The ‘Veronica Mars’ Episode That Got Us Hooked

1h 3m
Hooked continues! This time, Jo and Rob take us back to 2005 to make the case for Kristen Bell’s star-making series, ‘Veronica Mars’.

00:00  Intro

05:14  Rob’s elevator pitch

08:45  The Episode: ‘Mars v. Mars’

17:57  Guest/recurring stars

24:42  Episode MVP

26:20  A scene that embodies the show

37:25  How this episode sets up the series

40:16  The pilot episode

50:43  **SPOILERS**

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Transcript

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Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed.

I'm Joetta Robinson.

I'm Rob Mahoney.

We're here with another installment of Hooked, our end of summer, early fall little mini-series that we have decided to do about some of our favorite seasons of television.

Today, we're talking about Veronica Mars.

Have you heard of it?

Have you heard of it?

Listen, we did some huge, massive ringer core shows in Breaking Mad and Mad Men.

And then it was like two for y'all, one for us.

This is a very Joe and Rob coded show.

So that is why we're here to talk about Veronica Mars.

Step very carefully because this is a big show to a certain subset of people, which includes us, Joe.

Like this is as big as it gets, certainly for Teenage Rob and really just for Rob in general.

Excellent.

If you have not listened to any of these hooked episodes, here's what we do.

We're here to talk to you about the episode that is not necessarily the pilot of a TV show that you would show to someone, a friend, a loved one, et cetera, to get them hooked into a show you like.

Because sometimes the pilot isn't the episode that's going to do it.

So we're here to talk to you about some alternative options,

though.

We might have an exception that proves the rule coming up on this series sometime soon.

What

do you want to say about the premise of this show?

Rob, anything else before we get into specifics of today?

The premise of hooked or the premise of Veronica Mars?

Oh, no.

Of hooked.

Did I cover it?

Did I do it?

I think you covered it.

And I will say, in this particular case, very resonant for me because I would say throughout my lifetime to this point, this is the show I have tried to pitch to the most people and failed spectacularly.

I just can't, I cannot push Veronica Mars up people's queue to the the point that they will actually even give it a chance.

And so I think part of our exercise today is, look, if they were going to watch the pilot, they would have done it already.

What is the alternative way in we can give them to become Veronica Mars fans, to become proper marshmallows?

We have a slightly tougher assignment today because Rob and I both own this show on DVD

because

that's the kind of people we are.

This is not available to stream anywhere for free.

I was devastated.

Yeah.

Lulu, how dare you?

You can, I know.

They have the new new season, which we'll talk about in a second, but you can buy episodes on your streaming favorite streaming platform of choice, but you cannot just like stream it for free.

So, that's going to be a barrier of entry for some people.

But I do want to, before we get into sort of the civics of Ronica Mars, I want to mention one email we got from a listener sort of about this concept.

We've gotten some feedback on our Mad Men and our Breaking Bad episodes of people who vehemently disagree with us or agree with us.

It's a sort of touchy subject for this.

Well, well.

And Joe, where did these people email us?

Uh, prestige TV at spotify.com, I believe, is where they could find us.

Always perpetually, uh, we are there,

you know.

I just want to keep the lines open, you know, the lines of communication, especially in postseason.

This is very important.

And we've gotten a lot of people who are really eager for us to cover a show that we actually do plan to cover before the end of this little news series.

So, um, this email comes from listener uh Sam, who uh has emailed me for years across various shows and always has something very clever to say.

But

he wrote, I feel like we have so many, you gotta get to blank conversations about shows today because pilots are so strictly written to be sold and have to do so much legwork.

They rarely get to be the kind of show they want to settle into.

Sometimes they are diamonds and perfectly lay out the energy direction of a show, Mad Men.

Oftentimes they are Wikipedia articles for everything you need to know about the show in order for it to get loose, weird, and have fun later.

Sam sent us that emo before we did our Mad Men episode, so that's fine.

But listen, I think this idea of this is a Wikipedia article for what the premise of the show is could not better describe the pilot of Veronica Mars.

So

we are not going to be picking the pilot today.

We're going to be picking a later episode.

Veronica Mars

ran on UPN.

From 2004, 2005.

May it rest in power.

And then it became the CW and Veronica Mars wrapped up its third season in 2006.

It was then Kickstart crowdfunded into a 2014 film.

If I can raise my hand, I was among them.

Me too.

I helped to kickstart this movie.

I still have my honorary t-shirt as such.

Do you?

Does it say like I'm a marshmallow?

What does it say?

No, it just has a nice little stylish Veronica Mars logo of her in her car with her camera.

It's lovely.

Love it.

And then it was rebooted on Hulu.

in 2019 for an eight episode season four so controversial that it's almost impossible to Google literally anything about the show without hitting a wall of articles about the season four finale.

Yes.

Which we'll talk about in our Uber spoiler section at the end of this podcast here today.

Rob Mahoney, you already teased that this is an important show to teenage Rob.

Do you want to give us sort of the log line?

What is Veronica Mars about and what did it mean to you when it first came on?

I mean, Veronica Mars is a genuinely amazing detective show that happens to largely take place at a high school.

And because of that, look, the Nancy Drew looms large, and we're just kind of trying to overcome the barrier to entry.

But if you can get past that, and we would encourage you to do it, and that's what we're here to do today.

It is as sharply written and stylized and well-acted.

And I think one of the hallmarks of Veronica Mars is how insane so much.

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This cast is in retrospect and the people, the talent they were able to bring into this little UPN show, it just turns into something that is so funny and so emotionally resonant.

And honestly, like actually seeks to tackle some very real societal problems and societal difficulties.

And it's like, it has a lot to say about class.

It has a lot to say about high school.

It has a lot to say about Kristen Bell being a star.

And a lot of the reason we live in our current Kristen Bell-ruled climate is because of Veronica Mars.

This show was created by Rob Thomas, not that Rob Thomas.

No relation.

Who also did Party Down.

He was a writer on Dawson's Creek.

He did iZombie, in which they had the other Rob Thomas guest star.

This is a show that, you know, you and I are huge Buffy Vampire Slayer fans.

This is like in every way sort of an honorary continuation of the Buffy Vampire Slayer legacy.

It was originally meant to be a YA book that Rob Thomas then turned into a TV show.

Originally, he was going to do a young, a young boy, like a high school boy who is the son of the sheriff.

He was pitching around.

He wanted this to be an FX show.

This is what we constantly hear, an HBO show, Showtime Show.

