Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars

by Rob Thomas

  Flit Twtr: Dearing Urgan (dulls

  The second act of "Leave It to Beaver" is comparatively short, and it consists of Veronica's attempt to clear Logan. The sheriff talks to Keith Mars over the phone and lets him know they had to let Logan go. At the beach Logan confronts Veronica and everything changes: Logan insists he is innocent and Veronica believes him. The proof, he says, is in a letter he wrote to Lilly the night she died. Veronica believes the letter is hidden in an air vent in Lilly's room. Because the Kanes are hosting a party for the governor, Veronica goes to the house undercover as a waitress. While preparing her disguise Veronica takes a sip from her mother's water bottle-the bottle it was established that her mother was drinking out of in the teaser-spits it out, and calls the rehab center. Once at the Kane house Veronica sneaks into Lilly's bedroom and begins to unscrew the vent. At the act break, someone is about to come in on her.

  The act break seems, at first, to be quite minor, but because sea son finales are the biggest moments in a television show, the person on the other side of the door is likely to be someone important; it is likely to be the killer. In any case, the false ending of the first act is already ruined before the second act break: Veronica's mother is still drinking-the domestic scene is ruined-and our heroine now believes Logan is innocent.

  Fitt Three: Reuwlliny Flacon (dulls

  The through line of the third act is the discovery of Lilly's real killer, and that discovery's consequences. (This can, however, be difficult to see, as the episode veers off to tie up a season-long loose end, and to set up a new tension for the new season.) It begins as Duncan Kane catches Veronica and confronts her. We expected Lilly's killer to open the door; Duncan was told he was Lilly's killer in the teaser. Veronica, in the process of explaining herself, recaps the show thus far. Veronica is about to discover Lilly's killer, and the effect will be more powerful if the full context of the discovery is expressed in a few sentences and if the climatic discovery is held back a moment longer.

  The second act began with a mini "teaser" (in which Keith Mars finds out the police let Logan go) before getting to the aim of the act in the second scene (Veronica thinks Logan might be innocent). The movement of the third act, its change of direction, is also set up in its second scene: the killer and what happened is immediately revealed, and the rest of the act is spent attempting to apprehend him. Veronica has discovered not the note she expected would clear Logan, but video tapes. One tape shows Lilly having sex with Aaron Echolls- her boyfriend's father-the day she died. Veronica says she knows what happened and a full flashback reveals that Lilly was killed because she was blackmailing Aaron, a movie star with a penchant for violence. Duncan discovered her after she was dead, and that was the scene his parents walked in on. The Kane cover-up of the murder resulted from the mistaken impression that their son killed their daughter. Veronica tells Duncan that Aaron is a psychopath: he beats Logan, and Veronica saw him savagely beat a man and then calmly ask Logan about his day at school.

  This beating occurred in episode nineteen and is an excellent example of satisfying misdirection: the scene in which Aaron beats up the man who beat his daughter is scored with Dean Martin's "That's Amore." In that episode the show is preparing evidence that Aaron is Lilly's killer, but doesn't want us to figure it out before this moment in "Leave It to Beaver." Intellectually we see Aaron's savagery, but emotionally we don't connect him with a murder, because the song keeps the tone of the beating and the tone of the murder separate. The tone is further separated by the status of the victims: we feel Lilly should not be dead, but we find poetic justice in seeing a man who beats women beaten himself. We don't connect the evidence as we should, and when we realize we should have, the effect is more powerful, because it feels both inevitable and surprising.

  Discovering Aaron Echolls is the killer is also the payoff set up by both the domestic scenes in the teaser and the episode's title. It is satisfying both in narrative terms and in thematic ones: Lilly Kane's killer broke up Veronica's family and exposed the corruption of the Kane family; the murder of Lilly Kane should therefore have something to do with bad families, and it does, as Lilly was killed by her boyfriend's father to cover up their affair.

