OPEN CASE:  Veronica Mars

 

Season 2

Episode 18

 

I AM GOD: The fickle finger of fate

By Spring Summers – 17-APR-2006

 

I am God.  You are God.  Veronica is God.  Keith is God.  We are each the Creator in our own lives - i.e., we mold our worlds with our own ten fingers.  Notice how both dreams and memories are given that same, fuzzy look on screen:  There's really no distinction being made between the two.  It's as if they were both products of our vivid and individual imaginations.

 

My sister and I are only a year apart.  We grew up together in the same household; we shared a bedroom.  But try interviewing us about our childhoods.  You'd never believe we had the same parents.  She is God.  I am God.  We have uniquely shaped our lives, and in doing so we have created our worlds.  It's what we all do.

 

Though some things may enter unbidden, you are still the Creator of your Dream-world.  True, nightmares are no fun, but notice how the characters in Veronica's dream complain about the way she has dressed them.  They are rightfully pointing out that she is responsible for the dream's content.  The process of dreaming is entirely internal, and whether your dreams are delightful or disturbing, they are all coming from you.   You are God.  Your Past is very similarly your own creation - notice how Veronica complains about way Logan is remembering their make-out session.  But sorry, Veronica - they're Logan's memories.  He is God; you're just going to have to let him finish.

 

Dreams and memories: They are not so different, really.   When it comes to your Past, you are God.  But you have zero access to, and only the most illusory control over, your Future.  So it is only in the waking present that any other God, besides yourself, exists for you.   Moment by moment, and only in the moment, we touch the Divine – we interface with that which is greater than us, that which, among other things, can put us in our graves.

 

Call it God.  Call if Fate.  Call it Destiny.  Call it the impersonal force at the dark heart of the universe.  Call it whatever you like.  But though you may be God in your dreams, only God – sentient & caring & deliberate or insensate & unfeeling & random – is the God right before your eyes, the God that you see when you open your eyes from a dream, and live in the real world, in the present.

 

To further underline the “who’s got the God-like power” theme and to examine the Force(s) at work in our lives, the episode features a great many references to control or lack of it – for example:

 

  • Lucky the janitor, like the buffalo who gave his life for Logan’s burger, isn’t so lucky after all, but seems very much the victim of Fate. 
  • Meg comments on the powerlessness of the dead. 
  • On the other side of the power spectrum, the faculty takes back control of their testing procedures from the students with “general anxiety disorder,” and Veronica claims she “willed” the CD into her possession. 
  • Dick thought he was in control of his relationship with Bettina, but her friend Maureen suggests Bettina had a plan to change the balance of power.

 

There is certainly a point being made about parents – the control they have, or don’t have, over their children.  The pampered Angie has no idea how much her Semester-at-Sea cost her, Keith sighs at the sight of Veronica in the principal’s closet,  and Richard Casablanca may have planned to send his boys over a cliff for the insurance money.  Yikes.  Logan and Wallace make better parents for their egg than many of the Neptune parents we’ve seen this season.  True, like all the students on the bus except Cervando, Logan & Wallace’s white, ovoid progeny cracks on impact, when its two dads deliberately send it diving toward the asphalt.  But unlike (possibly!) Big Dick Casablancas, Logan & Wallace were trying to protect the little dude.

 

And speaking of Logan & Wallace – are they actually buddying-up these two?  They were kind of cute together, and it would do Logan a world of good to have a true and honest and sensible friend like Wallace.   I notice that the perceptive Wallace has already noticed how much Logan is in need of “some slack” from Veronica, and how much he continues to care about Veronica, underneath the bluster.  We have seen that Logan is well aware of Dick’s shortcomings as a “friend.” And Logan is just so, very, very young to be so very, very alone.  So a friend like Wallace would be a huge plus for Logan.  But Wallace – I’m not sure it would be so great for him.  Veronica is pretty much a handful already.  Does he really need Logan too?

