Date of airing: November 2, 2004 (UPN)
Nielsen ratings information: 2.86 million viewers, 2.1/3 in Households, 1.4/3 with Adults 18-49
teleplay by: Phil Klemmer
story by: Rob Thomas
directed by: Sarah Pia Anderson
Six episodes into the drama of the premise, and the writers may have come to a realization: Focusing on both the Lilly Kane murder and Veronica’s mother’s disappearance, as interesting and developing as both cases can be, might be a little too much for the show to handle right now, which is why Veronica stopped looking for her mother here (presumably because Veronica listened to her mother’s message from the previous episode by heart), and put her investigative skills into solving the Lilly Kane murder, all while the series itself starts putting some attention on the other characters, as both Duncan and Logan were given major storylines that helped flesh them out as characters, as well as distinguish them from one another.
The case of her missing mother, as well as the Lilly Kane murder, are stories ready to screw with Veronica’s mind and form
her character traits over the course of the series, but doing both cases
at the same time is like a crime procedural television drama on CBS
having two ongoing investigations going on simultaneously for an entire
season, while the show also delivers the stand-alone cases in each episode, as it is the nature of such crime procedural TV dramas. VERONICA MARS still needs that part of its premise to entertain the casual viewers, while the writers definitely had enough gas in the tank with both ongoing storylines to fill entire episodes, without moving a step forward in the narrative. And if such a show exists already (multiple ongoing criminal cases in addition to the stand-alone cases), then I do not
know about its existence, or maybe it has not been promoted enough when
it was aired or streamed. But let me tell you, VERONICA MARS has me getting interested in those shows now.
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| The only viable woman candidate in this race gets the most media coverage. |
This episode was interesting. It turns out that the presidential administration of Donald Trump can be compared to every corrupt election and administration television and film have depicted before the Cheeto ever decided to run for president, and this episode certainly had a corrupt election, even if it was just for the equivalent of a school president. But not unlike any other election in the world’s history, it was filled with ugliness, the candidates delivering a bad-form campaign, and the realization that no election ever runs fair, let alone results in an expected outcome. Wanda should have won the runoff election, considering how many students were on her side, but it turns out that the “narc” theme of her runoff campaign hurt her chances like James Comey hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances after he reopened the email investigation a mere two weeks before the general election in 2016.
And the thing is, both this election in VERONICA MARS and the 2016 presidential election can be compared. The favored candidate did not win, due to a last-minute twist making the favored candidate look bad (interestingly enough, in Wanda’s case, sticking her with the “narc” stamp might have had a reason), and the other candidate was not even interested in winning, let alone being president, although Duncan and Trump’s decision to run differ as well (the former was convinced to run after his campaign video was released, the latter ran for office to raise his profile for future $$$ deals with foreign governments). Besides that, the woman candidate lost either election, while the richer white man won. One can only hope that Duncan does not turn out to be a nationalist boy trying to cage in the less-fortunate students of Neptune High, otherwise, we will know that VERONICA MARS has been smoking some of the future and decided to bring it into the show. Plus points for Duncan to include the entire school in the Pirates points system, even if he would have looked better to just eradicate the program. Because why is it so bad to get your lunch delivered to school? What is the problem with that, and why should the less fortunate at school be punished by eating school food?
I was also surprised to see that no one had a problem with Veronica being actively involved in Wanda’s election campaign, considering she investigated the first election and found the fraud, and, as the journalist in the school, should have been neutral (at least in public – she could have voted for either of the candidates in private as much as she wanted). One might say that Veronica had to abstain from the runoff election and not be part of Wanda's posse, but I guess the school did not care about Veronica’s connection with either of the candidates, which by the way was also intriguing: Both of them were part of Veronica’s life in the past, one being her boyfriend, the other being her pep squad buddy. It makes one wonder why Veronica was so interested in Wanda’s campaign, and why she did not have an ounce of interest in seeing Duncan win. Was Veronica so deep into the idea of never having to see the Pirates point system ever again, because she connected to the majority of Neptune High students who were not part of the 09ers or rich? Was it that easy for the candidates to speak to their voters, showcasing the most extreme example of partisanship?
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| He will take the punishment with a smile on his face. |
Meanwhile, the episode made a decision about whom to focus on when it comes to the male characters of the show. The writers continued to choose either Duncan or Logan for the more emotional storyline of the episode, and while both guys were deeply involved in their own stories, it was clearly Logan who was given more depth by having his father introduced, who happened to be a major asshole, and potentially even a villain. When Aaron Echolls was introduced by screaming at his son for disappointing him, and concluding this episode with the belt, it can only mean that Logan and Aaron will have a difficult relationship throughout the entire show, and that Logan will always look for a way to humiliate his father, in addition to getting the sympathy from the audience, now that they know why Logan acts the way he does. There could be tendencies of Logan being a true villain himself, maybe abusing some of his friends, maybe even having abused Lilly Kane a tone point.
Who knows, might Logan be a suspect in Lilly Kane’s murder? Did the writers just add two people to the suspect list (Weevil too, after it was somewhat established that there may have been a thing between him and Lilly in the past)? Besides all that, the writers definitely knew how to make Aaron as unattractive as possible to the viewers of the show. Being the ruthless father makes it already easy to hate the guy, but talking an eight-figure sum to star in a movie he declared written worse than the text on a cereal box means he is going to do anything to make himself look good in the media, which means he is capable of doing some bad stuff. That makes him as dangerous as the potential of seeing Logan become ruthless under his ruthless father’s belt.
