Tuesday Night TV

No House, American Idol fever is sweeping the nation (except for everyone I know), but still plenty going on. Highlight for spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: Logan's business goes bust and he instantly turns back into his former jackass self. So if the series wraps up this year, not everything might be all happy happy. But the rest of the stuff is headed in happy directions. Luke and Lorelai had a bit of a moment, Rory had a meeting with a New York Times guy (A.J. Abrams is a weird choice of names... maybe he was late to coffee cause he was Lost?), Lane is going to have her twins, and Sookie will shoot out a kid before long, too. And a decent amount of Kirk, but he wasn't as funny as normal. Blah episode, as they mostly all have been this year.


• Veronica Mars: Sadly, this is the last episode for a while. The reality competition show "Who wants to be an anonymous dancer dressed like a harlot in a crappy pop group?" also known as The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll will be taking VM's timeslot. But I was super excited about this episode, expecting the Dean's murder plot to be wrapped up.
  
  So the Dean shows up at Hank and Mindy's hotel room, which we already knew but Keith just found out, and threatens to divorce his wife and ruin Hank's career. The thing that stuck out here is the random mention of Landry bedding random co-eds... it could be that this was just a character detail, but it felt like it might be significant.
  
  Hank claims an alibi that he went to buy smokes, and that an anonymous woman (who they're very careful not to show, so you know it's important) can confirm it, if only we knew who she was. Tim the TA guy looks all kinds of guilty when the cops show up to arrest Landry, but when Landry asks for help, Tim is all over helping him, and Veronica agrees to help him out.
  
  While they follow the smoking lady lead to a bunch of strippers, Mindy cashes in insurance and buys a boat, looking super guilty. The stripper turns up and Landry gets released, V&T find the recording of the pre-murder phone call (and a rather amusing second one of Landry dumping on Tim). And Landry takes off, turning up on Mindy's boat.
  
  Veronica and Tim, or rather Ms. Crockett and Mr. Tubbs, start chasing down leads, and soon discover that the mystery stripper turns out to be the mother of a hoodlum on whose juvie board Landry served.
  
  Crockett and Tubbs show off some rather insane knowledge of license plates in trying to track down a cabin, but Keith out-sleuths them with street smarts and traces them to Cabo. When he shows up on the boat, Landry admits to trying to cover for her, swapping the Dean's keyboard with Botando's, and that he accidentally killed her.
  
  This seems all too easy. Tim takes over Landry's class, Veronica becomes the TA. And... as the resolution seems to go on too long, Tim starts talking, I got the feeling he was about to out himself as the real killer. Veronica picks up on the fact that Hank never had time to call the fake stripper, finds the bug in her phone, Tim says something he couldn't know, and there we are.
  
  Some Logan/Veronica/Parker drama was thrown in, too, and... who cares? One of my favorite moments, possibly ever, was when the stripper asks "Do we look like we smoke?" and Tim thinks carefully before saying "yes."
  
  Not an entirely unpredictable end to the mystery, but still, a fun ride. After last week's Lamb shocker, I'm cool with a few less surprises. Plus, we close on a nice Keith/Veronica moment.

Still on the Tivo: L&O's CI and SVU.