Veronica Mars 2.11
Jan. 27th, 2006 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakDarth Real Life kept me busy this week, but in a good way. I did have the opportunity to watch the latest Veronica Mars episode, though.
The Keith-Veronica relationship is at times so idyllic, with Keith having the patent on ideal fathership, that interruptions such as this one serve to make it more real to me. Especially since I can see both points of view in what was easily the most powerful scene of the episode, with Keith delivering a rare outburst that reminded me of Giles in Revelations. Kidnapping is a crime, and I think Veronica’s main reason for deceiving her father was the awareness that he’d never have gone along with this, and definitely wouldn’t have let her aiding and abetting. On the other hand, given what she and Duncan discovered about the Manning household, and Duncan’s less than stellar chances of obtaining custody of the baby in a legal way, plus Meg’s explicit wishes, I can understand why the whole Duncan-kidnaps-the-baby plan seemed to Veronica the only option.
(Sidenote here: back in the episode where Duncan first found out that Meg had witnessed child abuse, I wondered the same thing as I did in this episode: how much Duncan and Lilly, who had known Logan since many years, guessed about what was going on in the Echolls household, and whether Duncan’s strong and immediate reaction to the idea of a child being abused – which is marked as he’s mostly a passive character – was due to not wanting to stand by again. )
Episodes where the audience gets played along with most of the characters until the revelation can be tricky, but I think Thomas pulled this one of. Duncan’s “break-up” with Veronica was a little too rude, Veronica definitely too emo (to use the Wallace term), which was a hint at it being an act. Moreover, Veronica not trying to find Duncan on her own and cooperating with the law was another strong indication that something wasn’t right; of course, she knew exactly where he was all along. Lamb, bless his paranoid heart, thought so all along, but Lamb of course always thinks that about Veronica. Nice writing, btw, with the FBI agents (I so was expecting them to be called some anagram of Mulder and Scully) dressing Lamb down on the one hand undercutting his natural smugness but on the other feeling overdone, as the female agent was just as smug. Plus, of course, to quote a certain American politician about a vile dictator back when he was still supplying him with weapons, Lamb “may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”. So when it’s FBI agent versus Lamb, I ultimately sympathize with Lamb.
(Oh, and I’m still maintaining Veronica’s scenes with him are more interesting than hers with Logan this season.)
When watching this episode, it occurred to me that season 2 consistently refuses to play along with fanon, fanon being that Veronica doesn’t really love Duncan and is bound to discover she really loves Logan, that Duncan doesn’t know the “real” Veronica and only loves the memory of the pre-Lilly’s death one if he loves her at all, and that Veronica is bound to rush into Logan’s arms and have hot reconciliatory sex with him as soon as Duncan is out of the way. This always ignored that Logan and Veronica didn’t break up because of Duncan to begin with. Far from angsting about and waiting for Veronica, Logan is currently more busy trying to figure out what happened during his blackout with Weevil. Duncan not telling Veronica about the Meg pregnancy once he found out (at the end of the child abuse investigation episode, when he opens Meg’s letter) is certainly questionable and an illustration of his basic character flaw (try to avoid facing ugly truths as long as possible), but there is no indication he sees Veronica as something other than the clever, acerbic young woman she became. (The Veronica in his nightmare about her and Meg certainly wasn’t the sweet young thing fanon insists he’s seeing Veronica as.) And if Veronica doesn’t really care for Duncan, she has been giving a good imitation of it from pretty much the pilot episode onwards. Mind you, I don’t think they truly make a good couple (and if this was the last we see of Duncan, I’ll keep worrying whether he’s really up to the task of caring for a baby, though he actually was way better at caring for the plastic version than Veronica), but I think that as opposed to Veronica and Logan, they can pull off the friendship thing once the romance is over, and I don’t doubt what they feel for each other right now is love.
One more thing about Duncan: of course he named the child Lilly.
Wallace and Veronica and their sibling relationship was much missed, and I’m glad Wallace is back. Both supporting Veronica and in trouble of his own.
