halgia

Okay, here's one more interesting point of view and then I'm done: Matt Singer on The Dissolve, Why I loved not liking Veronica Mars.

Todd apparently thought that "The series finales of Veronica Mars and Arrested Development are both enormously satisfying" – I'd agree with that on Arrested, but not on VM. The finale is a big story that the whole gang gets to take part in, but it only solves a story that started the episode beforehand, and even that is more about Veronica getting revenge than really being about standing up against injustice or helping anyone else or anything. It also does establish that Veronica's life has had enormous costs for Keith, and though it doesn't explicitly do the whole transfer-to-Stanford-stop-being-a-PI stuff (for obvious reasons), it sets that up. But yes: that is totally Veronica going against who she actually is, because she's afraid of the consequences, and it totally feels inevitable that eventually she'd come back on that decision at least somewhat. But I think part of Todd's criticism is: yes, obviously Veronica is not going to be happy as a New York corporate lawyer protecting big corporations from "frivolous" lawsuits. But the movie sets that up as her only alternative, where really it's not at all. The obvious one is the FBI: that's what the series was obviously aiming for in S3, that's what Rob Thomas was originally planning on, etc. People in the AVC comments talk about how that probably wouldn't have worked because Veronica is fundamentally too anti-establishment, and I think they're probably right. But Rob Thomas said that's not why he rejected that idea: it's because he couldn't think of a way to get Wallace and Mac into that movie. I think that's the fundamental problem that Todd is complaining about: that these big character decisions are being made without much in-world justification just so the movie can have everyone back from the show. Todd seems to think that being an actual good-guy lawyer, maybe a Cliff but more competent, would work for her. I guess that's fundamentally not so different from being a PI, and Veronica is maybe too devious to really play by lawyer rules. I do agree that it completely fits with her character to end up back in Neptune. (I don't know if I quite see it being as triumphant as you do: the addiction metaphor frames it as just something that she has to do because of who she is, which I buy.) And, sure, it makes sense that Wallace would end up a teacher at Neptune High. I don't totally buy Mac at Kane Software: if she's supposedly this hotshot programmer, after Sun died she could be anywhere, and there's not a ton tying her to Neptune since she's not that close with her adoptofamily and was never really superfriends with Wallace during the show, but whatever. I also don't entirely buy that Logan is still in Neptune, though if he's mostly off in the Navy then I guess having his time off be around Dick is nice (and Carrie Bishop still lived there for, I don't know, we didn't know her that well – same with, say, Gia). But, though none of these decisions is terrible, having all of them stack up in the same direction feels like a little much. I did like this movie. I really did. But, imagine for a moment that the Veronicaverse (is there a different name that people use?) stops here: no books, no sequels, no possible Netflix deal, whatever. I think a story about Veronica as an FBI agent, one that completely threw out the structure of the show and just kept Veronica as a character (and whoever else made sense in the story) could have been a better movie, and might have served the character of Veronica better. Then again, it might have sucked – I don't know. I don't think we've seen Rob Thomas pull off any great short, self-contained mysteries so far: the best mystery plotting of the show was all at season-scale, and though many of the cases-of-the-week were fun and intriguing, none of them were really at the level of carrying a movie. It would have been riskier, for sure, which with a big Kickstarter project maybe isn't the right way to go.

Really? :) (Also, I don't care if Alaskan Klee Kais are assholes. I still want them.) Here's a few of my cat, Bug. The first two are kitten pics from fall 2011; last is spring 2013. I don't really have more recent pictures because obviously you take more pictures of kittens than of fat old cats. http://i.imgur.com/w5N24ib.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lq1M5SC.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yUEA8iK.jpg

Todd VanDerWerff wrote an interesting piece on the movie today (if you count a piece published at midnight as "today"...weird).

Oh! I somehow totally missed that there even was a Norton Hulk movie – I thought it was the same as the Ang Lee one. Oops. There was a terrible Catwoman movie in the 90s too.

I just realized that I probably should have spoilered my last post, but I guess if you're reading three pages into comment threads a week after the movie came out, you should probably be okay with very minor spoilers of the second scene of the movie. :) About the picture thing:

I watched the first two after listening to the EHG canon of the first episode. Liked them both; I don't know why I haven't gotten around to the more recent ones yet. I took that trip to England just to DVR it, after all.

