Mark Watches ‘Veronica Mars’: S02E18 – I Am God

In the eighteenth episode of the second season of Veronica Mars, Veronica is haunted by visions of the students who died on the bus crash. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Veronica Mars.

Y’all, I LOVE THIS SHOW. I ADORE IT. IT COMPLETES ME.

• “I Am God” is, simply put, a writing feat, and it takes a fairly common genre trope – the dream episode – and integrates into Veronica’s process in a way that makes perfect sense for her character. It struck me during the part with Cervando that none of these characters were actually telling Veronica any “answers” that she didn’t have in her own subconscious. Instead, this was her mind directing her to ask different questions. And the whole thing works on another level because it represents those fevered, frantic dreams one has when you obsessively think about something right before bed. I do this all the time! Just the other night, I had a dream about being in the Borderlands 2 world and as I’m typing this sentence, I realize how absolutely absurd it is of me to even remotely compare the two. Veronica has increasingly stressful and restless dreams about dead students haunting her, and I have dreams about blowing up monsters and having a crush on Roland. Shut up, he’s hot. (Spoiler: Naq irel qrnq, hasbeghangryl.)
• Anyway, ON TOPIC. The details from Meg’s emails, Peter’s postings on the Pirate S.H.I.P., the “Ahoy, Mateys!” radio show, and other sources of information swirl around in Veronica’s brain, and it’s through these dreams that the victims are named, given actual screentime, and MOTIVES EVERYWHERE.
• SERIOUSLY, THERE ARE LIKE TEN POSSIBLE REASONS SOMEONE COULD HAVE BLOWN UP THAT BUS. THIS IS TOO MUCH.
• But I love it in terms of being an audience member because it reminds me of what it was like to try and figure out the end of season one. I have no fucking clue, y’all. It could be so many people! Woody Goodman, Lucky, Liam Fitzpatrick, Dick Casablancas, Sr., one of the people blasted on the radio show, Aaron Echolls, someone else who hates Veronica, someone who wanted Meg dead, AND THE LIST IS JUST DEEPLY UNFAIR TO ME.
• And yet, throughout all of this, the writers never stray from their biting commentary about race, class, and gender, and IT IS ALSO DEEPLY SATISFYING. Satisfying and unfair: All of Veronica Mars.
• “I Am God” cleverly brings back Ms. James as the counselor, who probes Veronica for information on her recent behavior. She’s exhausted. She’s cruel at times. She can’t pay attention. If anyone has anxiety here, it’s here. This case has plagued her for over a half a year, and nothing has made it any more clear for her. If you couple that with the stress she’s feeling due to her college future, it’s not hard to see why this is bothering her in such a physical sense, you know?
• And bless this episode so much for showing us in very plain terms how class affects college enrollment. As someone who faced the prospect of paying for college all by himself, I have a deep personal stake in a story like this. BECAUSE THIS HAPPENED TO ME ALL THE TIME. I had to turn down my acceptance at USC (!!!!!! I WANTED TO GO THERE SO BAD) and UCLA (OH GOD THE TRAGEDY) due solely to cost and nothing else. I could not afford $20,000+ in debt PER YEAR, and I know I’d still be paying those bills off to this day had I accepted. I can’t even tell you how many times I lost scholarships and grants to people who had privilege and access. I can’t even begin to recount all the times my ability to come up with thousands of dollars on a whim limited my college experience. I had to stop living on campus at Cal State Long Beach because of whiny privileged brats who resented how many poor people of color got free dorm stays because they did well at their schools. (Oh, and they’ll tell you that they fought the policy because it was “unfair,” but they weren’t the ones who suddenly had to pay rent or be homeless in the span of a week. I couchsurfed for two years while trying to get a double degree, and it will always make me mad that I failed to do it. I dropped out because I couldn’t afford to go to school and have a place to live.)
• So yes, I am utterly biased against Angie here. I feel no sympathy for her, and I’m so happy that Keith’s investigation exposed her entitlement. Because that’s what is at stake here, isn’t it? Angie and her parents, despite having more than enough money to send Angie to Stanford, feel entitled to that scholarship, not because of hard work or perseverance. They’re used to getting what they want, and so Angie appropriates A VERY REAL MENTAL CONDITION THAT DESERVES THE ATTENTION SHE FALSELY GOT just so that she doesn’t have to try hard to get the scholarship that Veronica deserves.
