Veronica goes to see Nipples of Steel, shows her the bag, and asks if she knows where the leaves might have come from. You'll notice that she doesn't actually accuse her of sabotaging the hard drive, which is a welcome change indeed. NOS tells Veronica that the leaves are green tea. As Veronica disbelievingly repeats that, NOS grabs a container of moist towelettes off a shelf, exposing a plastic banana squeaky toy. NOS confesses that she stole it off 25's cage on a weekend, since the sound was driving her nuts. Veronica puzzles over that...

...and we cut to her inspecting Pauline and Gil's space. She quickly finds and opens a container of leaves. From the look on her face after she smells it, she's located the green tea. Ironically, she does not seem soothed.

Later, Veronica has reassembled the magazines as VMVO tells us that all she found was "near-naked ladies"...

...and then Gil returns home to find Veronica waiting for him. He tries playing dumb at first, but Veronica, handing him the banana, sympathetically tells him that she heard 25 behind the door. So to catch up: the presence of the toy alerted Veronica to the idea that someone in the lab regarded 25 as more than a research experiment. My personal favorite touches? Gil's leering at NOS, which made the magazines seem in character, and the fact that a person working on cholesterol experiments drinks green tea, which is thought to lower cholesterol. Gil squeaks the banana into the last commercial break.

Cut to inside Gil's apartment, where Veronica is fondly watching the monkey dance around happily. I should say that, as mentioned in the forums, this monkey not only looks like Marcel, Ross's pet monkey on Friends, but actually is Marcel. And I just bumped the grade up for this episode because of that, because it occurs to me that this is the show's subtle way of getting us ready for the inevitable "WE! WERE ON! A BREAK!" conversation between Logan and Veronica. Veronica mentions the tea, and Gil clarifies that it's actually Pauline who drinks it, but Veronica goes on to reconstruct the whole thing, noting that Gil knew he could pin the break-in on PHAT. Gil and Marcel are busy being adorable, though, and Veronica can't help smiling. Gil explains that he started catching up on lab work on the weekends, so he bought Marcel a few toys with which to play while Pauline the buzzkill wasn't around. Soon, he was attached: "Veronica Mars, meet Oscar." Aw, Gil, my heart just grew three sizes. Can you find me a pill to treat that?