Careful what you wish for, 'Veronica'

It cannot be easy to walk through life suspicious of everyone and everything, particularly when experience has so often proved you right. Such is the lot of Veronica Mars.

As demonstrated (painfully) again on Tuesday, her boyfriend Logan's past is like a scab Veronica can't stop picking. And as all our moms told us, doing that's gonna leave a mark.

It wasn't even that Logan was dishonest during their little post-coital Q-and-A (although, as he withheld specifics, maybe not entirely honest either): He said he hooked up with a "horrible" girl while he and Veronica were broken up. Because of that scene with him and the surfer girl last week, we were all supposed to think that's who he was talking about; instead it was Veronica's nemesis Madison, which is just loads worse.

Then again, Logan's I-must've-passed-out explanation for why he wasn't aware of Mercer's cross-border travels that were key to the rape case feels a little weak too. If that line was there just to illustrate Veronica's inability to let things go, then so be it. If it has some bigger relationship to Dean O'Dell's death, then, well, Veronica's headed for some even more bitter disillusionment in the coming weeks.

The LoVe angst got a nice parallel in the Case O' the Week, involving fake term-paper maven Max's search for his lost Comic-Con cutie, who turns out to be a hooker hired by his pals. Max's joy at finding her again turns into a costly object lesson on being careful what you wish for, but within that structure there were a couple of nice, small twists (the fake bruises on Wendy's, uh, co-worker, Veronica's joy at getting dirt on a judge) that made the obvious mirroring of our heroine's situation go down easier.

(Although anyone who can explain why Veronica thought that blackmailing a judge wouldn't have complications gets a smiley face next to their comment.)

Once again, though, Veronica was pretty much entirely separated from Keith's investigation of the dean's death, save for passing along the information that his office was egged the night he died. The father-daughter banter tonight was at a solid level ("I'm meeting a couple hookers over at Logan's." "On a school night?"), but Veronica is showing a pretty shockingly low level of interest in her pop's case. I know she's got other things on her mind, but doesn't that seem way out of character?

Other notes from "Poughkeepsie, Tramps & Thieves":

• Love pretty much everything that happened while Keith was in uniform: His bad-cop act with the Lilith House women and his notoriety once again playing heck with his work when Nish recognized him. Best of all, though, was his eminently casual wave to Lamb when he pulled up next to the sheriff at a light.
• High-level snark from our girl during her initial search for Chelsea/Fiona/Wendy: "It's like a Zagat guide for hookers!" "Honestly, what did people do for sex before the Internet?"
• Big-mystery note: It seems we've pretty well ruled out the Lilith House women as suspects in the dean's death. But suspicion is now back on Mrs. O'Dell, whose car was also an apparent egg target on the night in question.
• This week's pop-culture shout-outs included extended love for Battlestar Galactica and nods to Dave Gibbons and American Beauty.
• No Wallace, no Mac, no Dick, no Parker, no Piz, and Weevil was used almost solely for expository purposes. Feh. I repeat my protest about the penny-pinching enforced on this show.

I have to circle back to Logan and Veronica, though. I know they're soulmates and everything, but I have to wonder if things should really be that hard. For all her practiced cynicism, Veronica still has a pretty squishy center, really wanting to believe in her boyfriend but never completely able to do so. That doesn't sound like a recipe for lasting happiness to me, and I think Logan maybe realizes that too, even if he's unwilling to face it head-on.

So whatcha think, Martians? Can Veronica ever get over her wary nature and just let things go?