"My Big Fat Greek Rush Week"
It’s the same morning as the final scene of “Welcome Wagon” and a deputy has arrived to talk to Parker about what happened. The last thing Parker remembers from the previous night is going to a Zeta Theta Beta rush party, and she’s not sure how she got home. Mac tells Veronica that she has “There’s Got to Be a Morning After” stuck in her head. Veronica tells her that the rapist must have been there when she came in the room to get the movie tickets, and she could have stopped him. Mac reminds her that she didn’t because she was the one who said that Parker was a floozy. Lamb arrives and taunts Veronica about her own rape report (see the pilot). Veronica tells him that the rape occurred around 11:45, which she knows because she was in the room. She adds that she heard a buzzing sound, which was probably an electronic razor. Parker is upset that Veronica didn’t do anything because she thought Parker was having consensual sex. In the desert, Keith walks tiredly, almost encountering an animal trap.
Logan and Wallace’s Intro to Sociology professor, Dr. Kinny, talks to his students about torture, then tells them that they need to write a 20-page paper on torture and imprisonment by the end of the term. As an alternative, they can participate in a 48-hour experiment in which some play prisoners and some play guards. If the guards can extract a piece of info from the prisoners, they win and are exempt from the assignment; if the prisoners don’t break, they are exempt. No one responds, so Dr. Kinny says that the losers only have to write ten pages. A number of students volunteer, including both Logan and Wallace. After class, Wallace heads to his room, where Veronica tells him she’s feeling guilty and is determined to catch the rapist. First, she’s going to an interview for the campus newspaper; she wants to make some money taking photos. Moe the RA arrives to remind Wallace of a floor meeting that night, but Wallace won’t be there because of the sociology experiment. Moe tells him that he participated last year and that the experiment was “life-changing.” Cormac tracks Keith through the desert. At the Hearst newspaper office, the editor, Nish, attempts to find someone to send to a sorority. She admires Veronica’s photo portfolio; Veronica is willing to take any assignment, since her alternate job is working in the library. Nish shows her a photo of the Theta Beta sorority (which Veronica calls “the gateway to hell”) and tells her that they want to get someone inside the house during Rush Week to write an exposé. Veronica doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but Nish is sure she’ll fit in. Veronica is especially not happy about the idea of having to wear a “tasteful floral dress.” Nish tells her that the parties consist of lots of drinking and boys. Supposedly once the girls are drunk, the sisters take them to a secret room and undress them while frat brothers watch through a two-way mirror. Nish thinks that if Parker was in the secret room, the experience could be connected to her rape. This sells Veronica on going undercover. In Mac and Parker’s room, Parker announces that her parents are taking her home since they didn’t want her to go away to school in the first place and didn’t think she was mature enough to handle college.
Decked out in appropriate rush wear, Veronica heads to the Theta Beta house and meets a couple of bubbly sorority sisters named Hallie and Shania. Her purse is confiscated and the girls are serenaded while sisters try to sell Veronica on pledging. A sister named Marjorie rescues her, but when Veronica asks why they took her purse, Marjorie just tells her to trust them. Veronica next meets the house mother, Karen, who has nothing but great things to say about the sisters. Marjorie tells Veronica that the sisters are like family. Dr. Kinny takes his students to an unused dorm wing and tells them that they’ll be monitored by surveillance cameras throughout the experiment. The students are split into guards and prisoners; Logan is a prisoner and Wallace is a guard. Dr. Kinny outlines the rules - sleep deprivation is allowed, but no other kind of physical abuse. The prisoners must be fed a certain number of calories each day, but a guard must taste-test each meal to show that it’s edible. Logan and Wallace decide to make a side bet - whichever is on the losing team will streak across campus. Dr. Kinny gives the prisoners the info the guards are trying to get - there’s a bomb in a mail drop box at the corner of 116th Street and Jamison Boulevard - and the experiment begins. It will end either when the guards get the information or when the prisoners go until 6:02 p.m. on Saturday without breaking.
