For my three-hundredth review, I am pleased to give "Veronica Mars" five glowing stars. I will try my best to keep this review short, because I tend to gush when I talk about this show at length; so keeping things simple seems to be the best way to go about this.
THE PLOT: Veronica Mars is an intelligent young girl (Junior in High School when the series beings, Freshman in college when it ends) with a Private Detective father, a bad reputation, and a whole mess of ambition. She often takes on her own PI duties, sometimes looking into small things like petty theft for classmates, but she also gets serious when a bigger case hits close to home. The majority of VM episodes are standalone, but both of the first two seasons also form bigger stories, in that you can watch an episode by itself, but watching a whole season forms a bigger, coherent story line. The third season, instead, is divided into three sections, the first two being shorter mystery arcs, and the final five episodes being completely standalone. The plotting of "Veronica Mars," especially in the first two seasons, is ideal for television because the story is kept fresh with each episode offering side mysteries, but the pay-off of the "big mystery" at the end of a season is heart attack inducingly climatic.
THE WRITING: Here is where I start gushing. The writing simply couldn't be better. Much like Joss Whedon of
Buffy fame, the writers of this show--headed by creator Rob Thomas--find a perfect balance between drama and comedy, driving it all forward by snappy dialogue and some of the best characters you'll see on television. Also, the consistency of this show's writing is literally unrivaled. Even the most quality of television shows (such as
Angel,
Six Feet Under,
Firefly,
Wonderfalls, and the aforementioned Buffy) tend to have weaker and stronger episodes, but "Veronica Mars" goes on for stretches of virtually flawless episode after flawless episode. The weakest writing you'll find is in late Season Three, when the network demanded that each episode be self-contained, but it's also astonishing to see how the writers worked with these restrictions and still made television better than 99.9 etcetera percent of stuff out there.
THE CAST: Kristen Bell stars as Veronica, and it's pretty much pointless to talk about how great she is, because then I KNOW I'll start with the gushing... but I'll say this: Her performances are laced with subtext and deep understanding of the character, and her chemistry with her nearly equally brilliant cast mates is a physical force. She can make you split your sides laughing one moment and cry the next. The rest of the cast--particularly Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni, and Ryan Hansen--are all phenomenal at playing their characters.
EVERYTHING ELSE: The special effects in this show are actually rather good. There are many dream/flashback sequences, and the lighting and coloring of those scenes highly contribute to the mood of the show. The extras are great (there are a few in the first two seasons and an entire disc for the third).
Critics (everyone from Joss Whedon, to Kevin Smith, to Stephen King, to pretty much anyone with taste) love it, fans still mourn its wrongful cancellation, and I can pretty much guarantee that you will fall in love with this show. It's one of the best I've seen, if not the best. That's it.
10/10 Classic.
