Mars Investigations 3: On Bimbos and Ownage

Oh boy, I am excited to talk about this episode. I love a story about a grift, a confidence game, a good ol’ fashioned flim-flam. There’s just something delightful about the mix of cunning, confidence, committing to the bit, and high risk tolerance that makes the people who construct and execute these schemes compelling. And I used to think the title of the episode referred to the con that Grant and Liam ran on Georgia. But the thing is, the kinds of scammers who use form emails to swindle everyday folks out of their savings are difficult to get excited about. Why title an episode after their boring spam email fraud scheme? Well, this episode does tell the story of a trickster with great cunning, confidence, commitment to the bit, and high risk tolerance: Veronica. She cons her way through this episode, first as Amber, then as Gamegirl, and then as the "nerd hag" girlfriend to Wallace's prospective freshman. The marks for her cons are anyone who comes between her and getting Georgia's money back, which she does, along with a commission for herself, while embarrassing and greatly inconveniencing Grant and Liam in the process. This is the wrath—Veronica’s wrath—of con.

One other thing before we jump in. I said in the last newsletter issue that I was excited to rewatch this "The Wrath of Con" because I remember really liking it. Imagine my surprise when, while looking at the episode's Wikipedia page, I see my own name and quotes from a story I wrote for Slate in 2013. I think I still stand by it, at least the ideas in it if not the writing craft on display!

As always, if there are any things you’d like me to talk about, no matter how big and thematic or tiny and inconsequential, email me at sally@sally.fyi.

Also please note: Any potential spoilers are marked with this emoji: 🤐.

🔍  Intro and housekeeping (above, already happened)
🔍  Synopsis of S1E4 from veronicamars.fandom.com
🔍  Some thoughts on bimbos and ownage
🔍  Stray thoughts and observations on music, tech, and cultural references
🔍  Next time in

🔍  Synopsis

"In this episode, Veronica helps Wallace's new girlfriend, Georgia, when she is cheated out of $6,000 in a confidence scam by the "Silicon Mafia". Meanwhile, Logan makes a video memorial of Lilly for a memorial ceremony at the school to dedicate a fountain in her name." (source)

🔍  On Bimbos and Ownage

In this episode, Veronica pretends to be three different bimbos: the one who falls for “Karl’s” advance fee scam, the one who keeps inadvertently killing her own teammate in the first-person shooter they’re playing at Gamelord, and the one who drunkenly wanders into Grant and Liam’s dorm room during a college party. The guys in this episode never suspect that the bimbo in their midst could be any kind of threat. After all, bimbos are as dumb as they are attractive, right?

The great thing about the bimbo persona for Veronica is not only that it allows her access to various places she needs to investigate, but also that her behavior, even if it seems strange or annoying, it’s never perceived as threatening or suspicious. This means she’s pretty much free to move around and gather clues. And if anyone does get suspicious, as Liam and Grant start to when she sets off the alarm in their dorm room, she can simply shout something nonsensical (“They told me this was Sri Lanka! I wanted a coconut toddy!”) and stumble away pretending to be drunk.

But the most delightful upside of pretending to be a bimbo? The sweet, sweet reveal that not only are you not the ding dong you’ve pretended to be, but that you’ve actually used that persona to con the con men, to play the players, and to humiliate all of them in the process. Veronica isn’t just about solving the puzzle, she’s also about letting her opponents know they’ve been bested. And in upcoming episodes, she will continue to own the bad guys in juicy, satisfying ways.

Attentive viewers will have sensed Veronica’s taste for humiliating her victims early on: In the pilot, we saw how she humiliated Logan simply because she was presented with the opportunity to do so while helping Wallace (AND while publicly embarrassing Sheriff Lamb). In S1E2, “Credit Where Credit’s Due,” she taunted Logan when she thought he was involved in the credit card fraud. Then, when she realized it was Chardo who had stolen the credit cards, she cornered him in the girls’ bathroom to let him know he’d been caught and give him a thorough dressing down in the process.

All that said, I would argue that this episode is the one where her punishment-humiliation kink really starts to pop. When Veronica thinks Karl is the scammer, she sets him up by asking, “Karl? I can trust you, right?” Then, once she realizes that the real culprits are Grant and Liam, she relishes taunting them. The first time she visits their dorm, she tacks Jimmy Spain’s (aka “Karl’s”) headshot to the bulletin board outside their room, just to let them know someone is onto them. When she takes their hard drives and floods their backups, she leaves a note taped to one of their monitors that mimics the language they used in their scam emails (“Hey buddy, I was hoping you could help me.”). When Grant and Liam show up with the money to get their hard drives back, she exclaims “Ownage!” with delight before informing them that they can find their hard drives in the trash cans.

