Writing my belated review of Fringe was very satisfying, as someone who got so used to live-tweeting TV shows and now often get to review my newer (and gayer) favorites over at Autostraddle, it was nice to be able to get all my thoughts out about the show after I watched it. So I decided to keep up the trend, this time with Veronica Mars. Since a lot of you followed me originally because of my TV opinions, either on social media or through my recaps, I thought you wouldn't mind if I occasionally took the time to write a TV review here. These will almost always be long-since-ended shows that I have binged and have nowhere else to put my thoughts and feelings about except into the DMs of my very patient friends.
As with Fringe, I'll start with general thoughts and feelings about Veronica Mars, then make it very obvious when big spoilers are coming. That said, in order to tell you the general plot of the show, I do have to give you two spoilers from the pilot, as they are Veronica's main motivation kicking off the series. So if you have never watched but want to, maybe bookmark this for later. Otherwise, let's get into it.
At one point in the peak of The Good Place's popularity, I was so enamored with Kristen Bell's talent that it made me want to finally watch Veronica Mars. Like Fringe, it was one of those shows that was right up my alley, but aired during The Dark Ages, aka when I was in high school and college and didn't watch much TV. I had seen a handful of episodes with my father, enough that any time I saw Enrico Colantoni in anything, I thought of him as Veronica Mars' dad first. So I decided to try it. But I made a fatal error: I expected Veronica Mars to be a comedy. I'd only ever seen Kristen Bell play quirky goofballs, and I'd seen a few funny gifs from the show. So what happened was, when by the end of the first episode we find out Veronica was raped at a party and that her best friend was murdered, I was met with a wildly different show than I was expecting. I could feel myself start to feel put off by this contrast, and I knew I had to step away and not press on. I had to take a beat, adjust my expectations, and come back to it another time.
That other time just so happened to be a few weeks ago. The plan worked; with my new expectations, I liked the first episode a lot more and was able to roll into the rest of the season. I immediately adored Veronica, her voiceover had that noir detective feel while being funny and sarcastic. She wasn’t afraid to use her taser. I looked forward to a case-of-the-week style first season.
It didn't take long for me to realize I was really going to love the show. I loved Veronica's relationship with her father, I loved that they were PIs as someone raised on Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy, I loved her budding friendship with Wallace. I loved her sense of humor and her sense of justice and her blatant disrespect for authority.
I also loved how many surprise guest stars popped up. I was constantly sending my friend Monica messages that just included a random celebrity name. Luckily she knows how my brain works and understood that I was referencing an episode of Veronica Mars and didn't mind that for a little while my side of the conversation was mostly, "Krysten Ritter!" "Tessa Thompson!" "Alyson Hannigan!" and so on and so forth. And there were so many guest stars. Jessica Chastain was a one-episode character from the crime-of-the-week plot. Paris Hilton was a random classmate. An Ashmore showed up for a story arc or two. Krysten Ritter was a ditzy popular rich girl aka the total inverse of Jessica Jones. Alyson Hannigan was a delusional rich brat and Charisma Carpenter was a hot evil stepmother and they had SCENES TOGETHER. And Tessa Thompson was just fully on this show for a few seasons. And I had no idea! Wild.
I watched the original three seasons, the 2014 movie, and the 2019 fourth season, and the show kept the tone steady throughout. There were always plenty of pop culture references. There were always perfect layers of comedy and drama, sarcasm and seriousness. Veronica is small but mighty, and Kristen Bell's effortless charm fits the character perfectly. It also aged relatively well. There were a few things that would need to be updated, language-wise, but overall it wasn't too cringe-worthy. (My bar is also low because of watching Dexter and Six Feet Under in the past year.) And I cannot express to you how fun it was to see so many familiar faces pop up.
So if you haven't seen it, I do recommend you do that now. If you HAVE seen it, and/or don't care about spoilers, now is when I'll get into specific likes and dislikes that cover the whole span of the series.
The Spoiler Zone
Okay now that we're done with the generals, I can tell you very specifically some things I did or did not enjoy about the series:
I love Veronica's attitude and personality, and I'm glad she stayed consistent over the years, and was never portrayed to be infallible. In fact, one thing I find her fallible of is her choice in boyfriends. Buffy had a more sensible love life and two of the people she dated were vampires aka the very thing that she has a biological imperative to kill. First she dates Duncan, who was almost potentially her half-brother (but thankfully wasn't) and who we later learn is one of the people who raped her that night of the party. (Put a pin in that, I'll get back to it.) On top of all that, he's just a bit of a dud. Veronica deserves someone who can quip at her level, and Duncan was not up to the task.
She also dated a cop, which was gross because a) he was a cop, b) he was WAY too old for her. He was charming enough, played by Max Greenfield, and he had good banter with Veronica, but every time it moved from playful to flirty, all my alarm bells would go off. I know she's precocious but she was no older than 17 when this grown-ass man dated her. Yucko.
In college, she dated Piz, played by Christopher Lowell, who I had a soft spot for because of Private Practice. And at least I believed he liked Veronica, and he was age appropriate, and had never raped her. He was arguably the Riley of the situation; mister perfectly fine. A better option than the others presented, but still not quite good enough for our girl.
