t Running in with hands over my eyes

(Do you have any idea how difficult it is to type like that? My head keeps banging on the keyboard and I can't see on which keys because of the hands so I have to re-write all the time and - well, it's just not pretty. Anyway.)

A couple of Veronica Mars thoughts I wanted to share (IIRC, the USA season didn't start yet, so it's not like I'm stealing second-season time with my first-half-of-first-season-ramblings, right?):

It was very much not a "love at first sight" for me. I have to admit, I didn't like the pilot. The show was broadcasted in Israel in a cables channel that I don't have. A friend liked the show so much, she said that she had to have other people watching it, so that she'd have people to discuss it with. So I got the tape. It's a friend whose taste I trust - we watched "Firefly" together, for example - so when she said how much she fell in love with the show, I was very willing to give it a try.

And then, I didn't like the pilot. I mean, it looked liked this pile-on of horrible things that kept happening to this one person. Something bad happened to her, and then another and another, and not all of them seemed connected to each other, so it made it look as though some evil entity looked from above and targeted that poor girl for "more bad things happen here, please".

And I did like how that powerful girl who was introduced to us at the beginning, with cutting down the kid who was tormented, when the whole school didn't dare to do it, and that with a quip and a smile, is also the fragile broken-hearted victim. How she was both strong and weak, smart and yet full of questions. I liked how the trust issues were laid out, with her father mostly, but with all that happened, as well. And it wasn't that the pilot was just too full, with too many events and new people, because I felt I have a pretty good handle on the characters the way they were introduced in it. I guess it was the "oh, another bad thing happens, to add to the list" feel.

But my friend asked me to watch a couple of more episodes, to see how the show goes on as a show, and it's not like I had lots of great stuff to watch anyway, so I gave it a shot, and I liked what I saw later a lot more.

I liked the character of Veronica - again, the combination of strength and need, smarts and mystery, being able to solve other people's questions while stuck on her own. I liked it that she had such obvious flaws - the disregard to other people's privacy, for once, her easygoing willingness to exploit people in order to achieve her goals, how she is so caught up sometimes int he way she sees things that she refuses to even consider a different look. Oh, and I liked it that she had no problem in being a good student (and, in fact, a character that is presented as such a smart sharp girl would have had to go a long way to convince me she couldn't do well in school).

One thing I did notice - and I hardly ever notice any of these things - is that in more than one case, Veronica is dressed in a combination of pink and green, which in my eyes is not such a common obvious combination of colors. I liked it. The innocence of pink, the girl she used to be - and still is, in the flashbacks - and the unusual addition of the green, which make sit all have a twist and make her look a bit out-of-place, standing out, but not in a "screaming" look-at-me sort of way. Am I making any sense? I liked it, even if I don't.

Another thing that I liked is the friendship between Veronica and Wallace (sp?), the new kid she helps at the pilot. I love it that there's a lovely and lively portrayal of a friendship between a boy and a girl that is not romantic, that doesn't look like it may turn romantic, that it just friendship. Part of what i liked so much about "Firefly" was the relationships between Mal and Zoe or Kaylee, which were deep but had nothing romantic or sexual about them. It's such a rich field to explore, without getting back to the "we're not just best-friends but meant to be together forever" territory.

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In a way, if anything, the opposite may seem a bit strange: there are very few girls that are friends with Veronica. I'm so horrible with names - that computer-genius girl, the blond 'good girl' (who is portrayed by an Israeli actress!) - they both seemed like they could be her friends if only she let them, but she doesn't let herself open up so easily to friends, in general, and maybe to girl friends in particular. Because of that special thing she had with Lily? Because of how she died? Because she doesn't want to get into the deeper emotional conversation that usually characterizes relationships between girls (in a generalized way, of course)? I don't know.

Oh, and I absolutely love the character of Veronica's father. He manages to be wonderful without being perfect, the underdog that is still the smartest person around - even smarter than his daughter, and again, how often do you see that on tv? As far as my limited experience with tv tells me, more often than not it ends with the kids teaching the grownups a lesson or outsmarting them or being right all along and why didn't anyone listen to them earlier. Here, Veronica may be strong and resourceful and able, but her father - the man the whole town seems to look down onto - is, still, the mature of the two, in the best sense of the word. He can catch her if/when she falls, and she knows that, and leans on it, even while she's not sharing everything with him. I really like the character, and I really like the relationship between the two. Again, I like it that it's not perfect.

And if I was talking about these things that seemed to truthful, one things that bugs a bit is the portrayal of the high school children. Not the actors (who are probably at least a bit older than their characters, and I guess I'm already used to that from other shows), but the behavior of the kids, which is not so much highschool-like, in my eyes. I mean, even with the special circumstances in which they put the school, the town with all the millionaires and the like, many of the characters still seem - to my eyes - like they're grown-ups who go to school.

And I'm not even just talking about the sexual experience which some of the characters seem to present at tender ages of 16 and 17 (Lily was around 16 when she was murdered, not much more than that, right?), the nearly every-day way they treat being drunk (or even very drunk), drugged or dealing drugs. I know that I myself may appear in the dictionary near the definition of 'vanilla', and I really have no idea about 'kids today' in general or in any of the demographic the show tries to portray in particular, so it may totally be a 'me' thing.

