AUGUST: We Used To Be Friends [And We Still Are], the All-Marshmallow Edition
Dear Kelsey,
I write you in the midst of what feels like cultural and personal chaos. On Saturday I opened my Twitter newsfeed at 4pm to discover that a mass shooting had taken place in El Paso, Texas—about 9 hours from where I live (Texas is big, okay?). I'm swimming in my own anger and fear, particularly as I remember conducting focus groups on attitudes toward gun reform in McLennan County, TX, where many citizens were completely fine with more restrictive gun laws. There's no good reason they don't AT LEAST exist in the state of Texas and it makes me angry to think about.
In personal chaotic news, Monday (Aug 5) marked exactly THREE WEEKS until the fall semester begins and I start my third year of my PhD, as well as my first year as a graduate professor teaching Intro to Sociology to college students! On Friday I told my spiritual director that "my entire life feels like it has been leading up to this moment," which feels like the truest thing I could have possibly said. (If you're the praying kind, say one for me on August 26!)
When I agreed to watch Veronica Mars for our August newsletter I thought to myself, "What a fun and exciting time that will be!", not "I can't wait to lay my heart out and then flay it into shrapnel!" I knew very little abut the Veronica Mars legacy or its popularity leading up to the 2019 renewal, other than the fact that it featured Kristen Bell who I am very into.
(I was so inspired by this gif that I try to work this middle finger technique into as many social interactions as possible)
If you haven't seen the show (and if you're planning to, I wouldn't read much further until you've had a chance to unless you're cool with spoilers), the show takes place in a very class segregated Californian beach town where Veronica works at her dad's private investigation firm, which he opened after being pushed out of his position as city sheriff. There's crime, there's teen drama, there's great humor, there's a surprisingly healthy and touching father-daughter relationship, it's delicious and smart and you should absolutely watch it.
I love this show. I really do. It is well worth our time and attention for this month's letter, but I think there are also some excellent critiques of this show to be had (particularly the way they choose to deal with race, gender, sexual orientation, sex work, etc). I tend to be of the opinion that "it's a product of its time" can be a valid explanation in some circumstances, but this show has such big Self-Congratulatory Progressive Energy (not unlike Handmaid's Tale IMO) that I just want to take a moment to say: I understand and am sympathetic toward people who struggled to watch all 4 seasons of this show due to its occasionally troubling politics.
With that preface, I was so immersed in this show from start to finish that I started having Mars-esque crime sequence dreams at night and waking up feeling very confused! The last time I was so sucked into what I was watching was the first time I watched One Tree Hill from start to finish in high school (LOL @ me)(can we please write about One Tree Hill sometime).
Let's talk about Keith a bit, because I love him so much and I love his arc as a character (and as the one person Season 4 didn't fail, tbh). Whenever I encounter a well-written and well-acted character like Keith, I find myself saying "He feels like a real person." One thing I know that you (Kelsey) and I have in common is our deep affection for ~realistic~, ordinary portrayals of people on screen, and Keith fits this bill. While his work is a bit unrealistic at time, his relationship with Veronica is real and deeply tender. I'm trying to keep my Season 4 spoilers condensed to one section to make it easier for people to skip, so all I'll say here is that S4 explored Keith as an aging father in some of the most emotional and moving moments of the season.
For a television show that wants to talk a lot about class warfare, the show has always floundered in its confrontation of racial conflict (likely because there are no non-white writers on the show). Nowhere is this more apparent to me than the show's treatment of Weevil. Weevil, initially portrayed as the "villain" of Neptune High, ended up becoming one of my favorite characters over the course of the 4 seasons and is truly the most slighted character on the show. Veronica continues to use him and his resources and then doubt him whenever things get complicated. Weevil deserved so much better than simplistic Latino stereotypes and a life as a janitor. #JusticeforWeevil
The show has a couple weird and problematic subplots. There's an episode in season 2 that involves a group of queer people being outed that I have mixed feelings about. I'm going to go on a tangent for a sec about the serial campus rapist in S3 for a sec because there's a Lot happening that was probably uneventful in 2007 but hasn't aged very well in 2019. I like the way the show likes to talk about tough political issues, but S3 veers too close to victim blaming for comfort on multiple occasions. Veronica also has this weird history of defending men accused of predatory behavior (see: her high school teacher played by Adam Scott). I know I'm all over the place right now but this show also has a MAJOR older-men-dating-underage-women problem. I know Max Greenfield and Kristen Bell are the same age IRL and have great chemistry, but that doesn't enable his character dating underage teenage girls!!!
