Veronica Mars & Meredith Grey Go For a Drink
Two tortured characters compare notes on who has it worse. Veronica Mars or Meredith Grey?
VERONICA MARS SEASON 4 SPOILERS AHEAD
If you are a Veronica Mars fan it has been a rough summer and not just because climate change and fascism are about to kill us all.
Marshmallows are in mourning because Rob Thomas inexplicably decided to blow up Logan Echolls in the cruelest timing possible. I will have a whole article dedicated to exactly that, but let’s stay on topic. When sleep eluded me for two nights after finishing season four, I couldn’t get it out of my head what writers put their female leads through.
Rape. Loss. Beatings. Gunfire. Bombs. Dead husbands……
I kept going back to comparing Veronica Mars and Meredith Grey and how creators and writers seemed to think that audiences would only watch the show if the leading ladies were brutally tortured. I’m talking, endless torture for these two. Because I am primarily a playwright, the following dialogue was born. I had no idea what to do with it, though I found it therapeutic to write. I decided to share it with you. I do not own either of these characters, though if I did, their lives would suck a little less. May this little scene bring you some ease to your pain my fellow #burtnmarshmallows. If my grief has no end, stay tuned for Logan Echolls and Tyrion Lannister going for a drink at a later date. I can’t believe #weusedtobefans.
Alas, enjoy….
Veronica Mars and Meredith Gray get a drink together at a bar.
M: I’m glad we could do this.
V: Yeah. I’m in Seattle working a case. Alone. Not a single fan is watching.
M: Oh? They are always watching me, even during surgeries. I’m not exactly sure why. You know, they’ve really put me through a lot on my show.
V: Oh please, aren’t you some rich Doctor? I’m pretty positive you make a little more money than I do.
M: Yes, but I think our hospital might be cursed.
V: I think Neptune is on a hellmouth.
M: The planet?
V: No, the town I’m from. So, tell me more, how rough have you had it, Doc?
M: Well, from the start, I found out my boyfriend was married to a hot redhead.
V: ………..That’s it? Um, they made me think my ex boyfriend was my goddamn brother.
M: Ew, wait what?
V: And that he had raped me.
M: Stop, no, but he didn’t? Wait, was he your brother?
V: No. Keep up. My next boyfriend turned out to be a lying drug dealer.
M: Well, my mom was totally neglectful and tried to commit suicide right in front of me.
V: Hey, I’ve had someone commit suicide in front of me too.
M: Really? Does this happen to a lot of people?
V: Maybe, it does. It seems unusual though.
M: My mom slit her wrists.
V: My rapist walked off a building.
M: Your brother!?
V: No, keep up!
M: I drowned to death and got brought back to life during a ferry boat accident.
V: Did you just say the phrase, “ferry boat accident?”
M: Okay, it makes it sound dumb, but it was very traumatic. My friend Izzy had a big monologue about it.
V: You just like fell in the water? Were you knocked out?
M: I think the implication was, I was so depressed I wouldn’t swim.
V: Oh, I channel my depression into rage and tase people. I can get you a taser.
M: Actually, I think that’s a good idea. A patient beat the crap out of me. Also, I like to carry around a bag full of mommy.
V: Say what? (thinking) And as I sat talking to this squinty doctor, I thought to myself, get a grip Veronica. Stop thinking money will solve ANY of your problems. Even Doctor’s lives suck.
M: Are you doing a voice over of your inner monologue?
V: Maybe. Ever try?
M: Watch. (thinking) Who gets to determine when the old ends and the new begins. We like to think that we have it the worst, but you never know until you are living your actual nightmares. (out loud) I am the queen of inner monologues and general narration.
V: Queen? Impossible. I do inner monologues for myself and Gossip Girl!
M: Holy shit! You’re Gossip Girl!? #spoilers
V: (rolls eyes) My boyfriend’s dad murdered my best friend after sleeping with her. And then he locked me in an old freezer and set it on fire.
M: Wouldn’t your brother’s dad also be your dad? Or do you have the same mom.
V: I don’t have a brother.
M: I…. don’t… You know what, we had this EPIC plane crash and we all had major PTSD.
V: Only my show can use the word epic, thank you very much. And at this point it’s as if PTSD has lost all meaning for me. My PTSD has PTSD. My rapist, Beaver, blew up a bus full of kids and a plane full of people.
M: And he is NOT your brother cause you have no brother.
V: His brother is Dick.
M: ………………………
V: And his dad is Dick. And his stepmom fucked my boyfriend.
M: …………I am the sun.
V: I am a marshmallow.
M: I’m dark and twisty inside.
V: That’s what my fans SHOULD have called themselves. #darkandtwisty Though, I hear they are burnt.
M: Okay, well my sister DIED in the plane crash, but I found out I had another sister later. And I was blamed for my stepmother’s death, and my mom had alzheimers and I’ve dealt with an active shooter!
V: AN active shooter. I’ve been shot at like 800 times and an Irish Mafia man held me down and tried to tattoo my face.
M: That is really specific. How about this though, the active shooter shot my husband and I had a miscarriage. Like, at the same time.
V: What monster wrote that?
M: Obviously a feminist one who wants to empower woman on screen and off.
V: Is that how your husband died? What’s his name? Mcflurry?
