Veronica Mars S1 Ep 17: Kanes and Abel’s

Original airdate: April 5th, 2005

Rewatched: April 5th, 2025

This week’s case looks at the unfairness of income differences. Sabrina Fuller, who is in the running for class valedictorian and a large scholarship from the Kane family and whose mother is the school board president, is being harassed. It’s so bad that she’s struggling to get through her mid-term exams. She asks Veronica to track down whoever is doing it. Although it takes awhile for Veronica to piece everything together, it turns out that Hamilton Cho’s father had hired Vinnie Van Lowe, the other, sleazier PI in town, to harass Sabrina. Hamilton was just behind Sabrina in the running for valedictorian and scholarship winner, and his father wanted him to have an advantage, the way that Sabrina’s family’s wealth had always given her a leg up. When Veronica cracks the case, Hamilton chooses to give up his chance at the scholarship. The Fullers were not ready to accept a compromise (splitting the scholarship between Hamilton and Sabrina) and Hamilton doesn’t want any consequences for this family.  He’s a bit bitter about Sabrina’s privilege and his lack, but he is not a sore loser. He tells Veronica he can study just as well at UCLA as at Oxford.

While I like the hard look Veronica Mars takes at income inequality and the privilege wealth bestows, and how central these themes are to the show, one thing about this episode bothers me. I wonder how much Hamilton’s father paid Vinnie Van Lowe, and if he hadn’t spent that money harassing Sabrina, could he have given Hamilton more advantages, like not having him work 20 hours a week in the family business, or sending him on the class trip to Italy that Sabrina went on and got AP credit for? Veronica and the viewer recognize that while the privilege being condemned by the show is real, the actions, equally condemned by the show, of Hamilton’s father are not the way to solve the problem.

The privilege that wealth buys can also be applied to the Kanes. It’s clear they paid Abel Koontz to take the fall for Lilly’s murder, although why is still unclear. During this episode, Veronica attends a scholastic dinner for the five best seniors and juniors at the Kane house. There, she visualizes who might have killed Lilly. Was it her mother or her father? She then has a vision of Lilly, who tells Veronica her parents aren’t killers. Later Veronica wonders if it might have been Duncan. Earlier in the episode, Logan comes to thank Veronica for helping him look for his mother. He sees Veronica files on her computer. She’s got one for every person close to Lilly. Logan asks her whether Lilly would want Veronica to investigate the people who loved her. For Veronica, it’s a clear yes, since she loved Lilly, too. Later, she asks Logan when he’s going to tell everyone about her investigation, but he asks her about Duncan’s epilepsy instead and then recounts being at Duncan’s house the week he broke up with Veronica. Logan saw Duncan trying to strangle his father, and later didn’t seem to remember it.

At the same time, Veronica has also tracked down Amelia DeLongpre, told her she may be able to get her father out of prison (and that she works for Abel’s lawyer), hidden her in a hotel room, and asked her to get the Kane settlement papers sent to her by her mother. Amelia is under the impression her dad got a settlement from the Kane family (for stealing his patent), but Veronica knows it’s the pay off. She hopes the papers can prove it. It looks like she might finally get them, but Clarence Wiedman manages to find Amelia in the hotel room. He tells her that Veronica is not who she says she is and he also tells her Abel is dying, something Veronica kept secret. Amelia decides to take the money rather than get her father out of prison, and leaves.

Finally, Keith opens up to Veronica. While searching for Amelia, Wiedman breaks into the Mars apartment. Keith catches Wiedman and at first thinks he’s managed to find something in his investigations to rattle the Kanes, until he realizes it wasn’t him but Veronica. Keith is angry, because he’s worried about her. While he asks her to be careful, he also opens up about the case. First, Lilly’s time of death never really added up as it didn’t match her core body temperature. Jake Kane called Wiedman 5 minutes before Lilly’s death (according to the official time of death), but if you assume she died earlier, that would put Jack’s call to Wiedman after Lilly’s death, and make Keith think Jake had put in a call so Wiedman could cover up whatever needed to be covered up. A final key clue was a washing machine running the night of Lilly’s death with just Duncan’s soccer uniform in it. Keith didn’t believe the Kanes did their own laundry, and the timing didn’t really add up either. With Logan’s story and Keith’s clues, Veronica has to ask herself whether Duncan had an epilepsy-induced fit of rage that killed his sister.

While the season’s arc is getting quite exciting, we’re still a few episodes out from the end and the final reveal. But it is looking like privilege can buy you a scholarship and an escape from murder charges.