Veronica Mars

9. Veronica Mars

Well that was just a big fat disappointment. I took a significant portion of my summer last year to watch the first 2 seasons of Veronica Mars. Now that was time and money well spent and I do not regret it. BUT it did lead to a problem. I immediately began looking forward to the 3rd season. Then the next thing I remember is being kicked in the balls and everything going black.

Why did this happen? Why were entire pieces of the puzzle removed and thrown out the window? The supporting cast was exiled. New characters were introduced and then promptly ignored. I am not sure why Parker was given a credit for every episode since all they did was rape the poor girl in the first episode and then have her be Logan’s girlfriend for about 3 episodes. As for Piz, I was neutral on the man, soured with the Veronica pairing, and then the show was shitcanned and I will never have a chance to reevaluate. As for the old school players; Weevil might as well have been dead; Wallace arrested; Mac excommunicated. Just because of that, season 3 was unforgivable. Kristen Bell may do the lion share of the work, but it is the rest of the cast that provides the oomph to reach that top level. Don’t get me wrong Bell and Enrico Colantoni were still swell for the third year in a row. In fact I would go so far as to say that this was Keith Mars’ best season. There were actually storyline reasons for Keith to be apart of nearly all of the episodes, which wasn’t always the case during the second season. Everything related to Keith wasn’t biscuits and gravy though. The random killing of Sheriff Lamb was criminal. It existed purely to put Keith back in the sheriff’s seat, just to put his new position in jeopardy for the end of the season. Poor sacrificial Lamb. Conversely whereas Keith saw an improvement in season 3, Logan was completely shit upon. The best parts of his character are always there but whiny downcast Logan is nowhere near as fun as crazy dangerous Logan. And you can’t change my mind no matter how many people he beats the snot out of to defend Veronica’s honor. Although I may have had issues with the treatment of the secondary players, Bell was strong throughout the season and by this point in time the praise has become redundant. I have faith that she will land on her feet somewhere decent enough to put her skills to use.

The switch to the shorter arcs weren’t too damaging to the overall product. The rapist storyline was slow to start (mainly complaining about the stolen playbook story) but it did finish off with one of the best episodes of the season. The second arc with poor dead Ed Begley Jr. was stronger throughout but did not have as good a finale, too many guilty parties. Also having a 2-part episode around Wallace’s dead coach in the middle of the dead Dean arc was an odd structure choice. At the end of the Begley story 3 things happened, the episode order was slashed to 20 causing the final arc to be axed in favor of the horrifying arc-less final 5 episodes, the show went on about a 2 month break so the world can be overrun by Pussycat Dolls, and the cancellation of the show was imminent. The final 5 episodes were no fun for me. Instead of a revelations about a mystery, we get terrorists, Paul Rudd, and child soldiers … two-thirds of those plots might as well have been on Law and Order (The answer is Paul Rudd twice). All whining aside, the back-to-back finale was just good enough to depress me as my last time seeing Veronica Mars.

The choices made to please the network and keep the show running left a weakened product on the air. Eh, what’s done is done. The first 2 seasons can be put up against just about anything else on television in the last couple of decades.