Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON TWO, EPISODE SEVEN 'Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner' (2005)

"Duncan, I know Wallace Fennel...and you are no Wallace
Fennel."

" A ten year-old boy who voluntarily washes his hands, who enjoys quiet time, and does what he's told with a smile. If he doesn't pick his nose soon, I'm looking for wires."

1) While there is some lip service given to there being a done-in-one plot, this is really Diane Ruggiero setting up a whole slew of threads for the second act of this season’s mystery.  And it’s to her credit that some of these thread set ups are very, very subtle.

2) And that done-in-one is a Trojan Horse that advances Duncan’s subplot while foreshadowing the reintroduction of Alona Tal’s Meg, and her ultimate role as this season’s Lilly Kane stand-in.  And, quite frankly, the final reveal is truly shocking.

3) This may be the only time that Michael Muhney’s Sheriff Lamb acts like a human being.  After a healthy dollop of comic relief, Lamb actually acts like a sheriff when confronted with what Veronica and Duncan discover.  It’s a rare moment that gives this otherwise one dimensional character a little nuance.

4) While I understand that at this phase of the Kendall Casablancas’ character arc, she’s serving as the lead up to the Fitzpatrick subplot (more on this in later episodes), but too much is spent on her striving to stay a woman of leisure in light of her husband’s disappearance.  Now maybe some of this is my feeling that a little Charisma Carpenter goes a long way, but I could really do without her taking up so much running time.  On top of that, there’s that weird little grace note that seems designed to throw doubt into the Veronica/Duncan storyline that I don’t recall going anywhere.

This scene is the one that almost makes
it worthwhile.

5) Boy, Krysten Ritter is a touch broad at this phase in her career.  I gather that Gia is supposed to be a spoiled rich girl trying to hard to fit in and become part of the Cool Clique, but her forced cherriness and cluelessness seems too forced.  Even though she gets much, much better in the years following her one year tenure here but at this moment...Yikes!

6) I am still amazed at how subtle some of the clues as to the solution of the season mystery is.  There’s a single line of dialogue from the person who turns out to be the villain, and its not until you’ve seen the mystery play out that you realize he’s trying to escape the scene of the crime.

7) It strikes me that there’s what I assume to be a conscious parallel between a scene with Steve Guttenberg’s Wally Goodman an his son and the scene in season one where Logan enters The Belt Room.  What it says about Goodman speaks volumes once we realize the skeleton in his closet.

8) This is the beginning of the Dr. Thomas Griffith subplot.  Maybe it’s because Rick Peters isn’t that great of an actor; maybe it’s because I know how this storyline goes nowhere...but it turns out to be really, really awful.

Not the picture I would draw of Kristen Bell, to be honest.

9) You know, I would not have known that was supposed to be Amanda Noret’s Madison Sinclair at Gia’s pajama party landing zings against Veronica if it wasn't for the closing credits.  Given how massive an influence Madison has in Veronica Mars mythology (so much so that the movie goes out of its way to give us a scene of Veronica slugging her), making her appearance in this episode so generic is puzzling.

10) In this episode, there is an attempt to make Duncan into a Wallace Manque....and Teddy Dunn thoroughly fails to live up to the task.  His lameness in Watsoning Veronica only makes one yearn for Percy Daggs all the more.

Overall...the final third almost makes up for the scattershot nature of the rest of the episode, as the episode tries too much to cover all its bases.

Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON TWO, EPISODE THREE 'Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang' (2005)



"How do you get along without actual, you know, talent,Ms. Carpenter?"


"Somewhere that million chimps with their million typewriters must've finally written King Lear, because Sheriff Lamb is actually right about something. I have seen this man before."

　

1) As mentioned earlier, the mini-mysteries (in this case, Cassidy hiring Veronica to catch Charisma Carpenter's Kendall cheating) end up serving the overarc while giving us a satisfying done-in-one puzzle for us fans. Of course, we're still early enough in the season that some of the additions to this overarc, like the man washed up ashore with Veronica's name in his palm, just add to the maze we're going to spend a year trying to transverse.

2) As terrific as this season is--and I really do feel it is the best of the three seasons this series lasted--there are a couple of really baffling dead ends and missteps...as we see early on with the first rumblings of what is going to be a really daft subplot involving the Fennels and the skeletons in their closet. Okay, it's just a little reaction of Alicia's when Keith asks her to come with him on a trip to Chicago right now, and a couple of appearances by a mysterious, vaguely menacing man, but trust me...soon we'll be up a cul de sac the series didn't need to go down.

3) The connection of our dead body to Aaron Echolls is actually sort of clever, as it gives us, the audience, a credible possible solution to the overarc tied in with last season's overarc. This ends up diverting us away from the real villain, who has shown his face several times already, and will show it a number of times before this season is over.

Everybody turns their back on Beaver...

