Spoilers for this episode below:

Things that happened

Time for resolution! This whole episode is essentially a bunch of reveals and twists for the Dean O’Dell mystery. We go from the Sheriff’s office to the classroom to Mars Investigations to a convenience store outside a strip club to Ernest Hemingway’s favourite little spot in Mexico and back again. It’s a whirlwind of information and all a little too much to make sense of, but let’s do our best.

First, it all looks like Landry did it. The bloody clothes, the lack of an alibi and Mindy O’Dell essentially selling him out as the killer all seem to point in that direction, anyway. Keith arrests him in his classroom and is prepared to throw the book at him (not literally!) but T.A. Tim is so sure that his boss is innocent that he teams up with Veronica to help establish Landry’s innocence.

Veronica and Tim are an awesome team, with Veronica being delightful and Tim being weird and awkward. He wears latex gloves when they break into Botando’s house! It’s so cute. For an instant I was kind of hoping he and Veronica would get together, but those hopes were dashed when, well… — read on.

With a little help from a local stripper who bummed a cigarette off Landry at the same time as O’Dell’s death, Tim and Veronica are able to establish Landry’s alibi and he gets out of jail. Keith isn’t too concerned, because now all the evidence is pointing towards Mindy, who has taken the opportunity of everyone being focused on her former lover to cash in Cyrus’ life insurance policy. Then she buys a nice boat and sets sail for a better life!

But she can’t get away, because Landry, feeling like Mindy has tried to frame him for her murder, takes the opportunity presented by his newfound freedom to find her boat, board it, and take her somewhere where they can have a good, long talk about why it is a bad thing to try to frame the person you’re having a torrid sexual affair with.

Meanwhile, Veronica discovers that Landry’s alibi was not as airtight as alibis involving strippers often are. The stripper was the mother of a young offender, and was blackmailed into saying what she said about Landry. So, well, shit — Keith’s first week as new sheriff has not gone very well.

The bad news continues! Out on the high seas (actually just outside of Hemingway’s favourite resort in Mexico), Landry’s talking with Mindy turns into Landry hitting Mindy and (apparently accidentally) knocking her overboard. She dies and he kind of freaks and hopes that no one will ever find him.

But he is found, as Veronica and Keith manage to gather his location from some photos he kept in his house. Keith heads down South America way to Mexico and finds the boat, finds Landry, who confesses to both having a role in O’Dell’s death and killing Mindy, and arrests him for generally being a dick.

Case closed!

But wait! There’s still ten minutes left. And in that ten minutes Tim takes over Landry’s class and man does he bomb hard in his first solo lecture. Goaded into talking about his boss’ case by the class, he ends up telling a story with so many holes that Veronica gets suspicious, finds out that Tim’s been bugging her phone and realizes that, hey, Tim is the one who actually killed Dean O’Dell.

Thankfully, he goes down peacefully and does not try to shoot, rape or light Veronica on fire, which has got to be a nice change for our young teenage detective. He is simply arrested and finally — finally! — this case is closed.

And somewhere between all of this happening, Logan decides he will start dating Parker.

Things that were good

• The reveals always make clear this show’s strength. They’re always rational and surprising, which is really difficult to pull off. I figured out that something had to happen when they arrested Landry with ten minutes left, but I didn’t start suspecting Tim until right around the time Veronica did. That’s nice writing.
• The last scene featured some really nice acting from T.A. Tim. I can see now why the actor has played two different characters on the show.
• Keith as the sheriff is awesome. I miss Lamb so much, but we’ve seen so little of Keith in uniform over the years that it’s a really nice change. I hope it sticks.

Things that were not so good

• One of the drawbacks of the shorter mysteries is that these reveals are never going to have the same weight as the ones that happened after a whole season of build-up. While everything made sense, there weren’t any gripping moments like those I loved in earlier seasons. It felt more like a really good extended one-episode mystery than a big, stirring, emotional arc of a mystery. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do miss the big ones.
• Even the first mini-mystery of season three had Veronica in peril for a little bit. There was no danger in this episode — I kind of like it when Veronica gets a gun pointed at her.
• Logan and Parker? Really?

Worth Watching if…

If you haven’t seen all the episodes leading up this one, this episode is a confusing mess of plots and counter-plots. On the other hand, if you have been following the lead-up, this was a satisfying pay-off, though nowhere near the level of what we’ve come to expect with this show. Not bad, though. Not great, either. Just Good.

In Five Words

Professor Lasky That’s Not Ethical

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