So, this is all very fun for us, the viewers, but it’s also telling us something about who Veronica is. Her interest in humiliating bad guys reflects her very binary—and, as I think we’ll see in upcoming episodes, rigid—sense of right and wrong. For Veronica, it’s not really about who’s acted badly or made bad decisions. It’s about who is and is not Bad. Sure, identifying the bad guys is part of her job as a PI. But after a year during which she lost her best friend, her boyfriend, her social circle, and her mom, seeing things in black and white terms also strikes me as a protective behavior. Take the conversation she has with Keith in S1E3, “Meet John Smith:”

KEITH: It's just that I never want you to think your mom's the villain in all this.
VERONICA: Isn’t she?
KEITH: No, it's not that simple.
VERONICA: Yeah it is. The hero is the one who stays, and the villain is the one that splits.
KEITH: I do not think that's a healthy prospect.
VERONICA: It's healthier than me pining away every day praying she'll come home.

As I say all this, I realize it’s probably too early in this series to make any sweeping proclamations about who Veronica is, especially because I haven’t watched the series in many years. I do want to keep an eye on this aspect of her personality, though, because it’s really standing out for me in this rewatch. And if I am remembering accurately, Veronica’s tendency to see things in rigid, binary terms becomes an important ongoing theme.

🔍  Stray Thoughts and Observations

• In the living room of the Mars home hangs a large framed poster of a dog that is breaking free of its chain leash. The text reads “UNLEASHED” and the illustration style is what I’d call comic-book esque. This kind of thing feels out of place anywhere besides maybe a dorm room or…perhaps the home of a recently single dad who is not that comfortable with interior design? On the other hand, I see some pretty lamps and sculptural bric-a-brac in their place. But maybe that’s just the stuff that Keith and Veronica took with them to their new apartment after Lianne left. Either way, I must tell you that this poster is actually an advertisement for surfaces manufactured by Formica. The small print beneath the large “UNLEASH” text reads “A free range of surface. Jump convention’s fence.” The hoops I’d have to jump through to explain how this ended up on the wall of the Mars’ home are far too many, so I will just leave it there.
• Update: I still think everything Troy says is at least a little bit obnoxious.
• Choker watch: This is the fourth episode in a row where we’ve seen Veronica wear a choker.
• We’ve already gotten a sense of what Lilly was like in previous episode flashbacks but this is the episode where we learn why people were so drawn to her. Sure, Celeste may think Lilly was the center of attention because she was a wild child party girl. But that’s not it. People were drawn to Lilly because her vitality was infectious; she created fun for everyone around her. Her life-of-the-partyness was generous and that makes her special to people like Veronica, Logan, and Duncan but also to us, the viewers who need to stay invested in figuring out her murder.
• Related: “Why do you insist on suppressing your hotness? The world is ready for you Veronica Mars. You do not have to blend in…You are not a yellow cotton dress…You’re red satin. You are strapless red satin.” And then the iconic dive-flop on the bed. This is the scene that always makes me think “This show needed more Lilly.”
• If you watch this episode four times over the course of one week, Wallace’s whole attitude and approach to helping Georgia start to feel a little icky, like the ratio of quid pro quo to altruism is skewing in the wrong direction. If you watch it once over the course of one week, as god and the showrunner intended, they get the balance just right.
• 🤐  Veronica and Logan exchanged glances a few times in this episode and each time there’s a distinct lack of hostility, even a presence of vulnerability? Softness? Interesting.
• 🤐  At about 9:06, Veronica and Wallace walk off-screen as Logan walks into frame. I can’t think of another time we’ve seen this kind of transition, at least so far, and I think we’re meant to start thinking about Veronica and Logan in the same frame or space.

• “Karl” might just be wearing the linen pants Troy wore on this date with Veronica.
• The “Around the World” party that the college kids throw is the kind of culturally insensitive event in which white college students have partaken since time immemorial. It’s at least more widely frowned upon today than it was when this episode aired.
• San Diego State is a real place. Lannigan Hall, Grant and Liam’s dorm, does not appear to be.
• Veronica finally listens to Lilly's advice and wears a strapless red satin dress to Homecoming. Nice touch.
• The Neptune High Orchestra (orchestra, really?) plays “Wind Beneath My Wings” for Lilly’s memorial. This is a music selection that can only be made by a mom who's incredibly invested in the narrative she's creating around her daughter's death.
• There’s a poem inscribed in Lilly's memorial. According to a 2006 blog post (here) this piece was from an unaired episode of Freaks and Geeks and written to honor a character’s dead dog. If you click on the picture in the blog post you can see the poem clearly and read it. It….sounds like it was written for a high school lit mag. By a stoner.

