Veronica Mars Re-Watch: Drinking the Kool-Aid (Season 1 Episode 9)

Hello again! We’re jumping back into Veronica Mars by taking a look back at the ninth episode of the first season, “Drinking the Kool-Aid.”

Where We Left Off

After dealing with the online purity test debacle, “Like a Virgin” ended with Veronica visiting Abel Koontz in prison and Koontz cruelly informing her that Jake Kane was actually Veronica’s father, thanks to a secret affair between her mother Lianne and billionaire Jake, former high-school sweethearts.

“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” or “Cults Aren’t All That Bad Sometimes, Apparently.”

This episode resumes exactly where “Like a Virgin” left off: Veronica, crying in her car, deals with the fact that Jake Kane is apparently her father. Of course, being Veronica, she quickly brushes away her tears of confusion and vomit of disgust (understandably, she throws up when she realizes this means Duncan is her half-brother) and snaps into action. She needs to find out who took the photos of her in gun sights and mailed them to her mother, scaring Lianne out of town.

In an excellent sequence, Veronica quickly manages to figure out who her photographer-stalker was– one Clarence Weidman, the head of security at Kane Software. Bingo.

She can’t quite figure out what apparent bio-daddy Jake Kane’s motive would be in scaring away Lianne, but it’s yet another item in the ever-growing list of the many ways the Kanes have destroyed her family, in Veronica’s mind. She quickly comes up with a plan to capitalize on this information: blackmail. She’s going to get cash out of those terrible Kanes in exchange for keeping quiet about her paternity.

Meanwhile, the case-of-the-week involves Aaron Samuels Casey Gant (Jonathan Bennett), a former jackass Neptune High ’09er whose parents hire Keith Mars (with promises of a $5,000 bonus) to retrieve their of-age son from a “cult,” the Moon Calf Collective, he has joined.

This being Veronica Mars, nothing is quite as it seems. Against Keith’s explicit instructions (bad Veronica!), our heroine goes to the cult’s compound after she fakes a “deep/profound” poem that gets the English teacher to invite her to join them. There, she finds a much more open-minded (and touchy-feely) Casey Gant. (Seriously, he touches her a lot in this episode. It’s a little odd.)

Over the course of the episode, Veronica tries to come up with something, anything, to indict the cult with. Instead of the expected pot farm and polygamy, she finds poinsettias and kumbaya campfire sessions.

Veronica bonds with touchy Casey and it quickly becomes clear that his parents suck. She realizes that their chief motivation in retrieving their son is not out of concern for his well-being. Instead, they discovered that his dying grandmother (who both the elder Gants mistreated for years) has bequeathed her fortune to their son, and fear being left out in the cold by him.

Veronica initially struggles with this information. Keith and Veronica are broke and in desperate need of the $5,000 bonus the Gants are promising. Veronica is taking cold showers and her father bought her a $10 water bed from a garage sale, so you know it’s pretty bad. If the paternity test she tricked Keith into taking comes back showing that Jake Kane is not her father, then those millions in blackmail won’t be coming through and the bonus is more vital than ever.

This is where things get interesting.

When Veronica attempts to impart the information about Casey and the cult to her father, they both have problems with the moral implications of completing the case they’ve been hired for. Both realize that Casey is better off away from his parents, but Keith is insistent that they need to stay out of it and finish the case. Regardless, there is nothing to indict the cult on (poinsettias are, alas, not illegal)– that is, until Veronica realizes one of the group’s members, “Rain,” is an underage runaway.

Veronica is against turning this information over to the police. Keith is, at least initially, positive that they need to use this tidbit to finish the case and get Casey back to his parents. He brings up the fact that contributing to the delinquency of a minor is a legitimate crime, and that they don’t answer, morally or otherwise, to the Moon Calf Collective–they answer to their clients.

It’s an unsatisfying and upsetting thing to hear Keith (good ol’ heroic Keith!) say. Luckily, in the end, Keith thinks better of it and doesn’t turn in the collective for the crime.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t even matter for poor Aaron Samuels Casey Gant. His parents intercept him at his grandmother’s funeral, kidnapping him, and having a “de-programmer” work his magic on the kid. The next time Veronica sees Casey, he’s back to his old, terrible self.

I’m always struck by what a dark ending this episode has. Sure, there’s the uplifting moment where we see Veronica shred her paternity test results when they arrive, which is great– in this moment, she is rejecting claiming Jake Kane as her father in any capacity, even though it means abandoning any hope of a more (monetarily) comfortable life. Instead, she chooses to live in ignorance of her true paternity, living in a crappy apartment with Keith, the only father she’s ever known. It’s a sweet message.

Decidedly less sweet? Casey being brainwashed by his parents!! That’s super dark. Sure, he gets a sweet ride out of it in the end, but it’s kind of vaguely disturbing to spend the whole episode seeing him be happy and kind and loved at the collective, only to realize that’s all ripped away from him in the end.

Arguably, though, the sight of Casey reverted to his old self, reclaimed by his parents, is the necessary catalyst (abrupt as it is) for Veronica’s realization that she shouldn’t attempt to blackmail the Kanes for money in exchange for the paternity secret. The situation with Casey and the collective crystallizes for Veronica a theme that is revisited again and again this season: sometimes your chosen family is better for you than your actual family. Sometimes, your “real” family doesn’t deserve you.

Other Thoughts:

• You may have recognized Casey Gant’s ex-girlfriend Darcy. She’s played by Courtnee Draper, otherwise known as that one girl who was all over the Disney Channel for a while there in the early ’00s.
• Veronica repeatedly trying to appear as the perfect cult recruit is a great recurring funny sideplot throughout this episode.
• We’ll see Casey Gant again, albeit briefly, later this season.
• This isn’t even remotely the end of the paternity subplot, so hang on to your hats, first-time watchers.

What did you all think of “Drinking the Kool-Aid”? Are you invested in the Veronica-paternity storyline? Did you want less of this and more of the Lilly Kane murder mystery? Let us know your thoughts by commenting below!