Season 2

Episode 2

 

Driver Ed: Heart and Head

By Spring Summers – 07-OCT-2005

 

 

The episode begins with Veronica asking herself:

 

If a school bus, traveling 40 miles per hour, drives off a cliff and plunges 90 feet into the jagged coastline, how many seconds do the six high school students, their teacher, and bus driver, have to contemplate the fact that they’re about to die?

 

And so - analytical as always and still hanging on to “normal” as the watchword -Veronica tries to deal with this incomprehensible, heart-wrenching tragedy by putting the event in mathematical terms. A math problem is resolvable. Bounded, neat, and comprehensible, a math problem will surrender to the painless and powerful application of a little brain power.

 

And so, with that intro, we’re off to examine the use of brain power versus emotions and instinct. (WOODY: “Sportsmanship separates us from the animals – that, and opposable thumbs.”)

 

  • KEITH: “Veronica, you can’t try to make sense out of this.”
  • DICK SR (to Logan): “Heart & head – that’s where it counts.”

 

The episode is crammed full of incidents of people making choices. They make those choices sometimes based on sense, and sometimes, on feelings. Nearly every scene makes subtle, or not so subtle, reference to the conflicts that can exist between head and heart, between duty and daring, between protection and peril. There is constant reference to people’s motives. (WOODY: “I’m running because I care.”) Are the motives mentioned the motives of the head, or of the heart? Are people being motivated by a desire for security, or sensation? Here are some of the many examples:

 

  • Veronica changes her mind and decides to help Bus Driver Ed’s daughter Jesse, after Jesse is treated cruelly by her classmates. Getting involved may not be the safest or most sensible choice, but her heart goes out to Jesse.
  • Keith changes his mind and decides to run for Sheriff after all, when he watches Don Lamb coldly ignore the desperate Jesse. Getting involved may not be the safest or most sensible choice, but his heart goes out to Jesse.
  • Bus Driver Ed Doyle and his lover Carla were trying to choose between duty to their families and their love for each other. (CARLA: “I wish I understood less. I never got to be with the man I loved.”)
  • Dick Casablancas Sr talks about the difference between work and family.
  • New girl Jackie accuses Wallace of helping her in order to get into her pants. Wallace doesn’t dispute this. They also talk about the attraction to the danger of bad boys, versus the safety of nice guys.
  • What’s the best part? The controlled warmth of cuddling, or the mind-blowing capitulation of climax?
  • Veronica (who earlier has talked to her father about the appeal of a guaranteed victory) seeks out and has sex with the relatively safe, nice-guy Duncan. But she is still so emotionally involved with bad-boy Logan, that she has to know, right now, who Logan was sleeping with in that motel room. She just has to know. Why?
  • Wallace motivates the hit-and-run driver by offering her something she needs. Jackie’s father attempts to motivate her with threats about going back to New York.

 

The need to examine our hearts and minds for our true motives, and to make a choice which both makes sense AND feels right, is underscored by constant reference to appearances, the need to dig further for the truth, and the need for action over talk and sentimentalities alone (e.g., fake notes, “I’m sorry” not being helpful all on its own). It is also emphasized by images of “waking up”:

 

  • Dad can’t get Jackie to wake up.
  • Duncan asks Veronica why she didn’t wake him up. (Good question there, Duncan. Veronica isn’t being honest with him, or herself, about her feelings for Logan, and she isn’t being fair to Duncan.)
  • Dick Sr & Kendall suddenly (and rather cruelly) wake up Cassidy from a nap, causing Cassidy to possibly “wake up” to the idea that his evil step-mom is even more evil than he thought.

 

Speaking of true motives: I don’t trust Woody Goodman as far as I could throw him, or his baseballs. Also, I don’t understand if he is a “mayoral candidate” as he said last week, or if he is running for “county supervisor” as he said this week. I don’t suppose it really matters. However you look at it, he is a guy who is after more power, and it seems to me, he is in some sort of cahoots with Sheriff Lamb. They looked all cahooty during that press conference – Don was constantly looking to Woody for approval. Yet he asks Keith to run for sheriff? Is he setting Keith up for something?

 

I also wonder if Dick Sr might be a bit suspicious of Logan, even if only subconsciously. It’s hard to say for certain. But Logan is playing “Lilly” to Kendall’s “Aaron,” and that is just not a safe place to be. As Dick Sr says about Logan: “You like to bust chops, I respect that.” Yep. But for all his bluster and bravado, Logan is in such an emotionally fragile and precarious place, that if it’s not high risk, and suicidally so, it’s not for Logan. Listen to the way he talks to his lover’s big, bad husband: Very much like Veronica does earlier with Sheriff Lamb, Logan is playing with Dick Sr. His contempt is barely disguised. He is cruising hard for the bruisings he’s so very used to receiving from Dad. Note that Dick Sr calls Logan “son”, and that a dad’s influence and approval is mention several times in the ep, as Veronica worries that Dad can tell that she’s had sex, Jackie complains that her father hasn’t been much of a father and then worries about him finding out about the car, and Cassidy is hurt when his father leaves him out of the target-practice activities.

 

The episode ends with a male body found washed up on the beach. The words “Veronica Mars” are written in the palm of his hand. I don’t know what this is about, but I’ve a feeling this isn’t good news for Veronica. But then, real life can never be reduced to a math problem. There is no running away from your own thoughts and feelings. No amount of intellectualizing is ever going to save Veronica from having to deal with the messy and painful journey ahead.

 

***


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