(STOP THAT. STOP THAT RIGHT NOW)
I love so much about this show, but the thing that kept me watching was two words: Logan Echolls.
I mean, JESUS CHRIST. It took me about 2/3 of the way through season 1 until I audibly gasped aloud, "omg Veronica is going to end up with LOGAN!" I don't know why it took me so long to figure out, but I have staunchly been on #TeamLogan ever since. Logan Echolls seems perfectly created with the intention of destroying me personally, and nowhere is that as painfully clear as season 4. I managed to survive having my heart destroyed in seasons 1-3 by reminding myself that Logan was a painfully dysfunctional person who I would want nothing to do with in real life. That plan was working perfectly well until season 4, when the writers had the fucking NERVE to make him emotionally intelligent and actively going to therapy!!! I literally wrote in my notes: "Take me Logan, my body is ready." (~EXTREMELY~ convenient that Logan Echolls and my husband share the same first name.) Down with the American military industrial complex, but let's keep uniforms and just use them for doormen and taxi drivers or something.
When Logan walks up to the beach in the first episode of season 4, I actually clenched the sides of my chair. The banter that him and Veronica immediately have in their first scene already displays their off-the-charts chemistry. Then they immediately go on to have some INCREDIBLE sex!!! I was sweating. The nerve to do this to us!!!
SEASON 4 SPOILERS AHEAD FROM HERE UNTIL THE END.
Season 4 was very focused on giving Logan his due before saying goodbye. We have so many delicious moments from this season: his own action scene, lots of steamy sex scenes with Veronica, his incredible growth through therapy......but it's not enough for me. Logan deserved so much better. (Please read this EXCELLENT piece on Veronica and Logan's fascinating relationship—one of my all-time TV faves—from PenPals fave Caroline Framke.)
My heart broke so much after the car exploded in the finale that it took me DAYS to be able to even start writing this newsletter. I know it's Over for Logan but there's a part of me that's still like "one of the classic rules of TV is to never rule somebody dead until you see a body!!" Like if there's enough negative response they can still find a way to bring him back. I know it's unlikely, whatever, a girl can hope okay?
A literal text I sent Kelsey halfway into the first episode:
I fuckin hate being right.
I cried so much during S4, and I can't tell if it's just because I've been very in my Feels in general or because this season was just VERY emotional. Keith's moment in front of the pop machine when he's so afraid of growing old and failing Veronica and what the future holds that he weeps made me an absolute wreck. I love soft and vulnerable Keith and also I want him to adopt me.
I think what made the ending so unnerving was that the creator and showrunner, Rob Thomas, doesn't seem to be particularly aware of what the fanbase actually values. Shows about women detectives solving crimes are a dime a dozen; what makes this show unique and special is the context Veronica is set in, and particularly her relationships. As several writers have noted, the crime solving is the least interesting part of Season 4 (Enrico Colantoni knows this), which makes killing off one of the few people in her life she unequivocally loves and trusts so particularly brutal. As PenPals fave Nichole Perkins wrote, "A woman learning how to love fully and openly while solving crimes & gouging rich people's pockets is still a fun, good show! I wish we could see that." If you want to end this newsletter feeling completely f*cked up, watch this video of Jason Dohring talking about the ending and saying goodbye to the fans (warning: you will absolutely cry).
(THIS GIF!)
