Lost in the Movies

Veronica Mars - "Green-Eyed Monster" (season 2, episode 4)

Welcome to my viewing diary for Veronica Mars. I will cover each TV episode (and eventually the film), several days a week; this will conclude just as the revival (which I will also cover) premieres on Hulu. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on September 28, 2005/written by Rob Thomas; directed by John Kretchmer): The tension in Veronica's life has been released. Well, mostly. When we met her at the outset of season one, her fire burned brightly: resourceful, traumatized, lonely, loyal, and observant, she'd been cast out of the town's elite circles alongside her beloved father. Despite intersecting with many different social spheres, she did not have a firm place in any of them and this outsider status endeared her to us. Throughout that season, her family life consisted of broken ties and terrifying secrets, her professional life was submerged her in the community's dirty business, her school life grappled with social stigma, and her romantic life endured frequent betrayals and disappointments. Now? At the start of her senior year, Veronica's mother is long-gone and not missed (her father has moved on and continues to date Wallace's mother); meanwhile, her dad is her dad and Duncan is, thankfully, very much not her brother. She is working at a restaurant instead of as a private eye (while her father reluctantly banked on the Echolls bust to publicize a true-crime bestseller), she's been accepted back into the company of the upper-class "09" zip code, and after breaking up with the moody-as-ever Logan Echolls (whose star has fallen as much as hers has risen) she is back with kind, quiet Duncan Kane.

But if Veronica's life has returned to normal (and a "normal" with heavy class connotations), Neptune has only plunged further into a kind of cold civil war with occasional hot flashes. The night Aaron Echolls was arrested for Lilly Kane's murder, a knife-wielding Logan was found passed out next to a dead biker. He claims innocence, and Veronica believes him; so does the justice system - but at least half the town does not. Instead, no doubt due in part to the shocking revelations about his celebrity father, Logan becomes the poster boy for unjust privilege in a town already simmering with class (and, as Weevil reminds us, racial) tensions. Veronica sticks with him through this trauma, which earns her the enmity of Neptune's have-nots (except the ever-loyal Wallace), but their relationship doesn't last once Logan, Dick, and Beaver vandalize the community swimming pool (knowing all the rich kids have pools in their backyards) as revenge for Weevil's gang firing a shotgun at the car of Logan and Veronica. Logan confronts Veronica about the break-up (she accuses him of partially enjoying the drama) and an angry Keith storms inside, throws the ex-boyfriend against the wall, and warns him never to come by again. Duncan, who has been showing up at the cafe where Veronica works all summer, is the beneficiary of this break-up which sours Duncan's own ex, the once-sunny Meg Manning (Alona Tal), on her former buddy. Logan, on the other hand, moves on by sleeping with with the Casablancas' boys new stepmom, the scintillating young Kendall (Charisma Carpenter), a former Lakers cheerleader.

On a lighter note, Veronica offers her long-dormant services to Wallace and several other athletes kicked off their teams for failing drug tests (even goody two shoes Meg fell victim). She quickly disposes with a red herring, the bullied Vincent "Butters" Clemmons (Adam Hendershott), who had access to the test results because his dad is the principal, before settling on the real conspirators: a group of wealthy parents whose children stood to benefit if the top stars on each team were dispatched. There is pleasure in revisiting these gumshoe antics, but most of the premiere's energy is focused on these more long-term crises and they come together in the episode's last act. Following a field trip to a baseball stadium, where the town's wealthy mayor (Steve Guttenberg, natch) introduces his daughter Gia Goodman (Krysten Ritter) to her new classmates, Veronica is invited to take a limousine ride with Gia, Duncan, and the Casablancas brothers. She initially accepts, which leads Meg to refuse; a guilty Veronica decides to get back on the school bus that took her there so she can make up with Meg. It doesn't work, and then at a rest stop along the way Veronica runs into another friend-turned-enemy; she and Weevil hurl accusations back and forth (she thinks the biker was killed by one of his own gang while Weevil too was out cold, and he thinks she abandoned all of them because inside she's an 09er too).

They argue so fiercely that Veronica misses her bus and Weevil, softening, offers her a ride on his bike. In fact, this argument appears to have saved Veronica's life. Along a coastal highway, the motorcyle slows to park alongside the limo on cliff's edge. Gia stands shocked, staring down below, and Duncan races to Veronica's side, embracing her. Strewn among the rocks below, floating in the stormy surf, is what's left of the bus. Coming after a year of shocking violence and simmering tension, this accident is just the thing to spark an all-out war amongst the hostile members of the fraying community. All the more so since, as Veronica's ominous narration reminds us, nothing in Neptune happens by accident.

