"The welfare of children doesn't seem to have been terribly high on your list."
"That's not how it was! It wasn't that way at all. Those boys...if you knew their fathers...how they ignored them, mistreated them. They needed someone. I listened to them; I cared about them."
Who controls the baseball team?
Who keeps the Sharks reigning supreme?
He does! He does!
Who lacks votes to incorporate?
Who touches boys like he touched his mate?
He does! He does!
Who stabs Keith in the place lumbar?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
He does! He does!
Who rules Neptune as the "mayor"?
Who gets blown up in the air?
He does! He does!
Or did, to be more accurate. More on that later.
Woody Goodman was best known in Neptune for being the owner of the Sharks (the younger crowd may know him best as Coach) and Woody's Burgers (where the younger crowd probably ate after each game). This election year, he threw his hat into the race — if you could call it that — for county supervisor. No one opposed his campaign to make Neptune a cleaner, safer town. It's not surprising, given the last county supervisor's term saw at least two murders, the return of a serial killer, and a tragic accident. Once he was in office, he meant to make good on his campaign promise, and he enlisted Keith's help. Incorporating Neptune and appointing Keith Mars chief of police would create a cleaner, safer Neptune. Keith noted, however, that it would also turn Neptune into some sort of 09ercadia. Whether it was that sentiment or the recent scandal involving a drunken hooker campaign staffer that swayed the vote, Neptune chose to stick with the status quo. Little did they know that the scandal was staged.
Woody was willing to go to bat for Neptune. He enjoyed the long ball, but we're not sure what Mrs. Goodman thought of that. He was no purist. She, however, was: not even water could sully her pristine carpet. The punishment she had in store for her young son upset him, but like Lynn Echolls, he did nothing to stop it. Instead, he retired to his room, allowing his daughter, Gia, to make friends at her new school, Neptune High.
Woody talked a great deal about creating a safer Neptune, but could he be trusted? He had at least one Fitzpatrick on the payroll. Add that to the easy access he had to explosives and the eerie warning he gave to Gia, and we thought he may have been involved in the bus crash. And the ease with which he falsely incriminates Keith to cover up his own indiscretions suggested a psychologist would classify him as something ending in -path.
But in truth, he'd be better classified as something ending in -phile: Woody's interest in Little Leaguers was more than just sports-related. He molested numerous children, including Tommy Dohanic, Peter Ferrer, Marcos Oliveres...and Cassidy Casablancas. Woody's abuse of Beaver, well-intentioned though it may have seemed in his head, indirectly led to the bus crash perpetrated by the damaged teen, who simply wanted his dirty little secret, forced onto him by a man perceived as "Awwwwesome," kept.
When mounting evidence suggested that Woody was directly responsible for the bus crash, however, he flew the coop, quite literally. Keith quickly tracked him down, though, and put him on a plane headed back home.
But everything comes full circle. The same type of bomb that was on the bus was on that plane, and Beaver detonated it in mid-air. Woody Goodman, like his famous burgers, is dead meat.
We think Neptune will be a cleaner, safer place without him.