He brought it to UPN and they said, Hey, man, we're looking for female empowerment to go with our recently acquired Buffy Vampire Slayer.

And he's like, Have I got a show for you?

It's about a teenage girl.

And immediately then it became, I don't know what the

instead of Ronnie Mars gave Veronica Mars.

And that is, that is the show.

What's so crazy about that is this would be an unrecognizable show if you gender swapped Veronica Mars.

Like it is a totally different show.

It's like, obviously, so many of the plot threads would read totally differently.

But her, I mean, it's so crucial in the text, not unlike Buffy, of this like, what do you expect of a teenage girl?

And the idea of being constantly underestimated because she is a teenage girl is central to her ability to then be a really good private detective, even though she's like 16 years old.

Even though this started as a YA book and became a UPN and NCW show, I would not call this a show for teenagers, even though Teenage Rob loved it.

I loved it as a just out of my teenage years person,

a few years out of my teenage years.

But the writing is so sharp

and so clever.

And the central relationship between the character of Keith Mars, who was a former disgraced town sheriff, now a private investigator, and his daughter Veronica, is,

I would say not the number one most important relationship on the show, but it is the number two.

And it is very, very important.

And

it's just, as you said, like the fact that Amanda Seifert is here as like a background guest star throughout season one of Veronica Mars is completely wild.

And the, and the enjoyment that you get out of the guests, the many guest stars who show up on this show

is part of the fun.

The episode we picked today,

season one, episode 14, Mars v.

Mars,

has

Adam Scott.

It does.

Leighton Meester.

A gossip girl pre-union.

Yeah, pre-union.

And

Christina Lockin from Step by Step, which is maybe not as important to other people, but here it is.

Here she is.

And this is a story by Rob Thomas, teleplay by Jed Sadell and Diane Ruggiero, and directed by Marcos Siega.

And it aired February 15th, 2005.

Yikes.

Spoiler warning.

Just big time yikes.

Spoiler warning up through episode 14, I should say.

And in a second, I'm going to make Rob defend why we picked an episode so late in the season.

This is the one where Adam Scott plays a charismatic teacher accused by Lane Meester of having sex with a student and potentially worse, owning black silk bed sheets.

It's not worse.

That's okay.

And this is also the one where Veronica is very wrong until she's right.

And quite crucially for our conversation today, the one where Logan and Veronica really start working together for the first time to find out what happened to Logan's mom, Lynn Eccles, played by future real housewife at Beverly Hills, Lisa Rena.

So that is what we're talking about today.

Rob Mahoney,

14 episodes into season one.

That's like two seasons nowadays, two seasons of

a given show.

How do you defend that we picked an episode so late in the season?

I would say a couple things.

One, look, this is a show that does have a good pilot.

It is a little bit of a Wikipedia entry of a pilot, but it does a decent enough job of setting up all of the major kind of players and mysteries in a pretty economical fashion.

I have a lot of respect for it.

But because it's taking place earlier, and you alluded to one of the most crucial relationships on the show, it doesn't have a lot of Logan as we come to know Logan in it.

Yeah.

And

that is Veronica Mars.

And so it's like, for me, look, there are three reasons why this show works the way it does.

In other hands, it could have been an absolute disaster if it was a little less well-written, if it was a little less well-acted.

Like, it could have been a joke, could have been an absolute joke of a show.

The reason it is what it is.

I think overall, Kristen Bell as Veronica Mars, like that performance has to work.

Enrico Colentoni as Keith Mars

lights out so funny, so endearing.

Their relationship as father and daughter critical to the show.

And Jason Doring as Logan, like that triumvirate is what elevates this from

run-of-the-mill teen show that would be watched and forgotten and maybe memeified in 20 years to one that like you can revisit over and over and over and over.

And it will always feel like an enriching experience.

I'm not sure I'm making my case for this not being a teenage show to say the most important thing about this show is the central love story between two teenage characters.

However, it is a chemistry between two actors so irresistible that it is something that they didn't intend.

They cast Jason Doring to play sort of like a one-and-done kind of guy.

And this is, this might be what Hooked winds up being, which is like the way in which TV, the best of TV, can be a reactive medium.

Yeah.

Right.

And so, and especially in this era when it was 22 episode season, you have a 22 episode season.

They start shooting it and they're like, uh-oh,

Logan and Veronica, that's firecrackers.

And it was episode, I think they say in interviews, episode four, that they figured that out, essentially.

And so they're like, okay, guys,

we're going to take a hard pivot

off of our intended path.

All these other would-be boyfriends, Bencham.

I'm so sorry.

to you, Duncan Kane.

We're going to take a hard right turn and we're going to figure this out.

We're going to pitch it at the end of the season, though, because we want to draw it out a bit.

But that is where we're headed.

And this is the first episode where these two characters are working together.

And

it is just undeniably crucial to the show.

It is part of what makes season one, I think, one of the most perfect seasons of television.

And then I think season two is really strong.

And then...

things are shaky and shakier from there in my opinion.

But

the thing about Logan and Veronica Mars, Logan Eccles, Veronica Mars, is it's a,

when you're a TV creator and you find something that this, that, that is this magical,

it is so hard to know how to use it correctly.

Yeah.

And they did their best to sort of like draw it out, a will they, won't they, find all these different ways in which they could keep that tension going.

And then sort of like similar to famously shows like Cheers or Moonlighting, like once they didn't know what to do with it, the show kind of stalls out.

And not only that, the relationship winds up swallowing basically kind of the rest.

It becomes like a monster to a certain degree.

So that when you get to the part where we're kickstarting a movie, or when you get to the season four reboot that they've done Hulu, all anyone wants to talk about is Logan and Veronica.

That's true.

And that's, uh, you know, it's something that I am like definitely guilty of, but it's something that I like, it's, it's a,

it's definitely a double-edged sword when you find something that is this sort of like TV heroine and then you OD on and are strung out on it.

You know know what I mean?

That frankly like burns that hot that it is all consuming in that way.

And it's very dangerous, not just from a plotting perspective, but for character.

Like any character who you try to make the next boyfriend or the next girlfriend or just like kind of put in that orbit ends up looking really lame by comparison, ends up being hated by comparison.

Like you just have this gravitational pull of the audience that then is,

it does make it hard to do everything else.

I think Veronica Mars overall, as you said, like still has a lot of great success operating within that relationship and somewhat in the shadow of it at times, but it's not perfect.

And there are the times where you really feel the absences of that relationship.

