Veronica Mars - Season 3

Archived review

The sort-of-Buffy-but-not-quite show about a teenage detective is dead, and despite it being a pretty good show, I'm not too sad to see it go. I don't think I've ever mentioned this show before because I only started watching it this year, and the first two seasons took up much of my spare tired-and-depressed time in the winter months. The first season I would recommend to anyone, as I would the first season of 24 - There's a huge plot arc spanning the whole season that gets wrapped up nicely, but with VM there are also individual mysteries to be solved each episode. It works as a self-contained season and the main plots about who killed Veronica's best friend and who raped her (she's had a difficult time, to be sure!) are both intriguing and very personal (I even cried at the scene that resolves Veronica's paternity questions, which took me by surprise). However, unlike 24, there wasn't much more ground to be covered after that. Season 2 was too much a clone of the first, and Season 3 just didn't work. Struggling to find viewers, the format changed to smaller 7ish-episode arcs, and eventually standalone episodes, to make the show more accessible. Sadly, none of it was ever as emotionally affecting as Veronica's first-year troubles. Like Buffy, the show worked best when the title character was going through hell and had great difficulty dealing with it. As she got older and moved to college, Veronica learned to take things in her stride which made the show a bit harder to get invested in. Also, the dialogue in Season 3 wasn't quite as witty as before, or perhaps it was and I had just tired of it, much like the 'Buffy-speak' of old. So goodbye Veronica, it may have gone downhill but we'll always have that first season. I shall return to watch you again someday.