So, speculations: next we’ll deal with the fallout between Veronica and her father, and secondary with Wallace and the fatal results of his Chicago accident. What we won’t get is a Veronica/Logan reunion.
The Keith-Veronica relationship is at times so idyllic, with Keith having the patent on ideal fathership, that interruptions such as this one serve to make it more real to me. Especially since I can see both points of view in what was easily the most powerful scene of the episode, with Keith delivering a rare outburst that reminded me of Giles in Revelations. Kidnapping is a crime, and I think Veronica’s main reason for deceiving her father was the awareness that he’d never have gone along with this, and definitely wouldn’t have let her aiding and abetting. On the other hand, given what she and Duncan discovered about the Manning household, and Duncan’s less than stellar chances of obtaining custody of the baby in a legal way, plus Meg’s explicit wishes, I can understand why the whole Duncan-kidnaps-the-baby plan seemed to Veronica the only option.
(Sidenote here: back in the episode where Duncan first found out that Meg had witnessed child abuse, I wondered the same thing as I did in this episode: how much Duncan and Lilly, who had known Logan since many years, guessed about what was going on in the Echolls household, and whether Duncan’s strong and immediate reaction to the idea of a child being abused – which is marked as he’s mostly a passive character – was due to not wanting to stand by again. )
Episodes where the audience gets played along with most of the characters until the revelation can be tricky, but I think Thomas pulled this one of. Duncan’s “break-up” with Veronica was a little too rude, Veronica definitely too emo (to use the Wallace term), which was a hint at it being an act. Moreover, Veronica not trying to find Duncan on her own and cooperating with the law was another strong indication that something wasn’t right; of course, she knew exactly where he was all along. Lamb, bless his paranoid heart, thought so all along, but Lamb of course always thinks that about Veronica. Nice writing, btw, with the FBI agents (I so was expecting them to be called some anagram of Mulder and Scully) dressing Lamb down on the one hand undercutting his natural smugness but on the other feeling overdone, as the female agent was just as smug. Plus, of course, to quote a certain American politician about a vile dictator back when he was still supplying him with weapons, Lamb “may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”. So when it’s FBI agent versus Lamb, I ultimately sympathize with Lamb.
(Oh, and I’m still maintaining Veronica’s scenes with him are more interesting than hers with Logan this season.)
When watching this episode, it occurred to me that season 2 consistently refuses to play along with fanon, fanon being that Veronica doesn’t really love Duncan and is bound to discover she really loves Logan, that Duncan doesn’t know the “real” Veronica and only loves the memory of the pre-Lilly’s death one if he loves her at all, and that Veronica is bound to rush into Logan’s arms and have hot reconciliatory sex with him as soon as Duncan is out of the way. This always ignored that Logan and Veronica didn’t break up because of Duncan to begin with. Far from angsting about and waiting for Veronica, Logan is currently more busy trying to figure out what happened during his blackout with Weevil. Duncan not telling Veronica about the Meg pregnancy once he found out (at the end of the child abuse investigation episode, when he opens Meg’s letter) is certainly questionable and an illustration of his basic character flaw (try to avoid facing ugly truths as long as possible), but there is no indication he sees Veronica as something other than the clever, acerbic young woman she became. (The Veronica in his nightmare about her and Meg certainly wasn’t the sweet young thing fanon insists he’s seeing Veronica as.) And if Veronica doesn’t really care for Duncan, she has been giving a good imitation of it from pretty much the pilot episode onwards. Mind you, I don’t think they truly make a good couple (and if this was the last we see of Duncan, I’ll keep worrying whether he’s really up to the task of caring for a baby, though he actually was way better at caring for the plastic version than Veronica), but I think that as opposed to Veronica and Logan, they can pull off the friendship thing once the romance is over, and I don’t doubt what they feel for each other right now is love.
One more thing about Duncan: of course he named the child Lilly.
Wallace and Veronica and their sibling relationship was much missed, and I’m glad Wallace is back. Both supporting Veronica and in trouble of his own.
