Mon, May 16, 2005
Veronica Mars
I just finished up season one of Veronica Mars off TiVo and already I can't wait for the DVD set. Hands down, the best new show this season – and there was some stiff competition in that category. My other favorites were good, too, but Veronica had more emotional resonance than Boston Legal and it was way more consistent than Lost. (Maybe Lost will still wrap up its first season nicely, but it would be mathematically impossible to eclipse Veronica Mars for tidiness based on where they are up to this point.) It's excellent news that the show will be back for another year next season, because while they wrapped up many, many loose ends in a concise and satisfying way, they also closed with the best summer hiatus cliffhanger I can remember since the Cheers with Sam Malone on the plane to Europe. (And there's even a hearty Monsters, Inc. reference, for my fellow Pixar lovers.)
Reviews and previews of Veronica Mars intrigued me before the season began, so I didn't come to the show as late as the majority of its current obsessive fan base, but it did take me a few episodes before I was sure I was going to watch the rest of the season. (By the way, how is it that every struggling show these days is described as having a cult fan base? Is this just the media's only way to describe something that's critically acclaimed but gets low numbers? Why are we giving high-priced network marketing weasels a pass on this? These shows are so good – to paraphrase Clark Gregg on Sports Night – if networks can't make money off them, they should get out of the money making business.) By episode three or so, I was hooked on the show's unique tone (I'm fond of referring to it as "day-glo noir") and the undeniable magnetism of its titular heroine, played to absolute perfection by Kristen Bell. Then, about halfway through the season, the show really hit its stride. Veronica begins the show following leads about her mother's disappearance and her best friend's murder, and by the halfway point these have unraveled enough to shed light on some much larger questions which really frame her character's vulnerability despite her tough-as-nails exterior. It's astonishing to see a young performer so talented at juggling the varied moods and overwhelming situations young Veronica finds herself in. In no time flat, she's leapfrogged right over Natalie Hurley, Lisa Miller, and Donna Moss to emerge as my all-time favorite TV crush.
On top of that, the show's writing is pretty dazzling. The dialogue features the requisite "punching up" that happens on every teen show these days, so everyone's wisecracks are a little too perfect – but I have to say that most of the time, it fits. Veronica's relationship with her dad (Enrico Colantoni of Galaxy Quest) is a delightful portrait of playful banter, deep caring, and utmost respect. The series faced the daunting task of introducing and evolving a set of large mysteries that unfold over the course of the season while also addressing week-to-week plotlines and doing other first-season business like setting up characters and histories. The weekly stories never felt shoehorned in, the season-long stories never felt ignored or got confusing (or – like Lost, in some cases – forgotten altogether). It truly was The Little Show That Could, steaming forward in spite of teetering ratings, and just telling a damn brilliant story all the way through. It's a real testament to the power of the TV drama format, which faces challenges that movies don't face in terms of pacing and content – but affords the advantage of exploring characters and situations over 22 hours. Best of all, Veronica Mars never felt the need to talk down to younger viewers, who necessarily form a large part of its intended target audience. The characters and their relationships are complex and real, and the things that happen to them are sometimes dark but never just for shock value.
I haven't been able to confirm this yet, but it stands to reason that UPN will be airing repeats of the show over the summer. They did a fine job of airing them during the season to allow newcomers to catch up as the show continued generating well deserved buzz – now that they've bought season two, there's no reason to believe they won't do it again. With no remaining Amazing Race conflict, you should seek out these repeats and watch them. If there are any of you who don't, I'll have no choice but to consider it not only criminally negligent – but also a personal affront. Maybe you won't love Veronica Mars as much as I do, but you owe it to yourself to watch two or three episodes, just to see. Even if you don't become a regular viewer, I promise it will be worth your time.
© onebee · all rights reserved
"Iucounu" — Tue, 5/24/05 4:39pm
WORD.
"CosmicViolet" — Fri, 5/27/05 10:19pm
"Day glo noir." I like that. That describes it perfectly. And yeah, I agree about the media's definition of a cult show, but I think in this case it's actually true. Great essay. :)
"chevy gurl" — Wed, 6/8/05 8:57pm
Ur so right! i love veronica mars cant wait till the next season
Brandon — Wed, 6/8/05 11:32pm
Repeats start up again on June 13th.