I think I'm always going to associate this show fondly with summer 2019. It came into my life in a time when I needed a story and characters to get immersed in. Veronica deserves better, and I hope upcoming seasons honor the journey Veronica has been on and who she's becoming.
Thanks for being the Mac to my Veronica,
Hannah
Dear Hannah,
Let me open with a little story. It was the day after I graduated from college. During a couple of days in which we couldn't stay in campus housing anymore but also couldn't move into the rental house until it passed inspection, one of my roommates and I were staying on the futon/floor of three generous friends with two bedrooms and three cats. Into this powderkeg of uncertainty and cat hair, two of our hosts—both VERY passionate Marshmallows—sidled into the conversation with a "since we have you here.....how about Veronica Mars?"
I'd actually seen the pilot a couple of years before, but this time, with five people on retail and nannying schedules, we burned through approximately 6 or 7 episodes a day, and when the rental house had the approval of the water inspector (???), we hauled in not only totes filled with used books from "Milton and the 17th Century," but also their DVDs of Seasons 1-3. We had time to marathon-watch TV again, after senior projects and internships and meeting with concerned freshmen to go over their Survey of British Literature II projects and it was wonderful.
Now.....with every passing year my capacity to marathon-watch seems to diminish? Anyway, this is a long way around saying that although I have seen the entire series, I only got halfway through season 2 on this rewatch before writing my section of the newsletter. BUT NEVER FEAR FOR I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT SEASONS 1 AND 4, WHICH I OBVIOUSLY PAUSED THE REWATCH TO DIVE INTO.
Warning: I'm about to spoil seasons 1 and 2 with impunity. Probably season 3 too, if I get around to it, though I do my best not to think about Rough Draft Zac Efron, also known as Piznarski. This show has been around for 15 years. I'll be a little more careful about season 4 since it just came out and I continue to feel annoyed about full-season drops.
(AM. I. WRONG THOUGH???)
Another warning: sexual assault is a central part of this show, and the show also includes domestic violence and suicide. Please take care of yourself as needed.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Season 1 of Veronica Mars is a near-perfect season, structurally. And like...I knew that the first time I watched it, but DAMN ON A REWATCH??? Even better.
(settle in, get a snack and a beverage, we are about to get IN IT!!)
The "Dead Girl Show" (p.s. I read Alice Bolin's Dead Girls: Surviving An American Obsession and will probably cite it...several times) is one we're culturally obsessed with; it's baked into numerous genres and subgenres, a unifying thread between shows that are otherwise tonally dissimilar. One of the most iconic lines in American television—"Who Killed Laura Palmer?"—is the thesis statement of David Lynch's Twin Peaks, and though the show sets a standard for "bonkers" that Riverdale seems fixated on outdoing, the premise is inescapable.
In the Dead Girl Show, Bolin explains, "the Dead Girl is not a 'character' in the show, but rather the memory of her is," a puzzle to be solved, usually by a man (14). Considering that (as in life) the perpetrator is almost always a man as well, the shows often have a complex and even contradictory relationship to male violence and male responsibility, simultaneously urging women to recognize that "father figures and male authorities hold a sinister interest in controlling girl bodies, and therefore in harming them" (16), while also revealing villains almost supernaturally monstrous, "externalizing the impulse to prey on young women cleverly depicts it as both inevitable and beyond the control of men" (17).
Enter Veronica Mars, in which protagonist and show's investigator is demographically similar to the Dead Girl. [side note: Bolin's book includes in her analysis that the Dead Girl Show is hyper-focused on the white, young, thin, cishet, able-bodied woman] [Weevil also points this out in Season 1 when the school brings in grief counselors in the wake of Lilly's death but doesn't even acknowledge the recent murder of an elementary school aged Latinx girl] Like Jane Campion's Top of the Lake, one of the other exceptions, the first season is a double mystery: "the female protagonist is both trying to solve the mystery presented by a Dead (or missing) Girl and to solve her own rape, making the question not 'What have I done?' but 'What happened to me?'" (21)
OKAY OKAY I WILL STOP WRITING A TERM PAPER ABOUT ALICE BOLIN. (fun fact about me is that for my Literary Theory final paper in college I wrote about how season one of Broadchurch subverts these tropes, further evidence that I have always been Thirsty For TV Yelling)
I'm not really sure how to slide into this next section, because I'm about to get into a real Hot Take [jk there is nothing new under the sun I'm sure AT LEAST a dozen people have said this already, probably more]: on a rewatch.......I feel differently about the Officer Leo plotline.
