Affogato

No one in the show has a real network of friends, except maybe Madison! And Weevil, but that's going bad. Your thought was my first thought, too, by the way, but she is obviously spending more time with Mac and we see her still persisting with Wallace, and Logan and Duncan for that matter and she really doesn't have much free time. Veronica says something in that sequence about being Duncan's conscience, so I think it has to do with guilt. Just a theory. Maybe guilt because he's cheating on Meg, his actual love (as Veronica points out last episode) or maybe because he isn't helping Grace more? I agree with the podcast that Veronica is relatable because she is often in over her head and she is a good enough actor (and a strong enough character) to show it. I think that's the underlying theme of the show (Thomas being a former teacher, right?) , that HS kids are thrown into deep water without effective guidance. With all the rape and abuse, how much help are those dolls, really? In the first season did Rebecca's study really help anyone deal with Lilly's death? So I think the idea is every time Veronica takes a job she finds a fellow student in deep water without a life preserver. The point is not that we get to know them. However we do get to know some of them. Wallace, Mac, Logan, Duncan, Meg, etc. all have their stories. There are many stories in the naked city. (I've forgotten the actual quote).

I wouldn’t mind, either. although enough is topical so it might get old if you didn’t have a society to connect it to i any way. All the movies you’ll never see and the restaurants you’ll never visit. Art museums, concerts......... I love envy as a burrito sauce. I think it is wise to speak respectfully to burritos. I have no idea what will happen next week.

When is a hat not a hat? Yes I thought that showed real growth. But the test was to find out what part of the bad place she would go to? Is there a spot for people who subvert expectations and make the demons have to work late?

You did in a parallel universe.

I loved the waterboarding scene. Just a day in a cubicle at the CIA. Also Skinner at the end. "Where are they taking Reggie?"

In the story, recently in the news, about the thirteen abused children kept prisoner apparently one escaped at on point and was returned to the house, also neighbors chimed up with stories of seeing them marched around the house all night. With a strong religious group to back Stuart up, it is easy to see his children would feel like they wouldn't be believed. It also reinforces Logan's story, many abuses never seeing the light of day because they are hidden behind the appearance of respectability. I imagine that this experience, after the open trial and Logan's revelations, leads Duncan to do what he does about Aaron. This confirms that Duncan did not know about Logan's abuse, I suppose.