  At the end of this scene, after Veronica tells Duncan to keep an eye on Aaron while she takes the tapes, she tells him that they are not brother and sister. This is not strictly part of the act structure of the episode; it could be cut without damaging the integrity of "Leave It to Beaver." It serves instead to tie up a loose plot thread from the season as a whole, which would be unsatisfying without the scene; the incest plot has been with us from the pilot, from the beginning of the Lilly Kane plot, and it needs to be dealt with in some way by the end of the season. The show has suggested that its title character has been the victim of both rape and incest. Ultimately, however, the teeth are removed from both: we learn in the previous episode that although Veronica was drugged when she had sex, Duncan was drugged as well and had sex with her because he loved her. She woke up alone and assumed she had been raped, but he fled because he believed he had committed incest. Now everyone is clear neither rape nor incest occurred. (At least for now; the season two finale will give us new information, but that is not relevant to the structure of this episode.)

  As she leaves, Veronica calls her dad immediately to tell him Aaron is the killer, a minor subversion of what usually happens in such films (the only person who knows is incapacitated, leaving the killer to do more damage in the meantime). Veronica Mars is out to reinvigorate the noir genre, and avoiding this cliche is one of its tactics.

  We next cut to Logan, drunk and teetering on the edge of a bridge when Weevil and his gang show up. Veronica's phone call to Logan is the only point of transition. This scene, which will not be resolved, is also not crucial to the structure of the episode. It instead serves to create tension between seasons one and two, since the main tension will be resolved in this episode. The first two acts were about Logan Echolls, while acts three and four focus on his father; something must be done to Logan so he is not completely forgotten about as the show makes this massive shift of focus. The murder of Lilly Kane will be solved, but the consequences of this scene on the bridge will direct season two.

  The act break occurs as Veronica calls Duncan while driving and finds out that Aaron is missing. Aaron appears behind Veronica, in the back seat of the car, and seizes the tapes. Veronica crashes the car, and the act ends. Again we have a false ending as the show playsjust for a moment-with the possibility that Veronica's discovery of Lilly's killer at the top of the act has lead to both of their deaths at the bottom-that her quest for justice set up in the pilot has lead to tragedy in the finale. But television's four-act structure means however much we are startled, we know there is more to come.

  The third act is mystery. The fourth act is a thriller.

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  Act four is the apprehension of Aaron Echolls. Though she is unable to answer it, Veronica's phone rings and brings her to consciousness before Aaron. Veronica grabs the tapes and rushes to the nearest house for help, ditching the tapes along the way. Aaron escapes from the car and enters the house so that when someone hears her at the back door and comes to help her, Aaron knocks them both out. Though it is a small detail, the show has once again pointed to a domestic scene: the battle occurs at someone's home.

  Veronica awakes in an abandoned refrigerator, the perfect domestic appliance.' Here a battle ensues in which Keith, who has gone looking for her since she did not pick up her phone, is burned saving Veronica, and Aaron appears to escape, before being attacked by Veronica's dog "Backup" (fulfilling his name) and hit by a flower truck. In a nod to both the show's creator and the name of Aaron's victim, the truck has the name Thomas and an image of a lily on it. Veronica shows up with a gun and tells the truck driver to call a fire engine, an ambulance, and the police.

  In the aftermath of the battle Duncan shows up with his father to establish that his father know
s who the real killer is. Implicitly the main tension between the Kane family and the Mars family has been resolved (Keith Mars believed someone in the Kane family was responsible for Lilly Kane's death). The tension resolved here is a complement to the smaller tension (the issue of incest) between Duncan Kane and Veronica Mars resolved in act three. But a new tension has been set up, as the Kane-Mars tension of season one becomes the Kane-Echolls tension of season two.

