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She's not here for John's nonsense, or your's either
From the first moments Veronica (Juno Temple), Debra Newell's (Connie Britton) daughter on Dirty John, appears on screen, she reveals herself to be a very specific type of young lady -- the type of gal who knows she's turning heads when she sashays into a room, teetering on heels and wearing an expensive handbag draped on her forearm in the manner of a Hilton sister circa 2004. But it's when Debra's date John (Eric Bana) shows up, sloppily dressed in medical scrubs, that we really get to know her.
Veronica can see John is beneath her, and when John innocently huffs that Debra has a "really nice place," Veronica snaps back the first of her many unforgettable lines: "Mmmhmm. It's like that on purpose." Veronica is not about false pleasantries, decorum or comforting some loser; Veronica is a bad bitch, and she knows it.
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It may not sound very nice (and it's certainly not something to call a woman who hasn't given you permission to do so), but it in 2018, Bad Bitch is an honorific, like "your highness" or the now-vintage "Miss Thing." Born from hip-hop culture and bestowed (though it can be self-appointed) by ladies like Beyonce or Rihanna (they made a song together with that very title), "Bad Bitch" is reclaiming power and dressing it in irony. A bad bitch asserts agency over herself, her body and her life as a whole, and she never reflexively acquiesces to men. Veronica, then, is a bad bitch. She does not hesitate to remind her mom she dates trash guys. Veronica is confident in her own perception and instincts, so much so that she slips a tracking device on John's car to see her for herself where the S.O.B goes while her mom is at work. Veronica keeps her Chanel and Givenchy handbags in a mother effing safe. Until Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) returns in April, Veronica Newell is TV's reining Bad Bitch and frankly, we all could aspire to be a little bit more like her.
Dirty John's Statement About Toxic Masculinity Makes It Essential Viewing Right Now
Played marvelously by Juno Temple, Veronica is as much an imaginative flight of fancy as she is based in the truth of the real Dirty John story. Debra Newell's real daughter is named Jacquelyn, for starters, and since she's been a bit more private than her sister Terra, we may never know if she was actually as bitchy as portrayed or if she actually did rock a pink bustier with tight pink pants and a horn to become a Slutty Unicorn for Halloween, evoking legendary Bad Bitch Regina George. Whatever the case, we will always have Veronica as an example -- a person unafraid to torch the notion that she's supposed to be quiet when her whole body is telling her to shout. Like Michonne (Danai Gurira) lobbing off zombie heads or Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts), able to literally snatch a soul from the body, Veronica knows her power, her worth and she knows a wack scrub like John (embodying both the medical kind and the TLC kind) when she sees one. As she says at one point, "I don't deal with people, they deal with me," and considering how her moxie helped save the life of her mom and perhaps many more women, we can only say to that yes, bitch, yes.
Dirty John airs Sundays at 10/9c on Bravo.
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