Ang Lee Hulk isn't in this continuity, and it's not great, but I guess you can watch it if you want. :)

And just in the interest of total clarity: number 1 is "Serenity", the pilot (but not first-aired) episode of Firefly. Number 15 is Serenity, the 2005 film. :)

Yeah, I also liked Iron Man 3 (mainly for its Shane Black-ness) and didn't dislike the first Thor/Captain America (haven't seen the new Thor). That said, I also gave up on AoS after being mega-bored by the first two eps, so.... :)

Yeah, without having read much about it I'm tentatively hopeful based, basically, on just this trailer and the list of people involved.

Wow, Alison is actually kind of awful at her job, huh? I guess she's afraid of not returning him though because last time she had anything to do with the Crowes it didn't work out so hot. RIP Danny, you were an idiot and you finally got exactly what you deserved. So we're building up towards Daryl trying to get Kendal to do something awful, and he either does it or peaces out. I vote he doesn't do it and Raylan takes him and Loretta and his baby daughter (does she even have a name? seriously) to go live in the suburbs somewhere and they have wacky sitcom adventures.

There's a trailer out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jFU0r0xG_c

That makes sense why they've had so many stories talking about how their producer ran into someone in Brooklyn or bought a car on Long Island. I just trusted that when they said "from WBEZ Chicago" it meant they were in Chicago. :)

I didn't hate One Angry Veronica as much as everyone else did, though it definitely wasn't good. Ditto with the S4 Buffy episodes mentioned. Completely agree with anything-to-do-with-Landry-in-FNL-season-2, though choosing a particular one would probably require rewatching that season.... There's also that season 3 Sopranos episode about Columbus Day and Indian casinos and whatnot. shudder I don't quite care enough to submit a nonaC (that should be the capitalization, right?), but that's probably my top contender.

@Lisin I've never seen an episode of Dawson's Creek and I think I'd like to keep it that way. :)

Well, Party Down would be the natural next choice, no? :) And

Stacey, And yeah, I'm very glad they made it to Pittsburgh so I could see this in a theater too – though it would have been nice if it had been at the independent theater a block from my house instead of the big AMC multiplex. :)

Just came back from AMC's first showing of the day, to which I dragged a friend who watched the last two episodes with me last night but hadn't seen anything else. Thoughts: well, I loved the fan service, and the movie was decent. It has all the elements of what made the show great, and some of them worked well, but it never quite gelled the way the best parts of the show did. Someone on letterboxd said, which I think sums it up pretty well: Semi-spoilery for themes: Actual spoilers: Overall, yeah, the plot didn't really completely pull together for me. But I still loved moments of it, and of course I'm glad that it made me rewatch the first two seasons and finally watch the third (which, sure, wasn't as good, but I'm still glad I watched it), and who knows, maybe those books will be good, or we'll get a sequel movie where she's actually finally full-out on being a PI and .

:( It SUCKS that Keith sacrifices his career just so Veronica can get her stupid fucking vendetta. I did like the rest of the vendetta, but goddamn is Keith the best dad ever. I did like seeing the whole gang together one last time doing something fun. Gory's secret was a pretty great "wow" moment for hey, maybe this isn't something I should go make public. I feel cheated out of that one last "We Used To Be Friends", even if it is the lame S3 version. (I meant to spread these last three eps out over the week, but that didn't work.)

Yeah – and Piz got Pitchfork and she told him to go! Of course she's gonna go to the FBI! Yep, the Weevil story is great. Yay Weevil. :)

Yeah, I really liked the not-actually-faking-it child soldier twist. Parker is dumb. I also really liked that Dick is actually showing some, like, emotion about how his little brother killed a bunch of people and then jumped off the roof of the hotel he now lives in, and how it's probably like 30% his fault.

So, how many more episodes can they end with someone looking at a Terminus sign? All of them? Probably all of them.

Lol Paul Rudd, it took me a while to recognize him with his weird hair. Nice to see Leo again, and to have Vinnie show up as a good guy. Uggggh at him running for sherif though - poor Keith can't catch a break with this job, huh? This was fun and cute, but yeah it's too bad that there's not some big mystery to be finaleed up.

Poor Logan. :( I hated the actor for the graffiti guy. His only character note was "gruff and sullen" and it was completely dead on the screen. Also, expired visa guy is obviously terrible but it's hard for me to get too excited about "oh I got him deported" as a storyline resolution. Keith's sanctimony about underage drinking is also dumb, but I guess it makes sense for the character, I just think it's a stupid policy. Mac and Max are cute.