One of the guards, Rafe, takes charge by sending the prisoners to their cell, but he denies them their beds and tells someone to take their mattresses to the guard’s room. He also won’t let the prisoners study or use the bathroom until he says so. One prisoner, Samuel Horshack, becomes Rafe’s main target; Rafe taunts him for being short and Jewish, which makes Wallace speak up in protest. Outside of the room, Rafe tells him that he’s just “playing the part.” In the desert, Cormac spots a pen Keith dropped but unwittingly finds himself stuck in an animal trap. Veronica leaves the sorority party without any dirt and finds flowers in her car, as well as an invitation to a private party that night. In the desert, Liam comes across Cormac caught in the trap and tells him he’s not too happy that he didn’t hold up his end of their deal - he would take care of Kendall and get a cut of her cash. Cormac claims not to know where the money is even when Liam threatens him with a gun. When Cormac continues to keep quiet, Liam says that their mother always liked Cormac better, then shoots him in the temple. Keith hears the shot as he approaches a town.
Veronica heads to the private party, where she comes across everything Nish told her she would find. Hallie tells her that the Pi Sigma Sigmas (see “The Rapes of Graff”) are the Theta Beta’s brother frat and they bartend for their rush parties. She introduces Veronica to a “newbie legacy” who turns out to be Dick. She gets him to play along with pretending that they don’t know each other. Marjorie approaches and tells Veronica that they take pledges’ purses so they can snag their keys and leave presents in their rooms and cars. Veronica realizes that this means someone had access to Parker’s room. Marjorie then introduces Veronica to the Pi Sig president, Chip, but she met him in “The Rapes of Graff” when she accused him of raping Stacy. “Learn to take a joke,” Veronica tells him. Keith reaches the Kretchmer County Sheriff’s Department and tells the sheriff and a deputy that there’s been a murder. Back at the Theta Beta party, Veronica plays drunk, hoping that she’ll be taken to the secret room. Nothing works until she plays up to a surveillance camera and Marjorie and Chip take her downstairs. Veronica gets her taser ready just in case, but they just want to get her a seat on the Safe Ride Home cart before the sorority sisters think she’s too much of a disaster to pledge.
Wallace happily taste-tests the prisoners’ unappealing dinner before they’re served. Only Logan doesn’t let the guards see that he doesn’t like the taste. Outside the Theta Beta house, Veronica pretends to be sick in an attempt to keep Chip away from her. Fern, the girl who kneed Dick in “Welcome Wagon,” arrives in the Safe Ride Home cart to take Veronica to Mac’s dorm. Veronica tells Fern that she’s not really drunk, then asks if she picked up any Theta Beta pledges the previous night. Fern didn’t, but there were other Safe Ride Home carts in use. The prisoners get a bathroom break, but Samuel is unable to perform in public. Keith takes the sheriff and deputy to Kendall’s cabin, but there’s no sign of any murder. It does look like the place was robbed, and the sheriff thinks that the burglar stole whatever he was looking for. Fortunately, the deputy finds a small splatter of blood on a picture, which keeps him and the sheriff from thinking that Keith is crazy.
Logan attempts to fall asleep, but as soon as his head hits a wall, Rupert Holmes’ “Escape” begins to blare. Logan tells the guards he’ll give them the information they want, but he winds up just telling them that he does like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. Samuel is embarrassed to have to reveal that he’s wet himself. Rafe refuses to allow him to change his pants. Veronica wakes up at home to find a distraught Keith, who tells her, “I screwed up and someone got hurt.” She tells him that she knows how he feels. The prisoners get pigs’ knuckles for breakfast, but Samuel can’t eat them because they’re not kosher. Rafe notices that he’s changed pants and sends him to solitary for not telling him where he got them. He taunts that Samuel can sit in the dark and pretend he’s “hiding from the Germans.” In Mac and Parker’s room, Parker tries on wigs with her overbearing mother who can’t wait to take her home. At the Hearst newspaper office, Nish urges Veronica to find the secret room. Veronica thinks that since Marjorie encouraged her to be careful about her drinking, she doesn’t think she wants to take her to the secret room.
Nish learns that Parker may have been taken home in a Safe Ride Home cart and calls a friend to see if they keep records of the students picked up. Veronica pays a visit to Moe and asks why he didn’t tell her he was the Safe Ride Home driver who took Parker home. Moe tells her that he didn’t know Parker was the latest rape victim. He adds that she was fine when he and the girl he was with left her. Unfortunately for Veronica, he’s not sure of the name of the girl he was with. Rafe takes Samuel back to the prisoners’ cell, where Logan tells Samuel that he would have cracked if he could remember the address. Samuel tells him, but another prisoner remembers differently. After confirming Moe’s story with his Safe Ride Home companion, Veronica heads back to the Theta Beta house and tells Karen she’s embarrassed about her drunken behavior. Karen offers to talk to the sisters about her before they vote on her. After she leaves the room, Veronica snoops and sees that the surveillance camera monitor is in Karen’s room. Karen returns and tells her that she doesn’t have anything to worry about.
