Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON ONE, EPISODE TWENTY-THREE 'Leave It To Beaver' (2006)

By the end of this episode, Lily will find some peace...

"You wanna know something about Joan of Arc, Veronica? God didn't really talk to her. Oh, no, it's true. I saw it on TV, you know, on one of those historical forensic programs. They decided she had a brain turmor. Burned alive. What a waste. She thought her death meant something, but all it meant was she was crazy."

1) This is it--the big season one finale and what was at the time, in Rob Thomas' mind, the series finale. Once again, a lot happens and it might be hard to keep up with all the balls in the air--but knowing what I know about Season Two, I can't help but seeing the role Kyle Gallner's Cassidy has in the way the story develops indicates that Thomas knew where he wanted to go if he got that renewal, and knew what sort of a person Cassidy was...

2) Of course, other loose ends needed to be tied up, and the resolution of the one involving Veronica's paternity allows Thomas to give us a scene that speaks volumes of the Veronica/Keith relationship. The way Bell unhesitatingly signs away her right to pursue legal redress against the Kanes says more than fifteen pages of dialogue could about the strength of that familial bond.

If you just went through what Keith Mars did for his
daughter, you'd be on the floor unconscious, too...

3) I've spoken in praise of Kyle Secor's Jake Kane before, and I'll speak again--the scene where Jake finally breaks it to Duncan that in his mind he killed Lily shows a remarkable passion. It once again proves that Jake didn't start out the cardboard villain he ends up by Season Three.

4) Perhaps the cleverness of this script is how Thomas just piles up the case against Logan in such a way that it compels Veronica to locate the one piece of the puzzle she's missing...which leads to her and Duncan discovering that the murderer was not Logan, but someone one step removed from Logan.

5) There's something truly, wonderfully creepy about how, when the moment of revelation happens, Thomas has the tape paused at a moment where it looks as if Harry Hamlin's Aaron Echolls is looking right at the viewer, a smirk of contempt on his face.

6) Incidentally, this episode--to the best of my knowledge the only one that ran without the opening credits while it was on UPN--has its own theme song, 'Bad Boyfriend' by Garbage. This song plays at several key times in the show, specifically during the final act's confrontation between Veronica and Aaron (and Logan and Weevil)...and, like the Dandy Wharhols song, acts as a de facto Greek Chorus.

He may look inocuous, but Cassidy
will prove to be something
truly sinister next season....

7) I really like the whole horror movie vibe of the whole Veronica/Aaron battle. Director Michael Fields keeps to a blue-and-black color palette, and choereographs everything as if Bell unwittingly stepped into a slasher movie, complete with an old house in the middle of nowhere and a villian who seems capable of the Jason Teleport.

8) The only thing that freaks me out more than the way Aaron has trapped Veronica in a fridge and tries to burn her alive? The trap the villain gets Veronica in next season.

9) You wanna know how convincing an actor Enrico Colantoni is? Not only does this balding, short and goofy looking man convincingly engage in a vicious fight with the larger and more physically fit Harry Hamlin which manages to wreck and entire backyard, he also walks literally through fire to save his daughter and crack wise as he's being sent to the hospital without us once rolling our eyes.

10) Now given that Thomas had not expected the show to be renewed (it may still hold the record as the lowest-rated drama to be renewed for a second season, and was the only new UPN show to survive into the 2006 Season), he expertly wraps up everything quickly. And while the resolution of the Lianne Mars storyline is prime hardboiled fiction, the true wonder is the final bit of magic realism that has Veronica unwittingly witnessing Lily's passing on to the afterlife. It's an ambiguous ending, but a magnificent one.

Overall...an excellent wrap-up of Season One that would have provided the few fans who watched it that first year a satisfying conclusion...if only UPN didn't have other plans for the show.

Next time we begin the Second Season--the last one before UPN is liquidated and becomes part of the CW--and talk a bit about why there really was a second season.

Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON ONE, EPISODE SIXTEEN 'Betty And Veronica' (2005)

Don't misconstrue this moment--this plot thread
reminds you that we're in a film noir world...

"Why are you following me?"

"You say following, I say taking a walk with a friend."

1) We pick up where we left off--and there's an interesting reversal of dynamics here. Whereas the relationship between Veronica and her father is equal-but-separate, with the father keeping the upper hand, the relationship between her and Corrine Bohrer's Lianne is much different. Here, Veronica is the paternal one, having to comfort and manage this mess that is her mom.

