Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

[Perversion]

I've always heard good things about this show, so when I found seasons 1 and 2 for $25 each last week, I scooped 'em up. But I'm still a bit wary. I'm probably not gonna return them or anything, but I'd still like to know what the general Pavilion consensus on the show is.

And am I mistaken, or were there only two seasons? Or maybe half a third season or something?

[Lausen]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

I don't know anything about the show, but she's hot.

[Riotsword]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

My girlfriend really likes it; she owns the first two seasons as well. I thought it was okay, but it's most likely you'll watch each episode once and probably never watch again like it was for me.

There are actually three whole seasons. There were supposed to be more from the looks of it but it was cancelled due to poor ratings is my guess. Lord knows critics gushed over it.

[Magus]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

I don't know anything about the show, but she's hot.

You should see her in Deadwood.

[IRC]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

Isn't the whole thing based on a murder mystery that they foolishly solve in the first season and then it just turns into typical teeny angst?

[John Mora]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

I can't speak to the quality of Season 1 but Season 2 was fairly decent. The series got ruined because the central romantic relationship between Veronica Mars and her love interest got really overbearing and eventually washed out everything else in the show.

[IRC]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

So typical teen agnst?

[Patryn]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

Season 1 > Season 2 > Season 3.

It's a good show overall, but Mora has it right: The romance factor eventually ruined the show.

If you want a preview, what looks like the whole first season is free online legally at TheWB.com.

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

I watched season 1 and 2 and enjoyed it. Then it switched to CW for Season 3 and I dind't have cable then. Although as I understand it CW isn't cable in some areas it is where I am. Anyway, season 1 was good but I was ticked off by the fact you couldn't have possibly figured out the big mystery ahead of time because all the real relevant info didn't come until the last couple eps. Season 2's mystery was more spread out through the season since it had multiple layers to it. From what I've seen of season 3 after the fact it wasn't as good as the first two. I think that's the one that got too angsty which is probably why they didn't make it to a fourth.

Anyway, my verdict is S1 & 2 are worth watching.

[Jamos]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

Nay, as in I nayver heard of it.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: Veronica Mars: YAY or NAY?

Mora talked me into watching it while it was doing its run of Season 2, so I checked out all of Season 1, which was phenomenal. I had a really hard time getting into it because I'm typically not a fan of shows with a hardcore narrative voice, and this one simply couldn't exist without Veronica's voiceover narrative. But she's sassy and easy to like in all the right ways so that her narrations were an aural treat, like strawberry ice cream for my ears.

It's not a show that's easy to just start watching. You kinda need a synopsis if you're gonna hop in somewhere in the middle or you'll be constantly confused about who people are, what's going on, etc. etc. It's like any other mystery/detective style story in that way, but I think it's emphasized in Veronica Mars because literally every single episode in the first Season builds on past episodes and advances the main murder mystery plot. There's often so many things going on at once, so many angles that Veronica is investigating simultaneously or just almost randomly seems to switch over to, that if you're not paying 100% attention, you've missed some vital piece of information for either the episode plot or the main plot of the season. It's not a show to casually watch, simple as that.

I highly recommend Season 1 as a solid, fully-realized and wonderful noir-styled detective show. It's really hard to say that it did much wrong, except for some of its celebrity roster guest-stars and one or two episodes with wacky, unreasonable plot developments (towards episode mysteries, not the season mystery).

Season 2 is pretty good if you're a mystery junkie and just want more Veronica Mars. As Patryn and Mora both pointed out (and I didn't agree with until more recently), Veronica and her romantic bull**** starts here, and it brings things downhill in a hurry. Not to mention the "villain" of Season 2 being completely out of character and almost like a slap in the face once it's finally revealed. It was like they intended to play up a certain amount of Noir style by having a mustache-twirling, egocentric villain suddenly appear and tell-all. It's REALLY hard to quantify why Season 2's ending should have just been the show's ending, but there was still some great potential for the character of Veronica Mars.

Season 3 has some good episodes (and plenty of Tina Majorino for you geek-lovers out there - I'm one of them), but it struggles vainly with the romantic aspect of Veronica's life and drowns itself in cheesy romance-reversals in nearly every single episode. It also doesn't follow the arc of one big mystery with many small ones over the course of the Season, which I thought at first might be an improvement or a good change of pace for the Season arc, but it turns out I was wrong. It follows a main mystery for the first ten or eleven episodes, suddenly resolves them with another cliched word-bandying machismo-boasting villain archetype, and then starts in on something new. It flounders here heavily because it's obvious that the ratings are suffering, but rather than try to bring the series to some kind of satisfactory conclusion for those of us who were still watching, it just continues to fall apart at the seams and all the cottony goodness of our cuddly, stuffed Veronica Mars floats away on a phantom breeze of indifference. The final episode hints very heavily at new directions Veronica can take as a detective, or as something in a more official, government line, but still doesn't answer EVERYTHING it rightfully should have, being the last episode. I wouldn't really bother with it unless you're crackhead-like fiending for more Veronica, or they announce new VM episodes or movies or something.

There was some talk of getting a Season 4, or making a couple of movies to fully wrap up the world of Veronica Mars, but I doubt any of it will happen. Seems only Joss Whedon can do that with his failed series. =(