Wednesday, June 28, 2006
we definitely like Veronica Mars
We finished up Veronica Mars in Georgia, on those nights in which we stayed at my in-laws' empty house. It does get better as it goes along. Even with my earlier misgivings, I already found myself wanting to watch it as much as possible during the first third. As the show progresses, and things start to fall into place, and this compulsion grows ever greater. The desire to see what happens became so overpowering that my wife watched the final eigth episodes without me, while I was down at my folks' place and she was alone in Calhoun. She then rewatched those episodes with me over the subsequent weekend. We's got hooked, for sure, which is especially surprising with the wife, since she was initially far more skeptical than I.
Anyway, it is a genuinely great show, eventually. There are those two or three outright bad episodes early on, but once they hit the homestretch they were nailing pretty much everything. And the resolutions to the various mysteries were all satisfying and well-done. They did a particularly good job with the Lilly Kane murder; the murderer wasn't one of the more obvious candidates, but it still wasn't entirely a surprise, and remained faithful to the character. And my greatest complaint from before is nullified, as Kristin Bell became less and less annoying as the show progressed. I don't know if I finally accepted her performance for what it was, or if she became more comfortable and thus believable over time, but my reservations about her character and performance eased away as we worked through the season. They seemed to cut back on the narration some after those first several episodes, and so that probably had something to do with it. But so, yes, overall, a great show, and we can't wait for season two to come out.
Oh, and to reevaluate previous comparisons: I can't really call it any worse than Gilmore Girls or Lost. I'll say this: when it comes to watching a random single episode of a show that's entertaining and features actors and characters I enjoy (and would like to meet both hypothetically and in the real world), Gilmore gets the nod. When it comes to a show with a highly engrossing central mystery and various surprising twists and turns, I'd take Lost. When it comes to combining the two, with an ever-so-slight drop-off in both aspects, I'd take Mars.
We finished up Veronica Mars in Georgia, on those nights in which we stayed at my in-laws' empty house. It does get better as it goes along. Even with my earlier misgivings, I already found myself wanting to watch it as much as possible during the first third. As the show progresses, and things start to fall into place, and this compulsion grows ever greater. The desire to see what happens became so overpowering that my wife watched the final eigth episodes without me, while I was down at my folks' place and she was alone in Calhoun. She then rewatched those episodes with me over the subsequent weekend. We's got hooked, for sure, which is especially surprising with the wife, since she was initially far more skeptical than I.
Anyway, it is a genuinely great show, eventually. There are those two or three outright bad episodes early on, but once they hit the homestretch they were nailing pretty much everything. And the resolutions to the various mysteries were all satisfying and well-done. They did a particularly good job with the Lilly Kane murder; the murderer wasn't one of the more obvious candidates, but it still wasn't entirely a surprise, and remained faithful to the character. And my greatest complaint from before is nullified, as Kristin Bell became less and less annoying as the show progressed. I don't know if I finally accepted her performance for what it was, or if she became more comfortable and thus believable over time, but my reservations about her character and performance eased away as we worked through the season. They seemed to cut back on the narration some after those first several episodes, and so that probably had something to do with it. But so, yes, overall, a great show, and we can't wait for season two to come out.
Oh, and to reevaluate previous comparisons: I can't really call it any worse than Gilmore Girls or Lost. I'll say this: when it comes to watching a random single episode of a show that's entertaining and features actors and characters I enjoy (and would like to meet both hypothetically and in the real world), Gilmore gets the nod. When it comes to a show with a highly engrossing central mystery and various surprising twists and turns, I'd take Lost. When it comes to combining the two, with an ever-so-slight drop-off in both aspects, I'd take Mars.