• Fuck her, and fuck her family. UGH.
• But bless Wallace and Logan, who both work together, pushing through a ton of awkwardness, to try and secure an exemption from Mr. Wu’s exam just so that Veronica has a better chance at winning the Kane Scholarship. Y’all, it was actually quite fun to watch Wallace and Logan hang out so much and not just because we’ve never really seen them together. It was a method for Wallace to build a little bit of empathy for Logan, which wasn’t how things started off. It’s hard to feel bad for someone who gets buffalo burgers and pillow fluffers delivered to their room because HOLD ON A SECOND. Are there really people in rich people hotels who come and fluff pillows and shit??? Like… wow, I really have been poor my whole life.
• Which reminds me of a brief story I need to tell about realizing what sort of standards rich people have in their life. When I moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles in 2010, Mark Reads was still just a hobby that had gotten slightly out of hand. It wasn’t making me any money beyond the contract I signed with Buzzmedia to continue writing Mark Reads Harry Potter after I left the company. I got no ad revenue or perks from the millions upon millions of pageviews I gave that site. So, it was important that I had a job when I moved up here so I could like… pay rent and eat. I got a job working for a company that was building a social networking site for children, and I gotta say… it was a blast working there. I do cherish the 18 months I spent there with one exception: the CEO/owner.
• She is, to date, the richest person I have ever spent time with for more than a few minutes. And the first time I met her, I had been warned by my fellow employees that she was kind of intense, so I had to be on my game if I was going to impress her. I remember walking into my first meeting with her and facing her wrath as she yelled at me about how absurd it was that the hotel she stayed at did not have heated towel racks.
• I swear to y’all, at that point in my life, I didn’t know heated towel racks were a real thing.
• Which I conveyed to her in a bewildered tone when she asked me if I had ever heard of such a travesty. No, ma’am, I’ve never heard of that travesty.
• Man, actually, fuck her, too. I don’t care. She liquidated that company and laid everyone off WITH TWO HOURS’ NOTICE. Literally, we had two hours to get out of the building with our stuff. I never got my last check from her, either, and she owes me 18 months’ worth of vacation pay/hours that she never paid me.
• ANYWAY, WOW, FUN TIMES THAT ARE TOTALLY RELEVANT. What was I talking about? Oh, my beautiful baby Wallace, who I can’t get enough of. Unlike Dick’s reaction to the documentary on Logan’s life, Wallace is kind of horrified to learn that this is what Logan has to see all the time. Granted, I don’t think Wallace sees all of Logan’s behavior towards Veronica (including his inability to speak to her without sarcasm all of the time), but I liked that he grew to understand him a little more.
• So! Let’s talk about some of the aspects of Veronica’s dream. The first person who speaks to Veronica at length is Meg, and oh my god Alona Tal is on the screen. UNFAIR. We’re back to unfair. It’s through this that Veronica explores Meg’s connection to Lucky, who she learned about in Meg’s emails. Lucky is a fairly scuzzy guy, one that Meg’s parents were convinced was THE PERFECT HUSBAND for her because he appeared to represent some strange American Dream-style stereotype. However, I’m not sure there’s much of a motive here just based on what information we got. Lucky might be a gross person who’s inclined to commit crimes, but why would he send that bus off a cliff?
• But then Veronica shares with Ms. James a startling fact: Rhonda left a message on a friend’s phone that clearly features Dick Casablancas in the background.
• WHICH.
• WHAT
• HOW THE FUCK IS THAT POSSIBLE.
• OH. Betina played a voicemail from Dick because Dick is extremely disgusting.
• So… maybe it was Dick? Except the episode demonstrates fairly quickly that Dick doesn’t possess the foresight or creativity to do such a thing, so yeah, that avenue is exhausted pretty much immediately. For a second, I thought it might be because Betina was prepared to ruin Dick socially, but nope.
