Pouring My Heart Out To Hulu
*spoilers within for season 4; TW - mentions of sexual assault and trauma*
I decided that the most important thing I could do to heal my heart was to open up completely and contact Hulu, the show writers and Crave. As I’m sure they’ll continue to ignore and bury our comments, I’ve made it public.
To those in charge of programming decisions at Hulu and Crave:
My name is Amber, and I am a Crave customer here in Canada. Crave, as you know, obtained the distribution rights for season 4 of Veronica Mars, an eight-episode block made with the backing of Hulu.
I am here as a writer, a woman, a Psychology graduate, and a survivor of rape and abuse. I am asking you something that, 10 days ago, I never would have imagined possible: that you do not renew Veronica Mars in any fashion, be it film or TV season. This ask does not, as Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell would have the world believe, stem purely from a “fan service” perspective; the objective fact of Logan Echolls’ death is not behind my ask. It is the approach to this creative decision, numerous other alarming messages communicated in this new season and most of all, the misogynistic messaging from Thomas that has driven me to send this to you.
To better appreciate my stance, it’s important to know why Veronica Mars has been one of my favourite TV series for almost 15 years. When I first began watching Veronica Mars, I was a rape survivor who’d barely processed that experience, never mind years of parental abuse and bullying throughout school. I was fresh out of an emotionally abusive relationship where I’d been gaslit for 2 years. A friend recommended the show to me and I immediately fell in love with Veronica Mars.
In Neptune, I found a survivor who refused to be broken by her assault and the horrendous bullying that came with it. In Neptune, I found a survivor of parental abuse who, like me, just wanted to love and trust people in his life. In Neptune, I found a father like my own, who had a great heart, a love of classic rock and the belief his daughter was capable of anything. The bonus: I got to watch the titular woman tackle mysteries, like an acerbic Nancy Drew. It was everything I could want.
I had my initial reservations about LoVe, a little “girl, he was the worst to you!” vibe, but over time, I came to sit it aside and recognize the cycle of trauma in Logan and myself. I also saw someone who accepted Veronica as she was, because better than any other love interest we’d come to meet, Logan knew what it was to be broken and furious, to want to raze the proverbial village and make one’s pain palpable for all. Conversely, Veronica also understood Logan’s feelings of loss, abandonment and fury, and could recognize the moments where a kind man hid beneath. Their pain manifested differently, their weaknesses diverging, but that understanding bred an intimacy that made LoVe one of the most compelling pairings ever on a screen.
I was one of many Kickstarter backers, grateful to support a franchise that had contributed so much to my healing and growth. I was in a better place, but still living with my ghosts, so to see Logan thriving and finding his peace gave me hope. And to see Veronica, throughout the film, recognize that she had spent a decade trying to “squeeze back into her cotton dress” as an avoidance coping mechanism? It was really powerful and nuanced. It was a story we need to see, particularly trauma survivors: that you can heal, be stronger, and one day, life won’t always be an angry battle. You can get a second, third or fourth chance to get things right.
I was so thrilled for a season 4 until it arrived, and now, I feel demoralized. I was given a show—and words from its creator’s mouth—that told me there is no light, that my value lies in my pain. I was told by a character I admired and saw a kindred in that therapy rendered me a pod person, that people in my life likely missed angry, toxic me. The ending was hopeless, and I lost a character I related so deeply to in Logan.
Now that I’ve offered the perspective of a trauma survivor watching the series, in specific detail, here are the reasons why Veronica Mars, as Rob Thomas currently sees fit to write it, is not a show audiences need in 2019:
The misogynistic justification and tropes used to explain Logan being fridged
I’m a writer, and my books have a body count. I was a fan of The Walking Dead for many years. I am okay with losing beloved characters, provided the death serves the story in meaningful ways, and the character is given a proper farewell.
The death of Logan Echolls does not meet either of these criteria, and with every interview, the misogynistic lens through which Rob views the show’s future alarms me. It suggests he has lost sight not only of what his own show is, but why he’s been lucky to cultivate a fandom so intensely devoted to it. Logan has been a character and a love interest since season 1. If he needed to die to serve the story in meaningful fashion, any reasonable writer would have made the time to bid him a proper farewell. A hero’s death for a decorated military man and textbook-brilliant anti-hero was his due. One also has to suspend a great deal of belief to accept that the bomb would still be in the car, that Veronica would park the car in the wrong spot so close to the usual alert time, etc.
