"The Wrath of Con"
Veronica and Troy are kissing outside her apartment after a date. He brings up the possibility of going to the Homecoming dance together, but she doesn’t accept or reject his offer. Inside, Veronica asks Keith if he’s investigated Troy and he pretends that he hasn’t. Later, Veronica flashes back to preparing for Homecoming with Lilly, who encourages her to put away her cotton dresses and go for strapless red satin. She then tells Veronica that they’re not actually going to the dance - they’ll be dressing up and hanging out in a limo with Logan and Duncan. At school, Wallace chats with a girl named Georgia, whom he seems to like. She confides that she’s done something stupid and starts to tell her. She finishes up her explanation in the girls’ bathroom, telling Wallace and Veronica that she got an e-mail from a trust fund kid who’d gotten in trouble because of a gambling problem. Georgia loaned him money for two weeks, with the promise of 200% interest when he got his trust fund, but, of course, she didn’t get the money back. Veronica assures Georgia that she’ll help her, then calls the trust fund kid, Karl, and leaves a message, telling him her name is Amber and she got an e-mail from him. She then changes the outgoing message on her cell phone so that it says she’s Amber. In their newspaper class, Veronica and Logan hear a student news broadcast about a dedication for a memorial fountain for Lilly. Later, Veronica tells Tory that Keith wants to meet him; she warns that he’s “intense,” but Troy assures her that he can handle him. He asks her about Homecoming again and she accepts.
Veronica flashes back to the Homecoming she spent with Lilly, Logan, and Duncan. Veronica videotapes Logan as everyone waits for Lilly, who’s taking her time. When she arrives, she’s wearing an age-inappropriate dress (which Logan enjoys), and the four friends pose as Jake and Celeste take pictures. In the present, Wallace tells Veronica how happy he is that Georgia’s crisis has allowed him to get closer to her. Veronica gets a call from Karl and arranges a meeting with him for later that day. Logan runs into Duncan, whose parents have asked him to arrange a video tribute for Lilly’s dedication. Logan offers to do it instead. “Amber” meets with Karl as Wallace and Georgia watch from nearby; Georgia tells Wallace that that’s not the guy she met, though he’s wearing the same clothes. Wallace covertly plants a tracking device on Karl’s car. “Amber” agrees to give Karl $3,000, expecting $6,000 in return, but has to postpone the transaction until she can get some cash. They agree to meet again the next day and Karl promises, “hand to God,” that “Amber” can trust him. Veronica follows Karl to a theater, where she discovers that he’s an actor (really named Jimmy Spain) who’s appearing in a production of “Endgame.” On the back of Jimmy’s headshot, she sees that he’s currently appearing in something called “Duped!” in the recurring role of Karl. After the show, Veronica ambushes Jimmy (“I’m a huge Beckett fan. Hand to God!”), who thinks that her ruse is part of “Duped!” He explains that “Duped!” is a reality show where people get, well, duped, but Veronica tells him that it’s all a scam. He gives her the phone number he called to get the job.
Back at school, Veronica and Wallace discuss the phone number, which is for a pay phone that doesn’t accept incoming calls and is at a place called Gameland. Wallace tells her that it’s a gaming club, where nerds get together to play games. He warns that the place is mostly male, so Veronica won’t exactly blend in. She decides that she doesn’t want to. Veronica shows up at Gameland looking like an anime girl and hands over her ID for an earpiece. She watches two guys play; one named Liam keeps winning and exclaiming about “ownage.” Veronica compares Karl’s e-mail address to the screen name of one of the players, a guy named Grant. She starts killing his character until she figures out where he is. As she leaves, she takes both her ID and Grant’s. Back at her place, Veronica convinces Wallace to go to a party with her at Grant’s college. As they dress up like nerds, Wallace tells Veronica how much he likes Georgia. Veronica tells him that she called an RA at the school and told him Wallace is a prospective freshman; she’ll tag along as his “nerd hag.” As they get ready to leave for the party, Veronica flashes back to the limo party, where she, Lilly, Duncan, and Logan played Truth or Dare. She learns that Logan thought she was hot when he first saw her, even though she was only 12 and was wearing a soccer uniform. Logan dares Lilly to kiss someone in the limo, and Lilly pretends she’s going to kiss him, then kisses Veronica instead. Duncan sprays Logan with champagne and they wind up wrestling good-naturedly in the sand as Veronica and Lilly look on.
