And even bigger yay:
Show Me the Monkey. Attempting to keep her mind off Logan (Jason Dohring), Veronica (Kristen Bell) takes a job helping animal researchers track down a monkey missing from their laboratory. In order to find the missing animal, Veronica and Mac (Tina Majorino) go undercover as members of an on-campus animal rights group, believed to have freed the monkey. Meanwhile, Mindy O’Dell (guest star Jamie Ray Newman, "E Ring") asks Keith (Enrico Colantoni) to investigate Dean O’Dell’s (Ed Begley, Jr., who does not appear in the episode) death because she believes he was murdered. Percy Daggs, Francis Capra, Michael Muhney, Ryan Hansen, Chris Lowell and Julie Gonzalo also star. Nick Marck directed the episode story by John Ebrom and teleplay by John Enbom and Robby Hull.
Let’s hope the animal rights activists are painted with a more subtle brush than the feminists of the last arc. And also that the show’s chances for another season aren’t signaled by what will apparently be an 8-week hiatus following this arc for some reality show called Pussycat Dolls.
Apparently the story is just that–another break (although I thought it was 6 episodes of the what’s-their-faces), followed by the final five episodes, which will be essentially stand-alones without an overall arc. Might be disappointing, might be interesting . . .
I won’t feel in the clear until it gets an official pick-up for next season. Fingers crossed. I’m hoping the fact CW has NOTHING will save it.
You would never house that monkey in a cage of that size.
(Or type.)
(Okay, shutting up now.)
And you would never house two college students in a room of that size!
The lucky dogs.
Also, my early money’s on TA Tim as the killer.
Maybe too obvious, but gotta start somewhere.
I believe this episode can be summed up with YAAAAAAAAAAY Mac!
I think all I have to say is MAC!!!
Well, that and Piz likes Neko Case, which is awesome.
Mac! Monkey! Canada jokes!
I think Oscar killed the dean. That monkey was just too cute not to be up to something sinister.
I liked this episode a lot better than the last few. I have been saying that a lot lately. I wonder if the break just left me wanting more or if it actually is getting better (or getting back to what I like). I liked how the professor shot down Keith and I like how they used Veronica’s paper as a blueprint for the murder. I’m not looking forward to yet another Veronica/Logan blowup next week. I’m a bit sick of that. I either want them together or apart. It’s tiring…
I liked this episode, but since I saw it I’ve been trying to work out why it felt so out of step with the show’s general tone, and this morning it finally hit me – after the high-octane intensity of the rape arc, it’s a little strange to watch a story so disconnected from the main arc mystery. Especially one in which the mystery is so heavily invested with an allegorical relationship to Veronica’s personal life. I realize this isn’t the first time the show has done either, but I wasn’t expecting it.
I suspect that the moderate animal rights group was a direct response to the rape arc’s militant, personally-motivated feminists, but as much as I enjoyed having my expectations confounded I can’t help but wish that the episode as a whole had been a little more ambiguous about its sympathies in the animal experimentation debate. At the very least, I wish the ‘pill for fat people’ line had been cut – that’s just a hop and a skip away from saying that there’s no point in researching AIDS drugs because people with that disease should have used a condom.