WEBVTT 00:00:00.634 --> 00:00:05.372 A long time ago, we used to be friends but I- 00:00:05.372 --> 00:00:09.510 I love Veronica Mars! I think it's an absolutely brilliant show. It only had a short run of 00:00:09.510 --> 00:00:13.571 three seasons and only two of which were actually watchable. 00:00:13.571 --> 00:00:17.818 The third season has sort of been written off as a fluke, there was a lot of problems 00:00:17.818 --> 00:00:20.187 with it but I'll save that for another video. 00:00:20.187 --> 00:00:25.726 That said, you should go out immediately and BitTorrent, pirate, rent, buy whatever you 00:00:25.726 --> 00:00:28.629 have to do to watch Veronica Mars because it will totally be worth it. 00:00:28.629 --> 00:00:34.168 It's a show about a teenage detective. She actually learned the tricks of the trade from 00:00:36.570 --> 00:00:38.972 her father who's a private detective and she often solves mysteries at school. 00:00:38.972 --> 00:00:42.743 She even solves crimes that the local sheriff's department is unable to solve. 00:00:42.743 --> 00:00:46.947 The show is actually really funny, it's got great wit, great humour and I would actually 00:00:46.947 --> 00:00:52.653 compare it to Joss Whedon's writing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and maybe even say 00:00:52.653 --> 00:00:56.957 it's a little bit better? Joss Whedon did a cameo during season two because 00:00:56.957 --> 00:00:58.458 he thought the show was so good. 00:00:58.458 --> 00:01:01.185 And so did Courtney from the Dandy Warhols and Kevin Smith. 00:01:01.185 --> 00:01:04.665 One of the things that immediately drew me into the show is how technologically savvy 00:01:04.665 --> 00:01:08.502 Veronica Mars is. It's a pretty rare representation to have young women shown 00:01:08.502 --> 00:01:11.471 as super knowledgeable about all sorts of different technologies. 00:01:11.471 --> 00:01:15.943 So you see her often using computers and having a really good understanding of how 00:01:15.943 --> 00:01:21.081 they work. She is also an excellent photographer, printers, scanners all that sort 00:01:21.081 --> 00:01:26.753 of stuff. She also has a lot of different spy gadgets, so she can take apart an ipod 00:01:26.753 --> 00:01:30.324 and put in a hidden camera that will take a photo every five seconds for example. 00:01:30.324 --> 00:01:34.630 Or track people through GPS or put recording devices in cars. 00:01:34.630 --> 00:01:37.664 There's also another teenage woman at Veronica's school named Mac who's 00:01:37.664 --> 00:01:42.236 also super tech savvy. Veronica met up with her because she needed some help with 00:01:42.236 --> 00:01:46.206 the computer systems at school and Mac knew everything about them. 00:01:46.206 --> 00:01:51.111 So throughout the television series she is constantly going to Mac asking her for help 00:01:51.111 --> 00:01:55.782 in how to break into wifi networks and how to create websites and how to hack into 00:01:55.782 --> 00:01:59.653 different things and they work together as a pair on various projects. 00:01:59.653 --> 00:02:04.258 Very little violence is used on the show to solve problems but it's not a world 00:02:04.258 --> 00:02:06.494 without violence. So it kind of comes in two forms on the show. 00:02:06.494 --> 00:02:11.999 The first is really awkward and clumsy. So you'll have two teenage boys beating each 00:02:11.999 --> 00:02:15.335 other up and throwing punches and kind of missing but it's not like they are trained 00:02:15.335 --> 00:02:17.704 in martial arts, it's just really awkward. 00:02:17.704 --> 00:02:23.343 The second way shows how horrific and egregious violence actually is. 00:02:23.343 --> 00:02:25.979 It makes your stomach kind of turn as you're watching the show. 00:02:25.979 --> 00:02:31.051 I think that these characteristics and representations of violence on Veronica Mars 00:02:31.051 --> 00:02:37.524 really helps to show us how violence is used on other shows to solve problems how easy it is to write 00:02:37.524 --> 00:02:44.164 violence as a solution as opposed to coming up with really creative ways to deal with 00:02:44.164 --> 00:02:45.835 different problems. 00:02:45.835 --> 00:02:50.137 "Well she's giving a statement at the Sheriff's department tomorrow. I'll drop by see 00:02:50.137 --> 00:02:52.105 if she's up for a chat." "Well I'll go with you." 00:02:52.105 --> 00:02:57.464 "Actually, despite popular opinion, you really can't beat the truth out someone." 