Spoilers for “Un-American Graffiti” below.

Things That Happened

First of all: oh my god. Veronica Mars is back. I had completely lost all hope in it ever returning! I was taken completely by surprise when I learned that an episode had aired last night. I had convinced myself that the ratings success of The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll (seriously, awesomely concise title for your show, guys) meant the forever end of our lovable teenage detective show.

So is Veronica Mars’ return also a return to form? The answer is, not too surprisingly, sort of! But not really.

The episode begins with visual confirmation that Logan and Parker are, in fact, an item. Obviously a significant amount of time has passed since the whole Dean O’Dell mess, as Logan’s been dating Parker long enough to be throwing her a great big birthday bash with all their friends. This is a very un-Logan-like thing to do, a fact that only weirds Veronica out and makes her feel even more conflicted about their break-up. And, is she EVER conflicted, as there are awkward moments left and right throughout this episode during which our girl detective does everything she can to think of an excuse not to attend Parker’s birthday party.

Meanwhile, there’s also a mystery. It involves the only middle-eastern family in Neptune and the fact that their restaurant was recently vandalized. The clues take Veronica (and the viewers) through a couple of red herrings — one of which involves an entirely awesome Pulp Fiction reference — but eventually takes us to… some random guy. He’s an eagle-shirt-wearing redneck type, made three dimensional(ish) by the fact that his brother was shot and paralyzed in Iraq. It seems that, coupled with some vaguely anti-American cartoons passed out by an employee at the middle-eastern family’s restaurants, has caused him to view spray painting racial slurs as somewhat justifiable.

The owners of the restaurant are given the option to press charges against the kid, but opt not to. Instead, the father visits the kid alongside his wife and Veronica to deliver a rambling speech about the true meaning of America. It is probably the worst scene in this show’s history.

In our B-plot, Keith tries to stamp out underage drinking in Neptune. It is exactly as complex and interesting as it sounds. He eventually uses Wallace and Piz as pawns — after previously catching them with fake IDs — to reveal that his officers aren’t putting any effort into checking IDs at bars. So he fires a whole bunch of them. He is kind of insane.

In the end, Veronica’s got no reason not to attend the party. So she does, recruiting Mac, Wallace and Piz to go with her as protection from awkwardness. At the party, love is in the air. Mac is hitting it off with Max, who we met in Episode 11; they’re both similarly-named and like to exploit people! Dick is doing his damnedest to bang two girls he met on myspace. And Wallace is doing quite well with a pool shark he and Piz met at the bar (before the whole fake ID thing came up).

Most striking of all, though? Logan is being all I-am-an-amazing-boyfriend while Veronica is unable to find anyone to be with. That is, of course, until she encounters Piz. After Wallace tells her that Piz clearly has a crush on her, and that Veronica needs to let him down easy, Veronica does the exact opposite of that, making out with the dopey but lovable guy twice.

And the second time she does so in front of Logan. Oops. That’s how we fade to black.

Things that were good

• Well, let’s put it right out there: this was not a good episode. By any means. But it was still nice to have the show back again. Just listening to these characters talk reminds me how much better the writing is on Veronica Mars when compared to most other shows out there on television now. I love the dialogue on this show, even in bad episodes.
• The party scene was pretty excellent and, despite myself, I find myself liking the Veronica and Piz thing. It just might be crazy enough to work.
• We had all of the credited cast in one episode! Well, minus Weevil. And Lamb. Tragically.

Things that were not so good

• Oh man. Two major plots this week and both of them suck. I’m not feeling too good about the lack of an extended mystery running through these final episodes. It’s totally possible for this show to pull off a great one-off mystery — it’s done just that lots of time — but the nice thing about the mystery arcs was that, even when the self-contained mystery was disappointed, you still had the bits relating to the overarching plot to keep the episode interesting.
• Seriously, that speech about America? What the hell was that? It came out of nowhere and it didn’t even really fit with the scene or the character or the show, even. Really ridiculously bad.
• Also, maybe this is just a perspective thing, but it’s hard to emphasize with a character trying to stop 19-year-olds from going to bars. I mean, yeah, I guess that’s what I’m used to, living in a place where the drinking age is 19, but, even if they ARE using fake IDs, I can’t buy that drinking at that age is inherently any more dangerous than drinking at 21.
• That Dick subplot felt like it was imported over from some other CW show. A much much worse one.

Worth Watching if…

You missed Veronica Mars as much as I did. Sure, this was pretty all-around terrible, but it was still great to see these characters again, and I have faith that the rest of the episodes leading up to the season/series finale will bring back some of that quality plotting we know and love.

In Five Words

Dare You: Say What Again

Be Sociable, Share!

•