Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars

by Rob Thomas

  Logan and Keith have both been abandoned by women they loved. Both "motherless" men fixate, sometimes to the point of over-protection and possessiveness, on the nurturing Veronica as a guiding light out of their personal darkness. And both Logan and Keith are terrific hot-heads. It's important to note that neither man has ever physically harmed Veronica. But the similarity in the way Keith and Logan express their anger-they adopt a fragile facade of jokey calm until their fuses blow with sudden fury-is too glaring to ignore. Keith's temper flared like a blowtorch when Veronica's morals were impugned during his cross-examination in the Aaron Echolls murder trial; he leaned out of the witness box and jerked the smarmy defense attorney down to face level by the necktie, threatening him with bodily harm. Logan displayed an explosive, even violent, streak when Veronica told him she was breaking up with him in the second season opener; he smashed a lamp while she cowered on the sofa. "My mom is dead!" he shouted, voicing his ever-present abandonment issues. "My girlfriend is dead! My dad is a murderer! And the only person I still care about is dumping me!" ("Normal Is the Watchword," 2-1).

  Logan faced the prospect of losing Veronica with hurt, anger, and something approaching hysteria. But look how closely Logan's response was echoed by Keith when he learned that Veronica had deceived him and helped Duncan flee the country. His voice choked, eyes welling with tears, Keith could barely contain his panic when he told her urgently, "If they take you away, if you're sent to prison.... It's not just your life you're gambling with, Veronica. I would not survive without you!" Then, with a devastating glint of pain in his eyes, Keith lashes out at Veronica for her betrayal: "You played me, Veronica.... I love you. I will always love you. But I don't know how I'll ever trust you again" ("Donut Run," 2-11).

  Even if Veronica doesn't realize that she is looking for a Keith substitute, we do. The writers reinforce this idea by rendering Keith AWOL not once but twice at key moments of the second season finale, first on the roof and then in the final moments of the episode. It was the day after Veronica's high school graduation, and Keith was taking her to New York City as a present. As they prepared to leave for the airport, Keith was delayed by a sudden visit from femme fatale Kendall Casablancas, who wanted to hire him for a P.I. job that couldn't wait. He sent Veronica ahead to the airport, promising to catch up. Instead, he took a look inside Kendall's briefcase, was seemingly tantalized by the (unseen) contents, and left Veronica waiting at the terminal.

  The episode ended with Veronica standing alone at the gate as her flight was called for boarding, her face registering concern, confusion, and, finally, disappointment. We were left wondering how old, dependable Keith could have broken his promise. What did Kendall offer him? Was Keith corruptible after all? Was Veronica's notion of her father's perfection about to be shattered?

  Perhaps. But then, isn't this just the natural course that most fa ther and daughter relationships follow? Veronica's "abandonment" at the airport coincides with her high school graduation-symbolically the entrance into adulthood, the time of our lives when we begin to see our parents as flawed humans, not infallible gods. Keith can no longer be the center of her universe. Of course, viewed from the parental perspective, Keith's broken date with Veronica could be seen as merely a father's attempt to push his daughter out of the nest. But, whichever way you interpret this scene, the meaning is the same: Veronica's childhood is over. She is on her own. There will be grownup romances and inappropriate men. And if she's lucky, somewhere along the way, she'll recapture the feelings of perfect love and security Keith once gave her. Here's hoping Veronica's skill at tracking down missing persons remains formidable, because she'll need it. She'll be looking for her father in every man she meets for a long, long time.

  JOYCE MILLMAN is a freelance writer whose essays about television and pop culture have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Phoenix, and Variety. She was a founding staff member and television critic for Salon. com, and a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism for columns written while she was television critic for the San Francisco Examiner. She has contributed essays to several BenBella anthologies, including Flirting with Pride & Prejudice, Mapping the World of Harry Potter, and Getting Lost. She lives in the San Francisco area with her husband and son.

