Veronica Musings

[alexxkay]

kestrell and I have caught up on Veronica Mars. Cool show. Last year, I heard a bunch of people say that it was "like Buffy, only not supernatural". That's somewhat fair, the more so now that they have two recurring characters played by Buffy alumnae (and even a cameo appearance by Joss Whedon). But there's another interesting comparison that I haven't heard anyone else make:

Veronica Mars is Twin Peaks, only with the surrealism turned down a lot.

In a small community, a popular young girl gets brutally killed, leading to a murder investigation. In the course of the investigation, we find out that the girl was popular with more people than we previously knew, sleeping with several unlikely partners. The investigation ends up hauling lots of skeletons out of their closets, revealing scandals at every level of the society, in a tightly-knit web of soap opera.

And VM hasn't turned the surreal element *off*, just way down. Dreams of dead characters are fairly common, and there have been waking visions as well. Not to mention the plain old surrealism that comes from actual life in any high school, much less one as stratified as Neptune's.

Of course, it's not perfect. The first episodes of each season so far tried to jam *way* too much exposition into their running time. The episode dealing with video gamers (a subject of which I have some experience) contained numerous howlers. Coincidence plays a frequent role in the plot. But it's got good dialogue, servicable acting, interesting plots, and a good long-term arc. Unlike Twin Peaks, they actually have some clue as to how to pace a long-term plot. (On second thought, now that we're caught up and will only get new installments once a week or so, I may end up revising that opinion. I certainly thought a lot less of Lost in that mode, and Kes and I have gone back to saving up a big pile of Lost episodes before watching them.)

One of the interesting consequences of downloading these off the net is that I noticed a file floating around "Episode 2.09 - Alternate Ending". After seeing the episode itself, we naturally had to check out this alternate version. In the episode as aired, it ends with Veronica discovering that Meg is pregnant, then leaving the room just before Meg awakens. In the alternate version, just after seeing that Meg is pregnant, Veronica hears someone coming in, so hides in a closet. She hears Meg's mother talk to Meg for a bit, ending with "I'll see you soon." Veronica hears her leave -- and hears a disturbing whine from one of Meg's monitors. She comes out to find Meg dead with a pillow over her face. A nurse rushes in (in response to the monitor I presume), sees Veronica in this tableau, and shouts "What have you done!" Well, *that* would have taken things in a rather different direction!