PAPA'S CABIN

"'Papa's Cabin'" is episode 15 of the third season of the television show ''Veronica Mars''.

Contents

Plot

Arc significance

Music

Writing and acting

Quotes and trivia

External links

Plot

Sheriff Mars interrogates Mindy O'Dell, who reveals that the third man in her hotel room the night of the Dean O'Dell's murder was in fact Dean O'Dell himself. She relates that Cyrus was upset over discovering her affair with Hank Landry and threatened to destroy his career. After he left, she visited him in his office at Hearst College, gave him the Xanax which was found in his blood, and returned to the hotel. Sheriff Mars indicates that he strongly suspects Landry of committing the murder. After interrogating Mindy, Sheriff Mars instructs her not to leave town. She is subsequently seen receiving the proceeds from Dean O'Dell's life insurance policy, which she uses to purchase a yacht.
Sheriff Mars arrests Landry. At his interrogation, Landry relates that Cyrus also threatened Mindy with the potential for a financially disadvantageous divorce while confronting them in their hotel room. He also reveals that after leaving the hotel, he purchased a pack of cigarettes from a convenience store and was witnessed by an unknown brunette female. Tim Foyle, Landry's teacher's-assistant, visits him in jail. Landry implores him to find the woman who would serve as his alibi.
Veronica catches Tim breaking into Mars Investigations. He tells her of Landry's alibi, and the two attempt to track her down. While waiting outside the convenience store Landry visited on the night of the murder and as Tim walks into the store, Veronica receives a phone call from Sheriff Mars who informs her that Mindy is missing and has "shipped her kids off" to her mother's house in England. She questions an exotic dancer who claims to have seen Landry there around the time of the murder, establishing his alibi. Sheriff Mars takes her statement and releases Landry from custody, believing that Mindy framed Landry for the murder. Landry subsequently leaves Neptune. Wallace notices Logan and Parker eating lunch together.
Convinced of Landry's innocence, the two conduct a search of Steve Batando's residence, presuming that he planted the recording device in Landry's cellular phone and made recordings of the conversations. Tim is seen using latex gloves to search Batando's computer. Tim discovers the recordings, two of which are reviewed. The first recording was from the night of the murder and features a conversation between Landry and Mindy taking place after their altercation with Dean O'Dell in their hotel room. The second recording was a conversation between Landry and an unnamed faculty member at Pepperdine University wherein he gives an unflattering account of Tim's aptitude in forensics. Veronica gives these recordings to Sheriff Mars.
Veronica continues to peruse Landry's recorded phone conversations and hears Landry mention to Mindy a place called "Papa's Cabin," whence the title of the episode comes. She meets Parker, who attempts to tell her about her budding romance with Logan, but Veronica abruptly cuts her off. Mindy is then shown awaking in the cabin of her yacht in a state of distress. She ascends to the top deck, where she discovers Landry waiting for her.
Continuing their investigation, Veronica and Tim search Landry's residence, discovering a picture of Landry's grandfather standing in front of a cabin and a picture of Landry and Mindy standing in front of a bar. Tim also discovers a disposable cellular phone in Landry's trash. Veronica redials the last number called from the phone and extracts the address of the person who answers. She and Tim meet the callee, who is revealed to be the miscreant son of the same exotic dancer who established Landry's alibi.
Armed with this evidence, Veronica and Tim discuss its ramifications with Sheriff Mars. All three are now convinced that Landry manufactured his alibi. While Veronica and Tim speculate as to the location of "Papa's cabin", Sheriff Mars conducts a Google search and discovers that "Papa's Cabin" is in fact a resort in Cabo San Lucas. Sheriff Mars, along with local authorities, raid a yacht moored off the coast and discover a seemingly-intoxicated Landry, who details a struggle he had with Mindy in which she was thrown overboard. Mindy's body is discovered washed up on the shore. Landry is arrested and charged with the murders of Cyrus and Mindy O'Dell.
With the murders seemingly solved, Tim is elevated to temporarily instruct the Criminology class. The class discusses Landry's involvement in the murder, and Tim gives a detailed description of all the elements of the crime. Veronica becomes suspicious when she realizes that Landry was in jail when the call from the disposable cellular phone was made, inferring that he would not have had the opportunity to manufacture his alibi. Tim continues his explication of the crime, mentioning that Mindy's children were "shipped off" to England, a fact he could not have known. Veronica discovers a recording device in her cellular phone and reasons that Tim had listened to a recording of her previous conversation with Sheriff Mars, as well as Landry's phone conversation with Mindy the night of Dean O'Dell's murder. Veronica confronts Tim, exposing his motive (Landry's unfavorable recommendation) and opportunity (knowledge of the events immediately preceding Dean O'Dell's death as they transpired) to frame Landry for murder.
Sheriff Mars meets Veronica at their home after extracting a confession from Tim for Dean O'Dell's murder, and a confession from Landry for Mindy O'Dell's manslaughter. Veronica ruminates on the troublesome nature of justice, saying that even discovering Dean O'Dell's murderer will not change the fact that his untimely death was "unfair." Sheriff Mars sees a news report of an unrelated murder in San Diego, decides to turn the television off, but finally turns it back on. The episode ends with Veronica and Sheriff Mars eating a peaceful dinner.

Arc significance

★ Tim bugged Landry's phone, and later Veronica's.

★ Tim is revealed to be the killer of Dean O'Dell.

★ Landry is fired from the university and in a crime of passion, accidentally kills Mindy O'Dell.

★ The evidence implicating Steve Batando was planted separately by Landry and then Tim.

★ It is revealed that Mindy O'Dell was the unknown person who visited Cyrus on the night he died in Spit & Eggs.

Music

★ "A Night" - Harlem Shakes

Writing and acting

★ This episode provides a convoluted explanation for Landry's supposed alibi. While being interrogated by Sheriff Mars, Landry reveals his alibi to be a brunette woman to whom he gave a cigarette after leaving a convenience store. He then asks Tim to find this alibi. Tim coerces an exotic dancer who works across the street from the store to pose as the alibi by impersonating Landry and threatening to use his position on the Juvenile Probation Board to place her miscreant son in foster care. He then assists Veronica in exposing the alibi as a fraud. Either Tim was complicit in helping Landry fabricate his own alibi, or, as Veronica believes, he unilaterally contrived a dubious alibi for Landry to "be sure he'd [Landry] go down." In the one case, Tim would be assisting the release of the very person he is attempting to frame for murder, and in the other case, Tim would be fortuitously discovering a potential alibi with ties to the location and to Landry sufficient for blackmail while at the same time subverting Veronica's efforts to find Landry's (possibly genuine) alibi.

Quotes and trivia

★ Following the airing of this episode is an eight week hiatus. The remaining block of episodes will be shown beginning May 1st -- a promo shown at the end of this episode in a few markets on the West Coast stated that there will be six new episodes as opposed to five, but has since been fixed to the correct amount of five.

★ When Veronica and Tim go to meet the boy whose number was on the pre-paid cell phone, they introduce themselves as Miss Crockett and Mr. Tubbs, respectively. This is a reference to Miami Vice characters James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs.

★ Keith Mars uses the Mozilla Firefox web browser in the Sheriff's office when searching for Papa's Cabin.

External links

★ MI.net's Roundtable Review.

★ Television Without Pity Recap.