OPEN CASE: VERONICA MARS

Season 1 - Episode 17

KANES AND ABELS: Test time

by Spring Summers – 07-APR-2005

Cain and Abel each make a sacrifice to God. Abel, a shepherd, brings his most prized lamb to be burnt; Cain, a farmer, can’t see any sense in such a waste of resources and he chooses excess wheat from his crop. When God indicates a preference for Abel’s offering, Cain, filled with anger at what he perceives to be an unreasonable God who is unfairly favoring his brother Abel, strikes his rival dead. And this episode is full of images about rivals trying to outdo one another, as Sabrina & Hamilton, Sabrina’s mom & Hamilton’s dad, Clarence & Veronica, and Keith & Vinnie struggle for the upper hand.

Kanes and Abels is also full of representations of the guilty & the innocent, and the perpetrators & their victims. It’s not always clear just who is who. It’s so unfair that Sabrina has things just handed to her; it’s so unfair that one of the Kanes should get away with murder; it’s so unreasonable of Keith not to accept Vinnie’s offer.

GENESIS 4:4 (The Holy Bible, New King James Version): “And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.”

Anger, inner rage at life’s inherent unfairness, motivates Cain to kill Abel – and anger also motivates:

· Mr Cho to justify cruelly harassing Sabrina: It’s not right that his son should work so hard and not be rewarded in proper measure.

· Veronica to justify misleading Amelia into giving up $3 million with the hope that her father might be released and returned to her: It’s so unfair that the Kanes should get away with doing this.

· Jake & Celeste Kane to hide their son’s impairment, to the point of allowing Abel to be executed and allowing their daughter’s death to go uninvestigated: It’s so unfair that the bright and capable Duncan should have this terrible illness.

The episode explores moral ambiguity in general – when do the ends justify the means? What’s love got to do with it?

· Veronica says she is motivated by her love for Lilly.

· Veronica is counting on Amelia being motivated by love for her father.

· Mr Cho and Hamilton make decisions based on their love for one another.

· Veronica tears up Logan’s check (though it looked to me more like he was paying her with a coupon for 10% off on her next Blockbluster rental). Veronica did it for love, not for money: “Your mom was always nice to me.” (Veronica’s scenes with Logan – the lighting and scoring, the feel of them, contrast sharply with the rest of the ep. They’re very soft, very diffuse and cozy. There’s an intimate feel to them, just as there’s an intimacy to the casual familiarity with which Logan just walks in and rifles through Veronica’s computer files, and to the matter-of-fact way Veronica accepts this invasion of privacy. What’s up with that?)

· Vinnie’s mother buys mint cookies because her son likes them, and she just generally seems completely devoted to him.

· Kaz is willing to jump off the roof for Sabrina.

· Jake and Celeste make decisions for the love of Duncan.

Speaking of which: Whether Duncan did it or not, Jake and Celeste clearly believe that he killed Lilly. Yep. I’m saying that I don’t believe for a minute that either Jake or Celeste killed Lilly. No, no, no. Maybe Duncan did. Maybe not. But Jake & Celeste think that Duncan killed Lilly. Here’s my take:

· Jake & Celeste are washing Duncan’s soccer uniform because it had blood all over it. One of them found Lilly dead, and Duncan nearby, incoherent and in the state usually associated with the aftermath of his episodes. And Duncan was covered in blood. Duncan couldn’t remember (still doesn’t remember) anything. But Jake & Celeste put two and two together. Did they come up with 4, or 5? Don’t know. I don’t know if they are right, or they are wrong. But they think that Duncan killed Lilly during an episode related to his illness (as Logan puts it “that weird epilepsy he has.”)

· Celeste is lying about Duncan being in the shower when Lilly was found dead. It’s in her manner, but it is also right here: “I was in the shower” is used as an obvious lie earlier, by Keith, as he sarcastically tells Clarence that he didn’t here him “knocking” because he was “in the shower.” “In the shower” = lie.

· Listen to what imaginary Lilly says to her father, and to her brother: “You’re blocking my sun.” Or is it: “You’re blocking my son?” Even in her imaginary fatal confrontation with Celeste, the issue that brings it all to a head is Duncan. The son. The sun.

When it comes to “that weird epilepsy,” I did some web-surfing, and came up with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, whose symptoms, apparently, can include fits of “fear, rage and aggression.” I’m no doctor, and I’m not going to comment on the legitimacy of this, except to suggest that you do your own surfing, and to suggest this link if you’re interested in details of what I found: http://www.worldsend.org/help/tle/symptoms.shtml .

I noticed that Lilly called herself Celeste’s stepdaughter, and I note that Duncan is a junior, just like Veronica is. Was Lilly a junior? That she is Veronica’s age seems like a good assumption. Are Duncan and Lilly the same age because they are twins? Is Lilly just being sarcastic, casting Celeste as the evil stepmother, when Celeste is actually her mother? Or are Duncan and Lilly the same age because they have different mothers, and were born in the same year? That would be pretty funky, and would further explain Celeste’s mega-stress over Jake having ANOTHER child that isn’t hers. Or is it just that Lilly was a year younger or older than Duncan and Veronica? I is confoozed.

Who’s your daddy, who’s your sister, who’s your brother? We are looking at the question: “Is it ever OK to cause person harm?” but we are also looking at another aspect of the Cain & Abel story - that central question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Notice the multiculturalism represented in the episode:

· In his name and appearance, Hamilton Cho belongs to two worlds.

· The Chos – an Asian family – have a restaurant which serves “fine Italian food.” They’ve blended the East and the West, and offer some imaginative pizza choices.

· What kind of name is Vincent Van Lowe? His first name and his appearance suggest Italian heritage, his last name is . . . Dutch?

· The very white-bread looking Sabrina and her mom speak Italian; Sabrina spent time in Rome.

· Vinnie lists his ex-wives names, which include Brenda, Masako, and Debra Villarreal. Quite the sampler. (And I must note here that this episode bolsters my son Vincent’s theory that any character on TV who is named Vincent is either stupid, a criminal, or both – or possibly an animal.)

· Asian –American pizza boy Hamilton Cho, wants to study in England.

There are other references to groups of people and what defines them: Blondes, Rich People, Servants, The Smart Kids (nerds), Men, Straying Husbands. Yep - we may all belong to separate groups and we may each, individually, have our own Private Eyez with which we view the world. But we are all each also a part of this wide-wide-world, where Chinese people might sell you a pizza. We are all a part of each other – we learn and benefit from each other; we smoosh together to become more than just the sum of our parts. We are each other’s brothers and we are each other’s keepers; we have to be – we’re all we’ve got.

In an episode full of testing images, our characters all have their moral fibers tested, just as Cain did. There are no easy answers for any of them, or for us, as everyone deals with a world where, as Vinnie tells Veronica, someone else wrote the song, “now you have to live in it.” But Hamilton Cho, at least, definitely gets it right, when he does the impossible and makes “unfair seems cool.” He doesn’t take Cain’s route of vengeance in response to perceived humiliation or injustice. When Cain complains to God about his perception that Abel is being unfairly favored, God replies:

“If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

And Hamilton Cho is a child of immigrants who has, every day of his life, watched is parents live in a world where someone else has written the song. It’s not surprising that this is his overall plan: Do well, and be accepted.

***

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