TV Show Review: Veronica Mars - The Complete Series

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Great mysteries, strong cast creates strong characters

Cons: The third season slightly weaker than the others

The Bottom Line: 

Lots of mystery

Great combo of light and dark

And strong characters

"I Do Favors for Friends."  "I Can Pay."  "Sit Down, Friend."

Fall of 2004, I tuned into a new show about a teen detective.  I wasn't expecting much and figured I'd give it two or three episodes.  Instead, I gave Veronica Mars three years and only stopped watching because the low ratings that plagued the show all along finally killed it.

Season one of the show introduced us to the troubled world of Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell).  She's a high school junior who has gone from the cool crowd to being a loner.  Why?  Well for starters, best friend Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried) was killed and boyfriend Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn) dumped her.  And in the town of Neptune, you are either part of the haves or the have nots.  Since the Kanes are from the haves, all of the people in their circle turned their back on Veronica.  Add to that the fact that mom vanished when Veronica's dad Keith (Enrico Colantoni) lost his job as the town sheriff, and you've got a very hard year.

Keith has opened a PI business in town, and Veronica helps him out, when she's not working her own cases for friends at the high school.  And despite my review title, she will help friends out for free, although she's always willing to take a client who can pay her.  She helps a friend whose pet has vanished.  And she clears a teacher of statutory rape.  Each episode features a standalone mystery like these that are solved by the end of the show.

But each episode also features another piece of the puzzle of Lilly's murder.  And that is all wrapped up by the end of season one.

Season two picks up at the start of Veronica's senior year.  She's now caught in a love triangle between Duncan and Logan Eccholls (Jason Dohring).  And while she continues to help out school mates, she also finds herself investigating the crash that killed several friends on a school field trip.

Season three transports the action to Hearst College as Veronica and her friends move on there.  Sadly, crime also follows along as Veronica squares off with a serial rapist and the killer of the college's dean.

This series is a weird mix of noir and humor.  The cases that Veronica investigates can get quit dark at times.  Veronica herself was raped before the series started, and one mystery she investigates in the first season involves that.  The murders are also quite dark.  Despite the high school setting, this is a show for adults and older teens.

Balancing that is the wit of the characters.  Veronica is especially sarcastic and snarky, and I can't help but laugh at some of what she says.  Veronica also provides a voiceover narration that brings some wit.  But it's not just Veronica.  All the characters can be sarcastic at times, and the interactions are great.

I also loved the characters.  In addition to those I already mentioned, there's best friend and basketball star Wallace Fennel (Percy Daggs III) and bad boy biker Eli "Weevil" Navarro (Francis Capra).  All of the characters are well developed and feel real.  As the stories progress, they grow in some unexpected ways.

But the heart of the show is the relationship between Veronica and her dad.  It's great to see such a loving, devoted, healthy relationship on TV, and their scenes together were always great.

How were the mysteries?  Well, this mystery fan often had to go back and watch it again to see how they pulled it off.  Yes, the clues were always there, but I usually missed them.  This is equally true of the weekly mysteries and the longer mysteries.

On top of all the great writing, the actors brought the characters to life perfectly every week.  I became a big Kristen Bell fan as a result of this show, and I have yet to see anything she's done that has matched her level of acting as it did here.  The rest of the cast is just as good.

My only real complaint about the series was the final season.  While I still enjoyed it, I felt they focused a bit too much on the romantic relationships and not as much on the mysteries as they had the previous two years.  Still, I enjoyed that year.  The final season was also only 20 episodes instead of the 22 that the first two seasons had.

This set combines all three of the individual season sets.  There are no special extras.  The individual season sets did include extras like deleted scenes and gag reels plus a few behind the scenes featurettes.

Because the show started on the now defunct UPN, it never drew the audience it deserved.  But those of us who found the show were loyal fans.  If you've missed out on the gem that was Veronica Mars, by all means remedy that today so you'll be ready for the big screen movie coming this spring.