So, speculations: next we’ll deal with the fallout between Veronica and her father, and secondary with Wallace and the fatal results of his Chicago accident. What we won’t get is a Veronica/Logan reunion.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 05:04 pm (UTC)I don't think Duncan gets Veronica. I don't think he sees her for the remarkable young woman that she is. He doesn't acknowledge the existence of Detective!Veronica, who is an actor in a way that he (with the exceptions of his trip to Cuba and now Lilly's kidnapping - in both cases running away, not dealing with an issue head on as Veronica does again and again) will never be. Of course, neither did any of the other guys Veronica has dated. I'm still holding out for a guy who truly gets how remarkable Veronica is and how her tenacity and determination and willingness to step up and change the world are an integral part of her, not something that can be put aside so that she can be a regular teenage girlfriend.
Other than Wallace, that is.
I think the reason Veronica has stuck with Duncan has a lot to do with her attempt to redefine herself, which has informed the shape and tone of the entire season thus far. Veronica is trying to go back to the person she was before Lilly's murder, and at the same time she's not willing to give up the new skills and personality traits that she's discovered within herself. She's deeply conflicted about the person she wants to be (which is possibly why a lot of fans are complaining about her inconsistent behavior this year, and why the development of the season-long mystery has been somewhat aimless), and while it's obvious that she does care about Duncan, I think it's telling that when they're just trying to be regular teenagers, she's never entirely in the room (and usually focused on some case). The most intense Duncan and Veronica interactions have consistently involved Veronica using her detective skills in some way (tracking down the abused kid, kidnapping the baby). There's genuine heat between them when Duncan agrees to come into Veronica's world, but his default position is still normality and Veronica has, whether she accepts this or not, crossed over into a darker world.
Oh, and I'm also quite concerned about Duncan's ability to care for the baby.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 02:18 pm (UTC)Agreed that their most intense moments are about him coming into her world, though I'd also nominate the only flashback-shown Chinese cookie giving and the aftermath to the bus crash. But like I said, I don't think that meta reasons aside, they would have worked out as a romance in the long term anyway. However, friendship seems to be in the cards, and that's definitely an improvement over their first breakup.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 05:49 pm (UTC)There's also no indication that he does see her as that, though. There's no indication that what he feels for her is something that he feels for her; he could just be Generic Guy and she Generic Girl, for all it would matter to their relationship. But then I continue to be unconvinced that Duncan has a personality at all, which is the biggest reason why I can't believe that Veronica loves him and not the idea of him.
And I don't say this as a V/L shipper because I'm really not one. I love Logan but I want to see his interactions with Weevil and with Aaron Echolls rather than Veronica. And frankly I think his feelings for Veronica were a simple transference of what he felt for Lilly.
Lamb “may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”. So when it’s FBI agent versus Lamb, I ultimately sympathize with Lamb.
*g* Yep, me too. I also liked the Lamb-Veronica scenes a lot. I like how his dislike and suspicion of her actually led him closer to the truth than the FBI agents, even if he was being played like a fiddle the whole time.
And I loved Keith in this episode as well. The real tragedy is that Veronica ultimately played him because of who he raised her to be: smart, sneaky, determined, independent. She used the skills he gave her against him.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 06:25 pm (UTC)I really like it, too, that Lamb, while still a smug idiot, is also beginning to develop into a character rather than just a caricature.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-28 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 06:37 pm (UTC)At least the show wants us to believe this, and so I have to take off my lawyer hat (a baby CAN'T be adopted against the birth father's wishes, and vis a vis Meg's parents, he'd have presumptive custody, and visitation at the very least; I have to take a deep breath and say TV ALWAYS GETS FAMILY LAW WRONG, TV ALWAYS GETS FAMILY LAW WRONG). I don't understand the anti-Duncanness in fandom but, then, I haven't seen all of last season -- and I'm with you on finding the Lamb scenes the best part of the show.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-28 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-28 04:15 pm (UTC)also, the thing's going to YouSendit right now, or at least i hope so.