stagmania

Regarding Veronica’s characterization, it was noticeably different this season. No one is asking for sweetness and light or even for her to lose her edge. But to see her 15 years after the show began, even worse off than when we met her - when she was freshly recovering from rape, parental abandonment and the murder of her best friend - is depressing and not a little baffling. Let’s review. Veronica in this season is a horrible partner to Logan - she derides him for going to therapy and refuses to go herself, tries to force him to go backwards in his anger management, cruelly throws his proposal in his face and accuses him of manipulating her, entertains the possibility of cheating on him for half the season, and then agrees to marry him in a reactionary moment when she clearly isn’t actually ready, as evidenced by a simple text message causing her to immediately assume he’s jilting her. She still doesn’t trust him after all this time. Veronica in this season is an absent daughter to Keith. She’s so self-absorbed and wrapped up in her own self-inflicted drama that she doesn’t even notice his constant memory lapses. The most observant woman in the world doesn’t realize that something is very wrong with her beloved father until he finally fesses up. Veronica in this season is a shitty friend to Wallace. She displays clear distaste for his domestic life, expresses little interest in his child or his wife and can’t even be bothered to pay attention and be engaged in the little time she spends with him. Veronica in this season is straight up awful to Weevil. She treats him like dirt under her shoe, like he’s not the guy who showed up time and again to save her ass. She forgets everything she ever knew about his circumstances and how that limits his choices and places blame on judgment on him that he doesn’t deserve. This is just not my Veronica Mars, and nothing in the writing explains this level of cynicism and hardness from her that would cause her to be this way to her loved ones. Why has she regressed when she’s spent the intervening years relatively stable and happy? Regardless, I’m just not interested in this version of the character, and it’s clear with Logan’s death that they intend to make her even colder and less connected to her friends and family. I preferred the Veronica who was hard on the outside, marshmallow on the inside. They seem to want her to have a stone heart.

I questioned this for a moment before I remembered that Veronica changed schools, moved to the opposite end of the country, got nine years of distance and built a whole new life only to ...start dating Piz again, and then dump him for Logan. LOL that woman is stuck in a loop and seems to prefer slightly different variations of what she already knows.

This is a feeling I believe is created by fandom, but it's not actually visible on the show. I've been susceptible to that feeling myself, but when I go back and rewatch old episodes I'm surprised to see that Logan isn't actually on screen nearly as much as I remember. There are many episodes he doesn't appear in, and often his appearances are limited to one or two scenes, while Veronica is in every frame of the show. It's just that he's so memorable and he leaves a big impression even with limited screen time. Personally, I think Veronica working cases with the Neptune backdrop, with Logan away for work and only appearing in a few episodes per season, would have worked fine and allowed for other characters to have real storylines. Rob Thomas's primary objection to this seems to be that he wants to write Veronica having flings with a bunch of randoms.

Mary Louise was trying to take her children. Do you really think Celeste should have been polite about it?

It wasn’t required, it was a choice. The mystery was overcomplicated and largely boring and they easily could have cut some of those new characters to give old favorites a real story. But they’re not interested in them anymore.

“I fear that leaning into the high school soap that the show started out as is a losing proposition, that it will start feeling nostalgic rather than vital. If Kristen [Bell] and I want to make more of these Veronica Mars mysteries, I think it’s going to survive best as a true mystery show with a badass PI at the center of it, and I think that works better if the PI doesn’t have a boyfriend.” More here. It’s like Rob Thomas is trying to insult all the fans of the original show. Interviews today are indeed making it clear that it’s not just about moving on from Logan and their love story - he and Bell intend to leave the setting and the rest of the cast behind to do something new under the Veronica Mars moniker.

Jason Dohring recorded this message to the fans. Damn, he seems upset.

Dick is unfortunately the one side character they're likely to never drop, because Ryan Hansen is Kristen Bell's real life BFF.