My Response:

In 2018, fourteen years after the pilot episode on UPN, I began publishing my episode-by-episode of Veronica Mars. I had never watched the show before, so this was a first-time journey into its story - there are no spoilers and I offer an in-the-moment take including my speculation about where the series would go. That spring I reviewed the first season and in 2019 I learned that Hulu would be streaming a limited series revival, so I carried on with seasons two and three, followed by the feature film and then the new episodes of season four.

Here is my full episode coverage of Veronica Mars...

I started watching Veronica Mars in 2016, although it took me a while to really get going on the first season viewing diary that I published in 2018. This year turned out to be the perfect opportunity to follow up on the rest of the series because Hulu announced a return as a limited series. Eight episodes will drop all at once on July 26, 2019, and the timing worked out for me to run the diary for seasons two and three and the feature film right up to that date. Aside from a round-up page which will go up tomorrow and an announcement just before season four, every day will see a new post. I'm also threading not just these upcoming entries but my viewing diary from last year on Twitter, along with a countdown to the Hulu premiere.

On July 26, I will review the episodes as quickly as I am able over a "live marathon" weekend. I will be stopping after each entry to write my response, so future viewers won't get spoilers and those who watch it all at once can have at least suspense, waiting for my replies!

Here are a whole lot of images from the original series and film, gathered for my viewing diary but unused until now. See you in Neptune on Tuesday...

includes visual line-up of Lynch/Peaks book covers as a reference

Ten years ago (almost exactly to the day) I documented my history of cinephilia through a series of movie books; today I continue that tradition in podcast form with a rundown of the books that guided my Twin Peaks journey since 2014, in the order I read them. The emphasis tends to be on how they shaped or intersected with the themes or approaches I was exploring, but I'd love to hear your general thoughts on these books (and others) - I'll include them with future listener feedback, and perhaps share some more of my own too. And I've linked my interviews with several of these authors below the covers.

This will be the last random "Twin Peaks Reflections" section before I take a brand new approach to be announced in June (albeit already previewed on Twitter). I'm quite excited to begin presenting that.

For $5/month patrons, I continue my Lost in Twin Peaks podcast with the episode on Laura's funeral, again over two hours and with room for plenty of additional context on other shows and news stories of the period as well as in-depth exploration of the ongoing investigation and the episode's events...

Lost in Twin Peaks #4 - S1E4 (Rest in Pain/"Episode 3")

And for the main podcast, in addition to the Twin Peaks books, I cover other podcast recommendations (including a few Peaks specials amongst the usual political suspects) and cross the halfway point on my archival 100 Favorites series, including at least one movie you may have seen me discuss before!

Lost in the Movies Episode 55: Twin Peaks books (+ podcast recommendations, favorite films archive #56 - 46: The Last of the Mohicans, Historias Extraordinarias, 2001: A Space Odyssey, L'Eclisse, Mean Streets, Pinocchio, A Walk Through H, Murder My Sweet, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, The Big Lebowski)

Here's something to look at while you listen...

Book covers (visual reference)

"We live inside a dream..." and with this episode the dream continues. I conducted a long interview with Twin Peaks scholar John Thorne last December but almost immediately after he dove into an extensive new analysis and hoped we could discuss this too. So a few weeks ago we talked again, this time focused mostly on his thesis that the third season of Twin Peaks is a "mediated reality" in which we view Cooper's vision of "real" events (though what's "real" is itself a sticky question). I've shared selections from this conversation publicly on YouTube, divided into the following topics: The Return as dream/mediated reality; the desire or necessity for a dream/mediated reality interpretation; the beginning and end of The Return and the end of Fire Walk With Me; and Cooper's interpretation as a "cover story."

Here are my Patreon podcasts this month, starting with the $5/month Twin Peaks rewatch in which I go episode by episode through the entire series. David Lynch returns to the show he kicked off and incorporates his alternate ending to the pilot, which I incorporate at length. There are also asides into the context of the time, including surrounding shows like an interview with Donald Trump's mistress and the quintessentially late eighties/early nights cop show Max Monroe (which must be seen to be believed). This is one of my longest episodes for season one, as the "uncanny" truly begins to blossom in the small Northwestern town.

Lost in Twin Peaks #3 - S1E3 (Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer/"Episode 2")

Besides an additional hour of conversation with John Thorne (the whole section runs for over eighty minutes), I continue my "Favorites" reading series with classics from Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Coppola among others; updates, podcast recommendations, and listener feedback will be saved for next month as this episode was already quite long without them.

