“Meet John Smith”
Today’s first Veronica Mars episode is all about parenting and, more specifically, mothers. There’s Celeste Kane, the overbearing 09er matriarch who wants to keep Duncan on the antidepressants that have been stifling his personality. He goes off them and starts to get a little loopy, most notably being driven to jump off a balcony by the sight of Troy and Veronica getting close. After a chat with the doctor and, just as importantly, Celeste, Duncan goes back on the meds; but not before he gets a visit from/hallucination of his sister who tells him what we’ve known for weeks: something’s not right about the official story of her murder.
Meanwhile, in the case of the week, a young nerd asks for Veronica’s help in tracking down his dead-beat dad. But all is not as it appears, and when Veronica has Wallace pull the kid’s profile, she finds out that his dad died a while ago. The kid confesses that he was just lying to try and trick Veronica into spending time with him. However, much to his surprise, they actually get a response to one of the letters they sent looking for the dad. It turns out that Dad is still alive; he’s just had a sex change and turned into the nice woman who hangs out at the kid’s video store. Though the kid lashes out at her when he first finds out, he gets over it and the two bond.
For Veronica, Mom is as much an idea as a person at this point, and not a very flattering one at that. She lashes out at Keith and the client of the week, saying that the parent who stays is the hero and the one who leaves is the villain. Veronica’s jaded and cynical edge are an attempt to shield herself and deal with the psychic trauma of being ditched by her mom. She’s even gone a step further and taken to solving crimes and acting like Sam Spade in an attempt to cut out any memory of her mother from her personality and be more like her dad. But Veronica also isn’t ready to let go and so she decides to drive to the address she has for her mom. All she finds there is an old college friend of Mom’s who tells Veronica that her mom bailed and didn’t leave an address so Keith couldn’t find her. The woman’s attempt at comforting Veronica and assurances that her mom still cares for her are of little value to Veronica, who has once again been abandoned by her on the run parent.
“Meet John Smith” has a more satisfying emotional core than the first couple episodes and that, combined with the solid twist, made for my favorite episode so far.
“The Wrath of Con”
The weekly mysteries are kind of a mixed bag right now and “Wrath of Con” feels especially frivolous. More an excuse to put Kristen Bell in some Sydney Bristow-esque disguises (Veronica’s later characters and disguises will feel a little more natural than they did here), the episode has Veronica going toe-to-toe with a couple of con artists who stole money from a girl Wallace likes. Veronica infiltrates their game club and a college party before eventually figuring out that they’re raising money for a new computer game that will make them millions. She gets the girl’s money back and turns the guys over to the FBI.
Meanwhile, we find out that, like Veronica, Logan’s psychotic jackassery is as much a reaction to the emotional trauma of the last year as anything else. When put on the task of creating a video montage celebrating Lilly, Logan bypasses the syrupy, Hallmark stuff and decides to create one that Lilly herself would have liked. By all accounts he does a great job too: everyone except Celeste loves the montage and even Weevil is a little weepy by the end. Logan may be an ass, but he cared for Lilly and losing her has affected him in a very profound way.
The real main character of this episode is Lilly. Originally, the plan was for her to just appear in the flashbacks in “Pilot,” but the crew loved Amanda Seyfried’s performance and decided to keep her around for more episodes. Its a great choice and it especially works here as we get a feel for why, exactly, everyone loved Lilly so much and what a sad loss it is for the Neptune community. One of the show’s big ideas is showing how behind the media circus that comes with sensationalized crime stories like this one, there exist real people who are really hurting.
Meanwhile, Veronica has grown closer to Troy an 09er who is also somewhat new to Neptune and thus not as caught up in the anti-Mars drama. Although Veronica has been resistent, by the end of this episode, things seem to be going better.
“The Wrath of Con” saves a weak A-story with a lot of nice character work, bur for those of you still waiting to see what the fuss is about, don’t worry. If my memory serves, next week’s pair of episodes really sees the show start to kick it into high gear.
Jonah’s Scores:
“Meet John Smith” – 82
“The Wrath of Con” – 67
TUIW Grades:
“Meet John Smith” – A-
“The Wrath of Con” – B
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