Yes, obviously that's true. My point is that they never figured out what role they wanted her to play in the narrative, and thus never clearly defined her motives, and that left everything about her story pretty muddled and lacking any clarity about her purpose in the show. Exactly. Why did Mary Louise come there? Was her original intention truly just to help? Was there any point in time when she was genuinely on Celeste's side or was she always out to get her? Was she trying to prove her son was murdered? Did she want custody of her grandchildren to fill the void now that both her sons were gone? Did she intend to antagonize the entire Monterrey 5 because she suspected they murdered her son, or is she just an extremely unpleasant passive aggressive nightmare who verbally attacks everyone she meets? Did she actually care about being a grandmother to Ziggy, or did she just want to get at Jane? If she truly thought there was foul play involved in Perry's death, why did she drop that entirely to go after Celeste in family court instead? We'll never know because none of her behavior adds up. Her character was just a chaos agent, running all over town being awful often for no discernible reason and with no real plan. I think if the writers had decided early on whether she was an antagonist or another lead we were supposed to empathize with, they could have defined all of this a lot better. Yes, it was clearly an accident that she hit him- he stepped in front of her swing, which was aimed for the next set of shelves. If she had continued hitting him after that, it would have been something else entirely, but she didn't.

I was just remembering that this wasn't the first time Logan tried to push her to deal with her issues - recall that in season 3, the original reason they broke up was that Veronica couldn't get past her inability to trust and stop being reckless and Logan recognized how unhealthy it was. So he made the choice to end their romantic relationship and offer his continued support as her friend. Of course, they undid that within a couple episodes and had Logan pull a "we were on a break" because Veronica must always be the wronged party, but that's beside the point. Logan being open to changing and bettering himself for Veronica (and then eventually for himself) has always been part of their relationship story, as has her refusal to return the favor. I think that kitchen sex scene was less about how turned on she gets by angry Logan (though clearly she does) and more about her resenting that he is able to grow and change in a way she can't and wanting to punish him for that. I really would have liked a season that was committed to exploring that, and they could have done it even within the framework of still killing him off and making his death a more central feature of the season.

I think their intention was to completely kill him off, but perhaps they left themselves a bit of wiggle room to give them space if the fan reaction was really bad? Otherwise I don't see why they would have left his death even a tiny bit in doubt. I don't really get what on earth they were trying to do with the Matty character. The whole season (until the end) seemed to be telling us that Veronica is not a functioning adult because of her past traumas and inability to move on, yet they are presenting Matty following in her footsteps as a positive thing. The themes in the writing are just all over the place.

On your first point, that move away from cases that are personally connected to Veronica seems quite intentional. They’re trying to leave Neptune behind. But I agree with you that the mystery is not very compelling without that connection. On Veronica/Logan, I think your characterization of their relationship is a little unfair. She laughed and had fun with Logan - we saw it in this very season. Their shared sense of humor and matching quick wits has always been a feature of their relationship. They’re both angsty, traumatized people but they’ve brought each other joy along with the sexual tension and drama over the years. I just don’t at all agree with the idea that pursuing healing and healthier behaviors makes you boring, and I don’t think that’s really what the show was trying to say, either - they were making the point that Veronica is kind of toxic and a bad partner because she refuses to deal with her shit. Of course, they stepped all over their own thesis with the ending, so I’m not surprised the message is muddled.

LOL tell that to the worst and yet most nominated season ever of Game of Thrones. Still working through my disappointment. We didn't even get a big Mary Louise meltdown in the end! If we were going to go full family court melodrama and leave behind all notions of realism, we deserved to see her really lose her shit. They couldn't seem to decide all season if they wanted Mary Louise to be a true villain or a sympathetic character and that indecisiveness really came through in the writing.

We should give Laura Dern her Emmy and then all politely pretend this season never happened.

Welp, that was pretty damn underwhelming. This season was a whole lot of build up to very little. But hey, the music was great.

This seems like a classic case of the creator not understanding the strengths of his own creation. It’s so bizarre to me - he created this world and these characters that people love so much! Why bother bringing it back if he’s not interested in it anymore? This is a much more interesting idea than what they actually did, and would have given his death the narrative weight it deserved and created an avenue for Veronica to really explore her regrets and self-destructive choices. Instead, his death was treated like a tack on to the end of the season and an excuse to reboot the show with a Veronica defined by her isolation and “toughness.” Well said. The end of the season undermined the entire arc they seemed to be laying out about Veronica having agency in her life and refusing to use it to break away from her victimization. Now she’s just a victim again, her cynicism justified by external circumstances, giving her more excuses not to grow.