2) Even though Duane Daniels' Vice Principal Clemmons has been sliding around the edges of the series, he begins to take a new level of prominence here, acting as the catalyst (and client) for this episode's A plot. Daniels is a very low-key actor and, as he starts gaining more screen time (and a promotion), his dry, deadpan delivery becomes more and more of an asset.

Bizzaro Neptune calls for Bizzaro Veronica....

3) And speaking of that A Plot--as you might be able to tell from the title, this is a light hearted break before we enter Act Three of this Season and a wide swath of Dark Times Ahead.

4) Yep...nothing is as iconic a Veronica Mars moment as watching Kristen Bell making dinner while listening to the interrogation tapes from the Lily Kane investigation on her Walkman....

5) ...and there's nothing that speaks volumes more about the Veronica/Wallace dynamic than his discovery that she's making the Spirit Boxes his finds in his locker...because, as she puts it 'he doesn't' find school pride corny.

6) You know, as much as I like Kyle Secor's Jake Kane at this point, Lisa Thornhill never rises above Soap Opera Villian with Celeste. Her scenes, both in flashback and in the present, always ring broadly false, and disrupts the flow of the episodes she's in.

Veronica Mars...Now with Snickerdoodles!

7) I gotta give Alona Tal a lot of props here. She infuses Meg with a genuine desire to keep her relationship with Veronica even as Veronica tries to will it to wither--and it's Tal's brightness and natural likability that makes the moment where she is able to repair that rift between then work. She's a lot of fun, and I wish they kept her around past the middle of Season Two.

8) You know...I rather like the whole 'Bizzaro Neptune' aspect of Veronica's brief foray into rival school Pan--and the fact that she has this great respect for what could be considered Wallace's opposite number, Kyle Searles' Richie, to the point where she tells him how special he is, is one of the tiny touches that makes this whole comedic A Plot more than incidental.

9) The final scene has two phases...in the first phase, we learn how Veronica has put Lianne into rehab, sacrificing her college fund to do so, which sounds like a hopeful resolution until we realize that this is a hardboiled detective series at its core, and things tend to end badly. In the second phase, we learn something about Abel Koontz that will propel us into Act Three.

10) Speaking of which--this is officially the end of the Second Act of Season One. You'll find that more and more of the shows eschew the A Plot structure to focus on the Lily Kane...and when the A Plot does show up again, they tend to be...pretty stinky. You've been warned.

Overall...a pretty cool mix of lighthearted goofy A Plot and some pretty dour overarc stuff. There's a lot of fun stuff, both plotwise and performance wise, and it's a fitting close to the second act of this season.

Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON ONE, EPISODE SIX 'Return of The Kane' (2004)

"Yeah, and I bet this is how Jeb Bush did it, too..."

"Arrest records. Evidence Log. Autopsy Report. How many times do I have to look at this stuff? Until it starts to make sense."
 

1) Even before the credits, alot gets done--we finally get introduced to the Echols parents, played by real life celebrity couple Harry Hamlin and Lisa 'Fish Lips' Rinna; we see the storyline involving Jake Kane's pushing Duncan to be more involved progressed; we establish a little more about Wallace in setting up the central mystery for this episode; we are introduced to Abel Koontz (played by the highly underrated Christian Clemenson), the supposed killer of Lily; and we get Kristen Bell making sundaes. Okay, so that last part is only of interest to me, but still...it's obvious that Thomas--who wrote the story for scripter Phil Klemmer--is getting ready to start kicking things into high gear.

2) Oh, and one more thing...Amanda Seyfried pops up for the first time as a vision/guiding spirit, helping her piece together the mystery of her own murder. Supposedly, Seyfriend was only to appear in a small number of episodes, but Thomas liked the energy she brought to the set so much, he kept adding her to other stories...and boy, does the ghoulish chemistry between Veronica and Lily just supercharges every scene they're in together.

3) I'm still not sure why the whole 'Bum Fights' angle gets dragged into this story; it really doesn't interact much with the actual 'student election/Pirate Points' main spine...yes, it does help define the sort of home life Logan suffers through, but it could just as easily have been dropped into a dozen other stories.

Jane Lynch..torturing kids
since 2004...

4) Wow, Jane Lynch was being a bitch to high schoolers loooooooong before Glee, you Gleeks.

5) You really have to wonder if the whole storyline revolving around the school election was a reaction to the whole 'hanging chad' situation--which still rubbed some people the wrong way four years later.

6) While this may not look like a significant introduction, Madison Sinclair, played to Heather-y perfection by Amanda Noret makes an impression...and becomes a very significant thorn in Veronica's side as this season and next continues...