Lost in the Movies Episode 54: Cooper's dream or mediated reality? (bonus conversation w/ John Thorne + favorite films archive #67 - 57: The Apu Trilogy, Rear Window, Au Hasard Balthazar, The Best Years of Our Lives, 42nd Street, Barry Lyndon, Apocalypse Now, Civilisation, Dekalog, Annie Hall, Casablanca)

Podcast Line-ups for...

CURRENT STATUS: Completed the first video.

WORKING ON: From now on, progress will be recorded in a new post "The path THROUGH Journey Through Twin Peaks" which will be published on April 15. UPDATE April 2021: The schedule was modified and continued here, and will soon be expanded again to go through 2022.

You can bookmark this post to check back periodically. I will update each step to note when it is completed, bringing me that much closer to publishing new Twin Peaks videos. (final update on April 9, 2020)

What I will finish behind the scenes before Journey is published:

1) create all Patreon podcasts ahead of time through October 2019

(one main and one rewatch podcast each month)
completed May 15, 2019

2) create a viewing diary for Veronica Mars

(finish watching/reviewing seasons two and three and the feature film before the Hulu revival begins this summer)
completed June 5, 2019

3) research the work of Mark Frost

(finish watching Hill Street Blues season five and Buddy Faro, maybe re-read/re-watch books/films/episodes, etc)

(all except books are finished; reading about an hour each day but this no longer a necessary precedent)

4) create one 3 1/2 Minute Review video and two Side by Side videos

completed March 13, 2020

5) CREATE JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS

(I discussed the structure here)
completed April 8, 2020

6) Re-design the site

completed September 13, 2019 (advanced before #4)

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What I will present on the site before Journey is published:

1) Publish, as frequently as necessary, the Veronica Mars viewing diary for the old episodes leading up to the Hulu premiere

(the Hulu viewing diary will go up alongside video essays if necessary)
completed August 2, 2019

2) Publish, once a week, seven non-Twin Peaks video essays leading up to the first Journey video

completed March 31, 2020

•

You can follow my progress even more closely in this Twitter thread (scroll up for first steps, scroll down for updates) where I added a few more steps: an interview with Martha Nochimson for the summer (completed August 2019) and creating/publishing a series of backlogged posts (completed November 2019, publication completed March 2020) and podcasts (completed January 2020, publication completed March 2020) as a stopgap in the fall and winter. In March 2020, I also created a new Twitter profile to focus exclusively on the video series, and I will be creating a "path through Journey Through Twin Peaks" thread and post in mid-April to discuss the steps to completing this new Journey once it has publicly begun.

The details:

I joined the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast (along with Mya McBriar, of Twin Peaks Fanatic) for our first discussion in a year, and it was a doozy - not just a normal conversation, but a "March Madness"-style competition to determine our collective favorite Lynch films by setting two against each other in brackets and advancing until only one remained. You won't believe what happens next...

There are plans to use this format again for episodes, and I can't wait. It's of course ridiculous to set Lynch's film against each other this way, but by embracing that ridiculousness we had a blast and even managed to point out some interesting strengths, flaws, and surprises about the various works. How would you have voted in each step?

BECOME A PATRON

March 2019 Patreon Podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #2 - Season 1 Episode 2 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #53 - John Thorne conversation, pt. 3 (+ Roma, problematic art/artists, Venezuela, Late Spring, The River, La Roue, Pandora's Box, Gone With the Wind, Ivan the Terrible Part II, Scarface, Jaws, The Seventh Seal, God's Country, Satantango, podcast recommendations, Listener Feedback bonus - Catholicism vs. Protestantism in First Reformed, Democratic Socialists of America, Spirituality & Psychology in Twin Peaks & much, much more)

As winter turns to spring, I thought my podcasts were going to become more streamlined, but even as I pare my approach down to its essentials there's way too much material to keep the titles short, let alone the episodes. For starters, my "Lost in Twin Peaks" rewatch podcast continues for second-tier patrons with an extensive overview of the first regular episode in season one. This incorporates everything from my analysis of the episode's structure to what went down on Cheers the night that Twin Peaks made its Thursday debut.

Lost in Twin Peaks #2 - S1E2 (Traces to Nowhere/"Episode 1")

On the main episode, John Thorne and I wrap up our extended Twin Peaks conversation...for now. We zoom in on questions about Judy, the Experiment, and Diane (among others) and I won't be surprised if we do this again, soon, because just in the time since recording this John has already revised some of his thoughts on Cooper and written about them for The Blue Rose. The archive "favorites" series continues with a mix of very obscure, hard-to-find titles and a couple of the biggest blockbusters of all time, and after offering some brief reflections on the recent Academy Awards ceremony and the acclaimed nominee (but not winner) Roma I end the episode with an extended podcast recommendations session. This yields long deep dives into topics like problematic art and artists, the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign.