4) This episode does feature the first one on one interaction between Duncan and Logan this season--and it is interesting how, even at this point, Jason Dohring is a little ahead of the game. The way he allows Logan all this anger at being abandoned--and then slips in the one thing that should unify these two friends--is very interesting. Pity that Logan is one of those characters that the writers don't seem to know what to do with, as he sort of drifts from ill-defined sub-plot to ill-defined sub plot for the first half of this season; he rapidly becomes the character the writers think is essential to the show, but have no idea what to do with...and it gets sort of worse next season.

5) I was never much of a Charisma Carpenter fan--thought she was kinda shrill and one-note in Buffy--but let's give her credit for one thing. When she needs to do a little comedic facial acting, like she does in her scene with Veronica in the gym, she's very, very good.

6) More reasons why I think Enrico Colantoni is an amazing actor--look at the moment when he discusses wanting to become Sheriff again...yes, he's joking during most of that, but he keeps that somewhat serious tone and face from when he tells Alicia, 'Yes. Part of me likes being that guy.' It makes it very clear how important this opportunity is to him, even when he's making cracks about Veronica struggling to wrestle methheads into the cop car.

7) We've talked in the past about some of the really small done-in-one characters--Michael Kostroff's Mr. Pope is in maybe ten minutes of this episode spread out over the first two acts, and yet this actor infuses this teacher with a great deal of life and moral character. That he refuses Veronica's advice when it becomes obvious the Casablancas scam is about to go belly up speaks volumes for what kind of man he is...and that Kostroff sells it without going into hysterics is commendable.

8) Boy, that extended cameo by Courtney Taylor-Taylor, lead singer of the Dandy Warhols, was a bit...random, wasn't it?

Richard Casablancas...the lame-ass you get when you can't
get Jake Kane....

9) Here's why David Starzyk's Richard Casablanacas never quite works--unlike Jake Kane, Richard gets maybe four scenes over two episodes, then disappears in a rush when Cassidy reveals that Kendall has been cheating. Granted, the whole point of introducing Richard is to drive home Cassidy's feelings of neglect, but there needed to be more life in the elder Casablancas for this to work.

10) And we end with Veronica making the connection we made--that if the dead man on the beach was a stunt coordinator connected with Aaron Echolls, he probably was hired to cause the bus crash to kill her. And the brilliance of this is that it strengthen what the show has led the audience to believe...which allows their misdirection to continue further beyond this episode.

Overall...while this episode features a couple of the messy bits that will detract from this season as a whole (I'm not even mentioning the continued wince-itude that is Tessa Thompson), there are enough good bits that make this watchable.

Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON TWO, EPISODE ONE 'Normal Is The Watchword' (2005)...Plus some words on how we got here...

The biggest surprise about Veronica's lovelife is that it doesn't
include Duncan or Logan...no, wait....

"This is Neptune. Nothing happens accidentally."

To the surprise of everybody--including series creator Rob Thomas--Veronica Mars was renewed. At the time, it was the lowest-rated drama series to ever be picked up for a second season, and the only new show on UPN's 2004 schedule to be on its 2005 schedule. Part of the reasoning was because the show had garnered some celebrity fans. In an article in Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King of all people praised the show as being 'Nancy Drew meets Philip Marlowe.' Kevin Smith posted on his blog called it the best show on television, and Joss Whedon actually expressed envy over how well-crafted the season finale was. This resulted in both Smith and Whedon taking small parts in Season Two.

But I have to think somebody at Viacom, which owned both UPN and CBS, took a shine to the show. During the summer, key episodes of the first season were presented on CBS during prime-time on Friday. And a new advertising push spurred on by these celebrity endorsements preceded the show's return in late September of 2005. It's obvious that there was a desire for this show to succeed.

Which leads us to....

1) Well, it's the second year and even though Thomas and company decide to try to fool us into thinking we're back in the 'done-in-one-mini-mysteries' structure at first, it doesn't mean that things haven't been shifted around. And it's clever how Thomas is able to hold off some of the major revelations--especially the ones about the way the Veronica-Duncan-Logan-Meg rectangle has shifted--until late in the episode.

2) Now knowing he has another full season, Thomas chooses to make a few changes--primarily ratcheting up the '09er/PCHer tension through one of the loose ends in last season's finale. It allows for him to comment on then-current concerns, like the introduction of metal detectors in inner-city schools, without venturing out of Neptune proper.

3) We also get a couple of new additions to the cast. Along with Ryan Hansen and Kyle Gallner's Casablancas brothers being fully promoted to regulars (and we'll see the genius of that as we go along) and the addition of Charisma Carpenter, fresh from Angel, as Kendall Casablancas, Dick and Cassidy' stepmom, we get Steve Guttenberg's Woody Goodman. Of course, the brillance of introducing Guttenberg up front as a recurring character is that we're automatically assuming he's this season's Aaron Ecchols, a bad guy who will somehow be involved in the overarc. As we'll learn....yes and no.

There are ways to introduce Whedonverse actresses to
bolster ratings, and there are ways....

