A LONG TIME AGO ON VERONICA MARS:

• Real life Patty Hearst plays a fake Hearst; and real life kidnapped person Patty Hearst plays a fake kidnapped person. It’s all something to do with share prices and a rich-people divorce settlement and she AND her husband have both been having affairs with the dog walker?

• Update on Frats vs Dreaded Feminists: head fratter Chip is found unconscious, with his head shaved and a plastic egg shoved up his bum with a cryptic message inside.

• And the Dreaded Feminists make Veronica wonder whether all the rapes were fake, but NO, they were real, and the rapist has got Veronica cornered and drugged again.

• The Dean hires Keith to investigate whether his wife Mindy is cheating on him with her colleague. She isn’t - but she is, of course, cheating on him with the Dean’s colleague Professor Landry.

• And having confronted them in bed together, the Dean is found dead with a gunshot wound to the head. It’s ruled a suicide, but... is it actually murder?

• And after all that, w'e’re actually relieved to sit through another stolen animals plot, wherein Veronica and Mac infiltrate an animal rights group to get back a lab monkey and twenty rats.

• There’s even another culturally insensitive hat party!

• But it’s all worth it, because Mac meets a cute guy!

• And they get the monkey back!

• (And the rats, but nobody cares about them. (Except Jenny.))

Join Jenny Owen Youngs and Helen Zaltzman to investigate Veronica Mars season 3 episodes 8, 9 and 10: Lord of the Spit Monkeys, and ponder such mysteries as how Dick is not banned from everywhere already, how this show made us feel bad for awful Chip, and why they don’t just keep Piz dancing instead of talking.

Content note: Veronica Mars contains heavy themes, and this episode includes storylines concerning rape, assault, murder, suicide, drugs and violence.

For more about this episode, and to read the transcript, visit the podcast’s official site VMIpod.com/3-080910.

This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman; the music is by Martin Austwick and Jenny Owen Youngs; Lo Dodds gives us the LoDown.

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