Lost in the Movies Episode 53: John Thorne's Twin Peaks conversation, pt. 3
(+ Roma, Oscars, True Detective season 1, podcast recommendations, problematic art/artists, Venezuelan crisis, favorite films archive #78 - 68: Late Spring, The River, La Roue, Pandora's Box, Gone With the Wind, Ivan the Terrible Part II, Scarface, Jaws, The Seventh Seal, God's Country, Satantango & more)

I've been thinking for a while that it might become necessary to present listener feedback as an independent, bonus entry alongside the main podcast and it surely was this month. Often the feedback circulates around Twin Peaks, but in February and March there were a number of topics provoking fascinating discussions. Some are tangentially Peaks-related (whether trauma or mysticism, or both, provides a better lens for the show's drama, branching off into conversations about Carl Jung and the David Cronenberg film A Dangerous Method, about early psychoanalysis). Others aren't at all (including a dive into the theology and ethos of First Reformed - ok, maybe that gets a little Peaks-y - and a fascinating report from a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of the fastest-growing political organizations in the U.S., about the community work they are doing in San Francisco). You'll have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of this post for the full array of topics, because I couldn't even to begin to fit them all into the title.

Lost in the Movies Episode 53 (listener feedback bonus)
First Reformed & Catholicism vs. Protestantism, Democratic Socialists of America, Spirituality vs. Psychology, Carl Jung, A Dangerous Method, Trauma in Twin Peaks, Netflix movies, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, DC vs. Marvel, True Detective season 3, critique of my Satyajit Ray video, how I cover Twin Peaks & more

Podcast Line-Ups for...

The story is simple, straightforward, and the style carries the conviction of a raw immediacy difficult to fake. This is not to say that elaborate machinations and cagey deceptions were not involved in the events of April 11-14, 2002, in which the popular left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez was deposed (an occurrence all too familiar in the history of Latin America) and then restored (an occurrence not nearly familiar enough). Nor is this to ignore the sophistication of this documentary's analysis, its exacting deconstruction of the privately-owned media's duplicity as well as its own - consequently somewhat ambivalent - skill in shaping a narrative from a vast array of choices. The Irish filmmakers shot at a 200:1 ratio, meaning for every one minute of footage they used, three hours and nineteen minutes were discarded; struggling to tighten their focus, they hired a particularly crucial collaborator, editor Ángel Hernández Zoido, who has argued, "There are always hundreds of stories sleeping inside the material and you have to find them and wake them up." No, what I mean by observing - and praising - the story and style of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is that the filmmakers never lose sight of the essential truths at the film's core.

What are these essential truths? First, that the political tension in Venezuela hinges on class war, with Chávez's support rooted in the more impoverished sectors while the opposition's support is rooted in the more wealthy. Second, that the private media reflects its often oligarchical ownership by pushing narratives that relentlessly attack Chávez, through manipulation if necessary. Indeed, one of the film's most significant and highly cinematic observations is that an image used to justify the coup relies on a dishonest camera angle that denies wider context: Chávez supporters supposedly firing at a crowd of opponents when in fact their defensive fire was directed at hidden snipers in an area mostly devoid of protesters. Third, that the leaders of the opposition - despite their self-righteous claims to be resisting an authoritarian outlaw - gladly operate outside of the law when the opportunity arises; as soon as they have even a flimsy grasp on power they do not turn to democratic means to claim their legitimacy. Notably, although the details of the documentary can be, and frequently have been, vehemently if unconvincingly argued with lawyerly devotion, the film's critics tend to concede or avoid these broader, fundamental truths. They are essential not only because they make the most important facts clear but because they orient us toward the wider context and pattern.

Veronica Mars - "Green-Eyed Monster" (season 2, episode 4)

Veronica Mars - "Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang" (season 2, episode 3)

Veronica Mars - "Driver Ed" (season 2, episode 2)

Veronica Mars - "Normal Is the Watchword" (season 2, episode 1)

The Veronica Mars viewing diary

Veronica Mars every day, leading up to the Hulu premiere on July 26

The path to Journey Through Twin Peaks

Lynch Madness: choosing our favorite Lynch film on Twin Peaks Unwrapped (w/ Mya McBriar)

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

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