So with my pretty busy schedule I rarely have time to sit down and watch TV. I certainly don’t have the patience to watch commercials or to have to wait an entire week to get the next episode. Thus I have been watching a lot of television shows that have been released onto DVD.
The show that I have most recently become interested in is Veronica Mars. It is just an amazing show that has so many awesome things about it. It is a high school drama centered around class-struggle, crime, mystery and so much more. From the very beginning it is an edge-of-your-seat journey all the way to the end. There are lots of twists and turns in the plot and the main character Veronica is certainly an everyman (or everywoman in her case) that we can all relate to. Plus, the entire series is filmed in San Diego.
She is caught in a struggle between the classes which is defined in the pilot episode. She is really lower middle class but was part of the upper class group because of who she dated, Duncan Kane. When a key event changed their relationship, she dropped in social standing back to the lower class where she faced a certain degree of social stigma. Unfortunately for the upper classers or the oh-niners (09ers) as they are called in the show, Veronica does not stand back and take their abuse, she gets even.
There were three key love interests throughout the show and I have to say that I liked all of them, especially the key players in Seasons 2 and 3. I don’t want to give away anything so I will not give names. But they all brought something unique to the plot of the show and definitely kept the viewer wanting more. Though the show had key elements that made it a soap opera, it didn’t have cheesy elements of daytime television.
The first season has a main plot arc that goes throughout the entire season and then smaller conflicts that both manifest and are solved in each episode. At first I found this a bit unrealistic – and rushed – that everything is solved in one 43 minute block of time, but in the 2nd and 3rd seasons the writers got more creative. They expanded to a major plot arc, 2-4 episode intermediate plot arcs and then 1 episode or even half-episode minor plot arcs. The third season seemed to be a bit disconnected and some of its episodes were not serial at all.
I am really sad to say that when the WB and UPN were consumed by the CW, they canceled Veronica Mars because it did not have the best ratings. I think this is truly a shame to well-written drama but at the same time understand that the CW is in business to make money. I never even heard about Veronica Mars until it was already off TV. Netflix recommended the series because I was a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and realistically the only reason I started watching it was because Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia in Buffy/Angel) was a key recurring character in season 2.
As Wikipedia puts it:
Although not a ratings success, the series was a critical success from its first season. Robert Abele of LA Weekly said “in this smart, engaging series about a former popular girl turned crime-solving high school outcast, the hard-boiled dialogue comes from its teen protagonist’s mouth in a way that stabs any potential cutesiness in the heart with an ice pick.” In her review, Paige Weiser of the Chicago Sun Times said that “on Veronica Mars, wholesome is out; gritty reality is in. The show never soft-peddles the timeless, fundamental truth that high school is hell.” Joyce Millman of The Phoenix felt that the series was “a character study masquerading as a high-school drama.” Joy Press of The Village Voice saw the series as “a sharp teen noir in the making. Tinged with class resentment and nostalgia for Veronica’s lost innocence, this series pulses with promise.” Michael Abernethy of PopMatters said that “intrigue, drama, and humor, Veronica Mars is also a lesson book for the disenfranchised. Few TV series aim so high; even fewer succeed so well.” James Poniewozik of Time labeled it as one of the six best dramas on television. He praised Bell as “a captivating star,” and said that the series “uses its pulp premise to dramatize a universal teen experience: that growing up means sleuthing out the mystery of who you really are.” Kay McFadden of The Seattle Times called the series an update to the “classic California film noir.” She felt that Veronica Mars was the best new series on UPN, and that the title character was potentially “this season’s most interesting character creation.” McFadden described the series as “Alias in its attitude, Raymond Chandler in its writing and The O.C. in its class-consciousness.” Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com praised the first season finale for being “just the sort of satisfying capper you look for in a series that, week after week, keeps you asking questions.”
Veronica Mars was also positively received by other writers. Joss Whedon, who made a guest appearance in the second season episode “Rat Saw God”, said that it was the “Best. Show. Ever. Seriously, I’ve never gotten more wrapped up in a show I wasn’t making, and maybe even more than those [...] These guys know what they’re doing on a level that intimidates me. It’s the Harry Potter of shows.” Kevin Smith, who guest starred in the episode “Driver Ed,” said that Veronica Mars was “hands-down, the best show on television right now, and proof that TV can be far better than cinema.” Stephen King described the series as “Nancy Drew meets Philip Marlowe, and the result is pure nitro. Why is Veronica Mars so good? It bears little resemblance to life as I know it, but I can’t take my eyes off the damn thing.” Ed Brubaker called it “the best mystery show ever made in America.”
Despite being a critical success throughout its run, criticisms began to emerge of the series in its third season. Keith McDuffee of TV Squad described the third season as “disappointing,” mainly because the episodes offered nothing new: “most fans of Veronica Mars felt that season three was clearly its weakest.” Eric Goldman of IGN said that the main issue was the shift in the overall tone, with a lighter feeling than the previous seasons. He felt that Logan had been most affected by the tone change, robbed of his darker aspects and changed into an “increasingly extraneous character.” Goldman felt that despite the concerns over final five episodes, the series ended with “three very strong episodes, with lots of strong dialogue and Veronica proving again just how tough she can be, and what a strong character she is.” Goldman concluded that although the third season “was very choppy,” it still had “plenty of witty dialogue and a continually engaging performance by Kristen Bell as the title character.” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette opined that Veronica Mars had taken a dive “creatively,” from “the mopier version of its theme song to stalled storylines.” The reviewer felt that “the arcing mysteries had grown less convincing and compelling as time went on and were too drawn out.” Fox News Channel’s Bridget Byrne pointed out that Veronica had “gone from punky to-dare we say-preppy” in the third season. Byrne further explained that “with her quick, bright wit and sharp eye for life’s darker moments [Veronica] has left high school and is going to college, doffing her dark threads and spiked tresses for something a little more stylish.”
The series, described as a “critical darling,” appeared on a number of fall television best lists. In 2005, the series was featured on AFI’s TV Programs of the Year, and on the lists of MSN TV, The Village Voice, the Chicago Tribune, People Weekly and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It was named the second best series by Ain’t It Cool News, fourth best returning series by Time, fifth best series by Newsday, PopMatters and San Jose Mercury-News, and sixth best by Entertainment Weekly and USA Today. In 2006, the series was ranked number one on the lists of Ain’t It Cool News and the Chicago Sun-Times, and was ranked number six by Metacritic. In 2008, British film magazine Empire ranked Veronica Mars number 48 in their list of the “50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.” The magazine said that “smart storylines and witty riffs on pop culture pepper the scripts, while Kristen Bell lent ballsy charm to the title role and ensured that every episode of the show’s three seasons was television gold. Its untimely cancellation was a slap in the face that still smarts to this day.” Empire named “Not Pictured” the best episode of the series.
I think I can honestly say that Veronica Mars will go down in my book as the best show to date that I have ever watched and will certainly go down in history as one of the best, if not the best, teen dramas ever on TV. It is truly a shame that it was canceled and has utter shit, such as Gossip Girl, in it’s place – but at the same time at least it was never given the chance to get cheesy like Gilmore Girls, 7th Heaven, Smallville and other shows that were just run into the ground.
The third season left a lot of questions unanswered and a lot of loose ends untied. It clearly wasn’t a series finale, I don’t think anyone anticipated it to be the last episode ever made in an amazing show. Hopefully someday there will be a Veronica Mars movie made so that fans such as myself can have closure.
But regardless, now it is on to The OC for me, which I’m told is quite like Veronica Mars in terms of class struggle and is also critically acclaimed.
