Maude Manning

Well, now Veronica has a new mission, conveniently assigned to her by the late Meg. I can't take much credit for picking Meg for death since I did list four other candidates. Of course those others were just filler ;) For whatever reason, I was thinking a lot about this episode of "Homicide"--should have trusted my instincts. Of course when I saw Max Greenfield (a/k/a T-Rex-Arms) in the credits, I thought they might actually do the thing I said would be lamest of all.

Ah, Logan and Daria. He has good taste, as we know, although no one who owned the jacket from "Weapons of Class Destruction" would ever take tonight's jacket out of his closet. The character of Veronica certainly owes as much to Daria as to any other fictional high schooler I can think of, although of course this never occurred to me before tonight.

Silly MotW with holes even David E. Kelley could drive a truck through. At least they didn't have high-speed Internet access right there in the jury room, although that would have let the jury more efficiently consume evidence not introduced at trial. I guess the whole MotW was to set up how they will continue the show in Neptune after V graduates.

I would like to see a higher caliber of MotW, or a move away from the MotW device. "Twin Peaks" didn't get bogged down with an MotW structure. There are enough good characters on this show that we could follow a few more of their activities even if it means less screen time for KB. She can be the dramatic and moral center of the show without us having to see her solve a mystery--any mystery--every single week.

It's a repeat next week. Drat.

Not only is it a repeat but we are facing a 5 week hiatus. Plenty of time to review the plot so far. Not really a surprise that Meg dies - especially after her "if something happens to me" speech. Anvil. I'm overly concerned about V's lack of reaction to Donut's behavior. He doesn't tell her he's visiting Meg in the hospital, he doesn't tell her his mother is coming for a visit, he doesn't tell her Meg's pregnant...and V manages to let it slide. Contrast that reaction with what she would do if Logan had done all of those things. All hell would break loose.

Logan's jacket wasn't that bad. I miss 'Daria.' That was such a good show. Poor Logan. It was nice to see some good interaction between Keith and Logan.

Oh, man. Hiatus. I don't pay attention to these things until they are upon us. Overall, a far weaker lead-in to a hiatus than "An Echolls Family Christmas," but what wouldn't be?

I liked the return of Wallace. Very sweet. I wasn't thinking I'd be so glad to see him.

I feel like the VD relationship is just dragging on because the writers have been busy with other things and just haven't gotten around to killing it. But they are at least avoiding a writerly version of the sunk cost fallacy, not pouring good "money" after bad into developing that as a viable relationship. They do need to kill it soon or it starts to mess up Veronica's character development--as in, "this girl woudn't be putting up with that."

Further great lines from Dick. The nice thing about this show is that they don't feel the need to set up or connect the dots on everything--they are comfortable just throwing in a reference to "crazy Chinese pyro guy" and trusting viewers to fit it into place.

Kelly green and khaki . . . not a favorite of mine.

I'm a little fearful of going to the TwoP forums right now because they will be clogged with "OMG--Shirtless Lamb!!!" posts.

Maude Flanders?

I'm oddly not that interested in speculating about who dies on VM tomorrow, because I suspect that at the end of all the "someone in Veronica's world is going to die" build-up, they will end up killing off a truly peripheral character as "The Simpsons" did with Maude Flanders.

However, here are some possibilities, in order of increasing lameness:

• Trina Echolls - she's had her moment of closure, AH can't keep popping in forever, and Logan can always use another awful experience in his life.


• Aaron Echolls - see the last two points about Trina.


• Meg Manning - this seems unlikely, but maybe she wakes up, says her piece and then dies. Might be convenient, and they could have one of those clichéd TV moments when someone goes to see her at the hospital and finds the room empty, or with a different patient in it, and some nurse tells them that Meg unexpectedly died.


• Meg's mother. She really only needs one creepy parent, right. This would be a very Maude Flanders moment.


• Deputy Leo. How lame would it be to bring back a character from last season and kill him off in cynical ratings ploy?

Basically, it's no fun to speculate because it could be any number of characters and is almost sure to be a fairly minor one.

I'm going with Meg's younger sister. That way they can bring in the Sheriff Lamb had an abusive father angle...