  1 always get a wee bit defensive when asked why I paint (fill in the blank: moms, dads, the rich, the poop; the white, the non-white) as bad people. "Don't you get it?" I want to say. "I paint everyone as bad people!"

  It's noir It's built on a culture of dirty little secrets. It's built on crime. In The Breakfast Club, all the kids end up blaming how screwed up they are on their parents. We just add murder, pedophilia, and infidelity to the equation.

  But I'll admit, the fathers-save Keith fare badly in the show I'm pleased that Amy points out that, at the end of the day, Jake Kane isn't the worst father in the world. Jake does all he can to protect the surviving members of his family. If you had that much money and power, wouldn't you? Aaron's sinsbeyond the obvious ones-of not knowing Logan's birthday or that he's allergic to shellfish almost seem more egregious.

  But bad fathers also make for great characters-especially when they're played by actors as good as ours. By the end of the series, every writer wanted to write scenes for Aaron. Harry just became more and more interesting in the role. Among my favorite scenes from the series, I'd include Aaron and Keith discussing Russian lit in county jail, Aaron and Veronica in the Neptune Grand elevator, and Aaron having Trina's boyfriend sample his meat before he whips his ass. And whether it was, in fact, the Stonecutters who made Steve Guttenberg a star the show doesn't get much better than when Woody Goodman finds Veronica on his computer and asks, "So, Veronica.... Are you as smart as you think you are?"

  A sidenote: Bing Crosby was our inspiration for the Aaron Echolls character.

  Amy's essay is a reminder that I do want to bring some powerful women into the show, be they good, evil, or somewhere in the middle. As I write this, we're searching for a new dean of Hearst College.

  Daddy Dualities

  KEITH: Who's your daddy?

  VERONICA: I hate it when you say that.

  -"Pilot" (1-1) and "Leave It to Beaver" (1-22)

  UALITY" IS ONE of the most important facets of characterization in noir, a film and literary style in which things are rarely what they seem. The conflicted anti-hero trying to walk a straight path, the corrupt authority figures, and the beautiful femme fatale are hallmarks of this genre in which victims become aggressors and predators become prey. Many primary characters in both noir and neo-noir (where elements of noir are mixed into other genres, as in Veronica Mars) are ambivalent, struggling with the coexistence of opposing attitudes, needs, or interests.

  Veronica Mars regularly takes that concept and runs with it. From the primary conflict of the 09er "haves" versus the "have nots," to character placement (Veronica holding Logan on the couch in "Nor mal is the Watchword" (2-1), and its reversal in "Not Pictured" [222]) and simple costuming color choices (remember Veronica's pale floral dress in her high school graduation dream versus reality's black dress in "Not Pictured"?), the entire show is built off of duality. It's in the setting, the plot structure, and the characters. The show takes this idea of duality even further by regularly creating parallels and reflections of those settings, plots, and characters, either foreshadowing or reminding us of major developments.

  Take "Credit Where Credit's Due" (1-2), where Weevil's confession and willingness to serve jail time to save his grandmother stopped the investigation before the real perpetrator, his cousin Chardo, was ever investigated-much as Abel Koontz took the fall for the Kane family, bringing a halt to the official murder investigation and keeping Aaron Echolls from being found out. In "MeetJohn Smith" (1-3), we watched Veronica help a fellow student whose father had disappeared, giving us a backdrop for Veronica's absent mother and introducing the idea that Lianne's reasons might be more complicated than they initially seemed. In "The Girl Next Door" (1-7), the writers intro
duced the paternity issue with Sarah and her unborn child, an issue that haunted Veronica the entire season. In "Silence of the Lamb" (1-11), Keith found a kidnapped girl locked in a refrigerator, foreshadowing Aaron locking Veronica in a refrigerator in the season finale. Chlamydia came up in health class in "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner" (2-7), but Veronica wasn't diagnosed until "Look Who's Stalking" (2-20). "My Mother, the Fiend" (2-9) featured not only faux babies for a lesson on parenthood in health class, but also the story of the Prom Baby, setting the stage for Meg's pregnancy. And the list goes on and on.

