The Ottery
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The CW Cancels Veronica Mars: Boo! Hiss!

May 17th, 2007

Today’s bad news isn’t exactly a surprise, given the new network’s treatment of our favorite teen sleuth all this year, but it still stings. It was especially disappointing given the high quality of this week’s episode—high quality achieved despite the CW’s mandate of stand-alone episodes without an overarching mystery connecting them.

“I Know What You’ll Do Next Summer” centered around a fellow Hearst College student named Apollo who had, with the help of his professor, written a memoir about his experience as a child soldier in Uganda. When Veronica, while on assignment from a man who thinks he may be Apollo’s father, discovers that the memoir may be false, she’s troubled about what to do. Wallace points out to her how much good the memoir has done (just on campus, it has not only raised awareness of child soldiers but has recruited students to help out with the organization Invisible Children) and how exposing it as phony might undo that good.

Though Veronica obliquely references the recent James Frey fracas when she suggests that Oprah will be ready to tear Apollo apart on her show, the episode really has more resonance with the controversy surrounding Rigoberta Menchú’s autobiography a few years back. The same arguments were made for and against. Some people were disillusioned, asking how someone dishonest could deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Some people said it didn’t matter, because the events Menchú depicted had, indeed, happened to many, if not to her in the way she claimed. The nature of truth was debated.

Apollo’s story has a simpler resolution: he had intentionally set Veronica up to hear the “accusation” of falsity and the “breaking” of his movie deal so that he could be sure that the man claiming to be his father wasn’t just after money. Apollo really had been a child soldier, and the episode got to tack on a public service announcement for Invisible Children without any moral complications (though why on earth did they choose the actors who play Dick and Logan, of all characters the most self-centered, to deliver it?).

It was a satisfying episode, with important themes and hilarious moments, of which I’ll mention two. 1) After Veronica has just obtained her official P.I. license, a new client comes to see her at Mars Investigations. He is incredulous that she, a girl and a teenager, is Detective Mars. Veronica assures him of her qualifications, but then looks down and realizes that she is holding a pen in the shape of a cat with a long, fluffy tail that waves as she writes. That, precisely, is how I feel most days on the job. You try your best to seem professional and competent despite looking even younger than you are, but there’s always something that undermines all your best efforts. 2) Vinnie Van Lowe’s attempt to cultivate a respectable appearance. The haircut! The TV ad! Howlingly funny.

Waah! It was so good. And now there’s only the 2-hour season (and now series) finale left. I am glad that they didn’t pursue any option that would cut out the father-daughter interaction between Veronica and Keith or the great minor characters like Wallace, Mac, and Weevil. But . . . sigh.

Apparently Kristen Bell will be providing the voiceover for a new CW show based on the “Gossip Girl” teen book series. It sounds just about the quality level of “The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll.” Thanks, CW. You’ve just made me very grumpy.

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