Originally, it was the overarching plots and the characters that made Veronica Mars so great. Season 1 was a brilliant bit of television. So far, in this third season, the show has had flat-out bad overarching storylines and reduced its characters to vaguely unlikable versions of their former selves. Thus the chance for it to be redeemed fell on its weakest aspect: the self-contained mysteries of the week.

These were always hit-and-miss; even in the first season we got such gems as Veronica searching for the missing school mascot. The third season has had treasures such as a search for a football player's playbook, and heading into last night's episode I was ready to just say no to the show completely. Studio 60 had been so terrible on Monday, I was ready to just go back to the days when Lost was my only TV exposure.

This is all a lengthy lead-up to say that I was pleasantly surprised with the mystery of the week this week. Previous bit-part character Max wants to find a girl he met one night whom he thought was "the one." Simple enough. But unlike some recent cases (which can generally be summed up as "the culprit is the extraneous character, but not the obvious extraneous character"), we actually got twists, turns, and even a nice bit of feeling. I was a little bit moved.

First it turns out she was a prostitute hired by Max's friends. Then it turns out she actually liked him. Then it turns out she was conning him, but then it turns out that she actually wasn't -- etc., etc. All of this was actually genuinely interesting. And the unabashed unhappy ending -- the couple grew disillusioned after Max had bought her out of her occupation -- was a great sad payoff.

Some other notes about the episode:

-Hooray, Logan's reveal that he had fooled around with another girl during his and Veronica's break was dealt with anti-climactically without a tired "Veronica gets upset" plotline. But oh wait...she finds out about that other chick (who's apparently been on the show before even though I don't remember her at all) and gets all upset. Yay.

-Nice of Keith to single-handedly continue on with the overarching plotline of Dean O'Dell's murder. Or suicide. (Murder.) His subplot was OK even though it featured the unwelcome return of that constantly-bitchy feminist sorority or whatever it is.

-Great to see all the characters...last week, I mean. This week there's no Piz, Parker, Mac, or most notably, Wallace. To where the heck did Wallace disappear? Not like the show knows how to use him anymore anyway, but c'mon...he's Wallace.