Classroom. The teacher exposits that it's an AP class. Veronica is sound asleep. Hee. That was me in my 8 AM junior English class. When I went, which wasn't often. Sometimes I don't know how I got into college. The teacher asks if anyone did the reading, and no one responds, which...no. Not in an AP class. There's always someone. The teacher wakes up Veronica and says she's the teacher's volunteer. Despite the fact that she was just drooling onto her desk a second ago, Veronica manages to recite Epistle 1 of Pope's An Essay On Man. When asked for her interpretation of the poem, she smirks, "Life's a bitch, until you die." Pfft. Try recapping The Mountain, honey. Veronica looks away pensively as the teacher lectures that Pope believed that what keeps us going through life's defeats is our faith in a better life to come. So, in the first two minutes, the show has given us a relatively subtle and well-executed, as well as interesting, look at the dichotomous nature of the lead character's personality. You know, I just got cable last week in my new apartment, so I'm probably just mixed up here. For a minute, I actually thought this show was on UPN.

A Veronica Mars Voice-Over (VMVO) tells us that the school employs random locker searches, except that they're not really random, and she knows when they're going to happen before "Vice-Principal Clemens" does. In the hallway, Veronica turns the corner to find a security guard and, ostensibly, the aforementioned Vice-Principal. The guard greets her by her full name, which...bugs, because it makes me think of Joey Potter. At least "Veronica Mars" sounds cooler, though, and no one's going to call her "little Veronica Mars." No one who wants to live, anyway. The VP asks her to open her locker. As she works the combination, the guard's German shepherd barks, but she quiets him with a "Buster!" Hmm. She seems to be on top of how this school's run, that's for sure. She opens the locker to reveal...nothing, save a heart-shaped picture of the VP taped to the door. Ha! And on top of that, she deadpans, "Wow. This is a little embarrassing!" Okay, she's got me. I mean, it's still conditional, as we're only at the three-minute mark, but definitely pencil me in as a liker.