his brother's head. Of course, they don't show the bullet entering his skull, so maybe he and Kendall will be running off together after all. To Fantasyland. Speaking of Kendall, we see in flashback that it wasn't money in the briefcase, but a rare painting, which Keith sells, donating the proceeds to charity. Keith has to come home and, in tears, tell Veronica the degree to which he fucked up. Aww. At least she's in a good position to be empathetic. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Before I start, approximately 17,452 people posted or wrote in to tell me that the ringleader of the thieves last week was actually named "Donald Fagen," named after the vocalist and keyboardist of Steely Dan. This makes his name an extremely clever and layered double meaning, and I apologize profusely for missing that and jumping straight to the "You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two" reference. I also curse my college roommate for putting me off classic rock for life with his shrine to Lynryd Skynyrd. Djb would totally have been so happy with the Steely Dan thing, too. Also, the quote on Wallace's poster is actually attributed to the inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naisbith. If I get any more emails before I send this recap to Wing Chun, I will report them here posthaste.
We open soon after we left off last week, as Parker -- on the verge of dissolving into incomprehensibility, not that I blame her -- is telling a black female officer (blue uniform, so...campus security?) that the last thing she remembers was being at a "Zeta Theta" rush party, and she doesn't even remember how she got home. Plus, when she woke up, she felt "out of it" and was naked. VMVO tells us that when you're roofied and raped, you don't remember the who, when, where, and why, but you certainly know the what. I'm choosing to believe that she's referring to the feelings she had at the time of the incident, rather than get into a discussion of whether she still considers what happened to her "rape." Yes, I'm taking the path of least resistance. (Ooh, that was unfortunate.)
The camera pans back to reveal a fairly despondent Mac and Veronica. Veronica softly notes that she could have stopped the rape, since the rapist must have been there when she entered the room, but Mac says that she didn't because Mac had told Veronica that Parker was a floozy: "A proud, proud day for both of us."
Lamb enters and throws a faux-endearing smile at Veronica. "Tell me I'm here because of you. Not that I'm counting or anything, but isn't this Wolf Cry Number Two?" Veronica, defying belief, looks mildly amused. The officer on scene tells Lamb that Parker is the same as the others -- doesn't remember a thing. Lamb turns and fixes Veronica with a pointed stare: "They always say that." Sure, that's beyond obnoxious, but I can imagine that the ones with self-respect low enough to hook up with Lamb pull that excuse often enough. At that last comment, a swirl of emotions does hit Veronica, so maybe she's really trying not to show any weakness to Lamb's face, but the acting choices still seem way off to me for most of this scene.