Veronica Marred?

[sdelmonte]

First off, before we get to the show, a question...

We are having some big problems with our internet at work. And of all the sites I visit, the hardest to load is LJ. I remember a time when LJ was always fast-loading, and have to wonder if all the changes to the site and to the servers and to the company have done something to our beloved blog. Anyone have any insight into this, or is it just the random troubles of an overtaxed network?

Anyway, on to last night's VMars, which did something it's never done before. It was bad.

Yes, you heard me. We had three plots going on, and each was unpleasant but not all that interesting. The first involved Veronica being sent undercover by the school newspaper to a sorority that might be linked to the rapes. At the end, though, all we learn is that even college newspapers are scandal sheets. The sorority was just a sorority. The combination of cynicism with a rather tepid mystery did nothing for me. Neither did the sense that the show fell back on cliches about college life. And while this did sort of advance the bigger mystery, I don't find that engaging, either. Even though we are dealing with rape, the stakes seem rather small after the last two years' big mysteries.

The second plot had Logan and Wallace taking part in a sociology professor's experiment where some students are prisoners, some are guards, and the guards need to get information from the prisoners. This began as a very heavy-handed effort at some sort of commentary about torture and Abu Ghraib, and then just turned into something unpleasant to sit through. Never mind that I don't think colleges do this kind of thing, or that the internal logic of the plot fell apart to some degree. Only Logan's presence saved this in the least. Oh, and we got to see Dan Castelanetta (the voice of Homer Simpson) as the professor. His normal voice is nothing like Homer's.

And lastly, we had the mess Keith is in. I don't think we have an idea what's going on, and what we saw of it was completely unengaging. We learn what was in the briefcase - a Van Gogh - but don't learn why Kendall had it, or how Keith knew what it was. This subplot feels shoehorned in, and I really hope it goes away.

Hard to believe I am being so harsh about a show I usually love. But the longer I watched last night, the less I wanted to be there. After two weeks, I am concerned that we are seeing yet another TV show move to college without having anything to say about college that we haven't heard before. Remember Buffy in college? All the wonderful metaphor and subtext of high school vanished, and we had a very typical college (aside from the Initiative). Is the same thing happening again? I hope not, but the trailer for next week didn't inspire me with hope.

Still, every show is allowed an off-night. Let's hope that is all this was.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I am not having any issues with LJ loading here.

[immortalthief.livejournal.com]

Hey,

Sad to say I agree with you about Veronica Mars. It frustrated me that my hand kept wandering over to the remote to change the channel. Particularly since I had a headache and stayed up for the sole purpose of watching the show.

Hopefully it will only seem this way as they begin to set something bigger up.

And sad that you are having trouble with LJ.

[batyatoon]

Check out Aspen's review of the episode.

Apparently colleges do do this kind of thing.

[agonistes]

Speaking as somebody who's at a small, private, women's liberal arts college (albeit without a Greek system)...it was refreshing to finally see somebody make the point that while the militant feminists have a point, and while the sorority girls have a point -- sticking yourself on one side or the other goes a long way towards dehumanizing both parties.

And while colleges really do do this sort of thing (and so do high schools and middle schools, and I'm speaking as somebody who's both participated and facilitated), I can't think of any IRB form for that experiment that would pass the institutional IRB board -- and the professor did say that it was a study, which would require that form because it's human research.

Which doesn't mean I don't think certain aspects were implausible, or that some of the dialogue really needed work, or that trying to jam three storylines that disparate and intense into a single episode wasn't very wise.

[campkilkare]

I thought the resolutions of the college plotlines were both a little lacking. And I thought both plotlines were, in themselves, kind of pointless.

The thing is, I'm not sure if they don't cancel each other out.

There were things about the sorority, for instance, that aren't explained by the "Whoops, the editor has a grudge," solution. That's way too much pot for one person. Who were those four sources? Is it really possible Parker just happened to get trashed at a party held in a sorority where they stole her key earlier and then she got raped and it was all a coincidence?

The experiment--what the heck was the point of that, if nothing was going to happen? The only one to go evil was the guy who went so evil so immediately that I assumed he was a plant. I kept waiting for the shocking twist, or whatever, except it never came.

I think maybe it only seemed pointless because we got false solutions, because I wasn't really dissatisfied until the ending, in both cases. I have a feeling we'll be revisiting these events eventually.

And I agree with Sweeney that a big character development plot point was that people who call you "one of us" are probably not people you want to be one of. This is kind of important, because Veronica's defined herself against the 09ers so far, and seemed to initially identify the Greeks as eseentially the same type of guys, and everyone else as... everyone else. But in fact, things are more complicated here, and that kind of simplistic thinking will just make her a tool of some other faction.

This moves her into a little more traditional private eye's world, where you can't easily tell the good guys from the bad guys. (As seems to have happened to Keith.) And it's important because Veronica already does some ethically shady things. If she's not certain she's doing them for the right reasons--she's got nothing.