M: McDreamy.
V: My husband would be called McSteamy.
M: Sorry that nickname is already taken. Though… I guess he is dead.
V: McDreamy or Mcsteamy?
M: Both.
V: Hmmm. What about McSplosion? Too soon? Yeah, no………Then I had ANOTHER rapist drug me, but luckily they didn’t make me get raped again.
M: That’s good at least.
V: And hey, you got to have a husband for awhile?
M: For like 10 seasons? It was hard to let go of the fairy tale, you know?
V: 10 SEASONS!? You must never have been on UPN.
M: What’s UPN? We’re on season 16 now and we’ve been renewed for 27 more seasons. Oh god……What will they do to me next?
V: ……..
M: ……..
V: ……….. Maybe, you’ll join Doctors Without Borders and never look back.
M: That would be hard since I have kids.
V: Christ….. They gave you kids on top of everything else?
M: Yeah, but I got to be happy with my husband and kids like 30% of the time.
V: You got to be happy 30% of the time? I’m only allowed to be happy once a season and it is usually me bantering about wanting a pony or something with unicorns. And immediately after something horrific happens. They let me be happiest with my lamest boyfriend of all who knocked up my friend Meg, who survived the bus crash and had the baby and then STILL died?
M: That’s complicated. Happy might be the wrong word. Not miserable?
V: That sounds about right.
M: My mom had an affair.
V: Mine too.
M: My husband died in a REALLY dumb car wreck. To be fair, poorly trained brain surgeons killed him in the end. And he was a brain surgeon. So….
V: What a way for McDreamy to go. My husband died like 15 minutes after we got married in a car bomb left by a pizza delivery man.
M: A pizza delivery man?
V: Yup. And this after he was physically abused as a child by his movie star dad, the one who locked me in the freezer, and his girlfriend, my best friend, was murdered by his dad and then his mom jumped off the Coronado bridge, and he got beat up by a motorcycle gang, accused of murder, they burnt his house down, he also watched my rapist walk off a building, incidentally my rapist was his best friend Dick’s brother, and then I broke his heart, his later girlfriend was murdered in a bathtub and he was accused of murder again and then I treated him like total shit until they blew him up.
M: …………………………………………..I just remembered my dog died of cancer!
V: (bursts into tears) Not your dog. How could they do that to you? They would never do that to my onscreen.
M: Hey, it’s gonna be okay. It’s hard for doctors to be good pet owners anyway, you know?
V: You’re actually kind of…nice? I don’t mean that offensively.
M: It’s a little offensive.
V: (laughs) Sorry.
M: Hey, I also forgot I had a C-Section during a power outage. AND I kept a live bomb from detonating inside someone’s body. AND A bunch of my friends died.
V: Ugh. Me too. The dead friends part, not the other stuff. Though the live bomb thing sounds a little bad ass.
M: It kind of was? I was most upset that my best friend moved far away. She was my person.
V: Ugh, mine is inexplicably in Istanbul and the other one got like really normal. I guess he’s always been normal? But now, he makes me seem even more surly and stuck and like I’ve had no character growth.
M: What’s character growth? Everytime I think a new season will be different they just put me through more trauma.
V: Oh my god, so much trauma. It’s like they don’t think I’ll be interesting unless I’m constantly being brutalized. They had my rapist give me chlamydia he got from being abused by his baseball coach. And I don’t think I mentioned MY mother is a raging alcoholic. She’s sober now, but that was in the books and I’m not sure if it is canon. Oh so wait, I might have a sibling in an alternate timeline? And I found Amelia DeLongpre’s dead body in a freezer. I like saying her name a lot. Try it.
M: Amelia DeLongpre. Nice.
V: Right?
M: Wait. You have books?
V: Don’t worry. I won’t have anything else. They blew up my show. Betrayed the fans.
M: They won’t let my story end. It just goes round and round. I wish they’d just kill me off.
V: There truly are things worse than death. We had this movie where I sort of got to have fun? I mean, I got shot at still and stuff and my dad almost died again and stuff but I sort of got to like end happy kind of but not.
M- You have a movie too?
V- Well, fans paid for it.
M- You are clearly not owned by Disney.
V- Are you allowed to say fuck?
M- Nope.
V- It’s a weird universe where you can be raped but your can’t say fuck even if someone is holding a knife to your throat.
M: Why did they write us to to be like this?
V: I don’t know.
M: One of our episodes was a tragic musical with singing surgeons.
V: Shut up! I did have to sing once, but it was karaoke and made a little bit of sense.
M: Ours. Didn’t.
V: Well, this has been……something and I definitely think you may have it worse than me? But, I’ve got a case to solve. They are hoping fans just want a bunch of noir, noir, noir.
M: Yeah, I have a surgery or a clinical study or medical jargon, blah blah blah.
V: (raises her glass) ……..To strong female characters!
M: May the next generation get to be happy AND kick ass. (they cheers)
V: Wait, is that possible?
M: We’ll never know.
(they down a shot)
V: I’ll get you that taser.
M: Hey……did you just put a listening device in my purse?
V: I’m sorry about your dog.
M: Me too.
(A mash up of, “We Used to Be Friends” and “How to Save a Life” plays.)
THE END