However, the way almost each and every one of the teenager characters seem to have the self-confidence and self-reliance of a grown-up doesn't ring true for me, at least with the teenagers that I know/used to know. I'm not talking about the show-off of self-confidence, which almost everybody does, no matter at what age, and learns to sometimes fake. I'm talking about kids who behave as if the know, for complete sure, that things will happen as scripted, in a way, as they expect them to happen. Is that a side-effect of being portrayed as so-very-rich? Maybe, and that's definitely the way that I try to explain it to myself, but it seems like many of these kids characters have nothing to grow up to, in several aspects (definitely not all, though! Most of them are horribly childish, but they strike me as characters who will remain childish, no matter what their biological age is).

I can believe the character of Veronica, for example, when she shows such a rough exterior, has no problem talking to anybody, speaking her opinion and then some, because we are shown her vulnerable sides, as well, because it's a combination of a show and her inner strength and why she has to rely on both. It's the same with - grr, names again - that kid who at first was portrayed as the most annoying one at school and is getting more and more layers of depth as we go along. It seems like he really is this fragile and tender inside, and such an annoying show-off on the outside, again both because this is who he is and because this is the way he can prevent anyone from getting to the painful sides of his soul.

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But most of the characters don't have that. And, yes, of course, it's a result of having them on for guest-roles only, but still. Most of them behave like sophisticated seen-so-much people, with so much less of the inner world of kids (that made "Buffy" for example, with all its monsters and demons, so very realistic), and so much more of grown-ups. They have the same setting of the school to which they all go every day, so we can have so many different people from so many different backgrounds together to explore and play with, with clever twisty fun plots, but I don't get the feel of kids from most of them. Sigh. Again I'm not sure that something that was so clear in my head managed to get at all out to screen. Maybe there is something about this typing without my-hands-over-my-eyes thing.

And I can't wrap my brain around the friendship between Veronica and Lily. Veronica keep seeming like the nice girl, like the one who tries to do the right things - in her eyes, which may not always be the right thing in many other's, but still - and Lily seems to be, in the flashbacks, like the girl who cares about nothing and nobody but her own fun. She's not nice, she's bossy, she decides for everybody what they're going to do and how. She's mean. To people. In front of, for example, Veronica. Maybe it's my extreme-vanilla-ness talking, again, but I can't understand what's the appeal in being friends with such a person, as exciting and interesting as she may seem to appear.

Oh, and one more thing. I have no idea regarding episodes names, but it was quite near the middle - the episode in which Veronica bugged the counselor's office and listened to the heartfelt confessions of her classmates? It seemed to me like a big red line that was crossed, even in terms of the character who usually doesn't hesitate before crossing any lines. I'm not sure what made me jump so high in that, and then not even blink when a bit later Veronica sneaked under false pretense to her ex-boyfriend's doctor's office, to steal his medical records (even though, well, still not morally clean).

Maybe it was the difference between spying on facts, hard facts that are there already and out, and between eavesdropping to somebody's emotional private life. The first seems like something a private eye would do, the second - just like being a lousy person. And the character, with all her talk about he she tries to be a good loyal friend, didn't even seem to realize at any sort of point that there was something wrong with what she was doing. So far, that was the one part that I didn't like about the way she was flawed - it seemed like she was acting out of character, in a way, the character i already liked.

I'm afraid this post sounds negative, but it's not! On the whole, I like the show. I like the big mystery, I like that there are several people who seem right now as possible suspects, I like how things are being revealed slowly. I like the most of the more-regular characters, most of all, so I'm looking forward to seeing the second half and how things are going to be resolved.

[Edit: goodness, typing with my hands over my eyes so that I wouldn't see any spoilers did nothing for my ability to by concise. Oy.]

And I can't wrap my brain around the friendship between Veronica and Lily. Veronica keep seeming like the nice girl, like the one who tries to do the right things - in her eyes, which may not always be the right thing in many other's, but still - and Lily seems to be, in the flashbacks, like the girl who cares about nothing and nobody but her own fun. She's not nice, she's bossy, she decides for everybody what they're going to do and how. She's mean. To people. In front of, for example, Veronica.

Nilly, the same thing struck me, too. Lily seemed like -- well, you mentioned how the students seem more adult than typical high-school students, but I think that actually the portrayal was pretty common, particularly in a very affluent town, which is where the show is set -- anyway, Lily seemed like a typical high-school student, in a Cordelia kind of way, but in the flashbacks, Veronica came across as just this sweet, compliant good girl who would never cause trouble or do anything bad.

And that made me wonder why *Lily* would be friends with *Veronica.* I would have expected a character like Lily to have friends more like Cordelia's group of friends.

And that made me wonder why *Lily* would be friends with *Veronica.*

I always thought it was because Lily wasn't a conformist. She did what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it, and with who she wanted to do it. She was honest, and spoke her mind. And one thing that flashback Veronica seemed to be was honest, which probably couldn't be said for most of the 09ers that might want to hang out with Lily, whether for money or status.