OK, sorry. Trying to keep it short and it obviously wasn’t working. I was responding originally to the statements that Alicia was inconsistently presented, depending on what the show was trying to say in an individual episode and that the same was true of Wallace and a number of secondary characters. I don’t believe this is true. I do believe that there is something off about Veronica Mars, the tv show, and I don’t know what it is. I’m not finding it as rewatchable as I thought it would be, but many bad things can be rewatchable. I do find that it is pretty consistent about the characters and seems to have them react believably in individual episodes. Sure, it is her POV but not only her POV. Considering Alicia. She has moved to Neptune, on the occasion of her husband’s death, to take a job in Kane Industries. Money is tight but she buys a house that aspires to a position in the class structure higher than her own. She is always rigid and strident about who she wants Wallace to hang out with (not Veronica, because where there is smoke, must be fire) and what she thinks of Keith’s parenting (permissively allowing Veronica to have contact with people and ideas she should be forbidden to access). She may also be loving when the occasion calls, but never shows any interest in mothering Veronica and remains an antagonist to Veronica. Honestly, with Liane, Lynn, Celeste and Alicia mothers represent some major dragons for Veronica to slay. No wonder she doesn’t, especially at this time, want to become one. They also seem to represent the pull back to childhood. Frightened by the refrigerator debacle, Keith resumes relations with her and is amenable to following her rules for childrearing. Taking V off the MI payroll, pretending he isn’t having sex with Alicia, he pursues the ‘normal’ he wants (and that we always blame Veronica for wanting). He must have a taste for it since he was part and parcel of the Mars family absent father, drunk mother, enabling child group that tried so hard to look like the perfect family. This isn’t inconsistent behavior for him and seems well in Alicia’s repertoire. Veronica in the past comes across Wallace and cuts him down from the flagpole. He is the kind of guy who gets taped to a flagpole, not good at standing up to the many gray areas of gritty noir Neptune High. He learns. When Veronica, a pushy bitch (not dissimilar to Alicia) pushes to hard he pushes back and this is an important learning experience for him. Eventually it enables him to stand up to Tessa and to stand up to his mother when he discovers she has kept information about his biological father from him, and that allows him to head off on his own to have is own hero’s sidekick quest to find himself, which later leads to his following Veronica into the underworld in Season 3, which leads to his finding what he wants to do with himself. I actually feel he ends up being one of the better developed consistant characters in Veronica Mars, loyal to his friends and steadfast in his search for himself (as shown by his exploration of his biological father when presented with him). So, Duncan. Tertiary character. Hehasn’t changed much in his tendency to avoid direct confrontation, but this season he has an arc where he again treats Veronica shabbily, but stands up for Meg and his child. I believe Veronica and Duncan make the fairly ill conceived decision to send him away from everyone because they are keeping the child away from not just the Mannings but from the Kanes, who Duncan has little reason to trust at this point. Veronica herself, this is a heroes journey story and not unlike the tarot version. The burning tower and the roof of the grande story, upcoming, the comparison writes itself. Also, like Buffy the end of both shows ends in the card ‘the world’. Escaping the things that drag you down, the world in front of you! However, Buffy was a choosen one story and her destiny was forced on her. Veronica chooses to become a hero when Lamb brushes her off after Shelley’s party (yes, Veronica is not empowered by her rape, she is empowered by his callous indifference). This is much less common for female characters, Wonder Woman, certainly, a few others. So, yes, this story has some weight and importance. Veronica starts out the tarot fool. She is in her dress, demeanor years younger than her chronological age. She has been held back a year. She has tried to pretend that she is part of a perfect family, her only experience of that before her mother’s alcoholism became full blown, which was at age six. She has a child’s view of right and wrong, Logan cheated, tell on him. And in the limo she thinks Logan is the most exciting boy ever and the most grown up boy ever. By the beginning of the second season she learns that being shot at in your boyfriend’s car isn’t the exciting you wanted and that he really isn’t stepping up like an adult. She never goes back, no matter what she things of him (and some of the sexual insecurity stuff) deep down she is never that little girl again. She grows a lot. She is still growing, it is her superpower. Logan still is around. The actor got a huge role in the first season because he played so well with Aaron, but it isn’t like we see him grown and change, we just find out where he is coming from. In the second season the same shit happens to him. He gets worse and worse. Unlike Wallace, , he doesn’t have a heroes sidekick arc, and no, passive aggressive making yourself look good at someone else’s expense isn’t the same thing. And since people decided Logan and Veronica were the preferred couple it just gets hard for many people to watch. So is that the problem? Like maybe he should have been, as an alcoholic kid with a violent self destructive streak and a murder rap, been sent to a foster home or rehab center instead of becoming an emancipated minor? With some plots that protected him a little and led him to some modicum of self awareness, with a different group, perhaps some of the pchers? Should Meg have lived and moved in with Duncan (and away after a while.) could Veronica have been without a boyfriend for a while and made another friend or two? I don’t think the show could ever have been the show where Keith, against type, takes Logan in and adopts him and where Keith backs Logan up when Veronica puts herself in danger and the two of them double-team her about it, after which Logan and Wallace go out and solve the mystery (and learn that Madison isn’t so bad after all!) and Veronica has her scoobies back at the house for cookies. (or some version of this that is less obviously worded). However, there are things that needed to be fixed. And that was what I meant. I just was hoping not to be so wordy.

I wonder if the ‘nuns’ that Polly and chic were sent to aren’t themselves some weird cult. Did Polly leave to protect her kids. Did they even try to get chic adopted?

I haven’t seen him do anything else but my impression is that Chips was kind of like that. Does he have another shtick? yeah perfect for hell, though.

Ok I’m a Patriots fan but I did spare a thought for Jason.

I actually get that Jughead felt like he belonged at Southside and had some status there as FP’s son and a Serpent. At Northside he was sleeping in the janitors closet. The serpent and sword thing is pretty unbelievably inspired. He wants his family. Maybe FP realizes that, hence his heel faced turn. He gave jug a real choice, jug chooses his dad. So, where’s hotdog? I guess the fbi thing makes sense for Archie because he’s incredibly naive. Why didn’t she take Chic to the hospital? i don’t know most of the shows people talk about but this feels more like a comic book than most and I’m ok with that.

There ia no reason Why the judge couldn’t be checking them out ‘in the wild’ but you are probably right.

Then do they actually change anything? Or just choose the preferable destination while both destinations continue to exist? I get get your point. Maybe if you intervene just before the timeline split it never happens. Keep your dog inside the day he’s hit by a car. Two years later he alerts the family to a gas leak.

