Veronica Mars S1 Ep6: Return of the Kane

Original airdate: Nov. 2nd, 2004

Rewatched: Nov. 2nd, 2024

At the heart of this episode is the question of privilege. It explores various forms of privilege and what they mean for the various people who hold them.

First, there’s systemic privilege. Neptune High has a system of pirate points. Students who earn points get special privileges, like ordering food for lunch. While this system seems fair, in truth, only 09er kids are really in a position to earn the points and gain the benefits, meaning already privileged kids end up with more privileges.

Against this backdrop, the student council elections take place. Duncan, still feeling a bit cut off from life, is encouraged by Logan and his father to run. He’s not really interested at first, but in the end, he does run. Logan’s main goal in getting Duncan to run is so Duncan can maintain the system of pirate points. Duncan’s father just wants him to be interested in something. In the end, Duncan wins. His first act as president is to keep the pirate points system, but also to expand it into a system where all extracurriculars and all excellence, even in vocational classes, can be rewarded. While it’s unclear whether Duncan’s changes create real change at Neptune High, it’s great that Duncan could use his position of privilege to make life a little fairer. And he makes his dad proud.

Duncan’s main opponent is an old pep squad friend of Veronica’s and Veronica goes all in helping her. Wanda is determined to win and change Neptune High for the better, removing 09er privilege. She seems poised to win the election, but the results give Duncan the win. Veronica smells a rat and wants a recount. She gets her journalism teacher, Ms. Dent, to back her, although the teacher in charge of student council, Mrs. Donaldson, is deeply against the recount. The recount at first seems to prove Duncan won, but it turns out Mrs. Donaldson’s student aid, Madison Sinclair, who will be important in later episodes, made two lists of candidates. One list put Duncan first and was the correct list. One list put Wanda first. This “wrong” list was distributed to classes likely to be carried by Wanda… and when students filled in their machine-readable ballots by marking the letter of their preferred candidate, they were tricked into voting for Duncan.

With a run-off election planned for the two candidates, Wanda is suddenly targeted for being a narc. Veronica first assumes this is a low blow, another attempt to give Duncan the win, and it works. But at the end of the episode, it is clear Wanda actually is a narc. She was busted for drugs and started feeding the sheriff’s department info on other students to keep the charges off her record. She has big college plans she didn’t want ruined. Veronica is not amused, but that is perhaps her own privilege speaking. It’s hard to know what she would have done in a similar situation. Is it fair to tell the police about others’ illegal activities to save your own skin?

Finally, we get to know more about Logan in this episode. He also seems to have a lot of privilege. He is the son of a movie star, but this episode also shows that his house is part of a “homes of the stars” tour. One morning, when Logan encounters them and is rude, his father comes and makes him pose for pictures for his fans. What does a lack of privacy do to a young person? Does it make them act out? Maybe. Logan certainly does. He organizes a hobo boxing ring and posts videos online, which are then found by the tabloids and land him and his father in all the headlines. In order to fix the situation, Logan and his father do a photo-op and interview while volunteering at a homeless shelter. On the way there, Logan hears his father sell out, agreeing to do a crap film for a lot of money. During the interview at the homeless shelter, Logan surprises his father by saying he agreed to donate $500,000 to the Neptune Food Bank. His father is not amused. Later that night, Logan’s father beats him. Does Logan have privilege. Most definitely. Does it come at a cost? Yes. Both in terms of living with fame and living with a violent parent, Logan’s home life is not okay. Also, while setting up a hobo boxing ring was not okay, is it little wonder that Logan thinks everyone is for sale when his father definitely is?

The theme of privilege comes up often on Veronica Mars, much more so than on Buffy, and this episode showcases it well. It also shows the limits of class warfare, as Wanda’s run for president is unsuccessful, as well as the impact being responsible with privilege can have. This is something that Duncan and Veronica embody, but Logan does not.

The episode also has a few other interesting aspects. First, we learn that Keith is trying to bond with his daughter after his dating disaster. We learn that Wallace’s father has passed away, leaving his mother a single mom. And Wallace accuses Veronica of taking advantage of him, something far more common for Veronica to do with people than Buffy. However, she is also a good person. She responds well to Wallace’s accusations and is willing to change her attitude towards him.

There are also developments in the Lilly Kane case. Her alleged murderer, Abel Koontz, is not fighting is death sentence, which Veronica finds a bit odd. Veronica decides to look at the case files in her father’s sage and she discovers that the Lilly’s shoes that were found on Abel’s boat, part of the evidence for him killing her, were still in her room in the crime scene photos. This seems to be proof that Abel is not the killer. At the end of the episode, her father has changed his safe combination, trying to keep Veronica from investigating on her own. In addition to the shoes, Veronica learns from Wanda that Lilly may have been together with Weevil before she died.

On a final note, in the original cast of Veronica Mars, out of seven starring roles, only two are women (Kristen Bell and Sydney Tamiia Poitier). However, Sydney Tamiia Poitier is only seen in four episodes (credited for seven) and after the 7th episode, she will disappear from the opening credits and Neptune High (evidently it was difficult to find story lines for her, and it was too expensive to have such a big cast while also needing many guest actors each week). This means that Veronica is the sole female cast member for the rest of season 1. Buffy is a stark contrast to this, with three female cast members and two male cast members in its first season. While later seasons of Veronica Mars will have more female cast members (season 2 has one more and season 3 has two more), it is a surprisingly masculine cast for a series with such strong feminist themes.