That night, the prisoners make a break for it and head to the food court for a feast. Veronica encounters them and tells Logan that while he’s breaking out, she’s breaking in. Rafe tracks down the prisoners and blasts Wallace and another guard for not hearing them leave. While the Theta Beta sisters are busy voting on pledges, Veronica sneaks into what she thinks is the secret room and finds that it’s full of pot. “Holy smokes,” she remarks. She takes photos of the plants to Nish, who is excited to take down the Greek houses one by one. Veronica isn’t quite as excited, since some of the sisters were nice to her. “You’re one of us now,” Nish tells her. The prisoners get another bathroom break, and this time Samuel is so sick of being taunted that he gives the guards the address. Logan is disappointed that he gave in. Marjorie tracks down Veronica on campus and tells her that Karen knows she went into the secret room. The pot is hers because she has cancer. Veronica tells her that a friend of hers was raped after a Theta Beta party, and she just wanted to gather clues to help her. Marjorie explains that Karen got the pot from a botany professor; if she loses her job because the administration finds out, she’ll lose her insurance. She begs Veronica not to tell anyone what she saw.
The guards bring Dr. Kinny to the unused dorm wing to end the experiment, but they quickly learn that Samuel gave them the wrong address. Rafe sends Samuel back to solitary, then tells Logan that he’s sure he’s behind the trick. Veronica calls Nish from her car and tells her that she can’t publish her article about the pot. She asks for more time to verify facts, but Nish won’t allow it. Veronica goes back to the Theta Beta house to apologize to Karen and warn her to get rid of the pot before the article is published. Marjorie tells her the irony is that she was voted into the sorority. Parker says goodbye to Mac, preparing to go home with her parents, but Mac tells her to stay, promising to have her back from now on. Parker accepts, grateful. In the unused dorm wing, the clock strikes 6:02 and the prisoners celebrate their win. Wallace asks for the information, just for the heck of it, and before Logan can stop him, one of the prisoners gives it up. Dr. Kinny arrives to announce that the guards have won - the sleeping guards were faking, and while the prisoners were out, they set the clock forward. Rafe is upset that Wallace didn’t tell him. “We were counting on you to act like a jerk,” Wallace replies. “Way to sell it.”
At home, Keith finds Veronica on the computer and thinks she’s studying, but she’s actually working on the rape case. Keith takes the picture from Kendall’s cabin to a museum - it’s van Gogh’s Two Lovers and is worth millions. A flashback to “Not Pictured” reveals that Kendall brought the picture to Keith. He tells the curator that the money from the sale of the painting is to go to a food bank. In Dr. Kinny’s class, Samuel tells Wallace that he’s taking notes for Rafe; the events of the experiment were just a game and he has no hard feelings. As the class begins, Logan makes good on his bet with Wallace by streaking in just a mask. “That happens to me all the time,” Wallace tells Samuel. Veronica works in the library, reading her article about the Theta Beta house. Fern passes by and praises her, but Veronica isn’t as happy about it.
THE TITLE IS A PLAY ON... The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
THE RAPE CASE: Parker attended a Theta Beta party the night she was raped.
Rumor has it that Theta Beta sisters make drunken pledges strip while frat brothers watch them through a two-way mirror.
Moe drove Parker home from the Theta Beta party.
MEMORABLE QUOTES: Veronica: “What are you doing here?”
Logan: “Ah, finally, my conjugal visit.”
Keith: “‘Sup?”
Veronica: “Knowledge is power.”
Written by Diane Ruggiero; directed by John T. Kretchmer
Dick: “Fulfilling my destiny. It’s a sorority party. It’s why I left the womb. What are you doing here?
Hallie: “Veronica’s rushing, and we love her.”
Dick: “Somewhere in a parallel universe, Bizarro Dick is being a total killjoy.”
Veronica: “Hmm, let me guess. You’re out on good behavior?”
Logan: “No. You all know my girl, Veronica. I have your picture hung in my cell. Gets me through the long, lonely nights. I lend it to my buddy, Horshack, sometimes. Hope you don’t mind.”
Veronica: “It’s good to share.”
Veronica: “I’m not acknowledging that.”
Keith: “Nietzsche?”
Veronica: “Mm, Schoolhouse Rock!”