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"OK, do you think this thing will ever get more normal?" Veronica, M.A.D.
So here's the thing. You begin at the point of dealing with the aftermath of the great revelation your entire show built up to, and that's a problem. It's a problem because the two characters central to that revelation aren't part of the show any more, and you can't make a show about the holes in your character net. Or, perhaps you can, but we'll come back to that one. The point is, we need to be distracted. All of Neptune needs to be distracted, because it should be buzzing with the Lilly Kane murder trial.
Enter Logan: never less than a distraction, now with added murder trial of his own for good measure. Veronica can live with that better than she knows. After all, it's not so very long ago she threw Murder Accusation No. 1 hard and fast in his direction. For Veronica, picking up the pieces of Accusation No. 2 is almost a reprieve.
Season one Veronica and Logan come together in a dark place. The connection they find is one that rises out of that darkness like a Jacob's ladder; it's a relationship, ultimately, about hope. Theirs is, and always has been, a screwed up kind of a relationship: screwed up because the motivations are wrong. The only redemption was in the reality of that relationship - that you could come into a relationship wrong, but if you got the relationship right it would burn like a beacon: light, even out of grief and shadow; hope, even out of desperation.
I think it's why it's such a fascinating dynamic, because there's always a sense of them needing to get it right - this kind of fundamental need that goes beyond anything they might feel for each other. There's a fragility to it that always makes me catch my breath. It's like they're dimly aware of having stumbled on something rare and infinitely precious, and don't quite know what to do with it.
They remind me of Alice in Wonderland, where she sees the garden but can't work out how to get there.
No question, events at the start of season two steam-roller the hope out of this relationship. From there it can only go wrong - how can it not? While the hope between them is real they fumble towards some bright, uncharted horizon; without it they are just two people screwing up in parallel.
Logan is one of those people who thinks that what matters is not how he treats people in general but how he treats particular people. He can love Veronica with all his heart and think that's all that matters. Deep down, at this point, Veronica is the only real person to him anyway: if he's right with her he has everything that counts covered.
And Veronica? Veronica who last season would fight alone rather than not fight - that Veronica? Is determined to have her cake and make everyone sit down and eat it with her. (Mmm cake. Clearly, Veronica-as-Alice has all kinds of potential. With Lilly as the white rabbit. Hee!) Oh, Veronica tells us she's had to choose sides, but the truth is, she hasn't. What Veronica tells us is, and what is, are two very different things this episode.
Veronica and Duncan is a nice, sledgehammery example of that. In the words of Kristen Bell, "When you set up Romeo and Juliet - your star-crossed lovers - you need to have an ending." It's true that Veronica and Duncan very much had to be together at some point this season, because they need to put their relationship to rest. But something far more sinister than that is going on here. This is about propping up a delusion - one that, on some kind of level, I think we're being asked to buy into. Because look! It's shiny. Even Stalker!Duncan!Bot has a pop video sheen. And we're reassured over and over again that honestly, everything's fine. "Then what about that is so wrong?" asks Veronica of Duncan, way back somewhere in season one. "You didn't do anything wrong," Duncan tells Veronica when she's concerned for Meg. And oddest of all is a line from the Veronica voiceover: "I was with Logan and I was absolutely faithful." Veronica stating for the record that her getting together with Duncan was all above board is a case, I think, of trying too hard to make a point. This is the right relationship, we keep being told, but whether it's her or us she's trying to persuade, I'm not entirely sure.
Here's another strange line:
"Logan and Duncan don't speak any more. I guess that's what happens when your best friend starts dating your ex." Or, you know, when your dad murders your best friend's sister. And yes, I know it's all part of a fun game called, Guess who my boyfriend is, but it's also a good example of how blinkered Veronica is this episode. It's not only a hole where Lilly should be - "This is how it's going to be from now on. Right?" - but one example of many in the episode where we're made to draw a comparison between Logan and Duncan. And I'm not convinced the reality of that comparison is the way we're being told to draw it.
Back in season one when Veronica first introduces us to Logan, he's the school's "obligatory psychotic jackass," and given what we see of him the first few episodes we're quite happy to go along with that. The story that unfolds is one that's played up as your classic boy meets girl, boy and girl misunderstand each other, unexpected circumstances bring and boy and girl together scenario. But actually, I think the truth is we were thrown off track at the start. Because what we discover as the series progresses is not just that there is more to Logan than meets the eye, but that - to an extent - Veronica knew that.
Aaron Echolls' public take on his private life is hardly reliable, but his description of Logan as a "good kid until Lilly's death" isn't completely at odds with other pieces of the Logan jigsaw that fall into place over the course of the season. It's fair to say Logan's never exactly been an angel, nor has his quota of redeeming qualities at any point been overwhelming, but it's also fair to say that Veronica's take on Logan at the start of the show is one that suppresses a lot of the Logan she once knew and liked.
For somebody as obsessed as she is with exposing the truth, Veronica is very good at putting her own spin on reality.
The Veronica/Logan break-up scene is one example. Veronica tells Logan she hoped "You'd be you again" and accuses him of "refusing to let everything get back to normal." Which begs the question, what state of reality is Veronica drawing her "normal" line under? And which Logan? Lilly's boyfriend Logan? Psychotic jackass Logan? Or the screwed up boy who clung to her while his world fell apart because she was the only thing he had that let him aspire to any kind of normality?
Once upon a time there was a little scene with Logan and Veronica and a crowbar and she stood there and if she flinched she did if looking him full in the face. Why, now, should Keith jump in as if her life were in danger? And why the need for Veronica to tell us Logan "didn't take the break-up very well"? Would we see it that way if we hadn't been told to?
One of the things about the Veronica/Logan relationship is that they fall into it almost at the same time. It means that the challenge of that relationship is not in getting it off the ground, but in holding onto it. And for Logan it's like a gauntlet thrown down in front of him. I've talked before about the relationships Logan hasn't been able to hold onto: Lilly, his mum, his sister - even his dad - and where his relationship with Veronica is concerned, there's very much this sense of, "Come on world, throw everything you've got at me. I'm not going to let go this time." He's determined to hold on, come what may; we see that over and over. So when Veronica lets go - or lets him go - it marks an end of more than that relationship. But perhaps not an end of the relationship itself.
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I guess the most telling comparison between Veronica/Logan and Veronica/Duncan in this episode is in the hand interaction. The first has a sense of reaching out, of discovery: the second is like something played out for the sake of it.
And because it turns out I can't resist it, after all, here's another take on it, of sorts:
Soon her eyes fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words "EAT ME" were beautifully marked in currants. "Well, I'll eat it," said Alice, "and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!"
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, "Which way? Which way?" Holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size; to be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
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