Veronica Mars

<3 kristen

so having heard about this show for years i finally start to watch and plow thru season one in one week on netflix. very good, great entertainment. love the dad. maybe it was just bad luck and the timeslot but it does seem weird it wasn't a bigger hit. part of me wonders if it would've done well on a bigger network and part of me wonders if it wouldn't have been canceled midway thru the first season (nevermind lasted three seasons) if it hadn't of been on the cw.

Probably would have lasted longer on something like ABC Family channel that is geared towards younger people. Greek has been on 4 seasons now and that is pretty bad.

The subject matter probably wouldn't fly on ABC Family, though I admittedly don't watch that channel very much.

finished s2 recently. not as good as s1 for sure, but still pretty great. loved guttenberg!

the more i think abt it, it's kind of odd how most of the fathers in the series (keith aside) are kinda bad guys? daddy echolls, pedo mayor, wallace's dad (shady past least), Meg's dad, mr. casablancas.. idk, just a stray thought.

i think a major theme of the show is that the adult world does not have kids' interests at heart and is often actively harmful/abusive/neglectful of kids.

iirc rob thomas has a background in YA fiction (and maybe teaching, too) that might account for his POV.

it's a noir, most every adult is suspect in some way (and it ends up being significant when veronica discovers that her dad is willing to… what is it, have an affair with mrs. laura san giacomo just because it makes him happy?). moms and other women, too. veronica's mom ditches her rehab and takes the money veronica put toward it; celeste kane despises veronica and then still doesn't like her even after she helps solve lily's murder; one of her female teachers tries to hold off an investigation into madison sinclair's ballot-stuffing out of spite for veronica.

i can't remember the (fired) journalism teacher doing anything morally vicious. levy-the-business-teacher does nothing but have his retirement investments tank because he bought big into casablancas stock. apart from wanting to hide her past, and from being a little bit of a jerk to keith at first, did wallace's mom ever do anything blameworthy? logan's mom seems kind of put upon by his dad's behavior, but apart from being generally a bad mom i don't remember her doing anything specifically bad.

anyway, like horseshoe says, the bearing of their parents' behavior on the kids' lives is a pretty big theme: whether, say, the kids can somehow find a way to not be complete creeps given the world their parents have made for them or the examples they've set. lots of them are creeps, but they can at least point to their parents a lot of the time.

but it's also a recurring counterpoint to that that veronica discovers after helping someone out that there are plenty of decent people who like her and aren't especially mendacious or manipulative, she just couldn't see it through the perspective on her social world she'd adopted after being shunned by all the 0-9ers.

iirc rob thomas has a background in YA fiction (and maybe teaching, too) that might account for his POV.

you do rc (in both cases)

My wife and I finally finished the first season, and I pretty much hated the show. I mean, I thought the acting was great across the board, and the writing was tops, but rarely have I seen either put in service of stories I cared less than a shit about. Of all the things that bugged me perhaps number one was Veronica mentioning she had been raped in the first ep, but only getting around to finding out who raped her in the second to last ep. Like, VM's Things to Do list:

1. Solve murder of best friend
2. Find lost dogs and parrot
...
13. Find out who raped me

VM, apparently, was first pitched as a YA novel, and the rights bought as such.

We're not going to bother with the future seasons. That first one was just so full of holes and ridiculousness (in a bad way) to bring down the ridiculous (in a good) way stuff. Shame Kristen Bell hasn't taken off beyond this show, but she was great in "Deadwood."

i think a major theme of the show is that the adult world does not have kids' interests at heart and is often actively harmful/abusive/neglectful of kids.

This seems to be the implicit theme of any show about rich kids. It's a convenient way to get the grown ups out of the picture.

u dislike a lot of awesome stuff iirc

i thought they did a pretty awesome job of spreading the central storylines out over the course of 10+ hrs. balancing the time between that and the episodic mysteries is one reason why this is a great tv show in a different way than if it was a great 2 hr movie all about solving lily's murder. i'm sure that would be neater, but i'm totally willing to forgive a few minor plot holes to get stuff like dognappers and purity tests and transmoms too

i don't understand why they had to fuck with the theme song for s3 though :\

My wife and I finally finished the first season, and I pretty much hated the show. I mean, I thought the acting was great across the board, and the writing was tops, but rarely have I seen either put in service of stories I cared less than a shit about.

man, wonder which part of this they'll put on the dvd

Killing off --REDACTED-- halfway through the third season was the show's greatest mistake. And that awful Twelve Angry Men episode. And Wallace's dad. Otherwise: top-notch.

My wife and I finally finished the first season, and I pretty much hated the show. I mean, I thought the acting was great across the board, and the writing was tops, but rarely have I seen either put in service of stories I cared less than a shit about. Of all the things that bugged me perhaps number one was Veronica mentioning she had been raped in the first ep, but only getting around to finding out who raped her in the second to last ep. Like, VM's Things to Do list:

1. Solve murder of best friend
2. Find lost dogs and parrot
...
13. Find out who raped me

i thought it was pretty clear that #13 was something she basically wanted to put behind her? she keeps up her investigation, like she does with every other ongoing mystery in her life, but what's she supposed to do, go banging on doors day after day? when she goes to the cops to report it lamb laughs her out of the office, and she keeps it a secret from her dad for a long time. in fact, the two ongoing mysteries she does more actively pursue are both concerned with important other people in her life (finding lily's murder and finding her mom), while she tends to suppress things that (justice aside) only concern her and which nothing can be done about. seems like pretty good character-plot-writing to me?

she only investigates her rape (which turns out to be a somewhat ambiguous rape in a turn i'm not sure i would feel better about if they'd planned it that way or if they just twisted it that way at the last moment) when a new lead opens up from another case. 2-12 are her living her life/helping her friends/occasionally fucking w/ 09ers. i'm kinda happy the show wasn't 22 weeks of 'chick finds out who and wrecks vengence on her rapist'; not really crying out for 'i spit on yr grave: the tv show'.

have you only seen the first season?

yes! and one ep of season two before i stopped and thought 'ok, i need to watch something besides veronica mars for at least a week or so'.

