laceblade | 2.1 Best Quote: "Can Dick and Beaver come out to play?"

So, I'm feeling really lately, or something. Why write my own analysis of episodes when everybody else has does it already? GOOD QUESTION. So I looked on LiveJournal, as one does when looking for epic posts of meta amazingness. I'M GLAD THAT EVERYONE LIKES MY FAVORITE CHARACTER, TOO.

For your reading pleasure, I cut out my favorite parts of each post, but all of the posts are amazing! And you should read them, too!

Shit like this is what I love about the Internet and media-viewing. I'm watching this three years after all of these posts were written, but I feel this amazing sense of community and "OMG ME TOO!"

mon_starling posted here. My favorite bits:

like everybody else in LJ was quick to point out, Kendall Casablancas has femme fatale written all over her, which makes her far too easy a suspect, really. And her affair with Logan was totally predictable and all too creepy if you consider the Aaron/Lily affair and how well that went! Logan continues to need therapy, and remains the second most interesting character on the show (second to Veronica herself, of course) - he is just so fucked up.... and of course, we all love him for it.

Duncan and Veronica are so not going to last - Logan may have many many flaws (I won´t even attempt to count them all!) but to me, he is still more likeable than Duncan - the kid is like a black hole! He doesn´t want to cope with something? He´ll ignore it - he did it to Veronica last season (and we saw how that ended up with his little tantrum in 1x21...), and now he was acting as if Logan, Meg (poor Meg!), and his own parents thinking him capable of murder did not exist. That just can´t be healthy. Him and Veronica going back to "normal" was predictable, superficially cute and sweet... and deep down very very disturbing and quite as wrong as Veronica sticking to the 09ers (and being on speaking terms with Dick!).

comice posted here, and my favorite section is here:

Duncan remains Duncan as well, and I'm afraid that's not a good thing. Duncan is playacting at life, and resembles the embodiment of Veronica's willful blindness. The scene where Logan confronts them at the bus really struck me because Logan is addressing Veronica, with darting glances at Duncan to see if his barbs land, but Duncan is ignoring Logan in exactly the same way that he ignored Veronica their junior year

...

The question that Veronica needs to ultimately ask herself is: how could Duncan be so thoroughly unchanged after all that's happened to him? His sister is dead; his parents believed him to be a murderer and actively framed an innocent man to take the punishment they believed he deserved. He thought that he'd had an incestuous relationship with Veronica. How does all of that roll off his back? And how, quite frankly, is he going to respond when Veronica inevitably feels the pull back to her other life, her real life that is not full of sunshine and rainbows? I keep thinking about the scene with Duncan raging and kicking the shit out of the SUV, and … this is not going to end well.

coffeeandink posted here, and I like these parts the best:

She rejects the role of crusader for truth ("I don't do that any more," she tells the first kid to ask her for help), and is pulled in by personal loyalty to her best friend rather than any abstract desire for justice, exactly as she was drawn into investigating Lilly's murder; at the same time, personal desires and loyalties don't blind her to larger concerns or goals. It's telling that the immediate impetus for her break-up with Logan is that he still defines "right" as "loyalty to friends," without regard for who else gets hurt.

It's the impetus, but it's not the only reason: Duncan's making his interest clear before then, and her response is also clear; just listen to the special sweetness for him in her tone. She's also, wisely, wary of Logan's anger, impatience, violence, and poor impulse control, and possibly also wary of her own attraction to him; if I had to make a guess, I would say she's probably more sexually attracted to Logan but more emotionally engaged with Duncan. The differences in body language are fascinating -- we see her go farther with Logan (deeper kisses, making out in the car), but when she's with Duncan in public, she clings. When she's with Duncan, we don't see the Veronica we know best: headstrong, resourceful, smart, and smart-mouthed. We see sweetness and dependence. It's noteworthy that Duncan courts her by helping clean up at the café, by showing up every day, by being reliable, patient, and steady. Hell, it's noteworthy that he courts her. It's old-fashioned. It's a reversion to the safety and security of the past. It will not last.

bluehyacinth posted here! And here are my favorite bits!

Veronica kept repeating throughout the episode that she wanted things to get back to "normal." Normal for her seems to be a facsimile of her life before Lilly's murder and her own "rape" and exile from 09er world. She has the normal boyfriend and the normal job. She has picked sides at Neptune, and, uncharacteristically, sided with those in power. She refuses to help those who come to her in need.

This episode was about, in part, presenting the impossibility of normal to Veronica, at least "normal" as she has come to define it. Solving Lilly's murder did not mean that every day afterward would feature the two of them floating blissfully in pool chairs. Lilly is still dead. Aaron still killed her. As for Veronica, first, she is really not that girl anymore, no matter how much she wants to be, and second she has taken a long look at class and race divisions in Neptune and those issues do not just vanish.

....Somehow in the 6 to 9 weeks from the resolution of Logan's case and the start of school, Veronica has made out with Logan in a car, broken up with him, been wooed by Duncan, and turned back into the cutest couple in school. It is fast and she hasn't even started to deal with all the consequences and loose ends.

For one, is anyone else shocked that our girl did not investigate what was either a murder committed by her boyfriend or an elaborate attempt to frame him for murder? And then asks him to get over it and start acting normal? All this within weeks of finding out that his own father was sleeping with and then killed his last girlfriend.