4) On the other hand...the presence of Goodman also introduces a puzzling new aspect to Neptune--namely that it's a large enough market for it to support an MLB team, The Sharks. This is really peculiar given how close Neptune has been established as being to San Diego, and how Keith Mars was depicted as a Padres fan (there was even a subplot in one episode last season that had Veronica saving up to send her dad to Padres Fantasy Camp). This element really adds nothing to the season's overarc, and it simply muddies the continuity between the two.

5) Okay, I lied...the Sharks angle does give Thomas an excuse to introduce the Cooks, Jeffrey D. Sam's Terrance and his daughter, Tessa Thompson's Jackie. I suspect that Jackie was introduced to give Wallace a concrete love interest this season, but as we'll learn. this character is so badly written that we'll wish the Cooks weren't bolted onto this season's overarc so awkwardly. but then....

6) As we'll see, the series doesn't quite know what to do with Wallace this season. While he's a major portion of this episode, once more acting as Watson to Veronica's Holmes, his role gets reduced quite rapidly to the point where he literally drops out of sight for the middle portion of the season. It's a criminal underuse of Percy Daggs.

7) I have to admit...when we get the story about how Veronica and Duncan got back together, I love that we never find out what was written inside the birthday fortune cookie. Thomas is confident enough in the audience that has followed this show to this moment to know they will come up with the right answer to that question.

8) I appreciate that Thomas doesn't let Veronica and Weevil stay buddy-buddy like they were in Season One...but that the relationship and the respect hasn't degraded to the point where they're not there for each other. Yes, the words in their scene get heated (and sets up one of the sub-plot threads for this season), but in the end it is Weevil who offers Veronica a ride--not because he has to, but because he recognizes that she is one person he can count on.

Believe it or not, what precedes this shot is the biggest
suprise of this episode....

9) Of course, mention should be made of the sudden, blink-and-you-miss-it uncredited cameo by Amanda Seyfried as Lily, running out of the corner of Veronica's eye to lead her to Weevil. It's an indicator that the magic realism aspect of the series is not quite going away just yet...

10) And here's where Thomas pulls the rug out from under us...after all the indication that this season's mystery was going to involve the murder of a PCHer apparently at Logan's hand, we get the actual start of this season's overarc--the crash of the school bus and the death of all within. And it becomes apparent from the one quick, horrific shot of the path the bus took to its watery grave that what Thomas has in mind is a lot more grandiose than what he's been letting us in on.

Overall...if we ignore how some of these plot threads sour, this is an excellent start to the second season, climaxing in that one moment of magnificent misdirection that makes it clear that things are going to get darker...maybe even darker than they were last season.

Ten Statements About....THE EXPENDABLES (2010)

This version of The Village People may need work...

1) Make no bones about it--this is a very stupid, aggressively loud movie with a strong melodramatic vein running right through it. But Stallone doesn't pretend to have higher pretensions, and while he never goes so far as to wink at the camera, he never makes apologies for it. It tells you what it does, does it, and then thanks you for allowing it to do it.

2) That being said....there's a strange resonance between this film and his last Rambo picture. Once again, Stallone's character thinks himself past his prime but goes into battle to rescue a woman who impressed him with her actions.

3) Eric Roberts gives a clinic on how to play a rogue CIA agent--his James Monroe is what Jason Patric's Max dreams of being in The Losers.

My new hero....

4) I wish I had named a character Hale Ceasar before that sobriquet was placed on Terry Crews' character.

5) The script knows damn well what we're here for, and makes sure that every one of the action stars in the film (save for Mickey Rourke, who's here mainly to be a tattooing Yoda, Bruce Willis and the thoroughly gratutious Arnold Schwarzeneggar, who's there only so Stallone can make a joke about him wanting to be President) gets at least one fight scene to shine in. Even villainous characters like Steve Austen gets a scene where he dominates over one of the other main characters.

 6) There's a definite sense of passing the torch between Stallone and Jason Statham, who no one should ever, ever, ever mess with.

And you're in this movie why, exactly?

7) About Statham--he has a sub-plot involving a girlfriend (played by a barely-there Charisma Carpenter) that really adds nothing. He's pretty much the only character where we get a glimpse into his private life, but what we get is certainly a let down.

8) The CGI blood and fire just doesn't work. It looks fake, and draws attention to the fakeness of the choreography. The sameness to the splatter patterns is very, very noticeable. Hell--it totally blunts the denouement of the fight scene between Randy Couture and Steve Austin....and speaking of which....

9) I do like how Stallone knows there are certain match-ups we just have to see, like Couture vs. Austin, and gives them to us gleefully.

10) Jet Li may secretly be harboring a talent for being a comedian...because his justification for why he needs a larger cut of the take is hilarious. Plus, he thoroughly kicks Dolph Lungren's ass in what is a highlight of the film.

In short--it does what it says on the tin, and does so well. The trailers were a mish-mosh of action stuff, with the oddest being the ones for Buried, which does in a few seconds what The Last Exorcist trailer fails to do in several minutes, and The Green Hornet, which fails precisely because Seth Rogan is incapable of delivering a line without sounding like he's in a comedy. I know he's honestly excited to be in this movie, but every time in the trailer he opens his mouth the mood the trailer is trying to convey dies.