Veronica Mars S1 Ep 15: Ruskie Business

Original airdate: Feb. 22nd, 2005

Rewatched: Feb. 22nd, 2025

The spring dance at Neptune High is approaching, a fun 80s themed event, and love is in the air. Maybe.

Meg has a secret admirer, and Veronica decides to help her find out who it is. Her secret admirer wants to meet her at the dance, but Meg is uncertain if she wants to go with someone who isn’t willing to ask her out in person. Veronica is unable to find out who the admirer is, so Meg decides to take Veronica to the dance. As they are leaving, Veronica gets a fax. Her investigation has paid off and she knows Meg’s admirer is Duncan. It’s not easy telling someone your ex wants to date them, and Veronica first plans to keep it to herself. At the dance, however, she helps Meg and Duncan get together.

Veronica has her own secret admirer. Someone has been calling her and hanging up and she can’t find out who it is. She assumes it’s someone pranking her and doesn’t really let it concern her much. During her many investigations this episode, Veronica and Meg end up at the Sheriff’s office, where Meg sees the attraction between Veronica and Leo. Meg tells Leo about the dance, and he shows up. While they are getting closer to each other, another crank call comes in and Leo is able to figure out they’re coming from a pay phone, and it might be a blond lady making them. This is enough to send Veronica running. It’s her mom calling her, and it’s her first big lead. She manages to track her mother down at a bar (with a pay phone). Her mother is upset to see her there, and Veronica is shocked when she sees Clarence Wiedman. The episode leaves up on this cliffhanger, but evidently the head of security for Kane software is really trying to keep Veronica and her mother apart, although why is very unclear.

Besides helping Meg, Veronica works two more cases in this episode. She continues helping Logan track down his mother. Her credit card has been used at a hotel in Neptune and Veronica and Logan stake out the lobby to find his mother. Only it’s not his mom, it’s his sister Trina, played by Alyson Hannigan, the first Buffy main cast member to have a guest role on Veronica Mars. Logan breaks down in the lobby, finally realizing his mother is dead, and Veronica tries to comfort him. Later, when he shows up drunk to the dance (and without his pants), Veronica helps him get home. She may not hate him so much after all.

Finally, Veronica’s case of the week is a Russian woman who came as a mail-order bride, but decided she didn’t like the guy and left him. Now she regrets it and thinks he was probably her true love. Veronica decides to go all out to find him, wanting for once to use her skills to bring people together and not tear them apart. However, the man changed his name. He wanted to be an actor but felt another Tom Cruz wouldn’t get work. Veronica uses all her mojo and some help from Leo to find the man. Just as she’s ready to tell the woman the good news, her father shows up. He’s been able to figure out, in part because he was being followed on another job, that the woman is part of the Russian mafia, and they are looking for someone in witness protection. Keith saves the day and all the bad guys get arrested. In general, life, love and relationships remain complicated in Neptune, as they always were in Sunnydale, too.

Two final notes at the end. Leo is Veronica’s not-age-appropriate boyfriend of the series, and while he is not that much older than Veronica (20 to her 17 as opposed to Buffy’s hundreds of years age gap with Angel), I still find it problematic that so many teen series present adult men and teenage girl relationships as normal. While I understand that we don’t all magically become mature adults at 18, adult men and underage girls should be a subject that receives more scrutiny than it does.

However, to end things on a more positive note, let’s look at how both series use pop culture. It’s fun how both incorporate common culture knowledge of their times, for example Buffy telling Giles not to Scully her, a reference to the X-Files, or Veronica Mars using Bill Clinton’s infamous line about sexual relations in the last episode. Veronica Mars takes it to the next level, however, by also having many of the episode names be plays on pop culture, the “the Wrath of Con” being a play on The Wrath of Khan, a Star Trek film, “Lord of the Bling” take Lord of the Rings and the bling so popular in Hip Hop, or “Ruskie Business” being a play on the Tom Cruise film Risky Business. Some also allude to non-film pop culture, like “Drinking the Kool-Aid” being a common phrase for cult participation/members (member have been drinking the Kool-Aid) and is often associated with the events in Jonestown in 1978 where Jim Jones killed 900 members of his cult by having them drink poisoned Flavor Aid. Watching both shows presents a unique window to pop culture of the late 90s and early 2000s, although some references may date the series when watched today.