Veronica Mars. S01E06.

I loved the all-too-limited detective banter between Veronica and her dad, the homage to the gumshoe genre was just great.

This episode really makes Duncan look good; not only does he transcend clique-consciousness in Veronica’s flashback, but he makes the election results palatable to all involved. Logan, however, ends up seeming even more like demon spawn. Fortunately, we get to meet his dad and confirm that, yes, Logan’s ancestry really is demonic in origin. I was quite conflicted by the whipping Logan received. On the one hand, his impish grins deserve some form of punishment. On the other, he got his punishment for doing something that I thought was rather fitting. And what’s with the mother’s half-smile?

Of course I liked Wanda at the beginning. But, after she stepped on the pizza, there wasn’t a lot about her character that was particularly appealing. I do not see, however, what is so terrible about being a narc. On the one hand, I had enough class solidarity in high school not to tell our teachers when I knew some of my classmates had been smoking pot. On the other, if I had told someone, perhaps they wouldn’t have continued until they got into serious legal and personal trouble.

Now it’s time to get nitpicky. Television shows never represent computers well and it’s sad to see a show that otherwise does a decent job with verisimilitude failing so dismally when it comes to depicting computers. The software Veronica uses to organize her cases is just pathetic. It takes the folder metaphor far beyond its usefulness. Why can’t they just show a normal database? I mean, most Americans use computers daily and pretty much everyone in this show's target audience should realize how slow and unwieldy that interface would be.

To end, here’s a couple things I liked. The teacher in charge of the elections is the actress from A Mighty Wind, Forty Year Old Virgin, and Arrested Development. She’s awesome if a bit limited in this role. Second, the character I’ve always been most attracted to on the otherwise worthless Smallville is Chloe, the cute blonde investigative reporter. Veronica Mars is like giving Chloe her own show, cute, blonde, intelligent investigator who happens to still be in high school, but now with much more believable mysteries to solve.