I just thought it was sort of pointless to bring up the rape in the first ep if she wasn't going to follow through til the end. And in the end it only took an ep to solve something I would think would be even more damaging/horrific than the murder of your best friend. Just not needed, and really did reveal the on-the-fly nature of even that first season. I mean, I'm not even sure they knew what to do with the missing mom story! In the last ep, she she's basically back just long enough for Veronica to kick her out and write her off.

There are easy fixes for all these problems, which is why I'm so down on the show. I can handle failure, obviously I can handle success, but what bugs me more than anything are shows and movies that have everything going for them yet still drop the ball. All I can see is potential squandered. At the end all I could think of is that "Brick" did the hard boiled high school detective thing better. And Buffy did high school just as well as Mars, and it had vampires!

i'm not sure how anyone in 2010 could still regard vampires and teens as a positive

you'll want to avoid monk though, they take even longer to solve the central mystery. and you'll totally want to avoid homicide - they never solve it!

just finished the first season of this, too -- thought it was pretty entertaining. but the "twists" there at the end kinda amounted to making the show a lot less subversive/dark than what it started out with -- the rape, the incest, etc, all turned out to be kind of warm and cuddly, amazingly enough. also sort of weird that lily was depicted as a horrible human being throughout the season ...

Everyone was pretty much depicted as horrible, save Wallace, Wallace's mom, Mac and Veronica's popular blonde friend. I kind of wish they didn't solve anything. "Forget it, Veronica. It's 09-er Town"

wow came in here to post about the new Harry Hamlin/Lisa Rinna reality tv show to find that the thread has been flooded with RONGness. what the hell is up with ILX lately???

This seems to be the implicit theme of any show about rich kids.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, October 5, 2010 6:29 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this show is also emphatically not just about rich kids & frequently is aware of & confront class issues

which tbh was one of the best things abt it imo

I just thought it was sort of pointless to bring up the rape in the first ep if she wasn't going to follow through til the end. And in the end it only took an ep to solve something I would think would be even more damaging/horrific than the murder of your best friend. Just not needed, and really did reveal the on-the-fly nature of even that first season. I mean, I'm not even sure they knew what to do with the missing mom story! In the last ep, she she's basically back just long enough for Veronica to kick her out and write her off.

This is, like, so stupid as to be beyond words. Go hone your challops somewhere else, bud.

3rd season of this show might be my favorite TV thing ever.

amster you crazy

ya well S1 > S2 >>> S3 >>>>>>>>>> most everything else on tv anyway, so he does sort of have a point.

no, i'm not crazy. though admittedly i took a 2-year break between finishing s2 and starting s3, so maybe i just forgot how good previous seasons were? but seriously the episode in s3 with the guy searching for his prostitute soulmate was just shockingly good.

most episodes of this show have SO. MUCH. PLOT. not that this is by definition a good thing (see most soap operas) but it's usually handled so fleetly and deftly. i mean i can't believe the shit they pack into 45 minutes.

all the veronica mars fans i know irl think season 3 was awful which seems crazy to me also. i'm apparently the only person i know who thinks season two was best (and it's pretty far ahead imo). season 3 there's some definite cost cutting and heavy retooling on the go, anything to keep it on the air. plus tv shows set in high school always have such a awkward time transitioning to college for some reason. such a great character though. i wonder what that fbi fourth season would have been like. tempted to watch all the party downs again to see everybody pop up.

I always liked season 3, though watching episodes of it again recently I've found it somewhat wanting. It's alright, but it's not as good as the first two seasons.

there are some really great moments in the third season but also long stretches where they seemed uncertain of what to do w/ a # of characters (mac, logan, piz) & so didnt really do anything at all

i did think the switch to more self-contained episodes worked really well, and towards the end of s3 the show got really good again

I started season three with some hesitation four days ago and I'm already 2/3 through. Why oh why did I think it was so terrible? Too bad about the movie dying. Too bad / so sad.

just watched the pilot on netflix STREAMING VIDEO and lolllllll at this bullshit show

I will probably watch every ep by tomorrow or something tho

watch the first three or four before making a snap decision imo, but ymmv.

just watched the pilot on netflix STREAMING VIDEO and lolllllll at this bullshit show

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, February 7, 2011 4:48 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lollllll @ u imo >:[

I remember when I was a kid they used to be a promotional commercial for UPN where they had a bunch of kids dancing and jumping around shouting UPN all upbeat phonetically like "YEAHHHH OOP PEN!"

uh oh, you are TRIFLING with the WRONG MAMA-JAMA.

i REALLY disliked the first episode of this show, i was all "i can't believe how horrible logan is, i'll never like this character." then at the end of the season he was like my favorite character.

I started watching this the other day and like this show so far! I'll probably watch the first season by the end of the week.

Yeah awesome show! Jealous that you only discovered this now.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project

guys

It would also be a semi-Party Down movie given all of the VM actors that were on both shows. I would like to donate money if I could add the caveat that Piz cannot be in it.

I was watching an episode recently on cable and was surprised to Jessica Chastain on an episode, forgot she was on there.

I bet Piz is working for Buzzfeed.