It’s now or never for “Veronica Mars” (Page 2)
I have to say I found this review unsatisfying. I liked the fact that season 1 got re-opened on some issues. But what really bothers me is this report:
Add to that the adoration from critics and high-profile fans such as Stephen King and Joss Whedon, and it’s clear that “Veronica Mars” now has almost every possible outside advantage. Show creator Rob Thomas is attempting to capitalize on that with his decision to forgo the first two seasons’ year-long arc structure in favor of three shorter mysteries, making it all the easier for new viewers to start watching the show.
Attempt to capitalize by ridding the show of what made it great? That’s sad.
And another thing, the writer takes for granted that a proper mystery show is supposed to be decipherable to the audience with all the clues laid out. No, Sherlock Holmes is dead. Philip Marlowe is the detective here, as a blond California Daddy’s-girl who just started college. Raymond Chandler pointed out long ago in his essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,” what was wrong with the “puzzle mystery.” There is no reason to expect a decent TV show to try to use that method or to judge it by whether or not it does so. Since the writer himself points to noir elements, I would expect him to realize that VM is essentially a hard-boiled detective story where the process is not an assemblikng of clues, but a journey through characters who have so many secrets that one investigation involves exposing a host of other crimes that all get tangled up. Veronica Mars is not Nancy Drew; she’s better.
I’ve heard a number of people say they were unhappy with the reopening of the rape storyline, but I thought it was great, and a great nod to the film noir sensibility that you can’t ever assume that any conclusion was necessarily right or all there is to the story. The writer of that piece seems to be against complexity, even in Veronica’s character–her tendency to jump to conclusions isn’t a writing flaw, I don’t think, as much as it is a character flaw, written that way on purpose. And the idea that there were no clues to the bus-crash manipulator–I don’t know that that’s true either. I didn’t figure it out, but once I knew, looking back, there were signs. S2 wasn’t as tight as S1, but it wasn’t the trainwreck this writer seems to think it was.