Well, it had to happen sooner or later, and it really says something about how good this season has been that it’s taken fifteen episodes for it to occur: we have reached the weakest episode of the season.
Except, there are still good things here that happen to make it worth watching, mostly within the story arcs, but we’re definitely being treated, if treated is the right word, to the season’s weakest case-of-the-week, involving a potential runaway bride, that fails to engage in the manner that many of this season’s cases have done so brilliantly. The story arc stuff though is still on point and it’s because of that “The Quick and the Wed” is still recommended to an extent.
The arrest of Terrence Cook, the return of Aaron Echolls, and Logan’s relationship with Hannah dominate proceedings, and manage to yield some of the best stuff going on in this week’s episode, that it makes one more forgiving of what is the most uninteresting investigation that Veronica has found herself involved in this season.
With Keith getting the runaround from Sheriff Lamb, and Logan realising that his plot to have a relationship with Hannah is not exactly the nicest thing to do (the final moment of the episode is a lovely piece of acting from Dohring who has been delivering consistently great work all season), while his psychotic father Aaron makes a return appearance, it’s safe to say the story arc stuff is on fire. But any time the episode cuts back to Veronica trying to locate missing bride Heidi (Virginia Williams) all interest in the episode somewhat evaporates.
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It’s a shame for sure because everything else going on around it is still every bit as entertaining as it has been all season, almost to the extent that one might find themselves thinking of this as a better episode that others they’ve watched. We get also get a return appearance from Charisma Carpenter as Kendall Casablancas which is always welcome, not to mention seeing both her and Aaron Echolls beginning to conspire together feels like the set up for more fun to come down the road.
Top marks are also earned for managing to find a way to bring Harry Hamlin as Aaron back in a way that doesn’t negate his arrest at the end of last season. Better yet, after having played Lilly’s murder as “whodunnit” and the reveal not being until the season finale, there’s a real sense of joy in actually having Hamlin play the role in a much more villainous way than last year, with Hamlin going to town with that sociopathic glint in the eye that he never had a chance to do during the course of last season, most likely because even he didn’t know he was the killer.
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It’s things like this that help carry the load. In fact, given how perfunctory that case-of-the-week is, there’s a part of me that would have loved to have seen the series ditch this week’s mystery in order to just simply focus on its myriad of ongoing plotlines. Because quite frankly there is more than enough here to carry an entire episode, without cutting back to Veronica searching for a missing bride.
What’s worse is that this week’s mystery is where Veronica is more relevant to what’s happening as opposed to the arc elements, with only one enjoyably bitter argument with Logan that sees her involved in the story’s most important events, and one that will give LoVe shippers heart palpitations because it’s easy to forget that these two have not been together outside of flashbacks from the season two premiere.
With a less than stellar mystery to solve, it ends up being a waste of Bell really, given that it goes without saying how wonderful she is in the show, and that the series is masterful at doing self-contained mysteries without sacrificing the narrative flow of the arc. It’s a balance that one finds themselves using as an example of how great the series is.
Unfortunately, you can’t win them all, but also, if this is to be the weakest point of the season to date, then it says a lot about how great this season is that this is its nadir, because, by any other stretch of the imagination, it still has more than enough to make it a solid hour of television.