Veronica Mars/My Mother, the Fiend

My Mother, the Fiend
Season 2, Episode 9
Airdate	November 30, 2005
Production Number	2T7209
Written by	Phil Klemmer & Dayna Lynne North
Directed by	Nick Marck
← 2x08 Ahoy, Mateys!	2x10 → One Angry Veronica
Veronica Mars — Season Two

My Mother, the Fiend is the ninth episode of the second season of Veronica Mars, and the thirty-first episode overall.

Starring: Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars), Percy Daggs III (Wallace Fennel) (credit only), Teddy Dunn (Duncan Kane), Jason Dohring (Logan Echolls), Francis Capra (Eli "Weevil" Navarro), Ryan Hansen (Richard "Dick" Casablancas) (credit only), Kyle Gallner (Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas), Tessa Thompson (Jackie Cook) (credit only)

and Enrico Colantoni (Keith Mars)

Special Guest Star: Alyson Hannigan (Trina Echolls)

Guest Starring: Alona Tal (Meg Manning), Duane Daniels (Vice Principal Van Clemmons), Tina Majorino (Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie), Lisa Thornhill (Celeste Kane), Kari Coleman (Deborah Hauser), John Bennett Perry (Principal Alan Moorehead)

and Charisma Carpenter (Kendall Casablancas)

Co-Starring: Patrick Wolff (Hector), Terrylene (Mary Mooney), Dwight Ketchum (Skatepunk), James Molina (Thumper), Marcus McGee (Trent), Linda Castro (Mrs. Murphy), Christie Fite (Astrid), Kristin Lindquist (Marianna Mahnovski), Julie Pop (Patty Wilson), John Branagan (Security Guard)

Notes

Mystery of the Week

• Lianne's Seedy Past: After finally being nailed on sneaking into the school and removing private school property, Veronica was threatened with suspension by Vice-Principal Van Clemmons. However, instead of going that far, he sent her to detention, where she was sent to work organizing and filing permanent records. While toiling in the filing closet, she found her mother's file which said that she had been suspended, with Deborah Drummond (now Ms. Hauser), for spreading malicious rumors about another student. However, most of the information was blacked out of the report. After being shot down by Clemmons and Hauser, Clemmons cuts her a break and lists the teachers who were at the school during the incident who are now faculty members. She first confronts the lunch lady, a deaf woman who tells her in sign language that her mother was a "fiend." Seeing this as a dead-end, Veronica goes to Principal Moorehead, who doesn't remember what exactly was said but does remember that Lianne was "vicious." After meeting several dead ends, she meets a friend of Lianne's for coffee where she is overwhelmed with 20 year old gossip. Veronica learns that either Lianne spread a rumor about Celeste Kane being pregnant because Jake Kane left her, or Celeste made up the pregnancy to break up Lianne and Jake. Keith reluctantly gives up details about a Jane Doe baby being left in a bathroom at the prom, a detail which is appears significant when Celeste drops by with her assistant, a 25 year old woman who looks remarkably like Celeste. To find out if the woman really is Celeste's abandoned daughter, Veronica finds the woman's former temporary foster parents. The foster mother tells Veronica that her presumption was totally wrong, the adopted child was none other than Trina Echolls. Veronica and Trina hatch a plan to shame Celeste into going public. But, all of these things are cast aside when Mary, the deaf lunchlady from earlier in the episode signs to Veronica that Trina is her child and that Lianne was not a "fiend" but a "friend."

• The mystery concludes in a completely different way, in that Mary was having an affair with a faculty member and had gotten pregnant. Lianne, mistakenly, went to Deborah for advice about the matter - she spread the story across school. Lianne recanted and said that she made the entire thing up in order to protect Mary. After having the child, Mary left the baby with the father who dumped the child at the prom to avoid suspicion. The father was actually Principal Alan Moorehead and Veronica's uncovering of the mystery was orchestrated by Clemmons to usurp Moorehead's position as Principal.

The School Bus Disaster

• Veronica found the rat that was taped under the bus and blows up at Keith over not telling her that he checked out the bus. She construes the rat as a message to her, that she was the rat.

Felix's Murder

• Weevil admitted that he knows, now, that Logan most likely did not kill Felix. The two are forced to team-up in order to find Felix's real murderer.