Though my love for Max Greenfield, particularly as Schmidt on New Girl, is enduring and abundant, when I first saw him on Veronica Mars, I not only flinched, I blanched. I groaned. I grimaced in the general direction of wherever I thought the screenwriters were, and felt extra justified in my discomfort when I got to the reveal. After an "affair" [statutory rape] with Lilly Kane, movie star Aaron Echolls had murdered her and almost gotten away with it. [because of being a Wealthy White Man, he's acquitted at the end of the second season, only to be contract-murdered at the behest of Dry Toast Duncan Kane, hiding out in Mexico with his kidnapped baby daughter and y'all don't know how LUCKY YOU ARE that I don't have time to get into my feelings on THAT plotline!!!]
How shortsighted and discordant!! I screamed. For THAT to be the conclusion of the show's biggest mystery while also making it look cute for the 20 year old cop Leo D'Amato to date 17 year old Veronica when it's SO SO GROSS AND BAD. And it is. It is gross and bad. It's also thematically coherent with the rest of the show, season 1 in particular.
(if not for all this unfortunateness and also my general distrust for law enforcement, I would definitely try to date 2019 Leo and that's an unfortunate fact about myself that we're just gonna have to sit with)
This time around, even before Leo's introduction, I was startled again and again by how often sex [again, statutory rape] between adult men and underage girls kept coming up, almost casually. You mentioned this in your letter, as well as Veronica's habit of defending the accused man. We meet Leo one episode before the Adam Scott episode, in one of the many other episodes focusing on adult male predation on teenage girls. There's a serial killer on the loose, and as Keith questions one of the suspects at the police station, Veronica drops in. After she walks away, the suspect makes a lewd comment [which Keith tackles him for] and the VERY NEXT MOMENT Veronica is meeting Deputy Leo D'Amato, a clean-cut 20 year old who seems committed to speaking as though his tongue is stapled to his teeth. His attraction to her is undeterred by both learning Veronica's age and later on learning that she flirted with him primarily to steal evidence. The betrayal stings a bit, but he gets over it by hanging a drawing of her stylized as the devil [supes normal thing for a professional adult man to do] and also flirting with her some more. I was intrigued that the seedlings of this relationship were introduced in this particular relationship [we also find out that Leo is a musician, AS IS THE MURDERER], but the next episode was when I started truly losing my shit.
This is the Adam Scott episode, in which Adam Scott [all the episodes-specific characters in this one have chess-themed names and honestly who has the time] is accused of having "a sexual relationship" [I've said it enough times by now, right?] with a student, played by the incomparable Leighton Meester, who is Doing The Very Most in this episode. He's Veronica's favorite teacher, and Leighton Meester has always been mean to her, so she defends the teacher for most of the episode, all the way up until her experience of him starts to line up with Leighton's account. This is also the episode in which she starts to flirt with Leo in earnest.
Next episode. Veronica spends most of the 40 minutes trying to reunite a Russian mail-order bride with a man who turns out to be in witness protection, hiding from the "bride's" Russian mob. In the b-plot, she also tries to determine the identity of her friend Meg's "secret admirer," who turns out to be her ex-boyfriend Duncan. She also flirts with Leo, which leads to them kissing and slow-dancing at the school dance. [SUPER SUPER NORMAL, CAN'T POSSIBLY IMAGINE HOW ALL THESE ADULT MEN IN THIS TOWN ARE GETTING AWAY WITH THEIR PREDATION.]