And especially early in the season, when Logan is drawn before that kind of chemistry starts clicking as a little bit more of just like a high school asshole,

the absence of damaged, wounded puppy dog Logan.

Yeah.

Also crucial.

And that's, I think, especially what you get in Mars versus Mars: you're getting a sense of this like very wounded person who then, okay, you're peeling back the asshole layers you're peeling back like the tough guy popular kid into something that more closely resembles an actual person

um i know our our assignment here is to not make it harder for people to get into or enjoy veronica mars but i will say as far as like things you have to come back from and this is an archetype that always works for me it works for me on lost it works for me on both the vampire slayer like it works for me and all these shows these like blonde assholes who show up and then you have to be like oh i see what you're doing here.

You're a character on an arc.

I understand.

I love a character on an arc.

However,

orchestrating bum fights is one of the hardest things a character has had to come back for.

And

that is something that Logan Eccles had to grapple with in season one.

Not his finest moment, to say the least.

But honestly, I think what Veronica Mars really shines is there are a lot of characters who are doing deeply unlikable things, who are enchanted with an incredible amount of like wealth and privilege because they're families and just like are squandering it or immune, like don't have a sense of where they are or belong in the world and are just like operating like impulsive teenagers doing impulsive teenager things.

And the show has a lot of latitude for that, including for Veronica, who, as you, as you laid out in terms of our picking this episode, most crucially, is extremely wrong.

And I think that's another reason why this episode works so well is like

if we're going to set up our precocious teen detective who is incredibly charismatic and incredibly likable, you also have to allow yourself room to understand that she is going to make the kinds of mistakes that a teenager will make.

And what's great about a character like Veronica Mars, because this is a show that has always sort of wanted to be, go as dark as it can possibly go inside of a UPNCW shell and then start

figuring that out.

But it does and it doesn't in that like Veronica Mars is a character,

even as she then goes to college and then we meet her as an adult later in the series, like is always

fucking up and making the wrong choices.

And that is part of her appeal.

So it's not just like teenage fumbling.

It's like she is just an inherently, I charge after the thing I think is right kind of character to my detriment again and again.

And that is honestly fascinating to watch, especially inside of what Kristen Bell does with that character because you're always rooting for her, even though she is quite often making the wrong decisions, you know.

But so you have that fully drawn character in Veronica, who's just as good of a central character as we've seen really of many shows over the last 25 years or so.

You have these core relationships.

I would say, you know, her and Keith and her and Logan in particular really anchoring it and anchoring the episode that we've chosen today.

And then I think the guest star, recurring star element is another reason why I wanted to do Mars versus Mars specifically.

Like the Adam Scott element here as a first-time viewer is like, whoa, Adam Scott's on this show.

And he comes in with an absolute bang as the cool, quote, I say heavy air quotes, cool, fun teacher doing his exercise in history class, almost instantly being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student.

It's like, bam, we are, we are going to very intense places, very serious places.

There's a plot accelerant, and it's with people that you know.

And I think if you run through the list of the people who just like appeared in an Adam Scott-like capacity on Veronica Mars, I would like to read for you some of these names, Joe.

Obviously.

Oscar winner.

I mean, you mentioned Adam Scott, Leiden Meester here.

Amanda Seifreed, obviously.

She's recurring.

She has a secret, a big one.

I'm sure you've heard about it.

Jessica Chastain.

Yep.

Taylor Sheridan, who now also runs the world.

Tessa Thompson, Paul Rudd, Anthony Anderson, Max Greenfield, Army Hammer, Kristen Ritter, and Aaron Paul, you know, just breaking bad all over the place.

Allison Hannigan, Michael Sarah, Aaliyah Shawkat, Paris Hilton, very famously appears in an early episode.

Kristen Cavallari, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Jane Lynch, Diana Agron, our beloved Charisma Carpenter.

A lot happening in the guest starring and returning cast of Veronica Mars.

The Paris Hilton episode, which is episode two, which I did re-watch for prep here, is truly wild.

Like, I was watching episode one, I was like, let's let it run.

I was like, wow, Paris, I remember.

Yes.

I distinctly remember the Paris Hilton episode when it like aired, where we were as a nation, when Paris Hilton was a guest star in Veronica Mars.

Where were we as a nation, Joe?

Oh, it's tough.

It was a really tough time for us as a culture.

A lot of like juicy couture velour sweatsuits on display here.

I think Adam Scott specifically, who like shows up, he had done party down with Rob Thomas, obviously.

So he's like in the family, had yet to do parks and recreation, is rocking some real early aughts hair in this episode,

is perfect casting for this.

Oh, yeah.

Because this is before he was like lovable Ben Wyatt.

And Adam Scott has always done this thing where he's played with like lovability and darkness and all this sort of stuff like this.

And so this idea that Veronica Mars in 2005, an episode where Veronica Mars is just like

immediately on the side of the of the dude, despite being herself

someone who was sexually assaulted and that is a main plot line of the season, but she's immediately like, I'm not going to listen to this young woman who's accusing this dude.

I am on his side.

Her dad has to be the one that like this young woman deserves to be listened to.

And she's like, nope, she's a gossip and we don't have to listen to her.

Team, the teacher didn't do it.

Until the Mick Jagger and the Black Silksheets

enter the conversation.

I cannot believe it.

I mean, of all the improbable things that happened this episode, and an episode of Television I truly enjoy.

Imagine you're Adam Scott and you have just by the skin of your teeth

been absolved of something you definitely did do.

So sorry, Adam Scott's character, Mr.

Brooks, in this show.

Mr.

Brooks.

Okay.

Mr.

Brooks has been absolved of this thing that he definitely did do.

And the teenage girl who helped you get away scot-free comes over to your house and then you try to seduce her.

Try to do the thing that you did that got you in trouble in the first place.

No, no patience, no window here.

Just like immediately, bam, let's put on the rolling stones and get the black silks

down.

Straight to side two.

No hesitation, no shame.

I mean, the hubris of this kind of exact kind of guy.

And I think Adam Scott's portrayal of somebody who kind of like has always has a very innocuous excuse for everything.

Every piece of evidence is levied against him.

It's, oh, it was this.

Oh, it was reactionary parents.

Oh, it was that.

Like, it, again, it's like a very recognizable figure and one that I think as you're watching it, one thing I was blown away by revisiting this episode is like it's pretty clear as a viewer fairly quickly what seems to be happening, which is Veronica being very wrong.

Like Keith is presenting compelling evidence a quarter of the way through the episode that's not quite smoking gun, but like there are serious holes in this guy's story.

And the episode is playing out in parallel.

