Woe, it is over.
May. 26th, 2007 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhLast night I finally watched the last three episodes of Veronica Mars, which American Idol had been keeping me from. Not that I am not capable of watching two hours of television in one night, but when you meet up with friends to watch VM, only you aren't watching VM, and then you stay out late, there's only so much TV you can watch when you finally get home, and yeah, AI was my priority.
So, I was disappointed in the direction of the final five episodes of the series anyway, the abandonment of the overall arc in favor of MotW. And I was disappointed in the pacing of the two arcs of the first part of this season, though I was very much a fan of the new characters of the Dean and Piz and even Parker though I wish she'd been around more. The original third arc was going to be Mac-centric, so we got a lot of Mac in these last five eps, but with no arc she didn't have a whole lot to do here. The use of secondary characters has been a mess for two seasons, but at least in the second season absences were explained within the show instead of people just sort of not being around, and we really didn't need Logan in every episode, either.
I'd been listening to the podcasts done by the writers of VM this year and was struck with the disconnect between what they thought was interesting about the show and what most of the fans I knew loved. That, plus Rob Thomas's interview with Couch Baron on TWoP, made me very uneasy about this entire season, and somewhat distrustful about the skipping a few years to get to the FBI idea. I'm glad, really, that we're just done now, because I'm not sure they could have been able to make this work.
All that said, what I was disappointed by in the last eps was while I should have been pleased to return to the noir universe that was so carefully created in the first season, it was too fast, too pat, and too much like exactly the same noir universe we were in at episode one. There are many possible noir universes, but they don't all have to have Keith kicked out of office through the efforts of the fickle homeowner's association and Veronica ostracized by her classmates due to her rumored or filmed sexual exploits. Couldn't we have had a new noir set up? And while I know that this was never meant to be the last episode, I can't even imagine how they would have tied up all those loose ends in the "four years later at Quantico" scenario—especially Logan.
I've spoken many times about my ongoing frustration with the use of the secondary characters in this show. Logan was in every episode but I'm not sure why; Wallace and Weevil disappeared with no explanation for long stretches. If they'd been able to afford this large cast then many things would have felt more organic, like Veronica and Piz or Logan and Parker. With the loss of the arc, VM only had her personal life to really occupy her, and for all Rob Thomas's misplaced emphasis on the MotW, these last few weren't very good, particularly the vandalism one, which had too many ends wrapped up in a neat ball at the end (at the very least make the angry Muslim a US citizen, rather than getting rid of the problem thanks to the INS!).
So in the season that is in my mind, VM and Weevil really do ride off into the sunset together with Keith smiling fondly after them, some future universe in which VM is an awesome FBI agent and Weevil does something that I am just not cool enough to predict, but that involves plenty of turning VM's crank … if you know what I mean.
So, I was disappointed in the direction of the final five episodes of the series anyway, the abandonment of the overall arc in favor of MotW. And I was disappointed in the pacing of the two arcs of the first part of this season, though I was very much a fan of the new characters of the Dean and Piz and even Parker though I wish she'd been around more. The original third arc was going to be Mac-centric, so we got a lot of Mac in these last five eps, but with no arc she didn't have a whole lot to do here. The use of secondary characters has been a mess for two seasons, but at least in the second season absences were explained within the show instead of people just sort of not being around, and we really didn't need Logan in every episode, either.
I'd been listening to the podcasts done by the writers of VM this year and was struck with the disconnect between what they thought was interesting about the show and what most of the fans I knew loved. That, plus Rob Thomas's interview with Couch Baron on TWoP, made me very uneasy about this entire season, and somewhat distrustful about the skipping a few years to get to the FBI idea. I'm glad, really, that we're just done now, because I'm not sure they could have been able to make this work.
All that said, what I was disappointed by in the last eps was while I should have been pleased to return to the noir universe that was so carefully created in the first season, it was too fast, too pat, and too much like exactly the same noir universe we were in at episode one. There are many possible noir universes, but they don't all have to have Keith kicked out of office through the efforts of the fickle homeowner's association and Veronica ostracized by her classmates due to her rumored or filmed sexual exploits. Couldn't we have had a new noir set up? And while I know that this was never meant to be the last episode, I can't even imagine how they would have tied up all those loose ends in the "four years later at Quantico" scenario—especially Logan.
I've spoken many times about my ongoing frustration with the use of the secondary characters in this show. Logan was in every episode but I'm not sure why; Wallace and Weevil disappeared with no explanation for long stretches. If they'd been able to afford this large cast then many things would have felt more organic, like Veronica and Piz or Logan and Parker. With the loss of the arc, VM only had her personal life to really occupy her, and for all Rob Thomas's misplaced emphasis on the MotW, these last few weren't very good, particularly the vandalism one, which had too many ends wrapped up in a neat ball at the end (at the very least make the angry Muslim a US citizen, rather than getting rid of the problem thanks to the INS!).
So in the season that is in my mind, VM and Weevil really do ride off into the sunset together with Keith smiling fondly after them, some future universe in which VM is an awesome FBI agent and Weevil does something that I am just not cool enough to predict, but that involves plenty of turning VM's crank … if you know what I mean.
