Catching Up

Not only did I not catch HBO's Sunday lineup and crash early Monday, but I didn't get a chance to watch anything Tuesday night at all. I blame the government. So I'm going to be playing catch up all week. The Riches, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, and The Shield after the jump.

The Riches: Returning from the funeral, Hugh is flipping out over his missing money, and Wayne's been missing for two days, making him the prime suspect. To avoid suspicion, he says he was gone recruiting a rich investor. So the Malloys go looking for a mark. And they find one in an ex-baseball player/ex-con. Hookers, fast cars, statutory rape, and a sex addict. Cael thinks this guy is the greatest guy ever. Dahlia goes undercover at a sex addict support group with him ("Well the co-pilot was there too"). It takes... oh, about a half a second to hook the guy in ("Good thing I'm ambidextrous!") by playing to his addiction. Very sensitive.

They convince him that Wayne is Dahlia's ex, and that he's about to close a huge business deal that'll make him "richer than God," and he falls for it in a second. The one problem being that they need extra people to pull off the con, so they have to recruit some amateurs who make the whole situation extra stressful, but they pull the con off without a hitch. They managed to steal $500,000, but they're giving it all to PanCo.

In the end, when Wayne says next time they should keep the money and run, he and Dahlia come to the scary realization that they can't run, that they've settled in as the Riches and this is their home now. Best Wayne moment: "You know when you keep something in a hedge? Well, imagine a fund... hedge... uh...."

Gilmore Girls: The season finale isn't far away, and it sounds like it'll be aired before anyone knows the fate of the show, which sucks. It's always best for a show to know it's going to be canceled ahead of time so they can wrap things up nicely. Anyway, on to the show. They totally fooled me with a dream intro, showing Rory in a Chilton uniform made me think I was watching a rerun. Rory's freaking out about her future, having passed on a great job to hold out for a New York Times internship, and the Times later turning her down. I love that Rory had a birthday party at the Mark Twain house, since I didn't grow up too far from Hartford, and as a kid, that was the only museum type place that I thought was cool.


Lane's kids have some sort of lullaby thing playing a little baby version of "Boys Don't Cry," which is very cool in a Lane sort of way. Zack got a gig with some band touring over the summer, and they've agreed to take him and Lane and the kids. But Lane realizes she can't go, with two babies. But even though Zack wants to bail entirely, she insists that he go.

Lorelai takes Rory to a karaoke bar to cheer her up, and after a pretty awesome Culture Club cover by Kirk, Lorelai takes the mic to sing for Rory's gradutation, doing a pretty darn good rendition of "I Will Always Love You." So naturally, Luke walks in mid-song, and it takes on a whole new meaning. They're really laying it on thick lately. Perhaps my favorite moment of Luke and Lorelai's relationship happened in this episode, involving Luke's hat. Lorelai was all excited because she had given him a blue hat, which he hadn't worn since they broke up, but suddenly he was wearing it again. She thought this was a really big sign and was all excited, but in the end, we learn that Luke had dropped his other hat in the dishwasher.

We end on a cliffhanger as Logan gets a job in San Francisco, and asks for Lorelai's permission to propose to Rory. She looks horrified and the credits kick in before she gives an answer. I didn't care for the cliffhanger, but it was a pretty good episode. It's definitely past its prime, but the show's been a lot better lately than it has been the previous year and a half or so.

Veronica Mars: Finally, it's back! A local restaurant owned by Arabs is vandalized, and the owner comes to Mars Investigations to hire Keith, but since he's busy getting his sheriff on, Veronica takes the case. She not only catches the vandal, but she helps the father learn about his daughter's Jewish boyfriend and learn to accept it and get a disturbingly anti-American immigrant deported.

A 19 year old got loaded at a bar owned by Rescue Me's Chief Jerry (Jack McGee), walked outside, and got hit by a car. He had a bad fake I.D., but Chief Jerry doesn't even really care, so Keith is trying to crack down on ID checking. But his deputies mysteriously turn up nothing. Keith visits Chief Jerry's bar again, and finds Wallace and Piz there, checks their IDs, and immediately recognizes Veronica's handiwork (she hooked them up in exchange for them testing drinks for roofies at the frat party a while back). So he gets them to go to a bar with really awful fake IDs (John Bon Jovi and Biggie Smalls) to check on the Deputies, and cans the ones who don't catch it.

A bunch of relationship-y stuff happens later on. Logan's throwing a party for Parker, and Veronica has to act like a grownup and pretend to be over everything and go and be happy. Logan seems really happy though which makes her feel worse and feel even more guilty for feeling bad. Mac's still with Bronson, but it sounds like things are not all that great. She ends up on a couch at the party with Max, the test-selling hooker-loving geek we've seen a few times this year, and they seem to hit it off. Finally, Piz grows some cajones and makes a move on Veronica, which shouldn't have worked but did. It felt forced and stupid.

A fairly interesting case and the usual dose of wit and Lebowski references made it an ok episode, but I'm hoping for a little more for the rest of what hopefully isn't the last season.

The Shield: Gardocki shaved! Just one of several shocking moments this week.

Colette puts strike team on the machete massacre earlier in the season. Hyatt takes the lead and other new guy Julien is helping out. He's got a lot to learn about the strike team, and Vic isn't a great teacher but Hyatt is an excellent mediator, knowing both Vic and Julien's point of view. Dutch can't keep his mouth shut about Hernan, and spills the beans to Hyatt. They head out to Hernan, who tells them not only that the machete murders weren't Salvadoran, but that Guardo didn't kill Lem.

Vendrell gets the crap kicked out of him, and now that Heist is canceled, Mara is back. He got jumped because of Tilly, and Mara finds out and pitches a fit. With the guilt he's carrying, he doesn't care much about the beating or Mara, but Tilly calls his cell and Mara answers, so she kicks him out. He goes on a bender snorting ground up Oxycontin (can you do that? I'm drug-ignorant), and wanders back home, confessing to Mara that he killed Lem, in what would've been an awesome surprise had they not put "I killed Lem!" as the first three words of the commercials that ran during The Riches (thanks, FX!)

Dutch is still on the rape, and a concerned father shows up. Or is he a concerned father? The second he showed up, I thought he might be the guy, and Billings gets the same idea shortly after. They come up with a B.S. excuse to talk to him in interrogation, and one of the victims IDs his voice. He claims to have done it to generate publicity about runaways in the hopes of getting his own daughter's case re-opened. Or something. He was creepy. And he molested his own daughter, just to make it that much weirder. And thanks to the press coverage, he finds out that his daughter's dead.


Carl Weathers makes a return appearance, offering Vic a little off-the-books work that may be a preview of his life after retirement. Since Arrested Development, I have a hard time taking Carl Weathers seriously. I keep expecting him to say "Baby we got a stew going." It wasn't a very important storyline, except I think to make Vic appreciate his job a little more, and to provide a little dark comedy with Weathers' partner's incredibly gross treatment of drug dealers.