Whoa!

Did we ever see the limo driver?

(Now wishing that there were a set of Season 2, Part 1 dvds. . .)

Curly could have been the limo driver. Interesting spec.

I don't think Curly killed anyone, though.

Was she Maureen?

(Was it Maureen? I mean the new, pretty girl, who befriended the Geeks, and went to the ribhouse with them, etc.)

Yes.

I guess Beaver or Dick or Gia would have mentioned that Curly drove the limo when they were interrogated by Lamb, though.

Yes, she was Maureen. I didn't notice either, and if she had been Cindy Sanders I would have noticed because Natasha Melnick is WAY hot. (Though, admittedly, she apparently has short blonde hair now according to IMDB and I might not know her at all.)

I liked this ep a lot, too. Maybe not as much as the last one, but it was solid. if the entire season had been like these last two, I would be as deep into it as I was last season, instead of coasting along.

It's been confirmed, but yeah, Maureen. (And Natasha Melnick sounds like quite the stoner on the DVD commentaries.)

I don't know if I made it clear, but I liked the episode, too, even though they don't do dream sequences with the flair of, say, Buffy or the Sopranos. Points for effort and for keeping the plot moving along in interesting ways.

bald guy is Curly. it makes sense. Weevil does not make sense.

Lucky is James Jordan. he hasn't been in a whole lot of things. CSI, Cold Case, Over There, and Close To Home.

I couldn't resist looking at the episode cast for the next few eps while i was at imdb. i'm so excited for the final four eps. i can't believe we're already down to the final four. crazy.

Okay, I've been thinking about the bus crash all morning. (What? Not like I'd actually *work,* or anything....)

First, why does Veronica keep coming back to the idea that the bus crash was All About Her? I feel like I'm missing something there -- at the end of last night's episode, what made her go back to thinking that *she* was the target? I honestly don't get that.

As for who was behind the bus crash, the biggest question here is Who Benefits?

Or, rather, who benefits from a bus full of dead kids? Was there someone on the bus who was enough of a threat/liability/whatever that it would be worth the collateral damage of killing all the other passengers?

Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe the bus was never meant to go over the cliff. It's what Cervando said in Veronica's dream about the bomb killing only the driver, and not the passengers. I don't think that means that the driver was the target, though -- maybe whoever planted the bomb didn't expect that it would *kill* the driver, just that it would cause the driver to swerve and crash the bus. But not to go over the cliff.

That's just a thought. Because *almost* everyone's motives could be accomplished by rigging the bus to crash and scare the crap out of the passengers, rather than by killing them. You know, a threat to make sure to keep the target(s) in line.

So. Who would have motives for crashing the bus (but NOT sending it over the cliff), and why?

(1) Woody Goodman, for a LOT of reasons. It's possible that he was the target of the "outing to end all outings," or whatever the quote was. His creepy trip to the weight room with Logan suggests that he might just be fond of young virile men.

(In fact, Logan's essay on freedom was taken from Easy Rider -- Woody may very well have picked Logan's essay not because of the essay, but because he wanted *Logan* to be his buttmonkey intern. Why else would RT have Veronica bust Logan on his essay? To make us, the viewers, wonder why the mayor would pick a winning essay that was cribbed from a movie. That just ain't right.)

So maybe the dead gay student whose name I can't remember was going to out Woody. In Veronica's dream, dead gay student asked her "Why would *I* go to a baseball stadium?" (Which is a bit of a stereotype, but again, it tells the viewers something.)

Woody is the one who invited the journalism class. And he invited *only* the journalism class, which meant he knew what students were going to be there. Including Dead Gay Student. So he plans it so that the bus will have an accident, as a way of telling Dead Gay Student that he'd better keep his mouth shut.

A side benefit to Woody is that, given that all the 09-ers (except Meg) didn't take the bus back, he had to know there would be rumblings about class issues. And rumblings about class issues could actually help his pitch for incorporation.

And finally, a bus full of high-school kids, which should have included Veronica, crashes. What better way to convince Keith Mars to run for sheriff? Woody was pretty insistent that Keith run, remember. (Hmmm -- *that* is actually a reason why the crash would have been about Veronica. Interesting.)

Add in the fact that there's C4 stored at his hangar, and the fact that he told Gia not to take the bus back, and he looks big and suspicious.

(I also can't help wondering if Gia was in on it -- not in a plan-to-kill-students way, but in a bus-crash-without-fatalities-will-help-Daddy's-campaign way. Her reaction at the crash site was sort of overly hysterical, which I had attributed at the time to bad acting and/or the fact that her character was supposed to be a histrionic ditz. But the way she exclaims "They're all DEAD!" makes me think -- how does she *know* that, at that moment? Granted, she very easily could just be in hysterics b/c she just saw a bus with her classmates go over a cliff. That's entirely possible. But I just wonder. Gia was in the limo behind the bus, and could therefore was in an ideal spot to keep track of where the bus was, and either (continued...)

( continues...) set off the bomb, or let Daddy know, so that he could set off the bomb. And if that's the case, and she was expecting the bus to crash but not go over the cliff, the hysterics make sense, because she wasn't expecting people to *die,* you know?)

Likelihood: for Woody's involvement in general -- HIGH; for Gia playing a role in the crash -- MEDIUM.

(2) Dick Casablancas. Not big!Dick; little!Dick. We know that the PWT girl he was banging really wanted to get pregnant, and he admitted that he had unprotected sex with her. Maybe she got pregnant, and he wanted to scare her into leaving him alone. Or maybe she *didn't* get pregnant, and he was tired of her, and wanted to scare her into leaving him alone.

He knew his 09-er buddies would be off the bus; he's the one who suggested they take a limo back to school, right?

Or possibly Dick was the target of the Big Gay Outing to End All Outings. It seems like clues have been dropped all season that Dick likes....dick. We know that there's at least one gay Neptune High student who doesn't want his/her identity revealed. There was the mysterious weirdass "Sally" reference after the tranny incident at the carnival.

Or possibly both -- all the girls Dick's been with could easily be his attempts to establish his straight cred, and PWT girl could have been one of those girls, only she wouldn't stop bothering him. Combined with Dead Gay Student threatening to out Dick, and Dick's careful plan to get his buddies off the bus, we have a candidate.

Dick isn't as stupid as he looks.

Likelihood: MEDIUM.

(3) Kendall Casablancas. We found out at the end of last night's episode that Big!Dick took out life insurance policies on Dick and Cassidy just a little while before the bus crash.

This one doesn't really work, though, because at the time of the crash, Kendall and big!Dick were still together, and big!Dick hadn't been busted by the SEC, thus making Kendall poor. Timeline-wise, it doesn't work.

Likelihood: Eh.