  Just as many of these episode plots act in part as vehicles to explore the primary storylines of the seasons, some of the secondary characters on Veronica Mars become vehicles to examine the main characters and their relationships with each other. This is especially true of the primary relationship in the show.

  Sit down, Logan fans, I'm not taking about that relationship. Logan is a fascinating character, but to my mind, his importance to the show doesn't quite equal that of another guy. No, Duncan fans, I'm not talking about him, either (although I will later). I'm not even talking about that type of relationship. I'm talking about Veronica's deep bond with her father.

  As far as television dads go, you won't find many better than Keith Mars. This waterbed-buying, computer rebuild-arranging, ink bombsetting dad is pretty darn close to what a perfect father could be in the real world. Yet all the while, he somehow stays within the realm of realism instead of reminding us of too-perfect television fathers like Howard Cunningham and Mike Brady. He's there for Veronica even while supporting her financially with a job he never willingly chose. He values his time with her and does whatever he can within his limited means to ensure her happiness and safety. Like any good dad, he protects his daughter as best he can while understanding that she needs space to grow and make mistakes, no matter how much it may pain him.

  You've probably noticed that Keith has plenty of company in Neptune as far as fathers are concerned. From Richard "Big Dick" Casablancas to Terrence Cook, Stewart Manning to Nathan Woods, Dr. Tom Griffith to Van Clemmons, Veronica Mars is chock-full of fathers who far outnumber their female counterparts. In this age of single mother/wise daughter duos like Lorelai and Rory Gilmore on Gilmore Girls and Susan and Julie Mayer on Desperate Housewives, why does Veronica Mars choose to be so dad-heavy?

  It's no accident. Although fans pay a great deal of attention to Veronica's various romantic interests, the key relationship in Veronica Mars isn't the one between our heroine and whichever guy she may be dating that week, but rather the all-important bond she shares with her father. Remember, it's the paternal relationship that set up the show's original premise following Lilly Kane's murder. Veronica chose to support her father rather than turn her back on him and side with the 09er crowd, even though she lost both her social circle and her mother in the process. If she hadn't, Veronica would be just another popular girl, and Veronica Mars would be just another clone of Beverly Hills, 90210, her life playing out much like we saw in her dream in "Not Pictured" (2-22).Veronica and Keith conflict on occasion, but not very often; their father-daughter relationship is one of the strongest on television. Normally, strong, healthy bonds aren't the compelling ones, but this show keeps the Mars family interesting by crafting other paternal or pseudo-paternal relationships that act as reflections of Keith and Veronica's relationship. These mirror images are always skewed or twisted, but each reflection still illuminates the show's central relationship in its own way, allowing us to better understand and appreciate Veronica and Keith's bond, and so we welcome that bond again and again.

  There are plenty of fathers who appear in Veronica Mars's first two seasons, but five of the fathers in (or formerly in) Neptune create the reflections that fascinate me most: Aaron Echolls, Abel Koontz, Jake Kane, Woody Goodman, and Duncan Kane.

  Flaxen Ethulls

  Imagine that you know nothing about the show. Got it? Okay, now ask yourself: Who would you rather have as your father, a handsome A-list movie star or a disgraced (not to mention short) former public servant? Silly question. Most teenagers would love to be the son or daughter of a movie superstar. Money, fame, cheesy television specials about your family... if you think about it outside the context of Veronica Mars, having Aaron as your daddy would sound very tempting (well, except for those cheesy television specials).

  On paper, Aaron appears to be the coolest of cool dads. With a going rate of eight figures per picture, Aaron would hold a high place in our action movie star pantheon, somewhere between Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis. Cars drove by as part of celebrity homes tours, and he greeted them graciously, posing for photos and signing autographs. A pair of his old boots became the centerpiece of a school auction. Meanwhile, Keith remained nearly a pariah in Neptune society for much of the first season. All sorts of people wanted a piece of Aaron, and those people included much of the female population of Neptune.

