“Post-game Mortem” spoilers below.

Things that happened

This episode sees the long-awaited return of Veronica’s old supporting cast, as we get appearances from Wallace, Weevil, Dick and Lamb. The new-school cast (Parker and Piz) are probably off trying to get laid and reeling from unintentional rejection, respectively. And, Mac, well — I like to think she’s got some weird meta-textual pun-based relationship with Justin Long happening off-screen somewhere.

The mystery of this episode supposedly revolves around one of Wallace’s basketball teammates, the son of the coach, who is implicated by Sheriff Lamb in the killing of his dad. Since Coach Dad was found on the side of the road near a PCH hang-out, Keith and Veronica initially suspect the PCHers, but with a little help from Weevil, Veronica’s able to prove it wasn’t them. Further investigation points to the kid — Josh — being the most likely suspect after all, meaning Lamb might be right for the first time in recorded history. Josh ends up in Neptune County Jail, where Veronica slips him some cookies which Josh then uses to… escape somehow? It’s all a bit confusing, but Veronica ends up with cuffs slapped on her for aiding an escape. And before we can find out more, the episode goes all To Be Continued… on us.

All that, though? That’s minor. The real movement in this episode comes in the other two plot lines. The first sees Logan, still moping after his and Veronica’s seventeenth break-up, befriending a little girl who has come to live in his hotel room for a couple of days. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. They play Mario Kart: Double Dash and talk about life and love. I enjoyed the hell out of it, but that’s pretty much because playing Mario Kart: Double Dash and talking about life and love was like my hobby in university. In the end, Logan learns a lot from the little girl, and she learns a lot from him, specifically that Nick Lachey’s “What Hurts The Most” is not a cure-all to relationship woes. Though, really, Lachey himself could have told her that.

In the second major plot line, Veronica and Keith make some movement on the Dean O’Dell murder, finding evidence in the Neptune Grand that points the finger pretty squarely at Mindy and/or Professor Landry. Mindy ends up firing Keith, but after Veronica finds out that the Dean wrote a really nice letter of reference for her, the two Mars declare that this whole mystery just got personal. Because, really, there’s no quicker way to endear yourself to Veronica Mars than by telling her that she is more awesome than anyone else you know or have ever met.

So Veronica’s in jail! We’ve got our first major red herring in the Dean O’Dell thing! Wallace still alive! How will all of this play out? We need to tune in next week.

Things that were good

• The Logan story. Somehow Logan Echolls makes being depressed fun to watch. Generally a precocious child is a bad ingredient in an episode soup, but it worked pretty well here, but, again, I’m not sure how much of that was because of the Mario Kart.
• Dick getting married in Vegas was a cute little subplot, even if I could do with some more pathos from this character. His brother was crazy!
• “What Hurts The Most” was perhaps the laugh-out-loud moment of the season. Brilliantly done, both because they got the rights to the actual song and because it was indicative of the kind of writing for children characters we so rarely see. Kids are usually portrayed as sweetly dumb or wise-beyond-their-years, with little-to-no-overlap. This kid was just kind of a moron, in a way that kids are.
• The movement on the mystery was nice. This feels a lot more like an old-fashioned murder mystery arc than any of the other big mysteries in this show, and that’s a nice change. I’m glad that we probably won’t need any dream sequences to figure this one out.

Things that were not so good

• Mystery-of-the-week was not all that compelling, but as it was hardly the focus of the episode, that’s a minor complaint.
• Similarly, Veronica being thrown in jail seems pretty played out at this point, but I can’t hate it too much since it means we’ll get more Lamb next episode.

Worth Watching If…

You love Veronica Mars. This was one of those episodes that the network probably hates, because it was all about continuity and didn’t even feature even a little bit of self-contained resolution. But it’s hard to care, since I’m not new to the series, and the continuity stuff is what made this series awesome in the first place.

In Five Words

Riding High on Rainbow Road