Veronica Mars S01E14

The episode in which a teacher impregnates a girl, a Logan looks for his mommy, and Veronica stops answering the phone.

In this corner, Veronica Mars, child prodigy! And in the other corner, Keith Mars, hated ex-sheriff. Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!

I was glad about the father/daughter spy v. spy in this one and wish we could have seen more. I also wish we could have seen more of the medical records story line. I wouldn’t have minded seeing more Logan storyline even. The episode suffered from too many fertile plots and too little time (not unlike Love Actually).

It also had too many great lines to even try to list, but here’s a couple:

“Tell me where to put your father of the year trophy, ‘cause I have an idea.”

“They thought I was trying to turn their daughters into little beret-wearing, cloves-smoking Bolsheviks.”
“Were you?”
“Nyet.”
. . .
“Thanks Mr. Rooks.”
“Dosvidanya Veronica.”

Few things win me over as quickly as a few words in a language I’ve studied.

This is a rather small thing, but I think important: in this episode, Duncan sought out Veronica for no apparent reason. Previously, we’ve seen them thrown together by circumstance, we’ve seen Veronica use a connection to Duncan for some reason, but we’ve never seen either of them just go talk to the other for no apparent reason. Perhaps Logan “hiring” her was enough to let Duncan do what he’s wanted to for so long. It’s an interesting development. As is Veronica telling the deputy that she fell for him. And then the humanizing of Logan. So many guys, so little time, eh Veronica? (And please don’t forget Weevil is still a constant help in trouble.)

Logan is nearly acceptable in this episode, but he’s still a childish prig. It definitely is his volta. Still, I don’t like him.

As for the revelation that the death row inmate was already dieing . . . yawn. Guessed that one ten episodes ago. Or more. I’m not sure but anyone with half a brain could see that was a factor in his false confession.

For a while now I’ve been wanting to talk about the depictions of the father figure. He’s not nearly as bumbling as one might expect. He’s increasingly downright intelligent and responsible. That’s a rare breed on TV today.

In the struggle to show strong female characters over the last two decades, TV writers have increasingly changed the archetype of the father figure. Back in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, fathers were always intelligent, responsible, brave, resourceful, etc. To sum it up, the trope was that “Father Knows Best.” Now the role of zany Lucy is played by men and fix-it Ricky is played by the women. Just think of shows like Home Improvement, Reba, and Everybody Loves Raymond. Women/mothers are wise and loving, men/fathers play the clown. Even in Dharma and Greg, where Dharma is supposed to be so wacky, it’s usually her wackiness that saves the day and stolid Greg is proved the fool. It’s almost as if we’re incapable of conceiving of gender equality, and when asked to confront old stereotypes, we simply switch the roles rather than dealing with the problem. Instead of showing weak and dependant women, we show little boys who never became adults, they just move from mother to mothering wife without an interlude of independence.

Keith Mars plays a comic character but not a clown. He deals with issues and he jokes. I wish more TV shows could do that.