Relationship Spotlight: Logan Echolls & Veronica Mars (Veronica Mars)

Yes, I like Veronica and Logan – so sue me.  Their relationship, whatever the permutation, is never what you’d call functional, and it sometimes unfortunately magnifies Veronica’s control-freak tendencies and Logan’s emo-ness, especially in season 3.  However, when they’re on, they’re really on and bring a lot to the show.  (Some spoilers for the evolution of Veronica and Logan’s relationship.)

Since Veronica-Logan changes a lot, we’ll start at the outset of the series, which finds them nemeses.  She’s the hard-edged adolescent P.I. with a chip on her shoulder, a tazer in her backpack, and an extremely good reason to hate the rich “09ers” who rule the school.  He’s the reckless, inventively jerkish son of a movie star with a seemingly charmed life.  He goes out of his way to rile or humiliate her, and when she gets her own back, his retribution is swift and unpredictable.  No wonder he’s so often the chief suspect in her cases; even if he didn’t usually act shifty and amoral, everything about him begs for a righteous onslaught of karmic justice.

Although Veronica tells us this state of affairs wasn’t always the norm, it’s startling to them as friends in the flashbacks.  Not besties, granted – each dated the other’s best friend and were more connected by association than anything else.  Still, they hung out together and enjoyed one another’s company well enough, and both were deeply shaken by the tragedy that forms the central focus of the first season.  Because of this, the shots they fire at one another have real sting, and their mutual vendetta takes on a different tone when we see how entwined their lives once were.

This shared history gives us another phase of the Veronica-Logan relationship:  shaky allies.  Whether Logan is just trying to exonerate himself or hiring Veronica to investigate something of his, he occasionally teams up with Veronica, and a delightfully-snarky, frenemy sleuthing duo is formed.  She’s all caginess and competence, while he’s a quippy enforcer with poor impulse control.  They’re vastly entertaining together and form a surprisingly effective team, and I think they see one another best as people in this iteration, which makes it my favorite of them all.

But of course, this being television, they were never going to be just nemeses or former friends or reluctant allies.  Naturally, things turn romantic, and once they do, that wave rises and falls throughout the remainder of the series; no matter what dynamic they return to in various interims, the fact that they’ve been together is a constant presence.  I’m of two minds about this side of it all.  On one hand, I like that they challenge one another and that having a boyfriend doesn’t stop Veronica from being who she is.  I like the way it’s hard for her to believe in it and the way he falls so hard and fast.  I like how they make each other crazy, and it’s next to impossible to deny Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring’s ridiculously great chemistry.

Yet, when they’re together, their relationship plots tend to eclipse the other excellent threads of the series.  It’s interesting how sweet Logan is when he’s in love, but the pendulum swings too far and he feels defanged.  Veronica’s stubbornness, lone-wolf mindset, and distrustfulness overwhelm her and generally position her as the greatest obstacle to her happiness.  So, while I like Veronica and Logan as a couple, I don’t think it’s their most successful state of being, and I don’t like the way other versions of their relationships are swept aside in favor of it.