So the two episodes in which Leo and Veronica's relationship blooms are also episodes in which she spends most of her time completely wrong. We should be seriously questioning her judgement after even the Adam Scott episode, which is not to blame her! The show, not always successfully, asks us to walk a delicate balance between honoring her agency while also not falling for the self-justification that Leo uses: that her experiences have made her basically an adult, even if her ID doesn't say so. She's not basically an adult, she's a teenager who's been through an immense amount of trauma, and I believe there's a reading of this show in which Leo finding Veronica crying in her car outside a school dance, heartbroken over her ex-boyfriend, is meant to be read as a signal that he exists on the same plane as the lewd-comment-suspect, predatory teacher, Aaron Echolls, and every other creep on this show.
They date for a few episodes, until the plot/the forces of chemistry need Veronica to finally, finally get with Logan. And even here, the breakup coalesces with a bigger truth about the show. Veronica goes home with Logan and discovers his father viciously beating up Logan's sister's abusive boyfriend. Aaron is the murderer, though we don't know that yet, and it doesn't feel like a coincidence to me that the episode in which Veronica catches her first glimpse of the "real" Aaron Echolls [we the audience have seen it sooner, learning both of his sexual unscrupulousness and his abuse of Logan] is also the episode in which things end between her and her age-inappropriate deputy boyfriend.
Of course, OF COURSE, the responsibility to end things should not have been on her, which brings me back to the show's complicated relationship to Veronica's maturity. [I'll come back to this in a bit.] And I have qualms about this interpretation—I have no idea if it was even intentional, and if it was, is it effective if it doesn't read that way without searching for it? And yet my respect for the thematic integrity of Season 1 has grown inversely to my annoyance at Season 4.
[Season 4 spoilers can be expected from here until the end.]
So Season 4. I enjoyed watching it, but the more I think about it the more my feelings sour. As you mention, the way the show [and frequently Veronica] treats Weevil is just....beyond shitty. One of my top wishlist items for this season was some goddamn justice for that character, who throughout the show is repeatedly given the entirely thankless job of calling Veronica out on her tepid [at BEST] class solidarity. As you went into, the show isn't as effectively about class warfare as it wants to be, largely due to their hesitancy and limited capability as an all-white* writing staff to treat racial tensions and class tensions with an understanding of them as separate-yet-linked.
[*or nearly all-white; it turns out that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been getting into TV writing in the last few years, and has a writing credit for one of the S4 episodes, which still does not put the show anywhere CLOSE to having a racially diverse writing staff]
Like you, I don't think the "product of its time" discussion is completely meritless, so long as we're willing to examine what in its time the product is reacting to, and whether they're enforcing or pushing against it. A term I CANNOT handle is when people say things were "ahead of their time." THAT'S NOT A THING. NOTHING CAN BE 'AHEAD' OF ITS TIME, AND WHEN WE SAY THAT ALL WE MEAN IS THAT THAT TEXT/PERSON'S REACTIONS TO THEIR OWN TIME ARE MORE PALATABLE TO US NOW THAN WE WERE EXPECTING. [and the definition of 'us' itself is slippery and often reliant on who gets to be at the center of any given conversation.] Anyway, there's my textual soapbox checked off.
(just tryna be as rude, gif-wise, to you as you were to me)
All of that said, I think S1, for all its faults, was actually a more interesting investigation of class tensions than S4. Season 4 did a good job at capturing the chilling nature of gentrification in late capitalism and the way it stifles communities, but it runs into the same issue Rob Thomas seemed to face with the season's love story: Veronica's adulthood.
One of the premises that the original run of the show rested on is the inherent tension of Neptune High, a public school sharply divided into the 'haves' and 'have nots.' While it's true that public schools have always been and are still frequently segregated by race and class, in a community as close-quarters as Neptune, it's not unheard of that this is the place in which, despite their class-defined cliques, the have and have-not teens are, at the very least, required [to use a gross evangelical term brilliantly written about by Laura Turner*] to "do life together."