This is another reason why I think it's a great choice in terms of creating the sort of entry point for people for Veronica Mars is it's this story about Mr.

Brooks and this student.

It's this story about Logan and his mom.

And I think Logan and Veronica on sort of parallel journeys of coming to accept something they really don't want to believe is true.

And I think the way that those are played in parallel, while also here's some Lily Kane murder stuff, here's what's going on with Duncan stuff.

Like there's so many mysteries being juggled at the same time.

And yet, the central stuff never feels like it's getting short shrift.

Like you still feel the push and pull of everything that's going on with Veronica and Keith.

Something that they talked about a lot in interviews in terms of crafting season two is that Chris and Belle is in almost every single scene of season one of Veronica Mars.

And that's true.

And when you look at this story, which has an ABC plot, right?

The Mr.

Brooks sexual

misconduct plot.

You've got the Logan looking for his mom plot.

And then you've got the Lily Kane murder mystery plot, which is burbling underneath the whole season.

ABC plots.

all have Veronica at the center of them.

And in the pilot, which we will talk about in a second in terms of like why we didn't pick it,

has ABCD plots.

That's a lot happening.

All featuring Veronica Mars at the center of it.

So like, this is something the show learns like we cannot exhaust our young actress to this degree in future seasons.

In terms of like, is this a typical episode?

Yes, I would say so.

It is a like the main, the A plot is,

you know, something happening at the school to a student.

That's

classic.

Veronica Mars.

In terms of the characters represented here, as you already mentioned, like, you know, Logan is heavily involved here.

Keith is heavily involved here because it's Mars v.

Mars.

Keith is on one side.

Veronica's on one.

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On the other.

So there's that.

The gang's all here except for Mac, but she was not a main character in season one and Dick and Beaver.

All not main characters.

She's not in the pilot either.

She is like, it kind of on re-watching season one, it's sort of surprising to me actually how little Mac is used because she is such an important to me character

going forward.

And to the internet, you know?

Yeah, absolutely.

The net, as she would probably call it.

Do you have an episode episode and the Honorary Bill Simmons, MVP, who won the episode trophy?

Who would you give it to?

It's Keith Mars.

Yeah.

He's extremely right.

He's on it.

He has a lot of fun.

The girl deserves to be heard.

The girl deserves to be heard.

He is on it.

Like,

we really can't say enough about this performance and this character.

Because yet, again, it's just like one of those things where the show does not function without him in that capacity.

And I think the pilot also does a very good job of setting up Keith as being like very funny.

And like you already get a sense of his relationship with Veronica, but not as effectively as you can over the course of a full season.

It's just, it's not all there yet, but the warmth is there.

I would say that his line in the pilot, which is tonight we dine like the lower middle class to which we aspire, is one of my favorite Veronica Mars lines.

It's very good.

I mean,

the repetition of who's your daddy is also very good.

Like, honestly, every Keith Mars line is a banger and a winner.

And

his own arc throughout the course of the show and this season, as, as you said, a disgraced sheriff who's been run out of that job and run into all kinds of infamy as a result of trying to do his job and sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding,

it could anchor its own show.

And so it's always great to feel like with a show like Veronica Mars, it's like, yes, we are spending so much time at Neptune High, but there is this whole world of stuff happening in the background.

And sometimes that world involves the police department.

Sometimes it involves like high-rise condominiums.

Sometimes it involves, Joe, you and I are deep, neck deep in motorcycle gang culture lately.

It's true.

And it's huge in Veronica Mars as well.

PCHers are very important.

In terms of like picking a scene that, and a scene from this episode and talking about how it embodies the show,

I'm half to pick a Veronica and Logan scene just because of everything we said about that.

And something I wanted to add to that conversation is to say

it's not just that TV itself can be a receptive medium.

It's not just a reactive medium.

It's not just that TV is a reactive medium, especially inside of a 22-episode season.

But Rob Thomas himself in interviews has talked about how plugged in he was.

You know, this comes out in 2005.

Television Without Pity, the

very important TV recap and TV message board website.

Genuinely.

Really starts going in 2002.

And he talked about how he would read it religiously that he was like, in an interview I was watching he would say i was such a slut for it that i would read the message board reactions when the east coast

uh when it would drop on the east coast so that by the time it aired here in california on the west coast uh i already knew how everyone felt about the episode um so this is this is someone who's just like in deep in television without pity culture.

This is a time when showrunners would just sort of like hop on the television without pity message boards.

It was just like a real pivot pivot point in terms of like the power of the fandom to directly interact with the creators.

And so I would say the Logan and Veronica stuff, which comes out of not just something that the writers were observing, but something that viewers were observing as well as undeniable thing

dovestails into

what we get in this episode is we get Veronica and Logan on a case.

There's like, you know, fun banter with them in the police station.

Logan loses his temper.

That's very iconic and classic.

But I would say, again, this is the bum fight guy.

You know, like his temperament is what it is.

When he comes back between, sort of between

we're on the job scenes, there's a, he comes into Mars investigation,

sort of a little contrite for losing his temper, but he comes in swinging with sort of like an STG joke,

says he avoids buildings with stained glass.

They banter about tabloids.

You know, she's like, he's like, this is what I'm paying for.

She's like, I didn't know.

I didn't realize you were paying for this.

Right.

And he says, I mean, we're not exchanging friendship bracelets.

And she says, I'll stop braiding.

Right.

So they're on this like tentative edge of something.

Yeah.

But it's just like constant back and forth between these characters.

That is very like Buff Vampire Slayer Whedon-esque in its nature.

But I think that sort of tentative,

what are we?

Are we friends?

Or is this just a job?

And the fact that he's trying to figure out what happened to his mom, his mom has like allegedly killed herself by jumping off a bridge.

And he says, no way, that can't be true.

Meanwhile, another side plot of this very busy season of television is Veronica Mars trying to figure out what's going on with her mom.

And so it's just like a very, it's a, it's a, they gave Logan a story that would be a key inside of Veronica Mars' sympathies, despite all all the shit that he does at the beginning of this season.

And it works really, really well here.

For her and for us.

You know, I think a lot of it too, like, you know, Logan may not like a stained glass window, but the stained glass of Mars Investigations, the like dancing lights off of the pool outside of Veronica and Keith's apartment that kind of pour in through the windows.

Like there's, these are, they have to reuse the same locations over and over and over.

Neptune High gets a ton of play.

Mars Investigations gets a ton of play.

And yet you bring it some life for scenes like that with the way you dress it up.

