Is it okay to admit that I’m really, really psyched for the future of Veronica Mars? Am I jinxing anything by saying that? A Netflix series would be ideal, I think we can all agree: TV show format plus unlimited cussing; but I’m down for whatever. I really, really liked the Veronica Mars movie.
Note: All spoilers. Spoilers everywhere.
The wonderful Linda Holmes, with whom I nearly always agree (particularly about gender stuff), wrote a piece complaining about the trope of the Bad Caterpillar and how boring it is to have made the love of the Bad Caterpillar the main stakes in the movie. Piffle, say I. Bad Caterpillar Logan having his edges sanded off (shut up! I can mix my metaphors however I want!) is a side show. The stakes of the movie are whether Veronica is capable of — or interested in — becoming her own Good Butterfly; and I don’t think any of us needed twelve voice-overs with appropriative addiction language to assure us that she isn’t.
There’s a scene in the third season of the show where Logan and Veronica are having a fight, and Logan says, “Even right now, as you’re thinking Crap, he’s got a point, you still think you’re ultimately right.” It’s such a good line! It’s so true! Veronica always still thinks she’s ultimately right. Believing that the end justifies the means is the downside to her unflinching moral code, and some of the means she’s employed over the years were, yeah, pretty damn shady.
If we’re Veronica’s friends, we obviously want her to get an amazing job as a hotshot New York lawyer, marry someone sweet and attentive if she feels like it, maybe seek some therapy to work through her not-inconsiderable trust issues, and never ever set foot in Neptune again. But we’re not her friends, and we don’t truly want what’s best for her. We don’t want her to find peace. We want her to be angry and not to leave well enough alone. We want her to take on social inequality like the damn force of nature she always was.
Which is why Logan’s Good-Butterfly-ness or lack thereof is, in my opinion, not the point of the movie; and also is not that relevant to the Netflix series that I have now convinced myself we’re going to get even though I know we probably won’t. Logan’s the reason Veronica comes to Neptune, but he’s not remotely the reason she stays. She stays because she is angry and she can’t leave things alone, and the corrupt pricks of the Neptune police force framed her friend and almost killed her father. Like she would ever leave after that.
I think it’s pretty impressive that the movie conveyed all of this while staying true to who the character has always been and squeezing in an appearance by Max Greenfield. (Bless him.) I have missed watching Kristen Bell tilt at windmills, and I’m excited at the prospect of setting her loose on the forces of racial injustice in this country. Woohoo! Down with racial injustice! NEXT I WOULD LIKE A NETFLIX SERIES.
And now, an important question that Whiskey Jenny and I have been considering: Who leans against a car better, Timothy Olyphant or Jason Dohring?