A less optimistic reason might be that Lily knew her mother hated Veronica, and thus wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.

Lily seemed like a typical high-school student, in a Cordelia kind of way, but in the flashbacks, Veronica came across as just this sweet, compliant good girl who would never cause trouble or do anything bad

Wouldn't a character as strong and going-my-way (sorry, can't phrase today) as Lily like a compliant friend, who would follow her in her adventures and not tell on her to the adults?

Also, on top of what Jars said, Veronica seems to have it both ways: the good girl who has enough strength to her to pull off hiding stuff from the grownups as well as not going all the way with her less-good friend. Having it both ways, perhaps, for the both of them?

So maybe I can get the 'technical' reasons for them getting along, I guess. Huh. It's just, I can't see any friendship between them, in any of the flashback scenes. With any other interaction with the people who were her circle in the past, I think I can see the depth of the relationship, but not in the flashbacks with Lily. Not the kind of deep connection that would generate such a fierce loyalty and such a determination to look for the truth. Maybe it's me.

Maybe it's because it's Veronica's way of clinging to her past, to the innocent girl she was before all that mess, when she had the wonderful boyfriend and the great social status and both her parents and much less to worry about and fight against than after the murder? So it's like Veronica's way of finding something to hold onto, to figure out, in a way in order to try to solve and figure out all those changes and problems? Not something inherent about their connection itself, but about what it represents to her now, her past life, the one she lost forever. And the loss started with Lily's death.

Or, still, it may be just me. [Edit: who also can't spell today, on top of the lack of phrasing-abilities.]

I think you're all totally right (and eee! Nilly into Veronica Mars!!). In Lilly, Veronica had an exciting friend who would push her into fun/unsafe things she probably wouldn't do otherwise. In Veronica, Lilly had a friend who would do what she wanted and let her shine and lead and be fabulous, and who ALSO pissed off her mother. Perfect! And the fierce loyalty? Well, I figure at some point if she'd lived, Lilly probably would've fucked Veronica over, perhaps even without meaning to, and the friendship would've been done for. But she didn't get the chance, and Veronica maybe subconsciously trying to find the murderer as a hearkening back to more innocent/fun/happy times? Yeah, y'all put into words things I agree with but don't manage to say.

I'm so excited there's a VM thread here! Wheee! Of course, I fear I may never manage to keep up...

Her name is, oddly, spelled "Lilly." I... am not sure why I'm certain of that, but I am. And that's all I got today.

meara! With even more exclamation points! I miss posting with you!

Her name is, oddly, spelled "Lilly."

Oy. I'll never be able to spell it correctly, then, I'm afraid. If I tried, I'm pretty sure I'd turn it to my own name, and her being a dead fictional character and all, I wouldn't want to go there. So I apologize in advance.

Nilly!! Oooooh.

Something bad happened to her, and then another and another, and not all of them seemed connected to each other, so it made it look as though some evil entity looked from above and targeted that poor girl for "more bad things happen here, please".

This is a complaint I've heard before. I wasn't too keen on the pilot for the first half because I kept getting jerked around by the exposition, but Lilly's murder piqued my interest, and then "You want to know how I lost my virginity? So would I" sealed the deal.

Veronica is dressed in a combination of pink and green, which in my eyes is not such a common obvious combination of colors.

Yeah, there're actually some really interesting LJ posts about the clothing on the show. Check out Veronica's wardrobe. And here's someone who noticed the same thing you did:

Veronica has always been covered in pink and green. They're her colors. We know this and associate them with her. She is able to retain her femininity with the pink but still embrace a gender neutral shade in green, a soothing color associated with growth, healing and safety. This corresponds well with Veronica's personal growth and rehabilitation from the emotional damages done to her in her past. And Veronica's office (the girl's bathroom)? Greens and blues.

Pretty interesting.

I'm so horrible with names - that computer-genius girl

Mac.

the blond 'good girl' (who is portrayed by an Israeli actress!)

Meg, played by Alona Tal, who is preeeeetty.

And I'm not even just talking about the sexual experience which some of the characters seem to present at tender ages of 16 and 17 (Lily was around 16 when she was murdered, not much more than that, right?), the nearly every-day way they treat being drunk (or even very drunk), drugged or dealing drugs. I know that I myself may appear in the dictionary near the definition of 'vanilla', and I really have no idea about 'kids today' in general or in any of the demographic the show tries to portray in particular, so it may totally be a 'me' thing.

From what I heard, this portrayal is actually pretty realistic. It's not a high school experience I was familiar with, but many others were.

It's the same with - grr, names again - that kid who at first was portrayed as the most annoying one at school and is getting more and more layers of depth as we go along.

Logan.

Oh, and one more thing. I have no idea regarding episodes names, but it was quite near the middle - the episode in which Veronica bugged the counselor's office and listened to the heartfelt confessions of her classmates?

"Clash of the Tritons."

On the whole, I like the show.

Yay! I liked your post. You made a lot of good points, although I don't really understand the self-confidence issue.

Her name is, oddly, spelled "Lilly." I... am not sure why I'm certain of that, but I am.

Because it's right.