Televisionary: "Rob Thomas is a Whore" and Other Things I'll Miss About "Veronica Mars"
...writers Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero managed to reset the clock on Veronica Mars, returning us to several situations and storylines that defined the series in its freshman season: the feud between the Mars and Kane clans, Veronica being a social pariah, Keith losing the position of sheriff all over again thanks to Jake Kane, another idiot takes over as sheriff, etc. Hell, even Lily and Duncan Kane showed up, even if it was only as gigantic paintings in Jake Kane's palatial mansion.
There was definitely a cyclical feeling to the ending of "The Bitch is Back," as Keith sacrifices everything--the election campaign, his job, his sterling reputation--in order to save his beloved Veronica, though his intervention was ultimately unnecessary, which made his downfall all the more tragic. At the heart of this series has always been a compelling and extraordinary relationship between a father and daughter: because of her shame and embarrassment at the non-sex sex tape, Veronica is unable to tell Keith why she broke into Jake Kane's house and stole the hard drive; because of his love for his daughter, Keith does everything--including break the law--to save her. Has a television parent-child relationship ever been this rich and complex?
The ending, in which Veronica sees that Keith is being charged with tampering with evidence and then goes and votes for her dad in the voting booth (even though he's doomed to fail), was a beautiful crystallization about everything Veronica Mars has stood for: hope in the face of adversity, despite all proof that truth and justice don't necessarily exist in a noir-styled town as corrupt as Neptune. No matter how much good Keith and Veronica do in their roles as private investigators (or in Keith's case as sheriff), they'll never truly fit in in Neptune society; they're rebels, outcasts, forever removed from the '09-ers and tainted by the fact that they don't live in that posh zip code. If that's not the perfect ending to a series about class warfare, I don't know what is; it was poignant and full of promise for a fourth season at the same time. Pity then that we won't get to see (whether that's Veronica as an FBI agent or a college student) what would have come next. see all posts here re I just don't like that actress I guess. I like kristen bell much better. Veronica Mars was always about a teenage girl learning just how little the world wanted to do with her and biting back. The two shows had a high school milieu and a strong female protagonist in common, but not a whole lot else. And as the show entered its second season, creating a deeply tangled and complex mystery and then unraveling it rather coincidentally, it was easy to see people turning on it for not matching that first year.
Me, I actually liked the second season a little better. But that's no matter now. The show got its third and fourth and fifth chances this year and squandered them all. Perhaps it was just one of those shows the audience avoids, perhaps because it doesn't know what's good for it.