  With posters of himself on his walls and cameras installed to record his sexual exploits, Aaron had at least as inflated a view of himself as everyone else did. But while Keith's unflagging confidence stems from his expertise and belief in himself, Aaron's came from people paying him a great deal of money to look good and strut around onscreen making others believe in him (no offense meant to Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis, of course).

  Here is where the primary twisted reflection of season one, the negative mirror image, comes into play. Keith and Veronica needed an opposite to balance the show, and while Jake and Lilly Kane certainly formed one reflection, they weren't as integral as we were led to believe at the beginning of the series. Instead, the violent, abusive, and domineering Aaron was the paternal half of that opposite reflection, the psychotic with (literally) movie-star good looks. But the other half wasn't his daughter Trina, or even his son, Logan; instead his victim, Lilly Kane, played that role.

  While Veronica and her father have had many reflections as a pair, Veronica herself had one main reflection during that first season, who was her opposite yet the same: her best friend Lilly' Before Lilly's death, she and Veronica were very different; Lilly was confident and brash, especially when compared to the more reticent Veronica. In fact, Lilly's death, while devastating, was what strengthened Veronica's individuality and allowed her to come into her own. Lilly's confidence and zest for life inspired Veronica after Lilly was gone. It was the combination of their better traits, the embracing of their duality, that created the Veronica we know today.

  In addition to being self-confident, Lilly had a healthy sexual appetite and often cheated on her boyfriend Logan. Aaron Echolls was a movie star who regularly cheated on his wife with any available, willing, and beautiful woman. He was old enough to have been Lilly's father and, as her boyfriend's father, he should have served only in that capacity. Instead, he began a consensual affair with her.

  We all know what happened. Lilly found the tapes he'd made of them in bed and threatened to make their affair public, and Aaron killed her in a rage, ensuring her silence. But look at it in the abstract: one father figure killed one daughter figure to create the mystery. Then, another father figure and another daughter figure solved that mystery. Within this framework, the climactic moment had to involve a battle between the two father figures over the fate of the remaining daughter, and that is exactly the climax we received in the first season's finale, complete with blood and fire.

  Aaron acted as Keith's reflection one more time when he was acquitted of Lilly's murder in season two. Despite everything that had happened, Aaron was released and cleared of all charges thanks to his shrewd lawyers, who knew how to take witnesses apart. Conversely, just for pursuing Jake Kane as a suspect, the population vilified Keith and recalled him from office, effectively convicting him of incompetence.

  For a few moments, it seemed that both Aaron and Keith had died on the same day, both maliciously at the hands of others. But while Aaron's death may have felt like his just desserts, Keith's apparent death devastated Veronica (and nearly
sent my little watching group into hysterics). No single event could affect Veronica more than the loss of her father, and no event could affect the audience more.

  Luckily, Keith lived to investigate another day. Nobody cried when Aaron died.

  ]aka Kane and RW Krnmlz

  This biblically named pair did more than just create a huge neonred herring signpost pointing to the idea that Duncan killed his own sibling. Jake Kane and his son Duncan, and Abel Koontz and his daughter Amelia DeLongpre, each formed another reflection of Keith and Veronica during season one that offered alternate meditations on how far a parent will go to protect their child.

  First, let's get the Sunday school lesson out of the way: Abel was the son of Adam and Eve who was killed by his older brother Cain. Aside from the aforementioned red herring, the two also echo their Old Testament namesakes in that the dying "disgruntled former employee" Abel, in taking the fall for the Kane family, effectively lost his (remaining) life to them. Abel wasn't as simple or dumb as we might be tempted to believe of a man confessing to a crime he didn't commit; under the circumstances, his choice to confess and spend his last few months of life in prison in exchange for a hefty sum to be paid to his daughter Amelia seems smart.

  But was his confession a noble act? It depends on your definition. The already-dying Abel thought he was ensuring Amelia's financial security and safe life with his confession, and he willingly sacrificed what little time he had left to do so. He lied to accomplish what he thought would be a greater good: supporting his daughter by providing her with 3 million dollars.