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Infidelity: Duncan most definitely cheated on Veronica in a previous episode with Kendall Casablancas. She confirms it by saying she's been in "both of [their] beds."

• The PCH Split: Although one member of the PCH gang commends Weevil for beating up Logan in the bathroom at school, another dismisses it and claims that Weevil was still going soft and that if it were him, he would have killed Logan.

• School Hierarchy: Alan Moorehead has been removed as principal, either on his own decision or as demanded by the school board. Van Clemmons has taken up his position.

• Coma? On a visit to the hospital, Veronica decides to check up on Meg and discovers that she is pregnant. When Veronica leaves the room, Meg's eyes open (see also alternate ending).

Characters

• Kendall: Kendall has been selling off Big Dick's assets left and right to support her high-class lifestyle, which Beaver is not happy about.

• Beaver: To attempt to save his family's face, Beaver has been developing a real estate company that he needs Kendall's help for called Phoenix Land Trust, Inc.

• Meg: Meg is pregnant, this is likely why the parents have been guarding her daily and Duncan has been visiting her so often.

Referbacks

• 1x07 - The Girl Next Door: Lianne's high school past was previously briefly explored when Veronica found a yearbook picture of her mother with Jake Kane while working on an alumni photo project.

• 2x01 - Normal Is the Watchword: The Aaron Echols story that Trina mentions is presumably an adaptation of the book that Keith was wrapped up in during the first episode of the season.

• 2x07 - Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner: Kendall previously threw herself at Duncan when Logan refused to be her sugar daddy.

• 2x06 - Rat Saw God The rat that Keith found taped under the bus makes another appearance in the freezer, Veronica is alerted to the fact that Keith checked out the bus without telling her.

Trivia

The Show

Alternate Ending

An alternate ending to this episode was filmed and made available for download on AOL.com and can be seen on the Season Two DVDs. The new ending took place moments after Veronica discovered Meg's pregnancy. She hears a woman entering the room and she ducks into a hallway. Enter Meg's mother, who turns up Meg's music, reassures her that "everything would be ok." She leaves and Veronica discovers that Mrs. Manning smothered her comatose daughter and fled. A nurse enters and sees Veronica with the pillow, she presumes that Veronica has murdered Meg and yells for security.

Allusions and References

• The Surreal Life: The Surreal Life is a reality series that premiered on The WB before moving to VH1 that plays off of the MTV pioneer reality series, The Real World. In the series, several out-of-the-spotlight former stars are put into a house together where insanity ensues. Many pseudo-stars have been on the series, including MC Hammer, Erik Estrada and Flavor Flav.

Veronica: If Logan's sister is back in Neptune, that means she was the first one booted off The Surreal Life this season.

• Richie Rich: Richie Rich is a fictional comic book character who debuted on Harvey Comics in 1953, he was created by Warren Kremer. The idea behind Rich's character is that he has absurdly wealthy parents and owns "two of everything that money could buy." The comic book spun-off a television cartoon series that shared a time-slot with Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and a second cartoon created in syndication, as well as a live action movie starring Macaulay Culkin.

Kendall: Loosen up, Richie Rich!

• Punk'd: Ashton Kutcher is the host of Punk'd, a reality prank show on MTV where Ashton plays often elaborate practical jokes on his celebrity friends. Incidentally, Veronica Mars' own Kristen Bell was the victim of one of such pranks in the sixth season. In many of these episodes, Ashton Kutcher himself appears at the end of the prank, but more often it's a member of his team who reveals the joke.

Trina: No way. Ashton Kutcher is hiding somewhere, right?

• Pat O'Brien: Pat O'Brien is the former host of Access Hollywood and current host of The Insider. Trina's line about "pervy messages" refers to March 20, 2005, when O'Brien entered rehab for alcoholism as a result of several sexually gratuitous messages left on various co-workers' voicemails from O'Brien.

Trina: It's the least Big Pat could do after leaving all of those pervy messages on my voicemail.

• Machiavelli: Niccolò Machiavelli was a political philosopher during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. He developed several theories for war, most of which stressed that the ends justify the means. He often endorsed extreme measures to satisfy a virtuous end, including extreme violence. The term "machiavellian" is derived from this viewpoint.

Veronica: You read Machiavelli this summer, didn't you?

Memorable Moments

• Veronica discovering Meg's pregnancy at the end of the episode.