  At the hospital Veronica waits by her father, and a nurse asks if there is anyone she can call. We transition to Veronica's mother, at home, since her mother is the expected answer to the nurse's question. Veronica tells her mother that she knows her mom checked herself out of rehab early and kicks her out of the house. At the hospital Keith wakes up to see Alicia watching over him. Veronica called her, because she knows they really care about each other. In the course of the episode Veronica has learned to accept someone other than her biological mother in her family, because biological families, as seen in this episode, are not necessarily paradise. While Veronica sleeps, her mother steals the check from the Kane family and leaves. This is the point of no return for Veronica's mother: her lapse can be forgiven, but stealing cannot. The domestic scene established in the teaser, and the dream that finding Lilly's killer will restore her family (explicitly stated at the end of the pilot), ends here, as Veronica's mother leaves their lives as a villain. In the same episode in which she gains (metaphorically) her biological father, she loses her biological mother. And interestingly, just as the KeithAlicia split paralleled the Veronica-Logan split at the beginning of the episode, the Keith-Alicia reunion parallels the Veronica-Logan reunion that we will learn about in a series of flashbacks at the beginning of season two.

  The penultimate scene is a dream sequence in which Veronica and Lilly Kane relax in the pool together, at peace. Duncan's hallucinations of Lilly walking around with a head wound have been replaced by Veronica's idyll. Lilly tells Veronica never to forget her, invoking the show's theme song in a new way: for the first time there is a danger Veronica will let Lilly pass out of her memory. This is the proper ending of the episode. The final scene-a knock at the door wakes her up, and she answers, pleased, but we don't see who she sees-is the transition to next season. The episode and the season resolve, but the conflicts involved set a new structure for a new season in motion.

  GEOFF KLOCK is the author of How to Read Superhero Comics and Why (Continuum 2002) and the upcoming Imaginary Biographies: Misreading the Lives of the Poets (Continuum 2007), based off his doctoral thesis at Balliol College, Oxford. The first book applies Harold Bloom's poetics of influence to comic books; the second argues that the bizarre portrayal of historical writers in nineteenth and twentieth century poetry constitutes a genre (and will be followed by a companion book on film). His blog-Remarkable: Short Appreciations of Poetry, Comics, Film, Television and Music-can be found at geoffklock. blogspot.com. He lives in New York City.

  Rffrrf UQS

  Field, Syd. Screenwriting: The Foundations of Screenwriting. New York: Dell, 1994.

  Gulino, Paul Joseph. Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach. New York: Continuum, 2005.

  Howard, David. How to Build a Great Screenplay. New York: Souvenir Press, 2004.

  Marz, Ron (w), Darryl Banks (p), Romeo Tanghal (i). Green Lantern No. 54. New York: (DC Comics): 1994.

  McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. London: Methuen, 1999.

  Bully the Vampire Slayer: The Complete DVD Collection. Dir. Joss Whedon et al. Fox, 2004.

  1 bdkm that in film schools across the country, film students are being taught that first-person narration is, inherently, a flaw. "Narration isn't cinematic. It's a crutch." It's a blanket statement that I think has seeped into public consciousness. (Of course, I wouldn't know this for sure as USC, NYU, UCLA, and UT all rejected my film school application.)

  The truth is, we've used first person narration in ways of which I'm proud, and we've used it, at times, badly. Our "bad" voiceovers are often the result of budgetary conflicts. How so? Let's say we've written a script that includes Veronica breaking into Jake Kane's office and stealing a document out of a desk drawer. Shooting off-stage is expensive. Shooting "action" sequences is expensive. (Lots of short shots requiring many lighting setups. You can shoot six pages of two people talking easier than you can shoot one page of "action.") So, our budget comes in and we have to cut $25,000 out of an episode; what happens?

  INT. VERONICA'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

  Veronica enters her room clutching a file folder

  VERONICA (VO.): I can't believe I didn't get caught breaking into Jake Kane's office. Fortunately, the night watchman was drunk, etc., etc.

  It's gross, I know.