And just by just by being a little bit inventive with those sorts of trappings, I think Veronica Mars does that consistently all across the board.

It's like, how do we take something very worn in and familiar?

How do we take this like asshole guy, like very sharp teenage girl?

How do we make that pairing feel different and new?

Now, the actors are bringing all that chemistry that, as you mentioned, was undeniable and irrepressible.

But there's also just the way that they're deployed in the show.

And I think a lot of that comes through here in terms of putting Logan through the paces emotionally of having to confront his mother's potential suicide over and over and over with every new shred of evidence that is saying maybe she did in fact commit suicide.

And like seeing that version of that guy who in the actual pilot is mocking Veronica for her own mother's alcoholism

be worn down by the process.

is just like, that is what you make TV for, like for those sorts of like slow, like pounding the rock gradations of change.

Like that's what it's all about.

That's what long form storytelling is about.

Absolutely.

I do want to mention really quickly, we haven't mentioned, he's barely in this episode, but Weevil, a very important, you mentioned the biker gangs.

I just want to say his line in this episode when Logan.

He almost stole, he almost won the who won the episode with this one line.

He lose a puka shell when Logan storms out of the cafe is just like a top tier.

Look, he lose a puka shell is a top tier commentary on this character you were either there to understand the puka shells or you weren't and if you're if you're too young to understand the i say literal chokehold that the puka shells had on people i i don't think

you're better off i would say specifically the logan echels type a real logan eckles but honestly a duncan kane type as well really really the whole milieu uh i think all the oh niners yeah

um

Do you have a scene that you want to nominate that you feel like sort of typifies the series?

Yeah, I mean, if you're hitting Logan and Veronica, I got to hit Veronica and Keith.

And for me, it is the ink splatter coming out of the cracked safe.

Yeah.

Establishing Veronica and Keith as like, for one, Veronica is exactly the kind of person who would be smart enough to know because of everything her dad has taught her.

Someone's going to write down the combination to basically anything somewhere within range of that thing.

And Keith is smart enough to know that he taught her that and that she will look for it and has established this elaborate bit just as a means to teach her a lesson on something that she should already be picking up on and further kind of entrenching us in the fact that Veronica is so deeply wrong about Mr.

Brooks.

Like she has just been told all this information that should sway her.

She goes to the safe anyway, trying to crack it, trying to get inside this girl who has accused Mr.

Brooks's diary, instead gets, you know, just like ink splattered all over her and yet still.

wants to continue trading notes, still wants to try to prove Mr.

Brooks innocent.

And I think the fact that Veronica is that wrong and that irrepressible at the same time is part of what makes that character so great.

And the fact that Keith just wants to like warn her, but also teach her a lesson with a bit, great dad.

Just great dadding.

Keith has got some great dadding and some not so great dadding.

I would say inside of this episode, a thing that I'm missing in this episode is a scene where Veronica really, really reckons with how wrong she was and how she was unwilling to listen to like a young woman, even though like Carrie Bishop Bishop is covering for Susan Knight and there's all these hoops.

And she does sort of, she sort of apologizes to Carrie Bishop and Carrie's like, fat lot of good.

That does me now.

Yes.

She sort of apologizes to Susan Knight a little bit while pressuring her to report on the case, blah, blah, blah.

And when she sort of apologizes to Keith, which she doesn't really, he says,

if I were in trouble, I would want you on my side, which is just like a very gentle, kind thing to say to your daughter who has been royally fucking up for

many days in a row here.

All right.

I will say, too, Layton Meester, I think, is quite good in this episode.

Oh, yeah.

And she's great.

And all of this, again, pre-gossip girl.

So we're not even coded except by just Leighton Meester's general disposition to read her as like, oh, this is like a, you know, if you'll, again, pardon the just direct rip, but like kind of a gossipy bitch.

Yeah.

But like, plays this really cleanly, really straight in a way that turns out to be like quite sympathetic, obviously, given the circumstances.

But I think it's like a pretty good guest-starring performance from her as well.

I really agree.

Um,

what is the most 2005 thing about this episode?

I have so many curious.

Coco shells aside.

Yeah.

There is a line about that there's a jungle tribe that worships Donald Trump's hair.

That's a line in this episode.

We're just going to throw that out there.

Visually speaking, I do think for Veronica Marr's overall, in terms of the way the show is shot, the very like washed-out, blown-out, blue blue filter flashbacks, extremely early 2000s stuff that we just, we just don't make TV like that anymore.

Which we kind of OD on in the first episode.

Oh, yeah.

If you had to pick one color to represent Veronica Mars,

what color would you pick?

I'm trying to reach for it.

What do you have?

I can't tell if I'm being influenced by the CW logo, but I really do think it's that lime green, which was like so distinctive of the era.

The color of my iMac at the time.

Yes.

It's the color of Veronica has like stained glass on her bedroom window that is that lime green.

That lime green just like pops up all over the place.

I will say the phones in general.

Yep.

I was watching this episode and someone came in while I was watching it and they were aware of Veronica Morris, but they thought it was a more recent show until they like get out the sidekicks or whatever it is, like somewhere halfway through the episode.

And they're like, oh my God, when did this take place?

I also thought it was a more recent show until I looked into the dead expanse of time.

I was like, Whoa, this has been a minute.

It's been a minute.

Uh, there's a weakest link reference in this episode, and it's from somebody who's supposedly cool,

very cool.

Again, there's

a kid rock reference.

And I will say, for the last

10 minutes of the episode, Veronica, Chris, and Bell is wearing the world's skinniest scarf, which is the kissing cousin to the poop shell Shell necklace.

So

that's what I would say is the most 2005 thing about this episode.

The fashion of Veronica Mars is what it is.

I'm glad that by this point in the season, we have gotten away from the pilot era Kristen Bell haircut or Veronica Mars haircut, which was not her best look.

They've settled into something, but it is still inescapably mid-2000s.

There's still like a lot of chokers, a lot of vests, a lot of like weird plaid pants.

There's a lot happening.

A lot of Argyle.

A lot of Argyle.

The note I wrote about her haircut in the pilot is it looks like she had her haircut by an angry lawnmower that was listening to Dirty by Christiana Guillera.

Dirty with a lot of R's in it.

Okay.

How does this episode set up the rest of the series?

I mean, I just would say the Logan and Veronica of it all, obviously, Veronica chasing down incorrect leads is just going to be a hallmark of her entire life.

