Television "Veronica Mars" Pretty Close to Renewal

Television Veronica Mars pretty close to renewal

Generally one doesn’t hope for network retooling, but only time will tell if it was worth it.

7 more for Veronica Mars

7 more for Veronica Mars

20 episodes isn’t quite a full season, but much better than cancellation.

Veronica Mars: Welcome Wagon

Veronica Mars debuted last night. Funny how shows starting in October seem really late this year. I don’t have much to say about the season premier itself. It was a pretty good episode, clearly designed more to introduce new viewers to the characters than to deal with last season’s continuity. I would have liked a more compelling multi-episode mystery than the head shaving thing from last year. It will probably develop into something more, but I’d have liked to see something that we’d all be talking and theorizing about today.

The big thing I noticed was that they revamped the opening credits. You get used to hearing the same music and seeing the same basic visuals each week. For season three, there’s a new mix of The Dandy Warhol’s We Used to be Friends, and the images are… orange. It’s funny how much a change like that can affect one’s perception of an episode. I went from being excited about seeing the characters again to worrying the show was being retooled for a new network. I don’t have any indication The CW is meddling or anything, but certainly the creators know they need to pick up a lot of Gilmore Girls’s audience for the network to order the back nine. I’m sure once the season starts running my worries will melt away, and I’ll get used to the new intro, it was just a little unsettling not to have the familiar sights and sounds.

Veronica Mars: Season One

The wonder of having TiVo is that you don’t ever have to worry about missing anything. The drawback is that with so many good shows being automatically recorded, it’s easy to just not step out of that bubble and discover new shows. Veronica Mars is one of those shows that I should have been watching all along. Fortunately, it’s only been around for two seasons, I didn’t miss much, and there’s a DVD of season one out (with two on the way in August), so it’s not too hard to catch up at this point.

The show fits in very well as a successor to Buffy (it even airs on Tuesday nights), minus all the supernatural stuff. Veronica’s dad is a private investigator, so most episodes involve one or both of them working on a case, and also trying to crack the big mystery of the season. Season one’s “Who killed Lily Kane?” mystery is built up and foreshadowed well, and the final episode ends up being appropriately scary and satisfying. Also, season two stars Steve Guttenberg as the mayor, joining a very strong cast of supporting and recurring characters and playing his part with perfect, knowingly B-list Steve Guttenberg charm.

Katherine and I ripped through season one as fast as Netflix would deliver the discs to us, and we’re eager to catch up with the season two episodes we missed over the summer.