OPEN CASE: VERONICA MARS

Season 1 - Episode 1

PILOT: Unsolved Crimes

by Spring Summers – 24-SEP-04

When your name is Mars and you live in Neptune, you can expect to feel a little lost in space. High schooler Veronica Mars used to run with the In-Crowd, but it seems she’s no longer in their orbit.

The daughter of the sheriff, Veronica had rocketed to the top of trendy Neptune, California’s social circle due to her association with the prominent Kane family. But Veronica’s boyfriend, Duncan Kane, mysteriously dumps her, and her best friend Lily (Duncan’s sister) is mysteriously murdered. So Mars finds herself having to come back down a little closer to Earth – and so does her dad, who lost his job, his reputation, and his wife, due to everyone’s belief that he had bungled the Lily Kane murder investigation.

Veronica’s childhood ends very, very abruptly – it seems that within the span of a few months she experiences her best friend’s death, being dumped by her sweetheart, being suddenly abandoned by her mother, being raped (though she doesn’t remember the act) after being drugged at a party, having her story of the rape callously dismissed by the new sheriff, having to start working to help dad at his new detective agency, and moving from a nice home into what looks like a live-in motel with her dad.

It’s no wonder Veronica really gets into her new job as an investigator. The girl has a lot of unanswered questions needling her. Her life’s been totally turned upside down, and the only thing that has been half-way explained is Lily’s death: Her father suspected that Jake Kane, Lily’s father, had killed his own daughter. But Abel Koontz, a disgruntled former employee of Jake’s, has confessed. So it wasn’t Kane, it was Abel? That doesn’t sound right, somehow, does it? So even that one, partially closed wound reopens for Veronica, when she learns that her dad still believes that Jake murdered Lily, and that her missing mom may be somehow involved with Jake.

It all gets curiouser and curiouser, and I can only assume that subsequent episodes will bring more clarity to the whens and wheres and whys and hows.

Veronica certainly seems determined to find all the answers – we see in this Pilot episode that her experiences have hardened her, and left her cynical (“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that the people you love let you down.”) She’s willing to use questionable means to meet her ends. Rejected by the In-Crowd, she aligns herself first with an outcast named Wallace, a sweet but uncool kid who works at the local convenience store and is picked on by others. Then, by hook and crook, she helps Neptune High School’s most notorious gang of thugs (led by the unsavory Weevil) get out of serious trouble. So it’s Weevil and his pack, along with her dog Back-up, that apparently will be providing protection for the fearless Veronica.

Veronica has begun to view her harsh new world through a camera; she’s put a layer between herself and reality and become primarily an observer and a chronicler, rather than a hands-on participant. She likes taking pictures and she talks about streaming videos and she gets Wallace out of trouble by replacing a videotape. Unlike what happens in real life, recorded images can be replaced, manipulated, and controlled. Like Wallace with his remote control devices, Veronica now prefers to manage things from a distance. And she’s willing to lie and to manipulate others to force a foreseeable (rather than an unpredictable) end.

She’s hurting, she’s angry, and she’s determined not to be a victim again. (A classmate asks her the questions: “Who died and made you queen?” Who died? I think the answer is this: “Lily. A little bit of my father. And the person I used to be.”) There are many references to status and power in the episode, and I think power is what Veronica is all about at this stage in her life. She’s finding her power. And for right now, she’s come to the conclusion that it is better to be a user than to be used; better to be the queen than the subject. It’s better to become The Wizard, than to have to ask The Wizard for favors.

When she goes out to confront the world, she now does it with her back-up - always. Veronica shares her smart-ass, never-say-die characteristics with her arch-nemesis: Logan, the brokenhearted and angry former boyfriend of the murdered Lily. Veronica and Logan are a lot alike, and I have to wonder where we’re going with that.

Given what we see in this episode, it’s hard to blame either Veronica or Logan for trying to grab the controls however they can, or for developing a prickly outer shell, or for needing a little distance from painful realities. But Wallace suspects that Veronica, at least, has a marshmallow center. And given her brave rescue of Wallace from his tough tormentors, and her rescue of her mom’s music box from the trash, I do too.

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