That aside, the explanation for this plot twist is extremely sexist, based heavily in lazy tropes, and ultimately, offers dangerous messaging to women. Thomas tells us he prefers his “strong” female lead as a “wounded creature”, that married leads make for “boring TV”. That Veronica with a husband at home—a husband whose career deploys him on missions lasting weeks or months—would be difficult and dull to watch because he didn’t know what to do with Logan.
Many of the show’s fans are survivors of rape and violence. What Rob has told us for the last week is that our pain is what makes us interesting, that love makes us “boring”, and we cannot be interesting with both a career and a spouse. As an investigator with a husband, I would beg to differ.
Season 4 presented us with multiple future conflicts for married Logan and Veronica: her refusal to seek therapy or heal from years of trauma; the challenges military spouses face (which are seldom explored on TV). To say it was too difficult or dull when shows like Bones, Flashpoint and even Brooklyn 99 have managed it suggests to me that Rob Thomas has no idea how to write an adult Veronica—and that bodes poorly for any future seasons.
The dangerous messaging about mental health and therapy
One of the things I have always admired about Kristen Bell is her candor about her own mental health concerns and her encouragement of therapy as a powerful tool. Imagine my shock and dismay to watch Veronica, a Psychology degree holder, discredit therapy, imply it had ruined her life partner or made him less attractive, and that she wouldn’t even consider a single couples session. Imagine my disgust when Veronica so enthusiastically approved of pushing her partner into unhealthy anger, and encouraged him to take drugs when he was sober due to previous substance abuse. When Veronica tries to explain Logan’s supposed “pod person” self with psychiatric medication, I want to throw things at the TV.
There is enough stigma tied to asking for help with mental illness. Many people suffering from mental illness refuse or stop medications out of a fear that people won’t love them on their medications, or that they are “sanded down” when taking them. This storyline arc was extremely irresponsible TV and frankly, I’m shocked Kristen Bell did not take Rob Thomas to task for it.
Frequent continuity inconsistencies and out of character actions speak to a writer’s room where people were given Cliff notes on characters, as opposed to truly knowing them and their story
Continuity errors do happen on shows. People are human, although a good showrunner should have a book that captures the facts and events each character has revealed or experienced throughout a show’s run. Veronica Mars’s fourth season suffered from so many of these, it was jarring.·
Veronica has a Psychology degree, but is aggressively against psychological help for her partner
Logan is invited by his partner to partake in substances when he is sober after a substance use issue
· Leo D’Amato was let go from the Neptune police force for negligent handling of evidence (theft, but covered up by Keith), but has failed upwards into the FBI
· Veronica remains friends with and sexually interested in Leo, who dated her as a minor and sold off child pornography, the latter resulting in the killer of Veronica’s best friend being acquitted
· Logan and Leo act like they don’t know or recognize each other, despite the fact Leo sold the aforementioned videos to Logan, escorted him out of a dance in season 1 and arrested him in season 2
· Veronica’s dismissiveness of Wallace and Weevil runs counter to her character
· Veronica is more concerned with solving a case than her father’s declining health, also contradicting her character
· Veronica accepts and does drugs with Dick, who is indirectly responsible for her being drugged and raped at the start of the series (their continued acquaintanceship already strains belief)
The disrespect to Jason Dohring speaks to a lack of professionalism that is off-putting
In an interview with Jason Dohring and other cast members at Comic Con, he notes that on his last day of filming, the entire production team—Kristen included—were absent. Jason wrapped alone, and went back to his trailer. This goes against all etiquette and decorum on a set, where there is usually a grand, “That’s a wrap for X as Y” and a thank you for their work. To date, Rob Thomas has referred to Jason’s character as a problem, a limb to “cut off”, and even admitted wanting to be rid of his character since 2014. There has been no open thank you or acknowledgement for Dohring’s work from Thomas or Bell (who did, however, take time to thank a departing cast member from The Good Place on her socials). The optics are poor, and leave fans unsettled. We worry for other cast members aside from Bell, whom we also care deeply about.
