OPEN CASE: Veronica Mars

Season 2

Episode 8

AHOY, MATEYS: Truth hurts

By Spring Summers – 27-NOV-2005

Duncan is dreaming. Meg’s in white; Veronica’s in black. Meg is all sweetness and light, Veronica is all dominatrix and darkness. Veronica shuts Meg up with a blindfold over her mouth! Makes sense. A properly placed blindfold can shut someone up just as well as a gag. People can’t report what they don’t see right? Well, not unless they’re willing to lie. Like Dr Tom Griffith. Or Weevil’s biker buddy, Thumper. Or Keith at the deposition, if he hadn’t been smart enough not to be blinded by the set-up.

Throughout the episode, people are trying to shut each other up, or they are trying to make each other talk. Questions, questions, questions, questions. The episode title, and the many images and mentions of pirates clue us off, along with several references to rape (the date rapist, Logan’s fear of rape in prison, and Danny Boy-d’s lack of concern about statutory rape): We’re examining the methods and effects of invasion. We’re looking at the gross and painful violations we all experience, as victims and as perpetrators, one way or another, as we grow up and live our lives on the high seas.

The images of torture, torment and intrusion are continual. People hurt the ones they love. They hurt the ones they hate. One way or another, it seems, we are always intruding upon each other, and causing each other various degrees of discomfort and outright pain:

• Dream Veronica slaps Duncan.
• Duncan opens Meg’s mail. (Private & Confidential. This means you!)
• Vice Principal Clemons escorts Mac & Veronica to see his son Vincent, invading Vincent’s “private basement time.”
• Weevil tears open a classmate’s shirt to check for a wire, and he threatens to take his hubcaps.
• Veronica is slammed onto a pool table while a thug named Liam threatens to tattoo her against her will.
• Carlos’ statement about Marcos’ death makes his wife Maria cry. The thought of Logan being dead makes Veronica cry. Keith makes tech support cry. Mac suggests that Captain Krunk took time off in order to torture her.
• Logan points a gun at Liam. Veronica’s “live by the gun, die by the gun” prediction comes to pass, as later, Logan has a gun pointed at him. Very similarly to the way Veronica was threatened earlier by Liam, masked men hold a gun to Logan’s hand, then to his knee, in an effort to make him talk.
• The Olivereses are the target of a trespasser who is tormenting them by breaking into their home and car, to deliberately remind them of their dead son. Their neighbor Ned has made an offer on their house; he wants their property for himself.
• Marcos used the Captain Krunk persona to cruelly taunt his classmates.
• Marcos was sent to a camp that uses who-knows-what techniques of persuasion, to attempt to reprogram sexuality.
• Ned is physically overcome by Keith, as Keith shoves his head against the table and tries to get the innocent Ned to confess to crimes he has not committed.

There are also several scenes of people overhearing one another, and Logan suggests that Veronica think of him as her dog. Later, she says she’ll whistle for him. We get several images of dogs, and you know - that boy is love’s bitch. We also have repeated images of keys and security codes, many mentions and views of names and addresses, and images of shirtlessness (the torn $200 shirt, Danny’s scarred belly, Ryan’s mention of giving shirtless Marcos a backrub). These images emphasize human vulnerability to attack, whenever we open up, whenever we love, whenever we give others our name and address, whenever we let someone else aboard the good ship. As Mac says – you wanna play, you gotta pay. Marcos was his parents’ “pride and joy.” That’s why now, in death, he’s become a source of pain and sadness. You open up to the happy; you open up to the hurt. There’s no way around it. Images like Veronica crying at the thought of Logan’s death are juxtaposed against images of what’s forgotten (no one in class really knew or remembered Marcos, and Duncan is ignoring Veronica, e.g.) to pound the message home: It wouldn’t hurt, if you didn’t care. But who wants to go through life all hidden and anonymous and ignored and safe? Marcos paid a price for that, didn’t he? During his short life, no one really knew him, not even his parents. And no doubt, the sadism and acerbity of his Captain Krunk alter-ego was related to the pain of his isolation and repression.

If you fly your true colors, if you carry your keys around, there are people out there flying the Jolly Roger, who will take advantage. Ryan has tortured the Olivereses for the simple reason that he wanted to cause them pain. It worked. Torture is a great way to cause pain! Kudos, Ryan. If pain is your ultimate goal, torture is the smart choice, even if your goal is very sick one. But we’re looking at something else here, something that’s been in the headlines for months here in the USA: The efficacy and effect of torture, when used as a means to get at the truth.

Does it work, to make someone walk the plank? Well – Liam did let go of Veronica, when he saw Logan’s gun. Keith did get an answer out of tech support by bullying them, and then later, out of Ned, by doing the same. Now that Logan has survived his trial by fire, Weevil can sorta-kinda feel more certain that Logan is telling the truth, about what happened on the bridge. Maybe. So - does torture get you the truth, or does it get you whatever you want to hear? How can you be sure enough? And what about the consequences of the use of torture? What has Weevil wrought? What fresh hell will Logan now feel justified in bringing down, upon Weevil’s head? Matey, if you live by the plank, you will die by the plank. Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. (VERONICA, to Weevil: “They’re scratching your back, how are you scratching theirs?”) Stab my back, I’ll stab yours. Danny Boyd’s got a mean scar on his upper abdomen, but you should see the other guy.

White, or black? Teddy bears, or torture? Subtle, or a punch in the face? Sweet promises, or dire threats? Sunshine, or shadow?

