Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Warning: Some spoilers
You need to know this show. By any standard it stands as one of the best shows on television and as one of the most innovative since HILL STREET BLUES inaugurated the era of Quality TV in the 1980s. Creator Rob Thomas and the rest of the production team have created something not quite like any show that has come before.
The uniqueness of VERONICA MARS is not widely appreciated, even by its fans. In trying to describe the show to others, fans inevitably resort to comparisons, something I have been guilty of myself. Most often, people refer to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, in that both shows feature a diminutive blond in a high school setting doing heroic deeds. No doubt BUFFY is the major influence on the show. Two actors who played major roles on BUFFY--Charisma Carpenter who played Cordelia and Alyson Hannigan who played Willow--have recurring roles on the show, and BUFFY creator Joss Whedon himself both appeared in a cameo and supplied the most praise-worthy review of VERONICA yet in his ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY review of the Season One DVD: "Best. Show. Ever." And after its first season, Salon.com gave their award for the best show on TV ignored by the Emmys to VERONICA MARS, an award called The Buffy, named for the greatest show ever persistently ignored by the Emmys. Nonetheless there are some major differences between BUFFY and VERONICA MARS. First, like most shows on the WB, BUFFY was overwhelmingly white and comfortably middle class. VERONICA, on the other hand, was set in Neptune, California, which is, as Veronica says at the beginning of Season One, "a town without a middle class." If you attend Neptune High, your parents are either millionaires or work for millionaires. This gives the show a social and class tension fairly unusual for television, though that tension isn't exploited as often as it could be. Furthermore, Neptune High is ethnically diverse. The wealthy kids are almost all white, while the poor include some whites, a lot of Hispanics, and a lot of blacks.
A second major difference in the two shows is in the two leads. Buffy is a super-empowered chosen one, given by magical powers strength and power to fight and kill vampires and demons and her task is essentially a violent one. Veronica, on the other hand, has no powers, is in no way a "chosen one," has no hand-to-hand combat skills, and apart from her trusty taser, has no weapons skills. If one looks at other great female heroines in the history of TV--Emma Peel, Wonderwoman, the Bionic Woman, Pepper Anderson, Dana Scully, Buffy Summers, Xena, Max Guevera, Sydney Bristow, and Aeryn Sun--Veronica stands out in her relative inability to kick butt. Even Dana Scully (whose lack of hand to hand skills were wonderfully parodied in a fantasy sequence in which suddenly she did) was very good with a gun. Instead, Veronica is street smart in a way that none of these others--not even Pepper Anderson or Max--are. She is brainy both in a bookish way and a practical way. She is constantly out thinking her rivals. One of the complaints that many gender studies people make about characters like Buffy and Xena (though I think they are wrong) is that their resorting to violence actually makes them artificial men, undertaking a masculine solution to problems (some even call them transvestites). Regardless of the merits of that kind of position (which I think are minimal at best), Veronica is immune to that critique. The closest she comes to gunplay in two seasons is removing the bullets from a bad guy's gun.
Other parallels are equally unhelpful. She is sometimes compared to Nancy Drew, but other than the fact that both investigate mysteries and eschew violence, it is hard to see other parallels. Nancy Drew has more in common with the comfortable parlous mysteries of Agatha Christie, while Veronica is more spiritually akin to a Raymond Chandler or the psychological messiness of a Ross MacDonald.
But I can understand why the show is compared to BUFFY. Like that show, VERONICA MARS is a character-driven long narrative arc series, that flips from humor, to intrigue, to heartbreaking drama with ease. Like BUFFY, VERONICA MARS is not afraid to go for the hurt, killing or damaging characters, delving into emotionally painful moments, and violating your expectations. And like Buffy, Veronica can make bad choices. What you love about Veronica, however, is that no matter how life flattens her, she just gets up and reasserts herself. Her resilience is my favorite part of her character.
Anyone who hasn't seen VERONICA MARS should definitely get this two-season set. The writing on these two seasons is amazingly consistent and there is wonderful carry over from Season One to Season Two. In fact, there is a sense in which the conflicts in Season One are not fully resolved until the final episode of Season Two.
The spoiler paragraph:
Season Three will represent a major change for the show. Veronica will be attending nearby Hearst College where presumably she will at least be joined by Wallace and probably by Mac (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE's Tina Majorino, who is rumored to be a permanent cast member next year). Will Veronica and Logan find true (or at least epic) love? And just what was in the briefcase (Enrico Colantoni has revealed that what was actually in the briefcase as they shot was a batch of his favorite cookies that the cast surprised him with, but obviously that isn't what was "really" in the briefcase)? Time will tell. The one bit of nervousness I have about Season Three is that the show has been renewed for 22-episodes but with only an initial 13-episode order. This isn't very unusual. Most seasons, for instance, ANGEL operated under this arrangement. Usually the network will make a mid-season announcement that the additional 9 episodes have been picked up. Hopefully they will have not just a full third season, but a fourth and fifth for what is in my opinion one of the truly great shows on television. I've argued with friends for the past few years that on many levels--especially character development and extended narrative--television is vastly superior to movies these days. VERONICA MARS is exhibit A.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Veronica Mars - The Complete First Two Seasons (2004)
Studio: Warner Home VideoRelease Date: 12/12/2006
Get 10% OFF
Click here for more information about Veronica Mars - The Complete First Two Seasons (2004)
No comments:
Post a Comment