  One of the things I hate in television is "emotional exposition." It's used all the time. People, particularly all the teens on the WB, talk about their feelings. Though we're not always successful, I want Veronica Mars writers to have "action" define character rather than dialogue or monologue. I like it when our voiceovers reveal Veronica's attitude, but don't reveal, and often "deflect," her feelings. Even in internal dialogue, I think we-and this we definitely includes Veronica-delude ourselves.

  I was pleased to see Evelyn list, "You want to know how I lost my virginity? So do I," as the moment she was sold on Veronica Mars. That line of voiceover was the first thing written for the show. It was part of my pitch for the show. In my original notes, I jotted down that line and circled it.

  In the first scene of the pilot, I tried to write the most Chandler-esque voice over I could to reflect the spirit of Veronica.

  VERONICA (VO.): I'm never getting married. You want an absolute? A sure thing? Well, there it is. Veronica Mars, spinster... old maid. Carve it in stone. I mean, come on. What's the point? Sure, there's that initial primal drive... hormonal surge... whatever you want to call it. Ride it out. Better yet, ignore it. Sooner or later, the people you love let you down... betray you. And here's where it ends up-fat men, cocktail waitresses, cheap motels on the wrong side of town. And a soon-to-be ex-spouse wanting a bigger piece of the settlement pie.

  But of course, the network demanded the scene be cut (as I've bitched about elsewhere). I'll spare you the many, many examples of Veronica voiceovers of which I'm less proud.

  Veronica Mars:

  Girl. Detective.

  O ME A FAVOR. Read this, the opening voiceover from the pilot episode of Veronica Mars:

  VERONICA (VO.): This is my school. If you go here, your parents are either millionaires, or your parents work for millionaires. Neptune, California: a town without a middle class. If you're in the second group, you get a job: fast food, movie theaters, minimarts. Or you could be me. My after-school job means tailing philandering spouses or investigating false injury claims.

  Now-read it again, and imagine it being spoken by Humphrey Bogart.

  If you immediately started thinking about cigarette smoke, men in fedoras, and femmes fatale with great gams, then clearly it's working-Rob Thomas (a TV God, along with the likes of Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin) has created a hard-boiled detective protagonist out of a little blonde California girl.

  Cool, huh?

  The fact that the series is neo-noir isn't particularly earth-shattering. What's notable about its success in this arena, though, is the importance words play in creating that effect. More specifically, Veronica's words.

  The power of the voiceover narration in Veronica Mars to capture the hard-boiled detective feel, however, is only half of the equation. The narration also captures-bear with me, here-a completely unexpected but unmistakably girly vibe.

  Don't believe me?

  Do me a favor. Read the following voiceover, from a lunch-period scene in the pilot:

  VERONICA (V..O.): It's not like my family met the minimum net worth requirement. My dad didn't own his own airline like John En- bom's, or serve as ambassador to Belgium like Shelly Pomroy's, but my dad used to be the sheriff and that had
a certain cachet. Let's be honest, though. The only reason I was allowed past the velvet ropes was Duncan Kane, son of software billionaire Jake Kane. He used to be my boyfriend.

  Now: Read it again, and imagine it being spoken by Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City.

  Wait-I can hear your howls of protest from here. I'm not saying that Veronica is anything like Carrie Bradshaw One of the reasons I love Veronica is that she's almost the anti-Carrie ... the idea of Veronica spending rent money on a pair of fashionable Manolo Blahniks is ludicrous. I'm talking about the voiceover technique. So please. Go back and give it a try.

  Not as farfetched as you would have thought, huh?

  Here's my theory about the perfection of the voiceover narration in Veronica Mars. By using a voiceover with short, cynical sentences, the writers are indeed harkening back to the days of the hard-boiled detective thrillers. This certainly fits, because Veronica is almost as much a professional detective as her dad just ask lawyer Cliff McCormack. But keep in mind that this technique, so popular in the early twentieth century, long ago became almost mockable, the venue of sitcom dream sequences and Flonase nasal spray commercials. So why does it still work so well for Veronica?