Is the end, the end…
Or merely a new beginning?
Can what which once started
Suddenly be stopped?
Or is this a cosmic circle,
That makes us think we are over
Just before we begin again?

• 🤐  Another clue drop: Weevil crying at Lilly's memorial.

Cultural references

• "The Wrath of Con" is a takeoff on the title of the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in which is about the crew of the Starship Enterprise “facing off against the genetically-engineered tyrant Khan Noonien Singh.” I don’t think there’s any significance here besides wordplay, but I’m not going to lie, I read about the plot of this movie just in case and had a very hard time following it so who can say.
• “I believe Keanu Reeves said it best when he said ‘whoa!’” Keanu’s most famous “whoa” is this one from the Matrix. But I suggest watching this compilation of his Whoas over the years. FWIW Logan’s whoa has a surfer/stoner intonation that much better matches the “whoa” you see in the compilation video at this timestamp (from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure).

• Endgame, by Samuel Beckett is the play that Jimmy Spain (“Karl”) is in. According to Wikipedia, “Endgame is an expression of existential angst and despair and depicts Beckett’s philosophical worldview, namely the extreme futility of human life and the inescapable dissatisfaction and decay intrinsic to it.” Damn, Beckett, take 'er easy.
• Backstage West was the west coast version (founded in 1994) of the industry trade magazine Backstage (founded in 1960), which performing artists use to find auditions and job opportunities. In 2008 Backstage West and East were collapsed into one national publication called Back Stage.
• SAG points. The Screen Actors’ Guild (which, since 2012 when SAG merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, has been known as SAG-AFTRA) is a labor union that represents film and TV actors. To gain membership, you had to show proof of having worked on SAG-eligible sets. Unfortunately, because Duped! isn’t a real TV show, poor Jimmy shan’t be earning any points towards his union membership.
• “Japanimated.” This word was created by an executive at Central Park Media, the company responsible for bringing anime to Blockbuster Video. Even though anime fans had always used and preferred “anime,” the exec thought that word was too alienating to potential (Western) buyers. Eventually, though Central Park Media stopped using the term “Japanimation” and, in 1999, switched to anime which, as you probably know, did end up supplanting “Japanimation.”  This is all according to this article btw.
• The gaming handles we see in the video game club: Liamator, Snake_Bite, Coppertop, Grrantula, Tedster, Psyris, Kon_Artist, Kelly, Kill_Zone, Gamegirl, Jezebel, Faith. Best of: Psyris. Worst of: Tedster. C'mon Ted.
• Chaos theory, PDEs, adjoint methods, “for error estimation or duality,” Poincaré conjecture, Fermat's Last Theorem. I feel like I’d be violating a personal code if I researched anything math-related so I won't take this any further.
• “Nigerian scam.” Veronica explains that Georgia has been duped by “a variation of the Nigerian scam.” That’s not really accurate but it’s in the ballpark. A “Nigerian scam” is a kind of scheme (executed via phone, fax, mail, or email) where a sender claiming to be a person of importance in Nigeria requests the help of the mark to get a large sum of money transferred out of the country. In return, once their money is out and available to them, the sender will pay the mark a commission, a very large one. The thing is, what I have just described is itself a variation on an advance fee scam, one of the oldest cons in the book. In an advance fee scam, the mark is promised a large sum of money in return for making a much smaller payment up front. Obviously, all of that takes a long time to say and it’s easier to use the shorthand “Nigerian scam.” Related: I really recommend watching the 1997 movie The Spanish Prisoner.

