Veronica… teen detective?

Posted by Maggie March 23rd, 2006 at 10:15am In Veronica Mars

Once again, Veronica’s detecting skills got slammed in the mystery of the week. This time she made a bunch of mistaken assumptions about a fleeing bride. But who can blame her, really, as these one-offs are only increasing in their twist-and-turniness to the point that it’s impossible to tell who paid who to do what?

(I know a lot of people don’t watch this show. I think you should, and I’m going to write about it anyway [high five, Dan] but it’s not like it’s easy to get into at this point. Even with a full 5 minutes of “Previously on Veronica Mars…” Those five minutes seemed particularly excessive, by the way, and not very helpful. Anyway, I’d recommend stop reading right now and go rent the first season DVDs, then join up again next week. You will not regret it.)

These types of twists and coincidences are only fleetingly entertaining, like the solutions to a Encyclopedia Brown mystery. When the bride shows up on her wedding day to foil the plans of her dastardly fiance, I want to know why this is awesome. I don’t want to be wondering who these people are, what they’re waiting for, and if the fiance’s father is the farmer from Babe. (He isn’t.) The cheap twists don’t ring true on a character level — they just earn a small smile at the writer’s ingenuity, not at Veronica’s cleverness. I want to live vicariously through Veronica’s cleverness, dammit!

All I can say is Veronica better sharpen up, post-haste, because things seem to be getting interesting (or at least intriguing) in all the everyone’s-on-trial-for-murder plots. In last night’s episode, Kendall, by request of Aaron Echolls (hi Aaron! how’s jail?), either deposited or removed something from Logan’s shower drain. I’m going to make my prediction now — I’M MAKING A PREDICTION! — and say she was removing some hair so that Aaron can somehow frame Logan for Lily’s murder. Because that’s the type of caring, selfless father he is. Who wouldn’t sacrifice your son for the sake of your own neck? After driving your wife to suicide? And screwing and murdering your son’s girlfriend?

But we know what that means… Veronica will have to prove, again, that Logan didn’t murder Lily, and that Aaron did. Hooray! It’s Season One again! Forget about Logan’s other trial, or the bus crash — let’s just continually re-hash Lily’s murder. There has to be more we don’t know about this girl. Where’s the secret diary and the psychotic shut-ins and the gigs as a prostitute, a la Laura Palmer? If this show takes one lesson from Twin Peaks, it should be that there’s always more to learn about messed-up teenagers.

And if it takes two lessons from Twin Peaks, the second should be to slow the fuck down with the constant barrage of possibly meaningless info. Or at least pace yourselves. Agent Cooper could at least enjoy a cup of coffee before trying to process some crazy shit the log lady said. I get exhausted just looking at Veronica, sometimes. She’s top of her class, works after school at a coffeeshop, goes to all Wallace’s basketball games, solves various minor mysteries, and helps out her dad on the big cases. No wonder her judgment’s occasionally off.

I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school, I could barely manage to have a normal conversation with a boy or dress myself properly, let alone attempt to figure out what was wrong with other people’s lives and put people in jail. Which is part of the reason I like the show. I have faith that even though Veronica’s making a bit of an ass of herself so far this year, she will eventually get it together and tell everyone what they’ve been doing wrong. In a nice or funny way, of course.