STEVEN TIMBERMAN ON THE RETURN OF VERONICA MARS
Veronica Mars should never have worked. A
hard to describe show on a little known network, with a mishmash of tones and
genres somehow expected to sing together. The recipe for the show reads like a
parody of a parody – Buffy without the demons, Nancy Drew with an edge, X meets
Y with a dash of Z. High school hijinks standing side-by-side sun-soaked noir
with dames in short skirts. And yet, here we are – Veronica Mars endures. The
Veronica Mars movie has been heralded as the newest wave of direct-to-audience
content, and demonized as yet another way for movie studios to wring consumers
dry.
I don’t care about that. We’ve seen
Arrested Development return, NBC announced plans to reboot their derivative
Heroes, and Jack Bauer returns to kick unholy amounts of ass in a few scant
weeks. But shows are more than buzzwords – the best products are able to
capture lightning in a bottle at a specific time and place. 24 fed into our
national paranoia after 9/11, Heroes arrived to leech off dissatisfied viewers
from Lost like a barfly at 2 a.m., and Arrested Development tapped into growing
discomfort with corporate greed in the wake of Enron. But when these shows
return, they struggle to adapt to a new mood and an always changing audience.
Much as I enjoy the exploits of Jack Bauer (This year, he’ll be shooting his
way through London!), we don’t really need Bauer to return.
Veronica Mars needed to come back.
At times, the Veronica Mars movie struggles
to compress a sprawling TV series into a two hour event. Characters get lost in
the shuffle, the mystery is perfunctory, things have to be alluded to rather
than shown. But Rob Thomas understands that we don’t watch television for
events, we watch them for the characters.
(I’m not going to spoil any major plot
points in the movie, but I will discuss some of the information revealed in
trailers, commercials etc.)
When we last left Veronica she was walking
down the rain-soaked streets of Neptune, an affluent beach town located
somewhere between Los Angeles and San Diego. Her life had been torn apart yet
again, this time by a sex tape. And for all of her growing up, Veronica Mars
couldn’t let the issue rest – and picked up a flamethrower and got to work
burning down everyone who had wronged her or her friends. The movie tells us
that she finally got out, finally stopped the cycle, found a way to win the
game without playing.
Veronica Mars had always been a show in
love with inverting typical TV formula – call it the Whedon School if you’re so
inclined. Veronica Mars the movie is ostensibly about Veronica slowly being
sucked back into the town and life and habits she abandoned nearly a decade
ago. The emotional core remains resolutely capital N Noir, with injustice
always lurking offscreen. Within the first ten minutes, a beloved character
makes his entrance by fighting back against a loathsome real life policy that
stands at the crossroads of race and class.
And if there’s anything that surprised me
about the movie, it is how timely the film feels. This is not a throwback to Bush-era
America: This is a fully throated condemnation of America’s class divide. The
list of American shows that have dealt with class is pitifully small, and
Veronica Mars felt revolutionary in 2004. And for all of our Netflixes and
Snapchats and Elected Black Presidents, our class divide is growing bigger,
looming ever larger. And this movie feeds off that discomfort, that gnawing
sense that by trying to make things better we’re merely speeding further off
the rails.
Rob Thomas’ script spends a lot of time on
the vocabulary and power of addiction. At times it feels like Veronica might be
addicted to Logan, the ultimate bad boy trying to make good. Neptune itself is
an intoxicant, offering Veronica a chance to tangibly fight injustice with the
added opportunity to gloat about her righteousness. But for all her maturation,
Veronica is still addicted to a potent drug: her own nostalgia.
Part of the intrinsic pleasure in early
episodes was seeing Veronica take revenge against the rich and powerful (and
popular) kids that made her a pariah. But for all her boasting, Veronica missed
the naivete and wonder of childhood. She traded Pep Rallies for stakeouts, bake
sales for cheating husbands and wives. Like all great Noir, Veronica ached for
her past.
A decade later, Veronica is on the cusp of
completely erasing her life in Neptune. A high paying job with a big law firm,
an adoring boyfriend, a ready-made life in New York. But this Veronica still aches, this time for
the adventures and trials we witnessed her undergo so many years ago.
I grew up in Southern California, an hour
or so drive away from where the series filmed. I was introduced to Veronica
Mars when I was living in a rat-infested hellhole in Boston, the muggy summer
air feeling like a final indignity. I transferred back to California less than
a year later.
Veronica Mars portrayed a California that
felt if not literally true than emotionally accurate, a whirlwind of sunshine
and sex and repression and masochism and New Money throwing their newly bought
status around and a deep, deep abiding fear that everyone loved it anyway.
For three years we listened to Veronica
rail about her need to get out of California, to sand off all of her edges and
become the quintessential Adult. Although Thomas’ work has outgrown the label,
Rob Thomas started his writing career as a Young Adult novelist. Even in a
condensed format, his characters still emanate from that place, all raw nerves
and exposed emotions.
And since Veronica Mars the series ended,
Veronica Mars the character was allowed to build the life she always said she
wanted. But the audience craved more, and so too must Veronica. Some reviews
have expressed dismay that Neptune and her old life hold such power, even after
all this time. I have to wonder what past lives they’re running from.
New York a phone call away, slipping ever
farther. Her past beating down the door late at night and a growing part of you
that wants to turn to knob. The pull of California may well be an illusion, but
it will always remain intoxicating.
STEVEN TIMBERMAN IS A GRADUATE OF KINGSTON UNIVERSITY AND A CALIFORNIAN WRITER. HE IS AN OCCIASIONAL COLUMNIST FOR THIS BLOG.
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