Veronica and Wallace arrive at the college in the middle of a party with an international theme. The RA tells them about Grant and Liam, who are called the Silicon Mafia and are legendary on campus. Later, some other students give Veronica and Wallace more info on Liam and Grant - one kid got caught looking at Grant’s laptop, and the next day his school records had been messed with. Veronica gets the RA out of his room and grabs keys to Grant and Liam’s room. Wallace engages Grant and Liam in conversation, pretending to want to major in math. Veronica tacks a picture of Jimmy to a message board, then goes into Liam and Grant’s room, where she encounters an alarm system. Grant’s cell phone alerts him to the alarm, and he and Liam hurry to find out what’s going on. Veronica plays drunk and pretends that she thought she could get a drink in their room. As Grant and Liam see Jimmy’s photo, Veronica and Wallace make their escape. Back at school the next day, Veronica tells Wallace that the guys must be hiding something big in their room to have so much security. Wallace heads off to hang out with Georgia and Veronica heads to her newspaper class, where she finds Logan working on the memorial video. Veronica flashes back to the limo party again, where the four friends play I’ve Never. Veronica admits to never skinny dipping (though the others have), and Logan makes Duncan admit to some embarrassing self-satisfaction after watching cheerleading tryouts. Duncan tries to change the subject and ends up getting Lilly to reveal that she’s seen their parents having sex. Lilly says that she’s “never not had sex,” and Veronica and Duncan, the virgins in the group, have to drink.
Veronica recruits Keith to help her with Grant and Liam, getting him to pose as a DEA agent so he can get into Grant and Liam’s room and plant a bug. Veronica hears the guys set the alarm in their room and is able to reproduce the tones and figure out their code. She heads home to rescue Troy from Keith’s questions and confrontation over the fact that Troy possibly booked a room at a hotel. Later, Keith calls Grant and Liam, posing as an admissions officer who wants them to host a prospective student. He offers them three tickets to Gameland to screen a new game, and they accept. Back at school, Veronica finds Logan working on the video again; she gives him one of her personal videos, implying that it’s footage Lilly would want seen instead of what Logan already has. Wallace plays prospective student again, hanging out with Grant and Liam and text-messaging Veronica to let her know that they’re out of their room. Veronica heads to the room, voicing over that she’s discovered that Liam and Grant have developed a new video game and are scamming money from other students in order to raise their start-up capital. In the room, Veronica takes apart all of the processors and steals the hard drives, leaving an envelope behind. As she grabs the bug Keith planted, she notices wires and realizes that there’s another computer secured in a closet. As Liam, Grant, and Wallace arrive at Gameland, they note that no one is there and there was no screening. Liam and Grant note that their alarm on the backup drives is going off. They rush back to their room to discover that their backup drives have been destroyed. In the envelope Veronica left is a copy of the scam letter, offering money in exchange for the drives.
That night, Grant and Liam meet with Veronica, Wallace, and Georgia in the park and make the exchange. “Ownage,” Veronica gloats. She tells the guys that she left their backup drives in a nearby garbage can. Georgia laments that not everyone who got taken by the scam will get his or her money back, but Veronica says that she alerted the anti-fraud agency at the FBI. Georgia and Wallace share a kiss as Veronica heads to her car, where she finds a flier advertising the memorial. She flashes back to the morning after the limo party, when she and the others returned to the Kane mansion and were confronted by Keith, Jake, and Celeste. Celeste blasts Lilly for always getting into trouble; Duncan tries to take some of the blame off of her. Veronica heads to the memorial, where Celeste speaks before the Kanes unveil the fountain. Logan shows his video, which starts out nice and then turns to footage of the limo party. Duncan and Jake manage to enjoy the video, but Celeste is upset. At the end, Jake breaks down into tears, and in the audience, Weevil cries a little himself. The night of the Homecoming dance, Veronica (wearing a strapless red satin dress) and Troy double date with Wallace and Georgia, taking a limo to the dance. On the way, Veronica requests a quick stop at the beach, where she takes a moment for herself and skinny-dips.
THE TITLE IS A PLAY ON...: The Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan.
THE LILLY KANE CASE: Weevil had some sort of relationship with Lilly.
MEMORABLE QUOTES: Veronica: (pretending to be drunk) “I don’t feel so good, Papa Bear.”
“What part of my ignoring you makes you think you’re welcome?” - Logan to Veronica
Written by Dianne Ruggiero; directed by Michael Fields
(she and Wallace run off)
Wallace: “‘Papa Bear.’”
Veronica: “Never happened.”