Veronica Mars ramblings
Apr. 26th, 2005 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenWatched tonight's Veronica Mars. The show is definitely coming into its own. When I previously talked about VM I said that I didn't think they were handling the mysteries of the week very well while the arcy stuff was better. Tonight had a better balance on the mystery of the week, though admittedly it wasn't so much a mystery as it was a B plot. Either way, it's a variation on the formula they had earlier in the season and I think it's an improvement.
Mind you, this could also be due to how the story dovetailed into the arc. And I certainly can't fault them for not wanting to do too many stories like that because then it's tends towards predictable and a touch cheesy. Still, if in s2 (when it hopefully won't be scheduled opposite House b/c dear God is this cross programming annoying - considering my headache today I don't know if I would've watched VM at all if House hadn't been a rerun) they move a half step away from disposable cases of the week that are always about whodunit style mysteries for Veronica to solve, I think they'll be in good stead for what was the only discernible weakness of the show.
Now that I'm seeing it in action, I think what it is is that we want to see Veronica being smart and clever, and the poorly written MotW don't really allow that to happen because if the mystery is easy to solve on the meta level then Veronica doesn't look smart so much as she looks like she needs to be more like the characters in Scream, ie more aware of her own genre.
Putting that aside, though, this ep was really good for the thing the show is famous for (at least for what I keep hearing about it, I don't know if this is fandom-wide) which is the depth of characters. I kept hearing about how VM has character depth like Deadwood has character depth. I could see hints of that before but nothing on what I'd call Deadwood level. Before it seemed more like "good character depth... for a high school show".
But this ep was nice. The big one for that, I think, was Aaron. Here's the guy who we know is the cheating, abusive monster, yet now we get to watch him be on the ball and understanding with his son. I'm a Johnny come lately to the VM world (caught up now, but I wouldn't compare myself to people who've been watching each ep from the start and therefore have had months to analyze) and even I had my jaw drop to see Aaron having the friendly and seemingly geniunely concerned chat with Veronica in the car.
And the wonderful touch about that, to me, was that really this was an action foreshadowed last week with the ass-kicking that Aaron gave Trina's boyfriend. Because to Aaron those actions were one in the same. It's all about taking care of his kids.
And the great thing about the ass-kicking is that it was very much like the ass-kicking that Logan gave to JTT's character in order to save Veronica. Which is a chivalrous, romantic gesture when done on its own, but when viewed in the light of what Aaron did we suddenly get a new facet to it because now we can see a resonance of that too violent tendency, and wonder if maybe Logan learned the wrong things from his dad.
So we get this slow seep of character development where the facts are quietly put out there and the viewer is left to connect the dots on their own. As you know, I like that in a show. =)
On a more ep-specific level, I find it interesting that we see Veronica getting so invested in her relationship with Logan so quickly. Not that this is in any way inaccurate for a teenage girl, but watching it made me feel bad for her because... well, I've been a teenage girl. On a meta level it made me wonder if that wasn't a sign that the relationship wasn't going to last because I have a hard time believing it would be a relationship that quickly. As a story that makes it too "done".
OTOH possibly that was handled that way simply to provide more impact to the reveal about the drugs. I hope that's the case, because I find I rather like Logan as a boyfriend for Veronica. I don't know if theirs is a relationship that would or should last past high school, but for where she is at this stage of her life I think he's a good partner for her. He's got enough spunk (heh) and energy of his own that he wouldn't drag her down, plus he has enough issues of his own that he'd get where she was coming from. Plus you gotta admit: he would have such a ball helping her out with all the crafty spy stuff on cases.
So those are my VM comments for the night.
Mind you, this could also be due to how the story dovetailed into the arc. And I certainly can't fault them for not wanting to do too many stories like that because then it's tends towards predictable and a touch cheesy. Still, if in s2 (when it hopefully won't be scheduled opposite House b/c dear God is this cross programming annoying - considering my headache today I don't know if I would've watched VM at all if House hadn't been a rerun) they move a half step away from disposable cases of the week that are always about whodunit style mysteries for Veronica to solve, I think they'll be in good stead for what was the only discernible weakness of the show.
Now that I'm seeing it in action, I think what it is is that we want to see Veronica being smart and clever, and the poorly written MotW don't really allow that to happen because if the mystery is easy to solve on the meta level then Veronica doesn't look smart so much as she looks like she needs to be more like the characters in Scream, ie more aware of her own genre.
Putting that aside, though, this ep was really good for the thing the show is famous for (at least for what I keep hearing about it, I don't know if this is fandom-wide) which is the depth of characters. I kept hearing about how VM has character depth like Deadwood has character depth. I could see hints of that before but nothing on what I'd call Deadwood level. Before it seemed more like "good character depth... for a high school show".
But this ep was nice. The big one for that, I think, was Aaron. Here's the guy who we know is the cheating, abusive monster, yet now we get to watch him be on the ball and understanding with his son. I'm a Johnny come lately to the VM world (caught up now, but I wouldn't compare myself to people who've been watching each ep from the start and therefore have had months to analyze) and even I had my jaw drop to see Aaron having the friendly and seemingly geniunely concerned chat with Veronica in the car.
And the wonderful touch about that, to me, was that really this was an action foreshadowed last week with the ass-kicking that Aaron gave Trina's boyfriend. Because to Aaron those actions were one in the same. It's all about taking care of his kids.
And the great thing about the ass-kicking is that it was very much like the ass-kicking that Logan gave to JTT's character in order to save Veronica. Which is a chivalrous, romantic gesture when done on its own, but when viewed in the light of what Aaron did we suddenly get a new facet to it because now we can see a resonance of that too violent tendency, and wonder if maybe Logan learned the wrong things from his dad.
So we get this slow seep of character development where the facts are quietly put out there and the viewer is left to connect the dots on their own. As you know, I like that in a show. =)
On a more ep-specific level, I find it interesting that we see Veronica getting so invested in her relationship with Logan so quickly. Not that this is in any way inaccurate for a teenage girl, but watching it made me feel bad for her because... well, I've been a teenage girl. On a meta level it made me wonder if that wasn't a sign that the relationship wasn't going to last because I have a hard time believing it would be a relationship that quickly. As a story that makes it too "done".
OTOH possibly that was handled that way simply to provide more impact to the reveal about the drugs. I hope that's the case, because I find I rather like Logan as a boyfriend for Veronica. I don't know if theirs is a relationship that would or should last past high school, but for where she is at this stage of her life I think he's a good partner for her. He's got enough spunk (heh) and energy of his own that he wouldn't drag her down, plus he has enough issues of his own that he'd get where she was coming from. Plus you gotta admit: he would have such a ball helping her out with all the crafty spy stuff on cases.
So those are my VM comments for the night.