And, on and off throughout the series, she dated LOGAN. After he was nothing but a jerk, suddenly Veronica's kissing him. He was an absolute douchebag from the word go and now suddenly supposed to root for him as a love interest? Absolutely the FUCK not. He is the reason Veronica got raped at the party in the first place, and I, for one, never forgave him for that. He was a horrible person who never respected Veronica's boundaries, always acted like he was solely responsible for her and her safety, always made every argument about him, and never showed any real character growth. They tried really hard with the one episode of him being nice to a little kid but it wasn't enough. I don't know if it's because I watched it all so close together, or because I'm watching for the first time in my 30s and not as a teenager, but I despised this boy and was furious every time he and Veronica got back together. I have strong enough media literacy that I caught on that they were setting him up to be endgame, but I wasn't having it. Even in the fourth season, when everyone was all grown up, he sucked! Veronica needed someone who could match her humor quip for quip and who wasn't afraid to let her be independent and strong and a badass, and Logan wasn't up to either task.
I wish she had just been single for a while, but I also understand that it was the early aughts on The CW. No matter the hook, those shows were all about dating in the end. They were up against shows like One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl; they needed to have relationship drama just to enter the race.
But the romances all distracted from what I, personally loved about the show. Veronica's clever ways of solving cases. The crime-solving trio of Veronica, Wallace, and Mac. I love that they never went there with Veronica and Wallace. They were just platonic best friends. Mac definitely should have been gay (LOOK at her hair in that photo above) but again, it was the early 2000s. There was a Very Special Gay Episode that was great and gifted me this hilarious moment:
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Despite the fact that I hated Logan with every fiber of my being and yet he kept coming back like herpes, I did thoroughly love the show. I was shocked at the Season 3 finale, because it didn't even feel like a season finale, let alone a series finale, so I'm not surprised that fans of the show rallied for years and ended up getting the movie and then the fourth season. I wish those original seasons had more, because they were the best of the content by far.
And I know we're already in spoilerville, but I am about to talk about the literal end of the series finale so I felt like giving another one.
I enjoyed the series finale, as series finales go. I was so terrified her dad was going to die and I would not have been okay, But Logan exploding? I laughed out loud! I was finally free! I was sad for Veronica, but frankly it was the only thing that was ever going to get her to finally leave Neptune, something she's wanted to do since she was 16. I don't know why she ended up going to law school instead of going into the FBI, but I love the idea of her just being a roving PI, and I do wish they had been picked up for more seasons of that, but I also think where they ended it was nice. That said, after I was done celebrating the death of my least favorite character, I did have to raise an eyebrow at the decision. I felt pretty sure I was alone in my hatred for Logan, it seems like the kind of "bad boy" that was popular at the time. I was aware that my adult misandry was partially at play here. They wouldn't have made Veronica and Logan's relationship so paramount to the fourth season if people weren't into it. So the choice to blow him up at the end was really interesting to me. I want to know the reason. I personally can't be mad at it; the number of fictional women who have been killed to further a man's story is so high that there's a literal term for it, so even though men can't technically get "fridged" but watching Logan die to further Veronica's story was a little refreshing. I'm sorry! I'm sure a lot of the Marshmallows (that's the name for the fandom right? I vaguely remember knowing this and then thought it was cute when Veronica referenced in the show) were big mad, and I don't blame them. It was an odd choice, story-wise, even though I personally enjoyed it, all these years later and without any of the fandom context. And this is neither here nor there but I was thoroughly amused that Kristen Bell looked essentially the same in the fourth season after the time jump but Logan went from looking like a teenage boy to looking like a grown-ass man.
Overall I really loved the show, and I'm so glad I finally watched it. Immediately after finishing, I picked The Good Place back up for more Kristen Bell. I had previously stopped watching a few episodes before the series finale because I didn't want to run out of episodes, and in retrospect I'm kind of glad I did, because I'm not a huge rewatcher, but this gave me the excuse to watch from the beginning but finish it this time, and I am so glad I did. Talk about perfect series finales.
After finishing The Good Place, I decided to return to the Rob Thomas-verse and watch iZombie, which will probably be my next review. We don't have enough case-of-the-week comedy-dramas anymore and I am loving revisiting the format. Most of today's procedurals are so SERIOUS which can also be great but it's not the only kind of crime-solving show I want! Also, less cops and more PIs please! But this show was so serious in theme and yet took the time to be funny (the first time Keith tried to get Veronica's attention by saying "Earth to Mars" I lost my entire mind) and I thought it struck a great balance. It's the type of show I was raised on, like Buffy and Charmed, and it's the kind of show I'm still drawn to now, like Wynonna Earp and Yellowjackets, shows that aren't afraid to get deep but also know that so many of us use humor to cope.
I'm sorry if you were an original Veronica Mars fan and hated reading this, but hopefully you are at least a little amused by a newbie's journey through this show for the first time. ‘Til we meet again in Neptune!
God your hatred of Logan is cathartic.