• Then there’s that creepy ass drawing of the nine tombstones and the words “I AM GOD” on the back of a seat, which introduces a new motivation to this mystery: Maybe someone blew up the bus and sent it careening off a cliff just to play god with their lives.
• Damn it, I’m so unprepared for this.
• I also noticed that Dick said the gift he gave to Betina was what Peter threw away, which supports Peter’s question later: Why the hell would he go to the stadium if he didn’t even like baseball?
• So who was at the stadium that would have inspired him to go? I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, Y’ALL.
• Next comes Rhonda, whose sister Natalie went from being poor to driving a Corvette. SUSPICIOUS. There’s no upward mobility in Neptune! (WHOMP WHOMP.)
• Except nope. Aside from being kind of crude about Rhonda’s death (?????), the source of the money that Rhonda’s family got has nothing to do with the bus crash. It was from an unrelated civil case against Woody Goodman. Which might explain the video Goodman got? Bah, I don’t fucking know, y’all, and I can tell that most of you are squirming with laughter at me.
• Then there’s Peter, who, first of all, should never use the phrase “yellow fever” again. Well, wait, he can’t BECAUSE HE’S DEAD. whomp whomp. Seriously, though, don’t say this shit.
• Anyway, Peter’s crush on Mr. Wu could be a possible motive for the bus crash. Peter might have been prepared to out Mr. Wu, and Mr. Wu retaliated! Except that Mr. Wu isn’t actually gay. And there’s a neat subtext to this story that touches on why racial fetishization can be so damaging. Peter had a thing for Asian men, and so he projected a sexual orientation on Mr. Wu without bothering to understand cultural differences that might be interpreted as gay to a white America.
• Cervando provides a legitimate motivation for Veronica, though. He hustled a Fitzpatrick, and he bullied Cassidy. Except Cassidy’s beef seems far more directed at Dick being the worst than at Cervando. The Fitzpatrick angle, though? It still works. They’re certainly capable of it. But would they crash a whole bus for one $200 pair of jeans?
• AND THEN CERVANDO’S APPEARANCE IN VERONICA’S DREAM IS SO NOT OKAY THAT I CAN’T EVEN DEAL WITH IT. Only the driver died in the explosion, and the way that it was timed, this was intentional. The rest of the passengers? They died when the bus went off the cliff, including Cervando, WHO FUCKING DROWNED.
• STOP MAKING THIS WORSE, SHOW.
• I just… I can’t believe Weevil would do this. Why? What’s the point??? What does he gain?
• That being said, the previous episode just demonstrated that he’s capable of murder, too.
• FUCK.
• I’m fascinated by the apparent red herring in the “I AM GOD” drawing. It’s not a message, but that doesn’t disqualify it as a clue. There are two final reveals here that further complicate the issue: Dick and Beaver had a massive life insurance policy taken out by their father after he married Kendall, so WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN. Did Dick, Sr. or Kendall orchestrate this to collect the money? And if so, who planted the rat in order to get the 09ers off the buss?
• But it’s Marcos’s final dream appearance that will haunt Veronica the most. I think that her guilt had largely moved to the background of her subconscious mind, but Marcos crudely reminds her that it’s still possible she was supposed to be on that bus, that she was always the target and they all died for her. It’s so sad, but Veronica pursued this case regardless of the outcome, and she has to accept that she may have always been the target.
• THIS EPISODE WAS SO INTENSE.
• And I loved it.
• Honorary shout out to Keith discovering Veronica in Clemmons’s closet. One of the finest scenes ever, I swear.

The commission for “I Am God” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

Mark Links Stuff

– If you would like to support this website and keep Mark Does Stuff running, I’ve put up a detailed post explaining how you can!
– Please check out the MarkDoesStuff.com. All Mark Watches videos for past shows/season are now archived there!
– My Master Schedule is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.
– I will be at quite a few conventions and will be hosting events throughout the US, Canada, and Europe in 2014, so check my Tour Dates / Appearances page often to see if I’m coming to your city!