00:02:57.464 --> 00:03:01.559 Instead of using violence Veronica gets really creative and clever with the way that she 00:03:01.559 --> 00:03:05.752 solves her cases. At the resolution of each show the viewer is left with this sense of 00:03:05.752 --> 00:03:13.026 poetic justice. An example of this poetic justice is, when Veronica gets back at her 00:03:13.026 --> 00:03:17.698 boyfriend, Troy who she finds out later on was sort of scamming her the whole time. 00:03:17.698 --> 00:03:20.868 "Troy what's with this girl calling me? You gave her my number?" 00:03:20.868 --> 00:03:28.175 "Whoa, whoa what girl?" "Some girl named Veronica" "You didn't tell her you'd be seeing 00:03:28.175 --> 00:03:31.680 me did you?" "She caught me off guard, what was I supposed--" 00:03:38.834 --> 00:03:42.456 "Sorry we didn't get a chance to say good bye, just wanted to wish you good luck 00:03:42.456 --> 00:03:45.492 at your new school and leave you something to remember me by. 00:03:45.492 --> 00:03:49.363 It took me awhile to figure out where you stashed the steroids but there was only one 00:03:49.363 --> 00:03:53.233 place you were alone right? In case you were wondering the former contents of the 00:03:53.233 --> 00:03:56.537 package are somewhere between my toilet and the pacific ocean. 00:03:56.537 --> 00:03:59.439 Say hi to Shauna for me, she sounds like a keeper." "Dammit" 00:03:59.439 --> 00:04:03.911 The show is of course not without it's faults. It has some problematic portrayals of 00:04:03.911 --> 00:04:08.448 racism and classism but it does actually acknowledge those things and talks 00:04:08.448 --> 00:04:13.220 about them throughout the show. This is in comparison to most mainstream television 00:04:13.220 --> 00:04:16.757 shows that don't really acknowledge that racism or classism exists. 00:04:16.757 --> 00:04:22.763 I think that even though it talks about it in a sort of problematic way, 00:04:22.763 --> 00:04:28.902 just having that on our television screens I think is a step towards making our TV 00:04:28.902 --> 00:04:32.606 programs more anti-racism, more anti-classist. 00:04:32.606 --> 00:04:37.244 When I first started watching the show we were introduced to the local Latino 00:04:37.244 --> 00:04:41.014 biker gang and I was really fearful that the writers were going to feed into the very 00:04:41.014 --> 00:04:48.622 racist stereotypes, which they kind of did, but the writers also took the main leader of 00:04:48.622 --> 00:04:53.126 the gang and sort of humanized him. Really showed a bit of his backstory, and made the 00:04:53.126 --> 00:04:56.864 audience sympathetic and created a very complex character. 00:04:56.864 --> 00:05:03.203 There are also other moments in the show where the writers gave us very subtle and 00:05:03.203 --> 00:05:08.445 interesting and also humourous ways of exposing racism that you don't 00:05:08.445 --> 00:05:12.328 often think about. And you almost never see that on TV. 00:05:12.328 --> 00:05:15.516 "We're going to have to start searching the lockers. Immediately." 00:05:15.516 --> 00:05:21.421 "You wanna save yourself some time start with hers. We all saw her lurking around." 00:05:21.421 --> 00:05:24.658 "Lurking? Uh, you mean standing while black?" 00:05:24.658 --> 00:05:28.562 Sexual violence is a reoccuring theme throughout all three season of the show. 00:05:28.562 --> 00:05:34.768 I think that for the most part the writers did a really, really terrible job of dealing with 00:05:34.768 --> 00:05:40.007 rape and abuse and because of that I'm going to dedicate a whole other videoblog to 00:05:40.007 --> 00:05:46.246 it because I think that really needs to be exposed just how important it is to deal with 00:05:46.246 --> 00:05:48.982 sexual violence in a healthy manner on television. 00:05:48.982 --> 00:05:52.486 Overall I really, really like the show I would highly recommend season one and two. 00:05:52.486 --> 00:05:58.692 I think that there's a lot of really great things about it as far as the complexity 00:05:58.692 --> 00:06:02.196 of characters, it's entertaining and witty, it's really fun to watch. 00:06:02.196 --> 00:06:06.533 Veronica's relationship with her father is totally worth watching because they are 00:06:06.533 --> 00:06:11.605 really funny but it's also this mutual love and respect they have for one another 00:06:11.605 --> 00:06:16.743 and there's a lot of really progressive values that the show offers and I think that 00:06:16.743 --> 00:06:19.012 that's fairly rare to see on TV. 00:06:19.027 --> 00:06:24.883 That said I'm going to leave you with this clip that I think is wonderfully subtle. 00:06:24.883 --> 00:06:26.546 "Wow, that's some cake." 00:06:26.546 --> 00:06:27.684 "Isn't it though?" 00:06:27.684 --> 00:06:35.862 "I love it. Ever notice how everything you make just tends to lean a little to the left?" 00:06:35.862 --> 00:06:37.889 "I do that on purpose."