The marketing for season 4 pandered to the LoVe shippers for numbers and views, despite knowing how unhappy fans would be with the ending
Season 4 was sold to us as an ensemble piece—the Neptune gang’s all here, Mac aside! The vast majority of the pre-release marketing pushed the growth and conflict within the LoVe dynamic as the selling point. This naturally led fans to believe that the relationship held value with Thomas and Hulu. To have the season end on a rushed, sloppy death and be told in interviews that serving our affection for the relationship is why the movie failed (as opposed to the sloppy mystery?) and learn that while taking our collective six million dollars, Rob Thomas was wanting to kill off Logan feels deceptive. I, like many fans who backed the film, feel used; some are calling for a refund of their money, given Thomas’ callous comments of late.
If the goal was to shift and rebrand as a mystery-driven series, the marketing should have reflected that tonal shift.
The vision for season 5 is a completely different series, and does not preserve what fans tuned in for
The stated vision for future seasons of the series is that of Veronica Mars, “wounded creature” and single, “sexually available” PI, travelling the country to solve mysteries outside of Neptune. When asked about what will happen to the rest of the supporting cast, Thomas has cagily not ruled out their return, but overtly admitted that they had no role in season 5 specifically. The goal is to transform into a “pure mystery show” akin to a Sherlock Holmes.
There’s just one problem: the mysteries have always been the weakest part of the series.
Veronica Mars was never so much about mysteries as the character development, and it breaks my heart that Rob Thomas doesn’t seem to understand this about his own creation. Veronica’s sleuthing is a passion that’s driven by a sense of justice, but her relationships with her chosen few friends and her father are ultimately what have kept us tuning in. For many trauma survivors, her recovery alongside her parallel, Logan Echolls, is what made the show special. We had someone to be angry with, heartbroken with, and see ourselves in—for better or worse. She inspired me and others to get it together, get help, let it all out and remember that we deserve love, respect and happiness. She outright told us to demand it in our lives, and many of us now do. Logan taught us similar lessons, the most striking being that wounded people may act in cruel and terrible ways out of pain, but it does not make them irredeemable or lost causes.
The impression that I and many hold now is that Rob Thomas wants to write a completely different show, and port a ready-made fandom by carrying over a beloved character. That’s not what we signed up for. The irony is, had he chosen to write an entirely new show, we would have followed him there, as many of us did to iZombie. Given I no longer trust him to execute stories about women or trauma with care, I’m not interested in following his career further.
For a writer so determined to shed the show of “teenage drama” (although the characters are in their thirties now), the decision to re-traumatize Veronica and bring her back to zero effectively leaves her where the series began. We lost the slow upwards trajectory of growth in favour of a slate-clearing reset to that broken teenager from season 1, all because a showrunner, who freely admits to not being a mystery writer, wants to lead with his weakest foot forward.
For whatever reason, it seems Thomas and Bell have never liked Logan with Veronica. But so many of us did, I wish instead of discarding him as “difficult to work in”, Thomas had paused to consider what sort of fan finds the reformation of the “psychotic jackass” appealing. In writing season 4, I wish Thomas et al. had paused to think, “What message am I sending to someone who is in darkness right now, who feels like a perpetual underdog?” That Thomas had seen not only beauty in breakdown, but in the recovery.
Healed never means easy, perfect or boring for us; it only means that we thrive in spite of what never truly fades.
I am grateful for the show and fandom, because I needed it so badly when it came out. But I think of myself in my early 20s, watching season 4, and I worry that version of me would not have taken the positive Logan-like turns she took with the bleak, discouraging message the show now carries. That’s the biggest shame for me about the wrong turn here: that today’s Veronicas and Logans will not have that story to reflect their journeys in for their growth and betterment.
Hulu, please flip through the hashtag for the series and see just how many of us feel as I do. We will not “get over it”. This will not “blow over”. We Kickstarted a film nearly a decade after a show’s cancellation—we know a lot about perseverance. Please consider the irresponsible, offensive and dangerous messaging in the series’ latest season and the harm it can and will do.
They say to be careful what you wish for; Veronica Mars needs to end, and serve as a cautionary tale.
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