[EDIT June 2020: At the time this was written and published (August 2019), we were not aware of Laura Turner’s involvement in the Menlo Church cover-up, which was discovered by Daniel Lavery in November 2019 and revealed over the following months in stages, confirming the degree of her involvement in June 2020. For some time we have not supported Turner or her work and wanted to make that clear here as well.]
Which is really fucking interesting!! The original show leaned into the unique malleability and pressures of the teen years, simultaneously demonstrating the impact one's class has on their life while also presenting a space in which the teenage characters are forced by proximity to acknowledge and confront, and occasionally push back against, those boundaries in ways that their parents can [or have no choice but to] self-select out of.
[JUSTICE FOR WEEVIL AND HIS WIFE]
And that makes Veronica-as-adult a hurdle for the show, on which it firmly bangs its shins. The Mars family is certainly not free of money issues [gawd the simple fact of Keith's health problems being the result of an adverse mixture of medications, which only an expensive health care coverage could catch is just TOO REAL. #SinglePayerOrBust] but Veronica herself is comfortably ensconced in a beachfront property, driving a snazzy car, and extremely ready to ice out Weevil for making a choice she herself would never need to make. She still seems uncomfortable with both the very wealthy and those struggling more economically than her, but unlike the original run, she has no arena in which to exercise that discomfort, and it stagnates as a sideline to the buildup of her relationship with Logan.
You've already written beautifully about the frustration many fans (including both of us) are feeling about Rob Thomas' decision to kill off not just Logan, but Veronica's forward motion as well. It's troubling to think that he may not know how to construct a character arc for an adult woman firmly situated in meaningful relationships, even the adult woman he created. I don't feel terribly enthusiastic about the idea of more seasons of this show, despite Kristen Bell's fantastic statement that she'll "keep doing this show until everyone in Neptune is dead!"
OKAY THAT WAS A LOT OF SERIOUSNESS, AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR SOME GOOFING.
I'm so, so glad that Wallace was in this season. It really wouldn't be the show without him. I always feel compelled to start any conversation about the movie with "I know it's really fan-servicey, but..." BUT I REALLY LOVE THE MOVIE. I felt serviced to and I was completely okay with that! Sometimes I watch it to cheer myself up, just because seeing Veronica hanging out with Wallace and Mac does my heart SUCH GOOD. Also? If you're rebooting a beloved series you can't fucking pretend that "not doing fan service" is some kind of ~artistic choice~. BY REBOOTING THE SHOW YOU ARE ALREADY DOING FAN SERVICE AND IT'S FRANKLY INSULTING TO BACK UP YOUR BAD DECISIONS BY CLAIMING THAT NOT MAKING THEM WOULD BE 'JUST FAN SERVICE.'
Apparently the reason that we didn't get to see Mac this season is because conversations with Rob Thomas about the direction the show was heading was towards a more isolated Veronica and less as an ensemble, which is...so annoying to me, and I really respect Tina Majorino for deciding she wasn't interested in that show.
I was sad about Logan's death but honestly I would have been DEVASTATED if they had killed Keith. He's SO SO GOOD and precious, and often better at seeing the humanity and dignity in less-than-perfect victims than Veronica is, and I'm glad that he finally got a girlfriend. I also have a great deal of, perhaps misplaced, affection for Dick Casablancas and Vinnie Van Lowe and their adorably slimeball antics.
Now it's time for the goofiest bit of all, in which I say before god and our lovely readers what has been met with almost universal derision: of all the bangable men on the show, I am most into Cliff, the One Cheap Lawyer in Neptune.
I just...I'm so into him? And I don't even really have a good reason for it? I just think he's so charming, and FINE, I'LL SAY IT, HOT!
(me @ me)
I will OF COURSE be sending good thoughts and thirsty gifs your way in anticipation of August 26. You are going to rock the minds of those unsuspecting students and be the envy and desire of all who witness your acumen and style!!
Yours in extreme non-chillness, the Mac to your Veronica,