 

There is much talk of lows and highs in this episode – a low bar, rooftops, low points in the ebb, 4 feet, 12 feet, etc.  What’s the big idea? I suppose it fits with the God/Saints and Satan/Demon-spawn talk.  Sometimes Fate smiles on you, and you get into Stanford, and it seems good forces are at work in your life.  Other times you’re the one who gets to drown.  Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.  There’s Good in the world, and there’s Evil in the world.

 

Do the high & low images also suggest that someone else going to be taking a tumble from on-high?  Why did Peter Ferrer take a trip to the baseball field?  The implication seems to be that he was Woody’s lover, and that the outing of all outings in Neptune would have been Woody’s outing.   Is the highly-placed Woody about to come crashing down to the rocks?  Why did he really pay off Rhonda’s family?

 

Lemme take a quick look at the possible motives/suspects, by looking at the dead:

MEG:  Nothing new here, really.  The information about Lucky didn’t really point to any particular motive anyone would have for wanting to see Meg dead.  Though what exactly were Lucky and Dick up to, when they interrupted Veronica & Logan’s kissyface time?

PETER:  Woody, or whomever his lover was, may have wanted him dead to keep from being outed.  The only other person that I remember at the baseball field was Terrence.  Terrence is clearly interested in women though, so it will be kind of hard to buy, if Terrence ends up as the one involved with Peter.  Nah. 

BETTINA:  Dick, or his father, may have wanted Bettina dead if she had gotten pregnant.

RHONDA:  We don’t know of any real motive here, though I suspect that her family learned something about the crash that allowed them to blackmail Woody (in other words, the finger-in-the-burger story was just a ruse, a cover up).

MARCOS:  Nothing new here.

CERVANDO:  He pissed off the Fitzpatricks, but hustling them at pool doesn’t sound like enough of a motive for the Fitzpatricks to plan that elaborate bus-crash that killed so many others.  BUT – how in the world did DICK know about Cervando’s new pants?  Was he acting for the Fitizpatricks when he squirted Cervando with bleach?  Had he been buying drugs from the Fitzpatricks or some such thing?

MS DEMOSS:  Did Terrence want her dead?

DRIVER ED:  Since he was engaged in an adulterous affair, could a jealous spouse have wanted him dead?  But we get the strong suggestion in this ep, from dream-Cervando, that the explosion was deliberately timed to kill them all, not just the driver.

DICK & CASSIDY:  They didn’t die, of course, but the implication is that they were supposed to have died, so Big-Dick & Kendall could collect insurance money.  Well – we are told by Bettina’s friend, Maureen, that Dick Jr is the “bastard child of Satan.”  So if this is true, that makes Daddy Dick the Devil.  Exactly who Mom is, though, is an unknown.

VERONICA:  She also didn’t die, but she continues to suspect she may have been Aaron Echolls target – for revenge, I guess?  Or to keep her from testifying?

 

We have had several references not just to sexual preferences, but to gender identity this season.   Dick makes out with a cross-dresser, and in this ep, Logan tells Veronica she was “too much man” for their relationship to succeed.  But – well, I just can’t buy that any of our men are women, or our women are men.  I mean – no way Kendall used to be a man, or Woody used to be a woman, or Jackie is a Jack in drag.  I just can’t see it.

 

Speaking of what I can’t see, there was much talk of sleeping & waking, and eyes & seeing in the episode.  It fits with the “creating our own world” theme (seeing what you want to see, your unconscious mind not reaching your consciousness), and the references also continue to suggest that the clues for the mysteries are in front of us, we’ve just got to keep digging for the answer. 

 

And finally, I end, for no particular reason, with these words of wisdom from Dick Casablancas:  “Just because you wiggle your finger, doesn’t mean Dick’s gonna come.”   So true, Dick.  It’s never that easy.  Finding a finger in your burger is a much more lucrative proposition.

 

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