Carrie Bishop, we should say, comes...

not played by Leighton Meester, comes back in the Veronica Mars movie as a Susan Knight.

um

so you know carrie bishop could have been a a big deal like they wish they could have had layton meester like by that point a lot for carrie bishop so absolutely yeah uh what else would you say it sets up for the rest of the series i think it's just those key relationships mostly like the the early stages of veronica mars in season one are so much more driven by Veronica operating an individual case, chasing other leads, again, with other supporting cast members.

The one person we haven't really talked about who is not represented here just in much volume is Wallace.

Like he's, you know, in the episode, but not really in the episode.

That's that's a, you know, a shame as far as giving you a fair representation of what the show is and like who Veronica's key cast members around her, like what the actual ensemble looks like.

But the core representations are all there.

I would say not just Logan and Veronica, not just Veronica and Keith, Veronica and Neptune and like the broader kind of high school ecosystem is obviously something really important to understand.

I think this episode establishes that stuff as well as any of them do.

The other thing that I had forgotten, this episode ends with an Abel Koontz button, right?

Where Veronica goes to visit this guy who's in jail for Lily Kane's murder.

I forgot how hard they stepped on the Hannibal Elector gas with Abel Koontz.

It's

to the point of even almost doing a Clarice Starling accent.

Accent, yeah.

There's a lot happening in this show.

This is another thing, though.

It's like, if you are looking for television entertainments that are naturalistic in origin and make you feel like oh this is how real people talk this is not the show for you this is a show where an entire gaggle of high school girls know every word to don't stand so close to me this is

like i just all those oh niner girls know every every

single word and that's like that's just what the show is and we're gonna have like line-by-line references to the outsiders you know it's just like there's just gonna be things like that that happen and are really enjoyable and are kind of feeding into the feel of the show but look it's a gumshoe detective show more than it is a high school show.

And it has that sort of like brick superimposed trapping of genre on setting, like the film Brick, that I think works so well here, too.

Wow.

Just a couple of weeks ago, you referenced Looper on the Alien Earth podcast.

Now you're here with Brick

and your Ryan Johnson, Joseph Gordon Levener.

There are worse things to be than a Ryan Johnson shill.

I'm happy to participate.

I will say there's a Brothers Bloom reference coming up on our Prestige TV episode this weekend on the first episode of Task.

So stay tuned for that.

Okay.

In terms of the pilot,

a couple, one thing we should reference.

If you go ahead, if you're like, Robin Joan, I love the show.

I'll watch the show.

I've never watched it before.

I'll go ahead and buy it.

a season of it on on the streaming platform of my choice.

Not just that.

I'm saying you can buy season one on eBay for $5.

I bet you can get it for even cheaper than that, to be honest with you.

And this is what we would advise because the DVD pilot is different from the pilot that streams online.

There is a cold open that I think is kind of crucial for setting the tone that was cut from the original airing and

is it does not exist on the on the streaming uh version of the episode either.

So in discussing the pilot, we should say the cold open that existed on the version that you and I watched is Veronica on a stakeout at the Camelot Motel.

Yes.

She's talking about how she's never going to get married.

She's talking about how sleazy all these people are here having their hookups at the motel.

She's got her calculus book there on the car seat next to her long lens camera.

Very cheeky.

But what Rob Thomas talked about is he was like, I was making a high school show, and the network said it has to start.

If it's a high school show, it has to start at the high school.

So instead, we get...

cut to the first scene after the credits,

Veronica rolling up to

the high school, and she has a voiceover where she's like, some kids work at Taco Bell.

I'm a private detective.

So like everything that that cold open establishes with his context becomes like voiceover.

You know, so I'm just, I'm advocating.

If you still own a DVD player, hunt down the Veronica Marr DVDs for a couple bucks on eBay.

You won't regret it.

I promise.

The UPN executives were not doing us any favors in the battle against pluck.

You know, it's like, it's, it's real tough when you set it up that way.

But again, if you just show Veronica in action, even I can't believe you let Van infect your mind with his pluck agenda.

I really can't.

I don't think he, generally speaking, I have much more of an appetite for it than Van does, but this is a very real thing.

Like people are going to have a somewhat allergic response to just the, just the trappings and the setting of this show.

And if you can get through that, and I think one easy way to do it is show Veronica being something more than just an average teenager.

All of a sudden, now you're cooking with something.

Now you're seeing her.

And I think also most crucially in terms of that cold open, like somebody who can handle herself.

You know,

she's a do-gooder sometimes, she's a troublemaker at other times, but she's somebody who like you can understand her being thrown into some pretty extreme situations, and she can kind of find her way out with the help of a dog and a taser.

I will say that

the

way in which this pilot episode abuses

the flashback and the voiceover

is quite extraordinary on rewatch.

Again, I do like this pilot.

It very deftly weaves

a Logan plot, a Weevil plot, a Cliff plot, you know, all these things together, and a Sheriff Lamb plot.

Like everything sort of like comes in together in the most satisfying little braid you ever did see.

And the PCHers, like everything, Wallace, et cetera, et cetera, is all woven together in sort of like one triumphant knocking over the dominoes moment for Veronica Barrs.

I will say, I do think Veronica would have an easier time in life if she didn't show up to things to gloat.

She does it a couple of times in the pilot, and I'm like, you could just execute your little schemes without cheekily finger-gunning at the people that you have

screwed over.

But who would she be if she did?

You're talking about a fundamentally different character, you know?

Like, if she's not there to say, like, this is my over-the-moon face, like, what show are we even watching?

Um, the tone of all of these voiceovers is essentially, yep, that's me.

You wondered how I got here.

And again, it's trying to tell us a lot about Veronica's best friend

who was murdered, how her father

lost his job, where her mother is, this sexual assault that happened to her.

It's just, it's, it's just shoveling how her social status changed, all these various things.

It's just trying to lift a lot

in the pilot.

It's a lot to try to take care of.

So, yeah.

i do have an incredible amount of admiration for that like how much it is endeavoring to put forth in front of us and you you alluded to the characters like even just establishing like lamb for example pretty clearly in in a very limited amount of screen time

it's something that's very hard to do in a pilot even an extended one and so the fact that they're able to cover that much ground is great i find the pilot to be the kind of episode that like as i am watching it now having seen veronica mars i have a lot of affection for that pilot and i'm like man i just love this show but as putting myself in the, in the shoes or the seat of a first-time viewer, it's like, this is a lot that you're just kind of hurling at me and expecting me to not just like get my bearings, but understand kind of the plotting through lines of what this episode is about.