The Hollywood Reporter ran a piece today that includes this: “If Veronica Mars continues — Thomas is open to the idea, though Hulu hasn't signaled one way or the other yet — it could take on something of an anthology feel with Veronica working cases in new locales (while also allowing for fleeting romantic interests, another staple of detective fiction). The time jump in this season's final minutes, plus whatever real time might pass between seasons, would give the writers license to put their lead character in other relationships, even if they'd be unlikely to match the intensity of her long-time love.” So I think this is it. Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell don’t actually want to do Veronica Mars with the whole universe that entails anymore - they want to do a sexy anthology mystery show about a P.I. on the road and in order to set that up, they needed Logan, and Veronica’s ties to Neptune, out of the way (thus Keith’s miraculous health 180). I hated this ending for a number of reasons, but the primary one is that it was so cheap and rushed. They weren’t ready to get married, the entire wedding thing came out of nowhere and was clearly just there to make Logan’s death maximally painful. And to do an instant cut to one year later with a playful music cue, completely undermining the tragedy to get your quirky heroine right back on the road with her obligations magically evaporated? Seriously, what the hell was that. The missed potential here is extremely frustrating. The season began with a bunch of great set up for a real story about Veronica and Logan trying to work through their trauma and figure out how to be good to each other for the long haul - and it was just dropped. Leo’s inclusion as a third party relationship threat was just insultingly basic. When you have characters this rich, this complex, with so much history to play off, it’s a damn shame to waste them like this. Veronica is more than her toughness. Having love in her life doesn’t make her less of a badass. People who experience trauma can grow and heal and trust again. I’m angry that this show doesn’t seem to value any of that.

I could see them setting up expectations for Logan to die only to have the twist be that it's Keith. I'm not sure why they would kill off their most compelling love interest for Veronica if they're hoping to continue the show. But it seems certain one of them is definitely dying.

Oh yeah, he is definitely dying. Dammit!

Holy crap I just went too and it's still there. Well, that seems to imply a very specific spoiler, doesn't it! No wonder people think fans are going to be angry.

Here because I keep seeing hints about this horrible ending in reviews and on twitter and it's freaking me out! Also, this clearly means as soon as the season drops it's going to be spoiled. It'll be a race to finish the episodes without finding out what the twist is, anyway - I'd rather just know.

I laughed so loudly. The ultimate burn. Yeah, it's really, really bad. And I started off positive on this season! But it's clear Kelley has lost the plot, and doesn't know what to do with these characters with no book to guide him. Your point that no one is doing anything is right on, but also - the relationships have lost their depth. The ladies get together to bitch at each other every episode and show up in each other's storylines, but I don't feel the sisterhood and the genuine communication between women that resonated in every scene last season. Maybe because a man is trying to replicate a woman's work. I feel so validated knowing Bonnie agrees with me that Nathan is trash. The implication is that she was hoping Ziggy's dad was not a monster but someone decent so she could convince herself that what happened to her was just a misunderstanding between good people. But honestly, I call bullshit on pretty much every scene between Jane and Mary Louise this season. Why the hell is Jane still talking to her? Why hasn't she understood this woman is out to get them? Why hasn't she moved Ziggy into Madeline's house and kept him away from the evil grandmother? Given the news about this season being chopped all to hell and parts reshot, I am really wondering what kind of scenes got filmed that we'll never see, and definitely suspect that the constant repetition of stuff like this is filler to try to cover the gaps. Overall I'm just disappointed to see the show go out like this after such a great first season. Everything about the custody battle is ludicrous, but apparently that's what the entire season is hinging on. Bonnie's big confession scene fell flat because they didn't put in the work to make us understand or care about her relationship with her mom. Most of the cast is being wasted - the kids are barely characters anymore. There is some serious weirdness around the edges that I'm now putting down to half-revealed unrealized glimmers of whatever Andrea Arnold was trying to do. I'm sure it would have been more interesting than this; at least it would have had a real point of view.

It turns out that what happened is they cut a bunch of material trying to erase the female director from the show.

That Indiewire piece explains so much about this season. What a horrible way to treat Andrea Arnold, and it didn't result in a better show.

Absolutely - but not when they're wealthy and live in communities like Monterey.