Or the other journalism teacher from last year, who got fired for not sucking in that one episode!

Hey, I'm behind this one. With a voice like that, Joey Lauren Adams has got to be evil.

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With the three vehicles on that same stretch of cliff at basically the same time, can we be sure that the bus, and not the limo or the Fitzpatricks car was the target? If the bomb was in the prize thingy, I'd say so. An d Woody telling Gia not to get back on the bus is definitely suspicious. But if we're discounting Woody as too obvious a candidate for the Big Bad, then the timing of all three vehicles is suspicious, even if one of them is where the call for the bomb came from.

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I'm starting to get the niggling sensation that something is wrong with this whole question, for the simple reason that crashing the bus is a VERY complicated method of murder for a single victim.

I think that's why I think of Big Dick and some other sort of grudge that may well have been personal in some way, but isn't personal to the victims themselves. It actually would fit well with 09er sensibilities that the victims just didn't matter.

Even if the death needs to look like an accident, somebody with the kind of abilities necessary to engineer this feat could surely come up with some easier, single-murder method to get rid of one victim.

Yes. That's why I don't buy that Cervando was the victim. I have a little easier time buying Pete was the victim, but I still mostly don't think so, and mostly think there's something else to it, other than who was on the bus.

Hey, maybe Woody was trying to blow Pete up, when Pete got home, or even better, maybe Woody was just intending to plant an explosive on him, as a set up, so that nobody would believe any charges he might make against Woody, or so that Woody could see that he wasn't charged, and make Pete be in his debt. Maybe he used Boyd or the Fitzpatricks to get the explosive. Kendall might have known. If so, she could have told Big Dick, who might have her use the Fitzpatricks to blow up the bus earlier. Perhaps Kendall thought she was going to get to kill off Dick and Beaver and collect the insurance money, but Big Dick had other ideas, all along?

1) The driver would have been vilified - anybody have a good reason to hate him? I can't really believe it's this, since we haven't heard about him in SO LONG OMG.

Well, there's Ed Doyle's own wife, or the husband of Ed's lover, but frankly, unless a whole lot ties Ed into something in the next episode, I cannot imagine feeling anything but disappointed if he matters to this mystery. He hasn't mattered since the episode 2:02, Driver Ed. I suppose Ed could have been on the wrong side of the Fitz's too, but again, unless he is tied in, in some way that honors much of the story throughout the season, I imagine I would have a hard time being other than disappointed. I guess I should withhold judgment on the story 'til I see it play out, though.

2) The town, and, more importantly, school would have had to deal with a lot of grief. But this was a long time before incorporation was even publicized, and I don't believe it could have anything to do with effecting the vote. So what comes out of the grief?

Yes, but someone like Big Dick, because of his real estate involvement, is likely to have known (maybe he was even approached to endorse it, or invest in, or finance it, in some way) before it was publicized. What better way to derail it though, then to discredit the guy who is going to propose it, in the eyes of the voters.

3) Specifically, the entire journalism/yearbook/etc class would be dead. It would take a pretty deranged student to want to kill an entire class because of some slight, but it's possible... right? Maybe it's Ms. Whats-her-name! The journalism teacher from last year, out for revenge for disappearing! Or the other journalism teacher from last year, who got fired for not sucking in that one episode!

Has the paper done any big reporting, this year? I can't remember which was from this year, and which was from last, other than the Weapons of Mass Destruction plot. Was the Boatloads of Fun Corp. drug test fiddling reported in the paper?

I said yesterday that although I like the basic premise of "Big Dick is involved" presented at MarsInvestigations [link] I didn't agree with all of the ways Inigo filled in the blanks. One place I thought s/he was spot on though, was that she implied or explicitly said (it was long, so I skimmed a lot) that Big Dick may well have been inciting Dick, Lucky, Beaver, and Logan to keep up the tension with the PCHers. After all, we see Big Dick give Logan a gun, for protection.

I love Logan. That said, the boy should not be armed, and *really* shouldn't have been reminded that fire arms even exist at that particular point in his life. His mother had recently killed herself. His father was in prison for killing Lilly. His father had (continued...)

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( continues...) slept with Lilly. He'd been jumped and beaten within an inch of his life, while he was in the middle of flirting with suicide. He had been arrested for Felix's murder. Veronica had dumped him. Would you give that boy a gun?

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I didn't agree with all of the ways Inigo filled in the blanks. One place I thought s/he was spot on though

She. Inigo is awesome, by the way. If you find something that's particularly well written on our site, it's probably by her. Especially if it rhymes.

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My guess was "she"--I might have even known for sure, but I am always given unrequested sex-changes to the boys in fandom.

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Not exactly news, but...

Condition: If scheduling decisions were made by TV critics, this terrific teen drama would be an absolutely safe bet for a third season. Unfortunately, those calls are made by executives who have to worry about little things like viewership. And as brilliant and buzzworthy as the show has been, there are just too few viewers tuning in every week.

Prognosis: There's no question that this is a favorite of CW Entertainment boss Dawn Ostroff, formerly of UPN, and there were early indications that it would survive the carnage wrought by the WB-UPN merger. Now, the word is that the series' return is not a sure thing, but let's hope for the best.

From here: [link]

Kristen Bell though, is quoted here: [link] as saying:

Of her renewal chances, she added: "We're really optimistic about the year and we've been given optimistic words by the people at the network so I don't think we'll have a problem."

In that link, she discusses the finale. She doesn't give anything away. I just mention it, because some people are extra averse to any outside commentary.

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And as brilliant and buzzworthy as the show has been, there are just too few viewers tuning in every week.

Latest intel says the ratings don't matter, though, and let's hope that's true. And that all the pilot pitches to the CW suck. Except Split Decision, so Alona Tal can be on TV next season.

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VM hasn't been shown in its regular timeslot in NY for the past two weeks, and not in LA last week. It kind of makes VM's ratings kind of meaningless.

Furthermore, many of the current UPN affiliates don't have much of an incentive to promote a show that may be moving to a different station next season.

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Was Gia over-informing Veronica about the green Barracuda? I mean, she made certain to say where she was seated, and...I don't know. I just started thinking about her, last night. Do you think she really saw it at all, or was she misinforming, on Daddy's behalf?

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