7) There's a definite parallel between Kyle Secor's Jake Kane who (at least at this point) is a well-rounded character who actively wants what's best for his son, and Hamlin's Aaron Echolls, whose only thoughts are of himself. This will play out as we go deep into Season One.

As we'll learn as we get deeper into season one, all families
are unhappy in their own way...and the Echolls family's
unhappiness is a dark and perverse one...

8) The sequence that begins with Logan picked out a belt from a large closet full of them and ends with Lisa Rinna sitting alone with an enigmatic look on her face, drinking while the sounds of a beating reverberate through the house, is powerful film noir manque. Rinna has never been a great actress, but she does have moments of greatness...this one, where she is a modern Sphinx, her reaction to the violence elsewhere unreadable, is one of those moments of greatness.

9) The whole throughline involving Wanda and Veronica may seem a little deux ex machina...but I do think it serves to shore up the film noir cred of the series--namely, that anybody can betray our heroine, and anybody can prove to be an ally.

10) The stinger, which sort of brings the Abel Koontz situation to the fore for future episode, works here--it's a cliffhanger-without-being-a-cliffhanger, driving us to follow on to next week.

Overall....this is a collection of great moments that maybe shouldn't be hanging out together, but is still a great lil' forty-some-odd minutes thanks to a lot of set-up and advancement of individual story arcs.

Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON ONE, EPISODE FOUR 'The Wrath Of Con' (2004)

You would think this would be right up my alley, but...meh...

"So I was going through my stuff and I found this."
"What is it?"
"It's not a violin recital."

1) Now that the bulk of Thomas' pieces are in place (but not all; we've got Mac just around the corner), he can now start filling them in--starting with Lilly. The teaser features the longest flashback featuring Veronica and Lilly to date, soldifying their friendship prior to the murder and laying the groundwork for The Big Surprise down the road.

While Amanda Seyfried's Lilly is a presence throughout
the season, here is where she is brought ot life.

2) What is impressive overall about this episode--especially in this, the era of 'Just Go With It'--is how the script by Diane Ruggerio manages to effortlessly multitask. While the B Plot ostensively fleshes out Lilly, making her more human and a more vital presence (this show understands one of the tenants of film noir...namely, that more often than not, the victim is a bigger star than the killer), it also maneuvers Logan Ecchols into closer proximity with Veronica so that his character arc can begin its slow burn.

3) I'm not a big fan of the A Plot, which seems to have been built around the idea that Kristen Bell would look hot in Otaku gear (For the record...she's always hot, but she's hotter in a lot of other outfits throughout the season).

4) And the main reason the A Plot just Doesn't. Work? Adam Wylie's Grant and Robert Baker's Liam are terrible villains, and they simply don't give Bell anything to work against. You never feel for a second that these two could outwit a border collie, let alone the talented Ms. Mars.

And THESE Doofuses are supposed to give Veronica
a run for her money?  Ummmmm.....no.

5) And here in this episode, we start to see the Cool Boyfriend Facade of Troy start to crack--and learn more about how smart Keith Mars is, when he slips in the news that he foiled the boy's plans for the homecoming dance. The fact that Colantoni doesn't miss a beat, doesn't change his tone but still puts a steel shutter on his hotel reservations is masterful.

6) I have to assume that the reason this is reportedly Kristen Bell's favorite episode is because of the B Plot....

7) The whole reason behind the scams that drives the A Plot is revealed off camera...which is a very rare misstep when it comes to these done-in-one mysteries. It's almost as if Ruggerio forgot there needed to be some sort of motivation behind Grant's and Laim's scheming.

8) I haven't brought Kyle Secor's Jake Kane up yet. It's to Secor's credit that he takes what could have been a one-dimensional ogre of a man and made him much more complex. Look at all the different emotions he goes through during the dedication of the Lily Kane Memorial Fountain, and conveys them just through changes in expression. It's pretty powerful stuff.

9) The same cannot be said for Lisa Thornhill's Celeste Kane. This woman is so unimaginative in her evilness she needs a mustache to twirl.

10) I mentioned Keith Mars' misfortune when it comes to romantic storylines; here is the first of Wallace's disastrous romances. A big portion of this lies with Kyla Pratt's Georgia, who literally has no personality save for a propensity for getting into trouble. Granted, her lack of excitment pales next to the horrific disaster of Tessa Thompson's Jackie Cook, but it's still pretty sad.

Overall...one of these episodes which is saved wholely by its B Plot; there is so much done with regards to the supporting cast and their relation to each other that it more than makes up for the lameness that is the main mystery.