Brandon — Wed, 6/8/05 11:33pm
Oops, the 14th. That's a Tuesday. The 13th is a Monday.
Bee Boy — Thu, 6/9/05 12:16am
People! Seriously. Do not miss it.
Anonymous Coward — Thu, 6/9/05 9:56pm
Yes, June 14th, then another episode on the next day, June 15th. So 2 nights in a row for the first week of reruns.
"CJ" — Tue, 7/26/05 3:43pm
Um, yeah. Word. Truly, I can't recommend this show enough. I haven't loved a show like this, since, well, Sports Night, since you mentioned that, too. Veronica Mars is so addictive, it's like TV crack.
Brandon — Thu, 9/15/05 3:24pm
Now that I've watched the entire summer replay of Season One, I can agree with Jameson, Veronica Mars is a fantastic show that put together one of the most spectacular debut seasons in recent memory.
And now that I've finally seen it, I can get back to you Jameson on the Lost vs. VM debate. I agree, VM did a perfect job of tying up all the clues in the season finale and delivering a tidy, solved mystery. But I don't think you can hold up VM as an example of what Lost should have done, because they're such different shows.
VM has one central character with a surrounding world of roughly nine supporting characters (if you count Lilly, the Kanes and Aaron Echolls). Lost has 14 central characters who are more or less given equal story time. At the most basic storytelling level, Lost had more stuff they had to cram into Season One than VM did, and thus were limited in how many loose ends they could neatly tie up (and yes, to be fair, Lost did get 25 hours to VM's 22, but I still don't think that's enough to make up the difference).
I absolutely agree that Lost completely and utterly blew it with the hatch. They introduced it too early, they attached way too much importance to it, then were forced to drag their heels for weeks, and made things even worse by not giving a definitive answer in the finale. That one was bad.
But other than that, I thought they did a fantastic job considering the logistics they were working with. And I feel like as we head into Season Two for both shows, Lost is in a better position because there's so many questions left to explore and answer. VM wrapped up just about everything with the Lilly Kane murder, and even though they are planning to develop another season-long, overarching mystery, they're going to be hard-pressed to match the emotional urgency and all-characters-encompassing nature of last year's storyline.
But I don't think VM could have done things any differently. Their central storyline was perfect for a one-season wrap-up; Lost's was not.
Bee Boy — Thu, 9/15/05 4:11pm
I've been waiting for this comment all day!
First of all, I just realized that I've got my work cut out for me if I want the Annual TiVo Gauntlet of New Fall Programming to live up to this level of writing. (The Veronica review is far from perfect, I grant you, but more insightful and engaging than the rough draft I had going for next week. Back to the drawing board!)
Also, I really enjoyed putting in that line about being personally offended if any of my readers didn't give Veronica a chance over the summer, and to my delighted amazement, it worked! I know of three households that have become moderate-to-obsessive Veronica viewers as a result of that order, and the main reader who didn't give Veronica a try is my mom, and we all know she's already dead to me anyway. ;-)
I give Lost a hard time because it flirted and led me on for a few months, then broke my heart. But obviously it was a very interesting and well architected suspense show. I think mostly I just needed it to tell me what kind of show it was: Supernatural, with giant monsters and cursed numerical sequences? Or real, with intricate conspiracies and many subversive motivations? If they'd settled that around mid-season, I'd have been a much happier camper and bought into anything they did from there on.
So, obviously Veronica didn't have that problem.
Instead, it coolly and methodically built awesome television on top of awesome television until at the end of the season, the last piece falls into the puzzle and you realize it's not just a puzzle, it's a three-dimensional sphere, and you can rotate it and see things inside it that you never expected to see before. And it is like looking into the face of God, and seeing him smiling back and saying, "You are my most wondrous creation." Am I overselling it?
I think there's plenty for them to explore this season (plus, did I mention Guttenberg?!) and I think they've built lasting and fascinating characters that will be interesting in any story. I can't wait to watch the finale again. (TiVo'd it last night, but watched Head Cases instead, for the ATGoNFP. Keeping score at home? We're up to... Fox: 97, Jameson: 0.) And then I can't wait for this season to start and see what comes next!