The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Reflections of a “Veronica Mars” Newbie

November 29th, 2006

In case you didn’t know, last night’s episode of “Veronica Mars” concluded the first half of the show’s season 3. We’ll have to wait to January to find out the answers to mysteries new and old.

As someone whose cable company didn’t carry UPN and therefore couldn’t watch “Veronica Mars” until the creation of the CW this fall, I understand that I’m missing out on what most loyal Martians seem to think are the best episodes (namely, those in season 1 and season 2). I did recently watch the first two episodes of season 1, and I think I can see why fans like it better (more on that later).

As new viewers at the start of season 3, Porpoise and I had a tough time learning who all the characters were. I don’t know if it’s because we’re getting old and cranky, but all the college kids (the white ones, anyway) kind of look alike. That, and they kind of look like the youngsters from High School Musical. Thanks to reading summaries on Wikipedia and Television without Pity, I think we’ve finally got who’s who sorted out, though we still don’t know all their histories (we’re trying to keep ourselves unspoiled for when we watch the rest of seasons 1 and 2).

The best reason to watch the show is, of course, Veronica. I like small people who can clearly take care of themselves (that she’s not doing as good a job of that this season is one frequent cause of fans’ complaint). But she’s still got her witty voiceovers (“When did the Greek Chorus of Feminist Shame arrive?”) and sarcastic exchanges with both friends and foes. The detective-daughter/detective-dad relationship is appealing.

As far as this season’s story arc, the big mystery involves the string of rapes on the “Hearst College” campus. Rape’s definitely an important subject, but I always get a bit cynical when TV shows make it their subject matter. I read an article once in Entertainment Weekly criticizing the depiction of abuse and rape of women in a lot of popular crime procedural shows. The argument was that, the way these stories were presented, it almost made viewers into sadistic voyeurs by emphasizing the women’s victimization. Veronica Mars certainly doesn’t do that, but, knowing that rape was also an important theme of the first season, I do wonder if rape gets so much emphasis on the show because our heroine is small and vulnerable-looking (thus she gets threatened a lot, we feel more fear for her character, and it’s more dramatic when she escapes or Tazes her attacker or whatever). But, then again, rape is an issue that Veronica cares about from her own experience, so there’s an internal motivation to foreground it. I’d be curious to hear what other people think of how the rape theme has been handled.

Anyway, on to last night’s episode. Skip the next few paragraphs, ye spoiler avoiders!

Okay, first comment: Why on earth didn’t Veronica try to find Piz or Mac or somebody to go with her before leaving the party to single-handedly prevent a girl’s rape? We know she’s independent, and this season seems to want to convince us that she’s too independent, but would she really be that stupid? From what I understand, the usual Veronica is independent and resourceful, not independent and stupid.

Second comment, and this is the one that really bugs me: the scene where we find out that Mercer is the rapist, the one where the writers decide to use monologue exposition to explain his motivations for rape, is really, really silly. It’s so silly that it almost makes you take the situation less seriously, which is not a good thing. We recognize that it’s ironic that he’s delivering his monologue to Veronica (yep, we could pretty much guess it was Veronica under the covers as soon as the scene began) when he thinks it’s to his intended victim. We get irony. We understand irony. We’d just like it mixed with a little subtlety and plausibility, please.

Third comment: there’s perhaps a little too much subtlety to the explanation of why Moe serves as Mercer’s accomplice. If I hadn’t read Television without Pity or talked to Dormouse (who also reads TWOP), I never would have caught on to the continuation of the guard-prisoner relationship from the sociology experiment episode. And I still don’t completely buy it as a motivation. Maybe it would make more sense if I’d seen the episodes closer together, though.

I complain about these writing problems, though, because I care. If the show’s writing weren’t ordinarily so good, it wouldn’t be worth it.

When comparing season 3 to season 1 (the two episodes I’ve seen), I do miss the social-class commentary that’s more possible in a high school setting. Also, the first season has the added strength of showing us a recently transformed Veronica. I do think it’s a brilliant move to have started the series after the events that changed her life: that way the contrast between current-Veronica and flashback-Veronica is all the more dramatic.

So, in conclusion, I’ll be watching the rest of season 3, but I’m actually more excited to catch up on what I’ve missed in seasons 1 and 2.

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