I think the only reason this worked in a way that it shouldn't be, because now if you show this episode, if you show this season to someone, let's say you don't get all the way to episode 14, but you're like, okay, hang with me for the pilot.

Okay, now we got to get through a parasiltin episode.

It's kind of like episode four is sort of like when you can be like, okay, are you here with me?

But like, um,

I just think it's, it's like the fact that they have Kristen Bell, who will later make a fortune just doing cheeky voiceover work in gossip girl

is what saves the pilot from being an absolute train wreck because she can, she reads the flashback, you know, even when it is something as like, as devastating as the sexual assault of the party

morning after scene with this

just momentum that keeps you going.

But it is, I think, a tough sell for people who have never experienced Veronica Mars.

When I was watching a bunch of episodes to sort of prep for this, the person who wandered in and was like, oh, wow, those phones are sure are old, sort of just like got hooked and sat down and was like, sort of watching it.

And they were like, okay, I get it.

It's fun to watch her do her thing.

And I was like, that is Veronica Mars.

It is fun to watch her do her thing.

It's really good.

And again, to watch like within that Kristen Bell do her thing as, as you're setting up with the voiceover, like there, there are just some performances and some shows where it's like, holy shit, the star power of this person that, you know, found might be a little extreme, but like Kristen Bell was not holding down roles like this before Veronica Mars.

It was very much like a put her in a slightly different light.

Deadwood

guitar.

I love her appearance on Deadwood.

And it plays into some of the sort of like ingenue appearance of naivety that she has like leveraged in almost every six, like all of her great roles since then.

Like, there is a way that Kristen Bell looks and plays against type that I think makes her so dynamic as a performer.

But a lot of kind of her getting more serious dramatic roles starts here.

And I think what's so interesting about the way it has all unfolded is like, even though she and Logan had that chemistry, like the same has not been true for Jason Doring.

Like, he has not had the same kind of arc for her as her, like, even just like

somebody who has kind of disappeared, excepting the Veronica Mars reboot, which he came back for.

I feel like it's been like a curse for him almost.

I don't know.

I will say, in terms of like iconic moments in this pilot,

you're a marshmallow Veronica Mars

is what the fandom eventually is called marshmallows.

Like that's eventually what the Veronica Mars fandom.

So that comes from this, obviously.

The Keith Mars.

Tonight we dine like the lower middle class to which we aspire is from this episode.

Very important.

And you mentioned the outsiders.

That be cool Soda Pop line, which she says to Wallace after he mentions The Outsiders.

I think I thought that was an Outsiders line.

I say that all the time.

And is that not an Outsiders line?

I'm not going to lie.

I also thought it was just a straight up Outsiders line.

Soda Pop is a character from The Outsiders, but if you Google Be Cool Sodopop, you will get Veronica Mars.

It's not from The Outsiders.

But I say that all the time.

If like,

if like a dog is sort of like being antsy or whatever, I'll be like, be cool, soda pop.

Like, it's just a thing that I say that I got from Veronica Mars that I thought I got from the outsiders for a long time.

So that's the way in which

pop culture referential writers' rooms will screw you sometimes.

They think, you know, especially with stuff like, I mean, Veronica Mars is so good at it in terms of the little turns of phrase that just worm their way into your brain and never quite leave you.

And it's like, there are funny shows, there are well-written shows, they're really dynamic and interesting shows that just don't have that kind of stick.

You remember the character, you remember the plot line, maybe you remember like your emotional reaction to a thing, but this is just one of those shows where the writing alone will become like a part of your life as you watch it.

Yeah.

Anything else you want to say about the pilot before we get into sort of like deep, dark, scary spoiler territory?

I think we covered most of it.

I mean, we haven't covered this part specifically, but the opening theme, the Dandy Warhols,

lights out from minute one, just like, okay, we got it.

You know, there's so this.

I feel like I've been subject to a lot of really shitty opening themes or just like really like thoughtless.

Like, okay, here's a placeholder that we never quite got around to putting something else in for.

This is perfect.

It's so good.

It introduced me to the Danny Warhols, which is a great band.

What a gift.

And they show up in a later episode, right?

There's like a karaoke night where Christmas Bell sings.

Again, in the Buffy vein.

It's just like, you just got to have the band on.

Yeah.

Just have the, yeah.

Just invite Nerf Herder to come on.

Anyway,

yes, which I think you don't get the theme song in the pilot.

So that's another way in which it is really missing something here.

Anything else you want to say?

I think we covered it.

I think the pilot overall.

Still a worthy enough place to start.

But as I said, I've had trouble just getting people to watch this show.

And if the way to do it is by hooking Adam Scott or a guest star on and pulling people in through the side door, so be it.

Let's do it.

Clever.

Very clever.

All right.

I want to get into the big time spoiler section because it helps make our point in a way that I feel disinclined to spoil people on.

So this is your warning.

This is, no, we're very serious about this warning.

If you have not seen the show and you're not convinced yet, one, you're wrong.

You, like Veronica, are thinking you're interpreting the evidence here and you are interpreting incorrectly.

I need you to leave and think about what you've done and reconsider your life choices.

Hopefully watch Veronica Mars.

But at minimum, if you've not seen Veronica Mars, don't listen to this section.

We will be back on Sunday Sunday with Bill to cover the first episode of Task, a new HBO series that absolutely rules.

So please come back and listen to that.

And we'll be back with another hooked episode on Lost next week.

I'm really excited about.

So that's a little like tease come back, please, before we get into the spoilers to really give everyone time to

dry the like soapy water off your hands and press stop or pause or whatever you need to do on here.

Okay.

In season four of Veronica Mars.

You've shown

a lot of restraint.

Thank you.

I'm actually, I'm not as twisted up about this as other people are because like, I don't know, when a reboot happens, I'm just sort of like, well, any extra time is extra time.

And that's, that is what it is.

At the end of the eight episodes of the fourth season of Veronica Mars,

Veronica and Logan get married.

And then that same day, he gets blown up and is killed.

Yep.

And the fandom was so mad about this.

The fandom that like sparked back back to life with the Kickstarter for the movie

and just like was really living.

I actually didn't really love that movie.

I felt like it was too fan servicey and very product placementy.

I don't think it's great, but

I do think that they did some great, some good stuff, I think, with season four.

And I think the idea of wanting to return to Veronica as an adult.

having, you know, lived

through the things that she's lived through was a good idea.

Kristen Bell was interested in living in the world of this character.

They killed Logan.

I understand why.

Yep.

Because,

again, that relationship just sort of swallowed the show.