Duncan shows he really got to know Meg very well and at one point Veronica says 'I learned I wasn't the love of my life's love of his life' (something like). She realizes true love stories don't have endings, but she isn't part of Duncan's true love story. As she is following him around she is learning that he had a complex and involved relationship with Meg. So tertiary character development? Suddenly a load of insight into what Duncan has been doing, but only when Veronica notices! I think Veronica Mars, had it played out, would be her telling someone (a therapist, her daughter, keith when he's recovering from a hit and run) about what actually happened in highschool. I think what we get is her perspective on the characters. I don't think Veronica thinks a lot about Corny. Madison really is just mean to Veronica and (except for those two horrible times ) Veronica finds her just annoying. and could care less about what makes Madison tick. (Madison, after season 3, does actually come into focus for Veronica. Looking back). Tessa not too relevant, except as she had an impact on Wallace. Logan is treated the same way, most of the time in the show Veronica sees him as better than he is, which is part of the reason he clings to her. She sees Keith as thevperfect dad, so we do, too.. I think at the end of season three, looking back, there is a pretty rich characterization of Wallace, it just builds slowly. Veronica isn't, like jughead in Riverdale, taking notes on what is happening in his town, for his future book. She's swimming upstream and I think her processing comes later. She's too damn busy and tired to process and not that empathic (apparently teens aren't, it is a characteristic that seems to develop later than you might think). You may or may not like her, but this is her story. Not the towns, not the high school's story. The problem with the other characters isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Weevil's still in school because he promised his Grandmother he'd graduate.

But he isn’t on a trolley. It works in this case, it has been adapted. It’s the theme of tonight’s symposium.

They are trying to be good people. What matters if you gain the world and lose your soul?

I throw a molotov cocktail and them I have a Totally different problem.... words to live by! Michael just solved the trolley problem ! I believe so.

Never came up Northside because too ‘up scale’ for gangs. Gangs all Southside and gang paraphernalia a longtime southside high tradition. .

And she might take the part!

I think a lot happens between season one and season two, and remember, V's POV. In season one she still thinks Logan is the bestest, most suavest, adult and sexually experienced, exciting guy--the one she swoons over when he says he thinks she's hot in the limo. She forgives him for the bullying on the thinnest of reasons and starts a relationship with him. In Season two she has seen his self destructive behavior and knows him better. Logan has lost both parents and all his roots and is a mess. Duncan has lost both parents and his roots and is a mess. This happened when the Marses are attacked at the end of season one, it was a game changer. Logan learns dad murdered Lilly, Duncan learns his parents thought he was a murderer. Veronica has almost lost her Dad and feels responsible. I think in season two the three are clinging together, trying to recapture a time that doesn't exist any more. None of them is in romantic love with the other. I think you could argue that they aren't particularly good friends at this point.

I’m fairly sure that megs parents won’t let him see her at the school year end, probably because of the scandal. I’m also fairly sure that he doesn’t learn of the pregnancy until she is in a coma (Lizzy probably tells him). He avoids talking to meg when school starts and doesn’t tell Veronica meg is pregnant. This is exactly the same thing he does when he drops Veronica without explains why. No more or less. He avoids unpleasant conversations. It probably has something to do with Celeste Im not seeing him as shady Anyway Veronica stands up to anything to protect someone else but she isn’t good at standing up for herself yet. She wants to please people. She learns eventually.

Veronica is juggling a lot of things in this episode and doing a good job. Her one place to withdraw, Duncan’s suite, just got tainted. Why is Aaron in the two bit drunk tank? He’s been there for months? Wouldn’t he go someplace where they could protect him better? Like wherever they had Abel? Aaron always struck me as the kind of guy who lived above or at least at his means. I think weevil just burned down Logan’s inheritance, except for the bit Aaron spends on lawyers and the trust fund Logan goes through at Hearst. Why wasn’t weevil prosecuted? The insurance investigators would go hard core. Other rich people would want them put down. Logan wouldn’t keep it a secret.

Could Keith and Veronica be more alike in those two pictures? i think the art show picture was hilarious and massively unconvincing. With the age difference Veronica and Clarence could be a convincing Nora and Nick. If either of them drank more.

I’m hoping a giant three headed dog comes into this somewhere. I don’t know why.

It sounds like something potential humans should all get on their sixteenth birthday. Fear should play in their somewhere.