Danny Boy

By Fred Weatherly, 1910

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

But come you back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'tis I'll be there in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

This song makes me think of our sleeping Colleen, Meg Manning, and our other “sleeping beauty,” Logan Echolls. (MASKED PCHer, to Logan: “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”) Parallels are drawn between Logan and Meg in this episode as Logan, in so many words, asks Veronica to save him, right after Duncan dreams that Meg has asked for the same. This suggests that the images about love and redemption are for both couples. Logan, like Meg, needs Veronica to help him come to some conscious realizations about himself. As he says, he’s had a very bad year. He’s in a stupor of his own – self-destructive and confused. And Veronica, like Duncan (like Marcos with Ryan) needs to stop sitting on the fence about Logan, and go full speed on trying to save him. Both Duncan and Veronica, I have a feeling, will be saving themselves in the process. Because there’s a good side to the “you reap what you sow” message we hear in the episode.

The “Danny Boy” song reminds me also a bit of the song that plays at the end of the show, as Duncan opens the letter Meg received from Seattle:

Ocean City Girl

Ivy, 2005

Moving slowly into the setting sun
Keeping secrets away from everyone
Starting out into another world
Tide is rising but time is standing still

Ocean City girl
Is smiling
Ocean City girl
Is flying

The night is falling,
The streetlights start to glow
No one’s there
When the cracks begin to show
They can’t hurt her like
She’s been hurt before
No one here can get near her anymore

Ocean City girl
Is fading
Ocean City girl
Is saying goodbye

The suggestion here again seems to be that Meg is dying, and that because of Meg’s love for him, it is up to Duncan to save her, it is Duncan who has the key to awakening Meg. In finally opening the letter despite his reservations, the usually reticent Duncan has taken some action at last. He’s off the fence, and he seems to have understood, through his dreams, that he has an obligation to Meg, and that the violation of privacy he has committed is, in this case, justified. So right or wrong, he does the grown-up thing, and takes responsibility for an unconscious Meg, who cannot relieve him of the need to make this uncomfortable decision all alone.

Why hadn’t Meg opened this letter yet? She hid it away without opening it – that suggests one of two things to me: She received the letter very shortly before the bus crash, and she felt she needed more total privacy than she’d yet been afforded by her prying parents, before she could open it, OR, she was afraid of opening it, afraid of what it might say, and so she had delayed opening it, waiting to get the courage. And what does Duncan read, that upsets him so? Who is Kris Talley (the name-spelling and handwriting seem female), on the return address? This name makes me think of the word “crystal,” though that doesn’t suggest any thing to me.

The other big question I’m left with, by the end of the episode, is what in the world is happening when it comes to Logan, the PCHers, the Fitzpatricks, Dr Griffith, and Felix’s death? It looks this way to me so far:

• Logan didn’t kill Felix, so Hector and Bootie, the two who say they witnessed the event, are lying. Why?
• Some of the PCHers are involved with some of the Fitzpatricks, possibly helping them facilitate drug deals.
• The doctor is somehow involved with the Fitzpatricks, so he’s been asked or coerced by them into lying about Logan. The Fitzpatricks did this on behalf of the PCHers who are working with them. Did the PCHers simply ask the Fitzpatricks for help because they are convinced Logan is guilty, and hate to see him get away with it? Or are they trying to protect another guilty party?
• Weevil is genuinely clueless about what is going on, and is innocent of any real wrongdoing involving the Fitzpatricks, or Felix. He didn’t choose the wisest or friendliest way of dealing with Logan, but he was sincerely motivated by trying to find out if Logan was guilty, or not. And now, he must be thinking “not.”
• Is this all somehow related to the bus crash? I agree with Weevil that the Fitzpatricks didn’t cause the bus crash. So who did, and why? Was it Meg the culprit was really trying to kill? Does the letter have something to do with something Meg knew or . . .? No matter how I look at it though, it’s hard to believe anyone would arrange that bus crash, just to kill one person. It’s an awful lot of trouble to go to for one death . . . what was the culprit’s real goal? I look at the consequences of the crash: Six deaths, increased class-warfare related tensions, and the defeat of Keith Mars as Sheriff. But I still can’t figure out who is really benefiting to such an extent that he or she would kill six people to make it happen.

Some other things I noticed:

• The use of toy models in the episode: The toy bus, the toy motorcycle on Duncan’s end table, Vincent’s models. What’s that about? Is it just part of the usual “what’s real, and what’s fake” imagery that abounds on this show? And speaking of which, why do we keep getting references to Veronica’s breasts lately, as if she were flat-chested? She’s no Dolly Parton, but first, Kristen Bell is not flat-chested. And second, why do we care? Just more about real vs fake? Imitation boobs, like imitation crab?
• Tons of ocean and fish imagery in the episode – the pirate stuff, imitation crab, fish sticks, the fish tank, fish food, ocean city girl. Just laying the pirate motif (and its related suggestion of invaders and torturers) on thick? We see a lot of this – ocean and water imagery - in Veronica Mars, generally. But then, the city is on the Pacific, and it’s named Neptune. So maybe sailing the ocean-blue is a sort of over-reaching metaphor for life’s journey?
• Veronica has a Ramones sticker in her locker! Does she wanna be sedated? (Tranqued and tagged by nerd hunters?)
• I like the Vice-Principal. The Principal’s name is Moorehead. Weevil refers to the Irish gang as “Potatoheads.” The camera spins around Veronica’s head as she listens to Captain Krunk’s snarky commentary on his classmates. Just some extra emphasis on the “who’s in charge” (who’s the head, who’s got the power) stuff? Principal Moorehead’s in charge, not Clemons. Weevil wants to know if he’s still in charge. Duncan has the power to save Meg – use and abuse of power?

I liked the episode. Once again, even the bit parts, like Liam and Danny, Ned and Thumper, were superbly written and portrayed. Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring outdid themselves in the “Veronica crying in the car scene,” especially Kristen, when she carried her upset-self into the office, and had to pull it together quickly to talk to Dad. I’m definitely hooked for the remainder.

***

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