• Fragged you, ownage, lamer. I almost feel like I should've listed these under tech because they're such a good snapshot of the gaming landscape in the early 2000's.
• “Pimp Juice” is the fourth single from Nelly’s 2002 album Nellyville. Second Nelly reference of the season!
• In Ms. Dent’s classroom, aka the Student Publications Office, we see a poster for the movie All the President’s Men.
• The Matrix Online. This was a real video game! It was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that came out in 2005 and could be played until the servers were taken offline in 2009. It got mixed reviews from critics, one of whom said: “Simply put, only the most dedicated fan of the film franchise will glean any enjoyment from the most recent Warner-produced debacle, and experienced fans of MMO's will find nothing here to concern them.”
• “It's Lilly as a long-distance commercial.” Remember long-distance commercials? Honestly some of the saddest short movies I’ve ever watched.
• In the same scene, Logan says the video so far is “very Wonder Years” which of course refers to the saccharine sweet coming of age TV show of the same name.
• “The so-called Silicon Mafia has made a game that will make ‘Quake’ look like ‘Asteroids.’” These are both video games. Asteroids was first released in arcades in 1979 and Quake was released for computers in 1996. Quake is considered to be the influence for every first-person shooter that has been made since and its release marks the beginning of esports as we know them today.
• When Logan says that the tapes he’s working from for Lilly’s memorial video are “Memories both misty and water-colored,” he’s quoting the 1973 Barbra Streisand song “The Way We Were.” If you need me I will be coming up with an elaborate backstory that explains why Logan, a teenage boy, has Barbra and Beatles references (see newsletter issue 2) at his fingertips AND uses them in conversation.

Music

• “Supernatural Supergirl” by Josh Kramon is the song that’s playing early in the episode during Veronica’s first flashback about homecoming. It has a dreamy, ethereal quality that’s perfect for the memories of Lilly which are always a little haunting.
• “All That We Perceive” by Thievery Corporation is a song I’d listen to outside of its placement on this soundtrack which is something that I can’t say for a lot of the music we’ve heard so far outside the pilot. It's playing during the flashback when the gang plays Truth or Dare in the limo.
• The only other thing I want to note about the music in this episode is that “Diverse City,” which is playing at the Around the World party is by TobyMac who is, per Wikipedia, “is an American Christian hip hop rapper.” The lyrics are a journey.

Tech

• Camcorder
• VHS tapes
• Wallace plants a GPS device on Karl’s car allowing Veronica to follow “Karl” using what kind of looks like a Palm Pilot-y device. If you look closely you’ll see that it’s running map software called “Windows MioMap” which, as far as I can tell, didn’t really exist
• Personal checks
• Cash
• Saab 900 turbo. This car was manufactured by Saab Automobile, which has been defunct since 2016. The Saab 900 is probably their most recognizable model and was discontinued in 1998. Someone once told me that Saab stands for “something an asshole bought.” I highly recommend thinking about the people you know or knew who own/ed Saabs and seeing if this holds up. I know it has for me.

• Payphone
• Cyber cafe/video game club
• Lava Lamp
• Unreal Championship. This is the FPS that everyone is playing at Gameland. It turns out that the gameplay is depicted inaccurately in this episode because they weren’t playing via splitscreen.
• Single-ear wired headset
• Wired controllers
• Digital security alarm with a keypad and an LED screen. Grant and Liam were definitely smart-home pioneers for having a security system that pinged their cell phones.
• “Did you see the video posted with the ragdoll effects? The physics engine is killer.” Here Liam is talking to Grant about the upcoming video game Matrix Online. Ragdoll effects refer to animation that makes human movement look more fluid and realistic. And a “physics engine” is software that allows computers to create those and other lifelike movements in video games.
• Sidekick phone. It looks like Wallace is texting on a Sidekick which, by the way, was originally called “The Danger Hiptop” before it was rebranded. If you have learned nothing else from this newsletter, you at least have that. It was released in 2002 and discontinued in 2011.
• Texting in 2004. I really loved seeing Veronica and Wallace texting back and forth because we got to be reminded that texts used to be this sort of extra feature on flip phones. Text messages were by default in capital letters and ended with ***END***. If you didn’t have a qwerty keyboard on your phone, you were pressing each button multiple times to get to the right letter or availing yourself of the predictive text lots of phones started to have which I never got the hang of using.
• We see a bunch of computer and related parallels int his episode. Grant and Liam have a PowerMac G4 and PowerMac G5. Logan is using an Apple Studio Display. These we all around starting in the late 90’s and discontinued in the early 2000s.
• The noises cell phones used to make.

​🔍  Next time in

Next up is episode 5, "You Think You Know Somebody." This episode continues some of the themes I mentioned above like Veronica punishing and humiliating the bad guy(s). And 🤐, I'm very excited for Troy to get some comeuppance.

Mars Investigations logo by Amber Seger.
Special thanks to Andrea Lynch for the incredible editing.