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.
