OPEN CASE: VERONICA MARS

 

Season 1 - Episode 3

MEET JOHN SMITH: Time for a change

by Spring Summers – 06-OCT-04

 

 

During this episode, boyfriend-hopeful Troy programs Veronica’s cell phone with his number, calling it “booty call enabled.” At the end of this episode, Veronica sits outside Troy’s home, and she makes that booty-call. Troy appears and hugs her, saying: “It’s about time.” Isn’t it though? It’s all about time.

 

The word “time,” and spans of time, are mentioned continuously in the episode. In a very The Graduate moment, Jake Kane says to his son: “Gonna get off that raft anytime soon?” And thinking of his son’s future, he goes on to suggest plastics – uh, I mean politics - to the disaffected Duncan. (Hmmm. I haven’t seen any Mrs. Robinson candidates, though Veronica’s mom . . . nah. Honestly, that can’t be, can it?)

 

The past, the future, the present – we hear it referred to non-stop. Everyone is making dates to “see you later,” Veronica jokes that her file will self destruct in “five seconds,” Troy tells a story about swimming around for “15 minutes,” and it’s been:

 

 

And we find ourselves thinking hard about time: At first, Justin, Veronica’s classmate, says his dad ran out “about 10 years ago.” Then we hear Justin’s friend say that he believes Justin’s dad died “about 7 yrs ago.” Then we learn that Justin’s school record says that dad died when Justin was in first grade – so we’re back to about 10 years ago. Then, after Justin finds his father, he tells “dad” that he has believed dad was dead since he was 11 years old. Well – that would be about 5 years ago, maybe? Ack! My head hurts!

 

After squinting hard and grimacing through the complex calculations, I come to this conclusion: Justin’s mom let everyone believe that dad had died back when Justin was in first grade. But Justin knew better – until mom told him dad had really died when Justin was 11. Ugh. She made poor pint-sized Justin consciously live a lie from age 6 onward? Poor little bugger. It’s no wonder he’s didn’t quite believe her story about dad’s “real” death, or that he engages Veronica to find his father.

 

Justin doesn’t ever lie to Veronica – he lies to his friends, pretending to be running a scam to get close to a hot girl, rather than sharing his mortifying belief that his mother lied about his father’s death, and his desperate desire to find his father.

 

The episode is full of mentions and images of fakery – Julia Smith pretends to be just another customer at the video store where his/her son works; Veronica puts a fake message on an answering machine and sends out fake letters; Troy talks about pretending to be a shark; one of Duncan’s friends pretends to make a dangerous fall from the stadium bleachers, and Keith (Veronica’s dad) pretends he’s been frequenting a coffee shop.

 

But with time, the truth will out. With time, you can narrow down the possibilities. With time, you can both define yourself, and your world, your space, your borders - more clearly. With time, you become what you are meant to become. With time, men who, say – have always felt like a boy trapped in a girl’s bathroom – actually might become girls. With time, change happens. With time, all of us John Smiths begin to define ourselves more sharply, and we become more able to distinguish ourselves from one another.

 

JAKE (to his wife, about Duncan): “He’s not going to get into a good college without some defining interests.”

 

The episode abounds with people mentioning their individual perspectives (e.g., what’s funny to Veronica isn’t funny to her father; what Duncan is watching on TV is called “boring” by Lily). We also listen to people listing defining characteristics and labeling and rating themselves and each other:

 

 

All the images of fakery, and in particular the stunning surprise which awaits Justin about his father, suggest that labels and outward appearances can mislead. I note that the young Veronica is far from perfectly observant or perfect in her interpretations: She thinks that the parole officer with the interest in adult arcades is a petty criminal, but he isn’t. She thinks there’s a classic car under that dust cover, but there isn’t. So – I’m not sure if that suggests Duncan is not quite as wonderful as she believes, or if it suggests that Troy is shark in sheep’s clothing. Or both. But Veronica’s eyes aren’t completely open, to something. And neither are Duncan’s:

 

LILY: “You know it makes absolutely no sense. My disappearance, murder, whatever. How it supposedly went down. So bogus, right? But here’s the thing. The truth is gonna come out . . . it doesn’t add up. You know that deep down inside. I wish you’d just admit it to yourself. Break out of your stupor. Wake up.”

 

But Duncan doesn’t want to come out of his stupor. It took him six years to confront his parents about Molly, the dog they took away from him – the one that mom says went to a good home. Whatever it is that he knows “deep down inside” presently hurts too much to come out. He goes back to taking his pills, which for now, seem the only acceptable alternative to suicide. (Note also that in another image of pain-deadening, we see Logan drinking.)

 

But I have a feeling Lily is right: The truth is gonna come out. In time, the compartmentalized Duncan will open the doors between the compartments. And like Justin, with his realization that Julia is his dad – he’ll learn something that part of him has known all along. (KEITH, to Veronica: “Part of me is proud – let’s just leave it at that.”)

 

In the extremely well-done “moment of revelation” scene for Justin, we see it in his manner, we see it in his face, and we see it in his eyes: He has known all along that there was Something About Julia. He has known – he just didn’t know what he knew.

 

And you know what? We knew too, didn’t we? We knew that there was something funny about Julia, and about her interest in the clerk at the video store. Her special affection for Justin was in her eyes. The need to seek the truth, to look under the dust cover, is represented in part in this episode by the continual mention of eyes – those instruments through which we view the world, and more importantly, the world views us. We look outward to see others, and people look into our eyes, to see us:

 

 

There are many images and mention of friends and family in the episode – everyone is calling each other friend or “bro,” and parents are trying imperfectly, to care for, and protect, their children. But there are also many images of profound isolation. Duncan’s parents talk about him as if he isn’t even there. Justin cries that his mother is a liar and his father is circus freak. Veronica can’t connect with her father and feels abandoned by her mother. The experts – the counselors, the doctors, those who we expect to be in charge, to care for us and protect us and give us the answers – they often disappoint us, or they tell us scary things like this:

 

DR LEVINE (to Duncan): “It’s your decision, you have to do what’s right for you.”

 

Even Grasshopper eventually had to leave his Master, and head out into a world where there was no one to protect him, or tell him what to do. At the end of the episode, Veronica mentions, in a voice-over (while we watch Keith flirt with the counselor and Justin make a hesitant call to Julia) that eventually, even in the face of tragedy, we must begin to move on. She takes a chance with Troy – but, I suspect she’s not falling for Troy in quite the same way that she fell for Duncan, or that Duncan fell for her. I think she might have laid down some padding, for a soft landing, just in case.

 

Whether she is being honest with herself or not, whether she is being wise or foolish, Veronica is attempting to “move on” with Troy. We can’t cling to the past, not even if our ex is everywhere we turn. So everyone is trying bravely to move on. But these are only baby steps – and babies tend to fall on their butts many times before they can actually take off running. I think we can expect, for all our characters, that for each step forward, there will be at least two steps back.

 

Because with the picture of a dead shark’s fin that continues swimming around, and the image of Justin re-discovering his “dead” father, we are also learning that our pasts shape us and are forever a part of us, and that the dead don’t always stay dead - not until they’re good and ready.

 

***


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