You could not give Veronica another love interest because, you know, our guy Piz can really attest to that.

Like everyone will...

You're telling me off mic, Joe, that you thought Piz was like the one true pairing for Veronica.

Don't try to entrap me.

In your lies, Ramahoney.

But poor Piz, Chris Lowell, a real champ, showed up for the movie.

It's great.

It's kind of great in the movie.

Like, you can't put Veronica with anyone else.

Am I misremembering?

Is he working at this American Life?

Yes, he is.

I think Ira Glass is in the movie.

Ira Glass is in it.

Yeah.

Is in the movie.

Yeah.

That sounds right for Piz.

I think.

I just, I understand that they felt like they had written themselves into a corner.

I just have never seen a fandom turn on a creator.

They were so mad.

I mean, end of Game of Thrones may be comp, honestly, inside of this fandom.

I have never seen anyone as mad as the Veronica Mars fan was that Logan Eccles was killed off at the end of season four.

And then they like, they had planned to make more seasons and they just didn't because the hue and cry was so loud.

And genuinely, I was just trying to Google, like, get interviews of Rob Thomas from season one.

And I was putting in all these parameters in my search term.

And all I could get, I mean, first of all, Google's kind of broken because AI is stupid and wrong, but also just like

I, this the absolute avalanche of articles and interviews about this pop culture event that I was like, wow, I knew people were mad, I just didn't know that it was this deep, and also on like the red, I was like, you know, putting around the Veronica Mars Reddit boards, and a bunch of people are like, the fandom just died after they did this.

And I was, I mean, it's stunning.

So it just really underlines the argument that you were making that the Logan and Veronica relationship, which gets, starts to get its legs under it inside of Mars New Mars, is

the show.

It kind of is the show.

That said, those people were big mad about Logan dying in season four.

I was big mad at them being big mad because I really like season four and I really like the idea of a clean slate Veronica moving like

poker face, but making Veronica Mars.

That's what I was hoping for.

Oh my God.

Like the potential for that with this character, I think would have been incredible.

And I, I, I, for one, I, this is, this is my thing about TV.

I love the reactionary elements that we've talked about where you can shape and guide a show depending on what's working and what's not.

There's also this fact that like things are of their time and some things you have to just like let go of and it's going to be disruptive.

It's going to be controversial, but like sometimes you have to kill off really beloved characters.

And I think having actual stakes and repercussions for the shit that Veronica is getting into is what makes this show good.

The fact that some days she's going to show up to a biker bar and it's like, holy shit, this is dangerous.

Not just like a girl playing at detective is what made the show good.

And so the fact that there are actual costs, I was here for that.

I mean, I'm not saying like the show did that, I think, quite well in season two because I loved the character of Beaver and I was absolutely devastated, personally devastated

at the ending of season two.

So like the show has done it before.

And I agree, like I was actually kind of defensive of the choice in terms of if they want this story to continue and they want Veronica to sort of like be free to do other things and to move and shake and not be in the same cycle of the same relationship.

Yeah.

They had to do it.

And

I,

yeah.

Anyway, Jason Doring deserves the world.

He's so good.

I think Rob Thomas should just create a show for Jason Doring that is just like, which is just like,

just

make it basically Logan.

Just don't even try.

It's fine.

Just have him play basically Logan.

We're all cool with it.

We'd be really into it.

So

he deserves as much as Kristen Bell does a career, I think.

So I do think these cachos and these characters do also struggle with something, which is when you have...

the bad boy, bleached, blonde hair asshole character that we've been talking about all episode.

When you do make him into the like good boyfriend, there is a little bit of a plot vacuum of like, well, now if he's not starting bum fights, what do we have this guy do?

And some of the solution for that for season four is oh we make we kind of dial up some of veronica's mess even more and then he can be the sort of stabilizing contrast piece but then that's getting away from some of the edge that people like in logan in the first place and so it's like there's kind of a no-win situation that develops with characters like that they addressed it a meta way in season four in that episode where he's like he punches a hole in the in the you know, pantry and then they like have rough sex.

And he's like, is this what you missed, this guy?

And she's like, yeah, it was great.

And he's like, I'm going to therapy, man it is in fact what they and she missed i have been going to therapy and she's like i'm not interested so um yeah it's it's a it's a it's a no-one situation but when it was good it was very good and when it was good was season one and i would say season one season two season one perfect season two really good i mean season three to me mixed bag but you know yeah I could be talked into season two being even better.

I think some of the highs might be even higher.

One overall might hang together a little more.

Veronica Mars also has that thing where it's like the longer you go into it, the more certain events are almost like retconned into complications that make it hard to even remember.

Like, wait, who was it that did what?

Was it this person who left the room then?

And this person, like, there's a lot happening that you need to keep track of, and it keeps deepening and changing over time.

It makes it hard to kind of separate one season from another, too.

I think the mystery of season one, who killed Lily Kane, is so good.

And I think the Aaron Eccles reveal is so good that it's hard to top in season two with Steve Gutenberg.

With love and respect to Steve Gutenberg.

I love that.

Steve Gutenberg.

Good's great.

Good's great.

While we're in the broader Rob Thomas universe, the Steve Gutenberg episode of Party Down is just one of the greatest episodes of TV that's ever been made.

Absolutely rock solid.

Very good.

All right.

So, this has been another hooked episode.

We suggest you watch Party Down.

We suggest you watch Veronica Barrs.

Definitely.

We suggest you watch Buffy the Vampire's Lair.

Of course.

You should watch all the things that are very important to us because our taste is perfect.

We will be back, as I mentioned, with with the first episode of Task and also Rob's introduction to the television series Lost.

I can't wait.

I cannot believe I get to talk to you about the first two episodes.

We're going to be doing the two-part pilot of Lost is what we're doing.

I'm feeling a lot of pressure, Joe.

Just as somebody who obviously lost means a great deal to you, I am now on the other end of the like recommending Veronica Mars chain.

I'm really

confident.

I'm really confident, Rob, that you're going to enjoy the pilot of lost.

I hope you're right.

And then we've got two more shows that we plan to do after that.

And then that wraps up our first arc of

Hooked because

Task will be going.

So Horses is coming.

We've got a lot coming this fall.

So we will see you soon.

Press TV at spotify.com.

If you if you have any Veronica Marsh thoughts, oh, I would love to hear them.

If you have any Logan Eccles thoughts,

if you have any lost thoughts for Rob,

no spoilers on those, please.

No, no, no, of course not.

And we will see you soon.

Bye.