It didn't really hit me that the new batch of "Veronica Mars" episodes that recently premiered on Hulu constituted an actual revival of the original show until I was listening to Veronica's hard boiled narration in the first episode, taking us back to the seedy world of Neptune, California. And despite having to juggle a lot of balls, the new season is a pretty strong piece of work. You can see the creators taking steps to convert the show from high school noir to full on neo-noir.
Veronica is now in her thirties, still a private investigator alongside her aging father Keith, who is using a cane after a car accident. She's cohabitating with Logan, now a decorated Navy officer. He's away for long stretches of time, but has worked through a lot of demons and is ready to settle down. Veronica, however, has major doubts. Her latest case involves the bombing of a local motel, and there are an array of possible suspects: pizza delivery guy Penn (Patton Oswalt), local realtor Big Dick Casablancas (David Starzyk) and his prison buddy Clyde (J.K. Simmon), an Arab-America congressman, Maloof (Mido Hamada), and a local bar owner, Nicole (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). Also in the mix are two Mexican hitmen, Alonzo (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Juan Diego (Tyler Alvarez), trying to exact revenge for one of the victims, and the dead motel owner's daughter, Matty (Izabela Vidovic ), a nosy teenager who reminds Veronica of herself.
With series creator Rob Thomas back at the helm, it hardly feels like any time has passed at all since we last saw Neptune. Everyone still quips and throws references around constantly, though carefully updated ones. The divide between Neptune's haves and the have-nots is alive and well, though this time the have-nots are small business owners trying to avoid gentrification. The social commentary feels a little more pointed this time around, but also broad enough that it better captures the zeitgeist of 2019. As usual, the best part of the show remains Veronica's relationship with her father. The Veronica/Logan pairing is a little rockier since Logan has changed so much, both temperamentally and physically. There's been a lot of controversy about how this season treated this relationship, enough that I'm tempted to write a separate post about it. Ultimately I admire how it all played out as a critic, but kinda hate everyone involved as a fan.
And of course, the large extended supporting cast of the original series is back, but mostly in minor roles and cameos. The only three actors who appear in the opening credits are Kristen Bell, Enrico Colantoni, and Jason Dohring, as Veronica, Keith, and Logan. And this is very important, because it avoids having to find excuses for other characters to keep hanging around, and getting mixed up in those oddball subplots that were a drag on some of the earlier seasons. We get just enough of Weevil, Wallace, Dick, Leo, and the rest to get a sense of how they've been doing, but they aren't major players. This season is much less interested in fanservice than the overindulgent 2014 Kickstarter movie was, though there are plenty of little references and inside jokes for fans. With only eight episodes in this run, the show has to devote every second it can to the big mystery and getting us into Veronica's increasingly troubled head.
One of the nice things about Veronica being a grown-up now is that there's less beating around the bush about her personal failings. She's a danger junkie and hasn't dealt with a lot of the baggage that she's accumulated over the years. A big theme of the season is that nearly everyone else in her life has moved on, but Veronica is stuck in a rut. It's still as entertaining as ever to watch her chase down suspects and lock horns with her enemies, but there's also a sense of restlessness and staving off the inevitable. More than ever, this is Kristen Bell's show, and she's firing on all cylinders. I love her as Eleanor on "The Good Place," but "Veronica Mars" offers so much more opportunity for her to really shine. Veronica remains one of my favorite television characters, and this season does right by her - even if it comes at the expense of others.
I'm glad that the show has lost none of the inventiveness and efficiency that made its mysteries such a pleasure to see unspool. With the new characters in particular, the writing does such a great job of setting up these interesting personalities who then collide in interesting ways. Penn is an attention seeker and conspiracy theorist who is part of a group of "Murder Heads" who investigate cold cases. Clyde is shady as anything, but also becomes drinking buddies with Keith. Nicole is intriguing and admirable, but there's a nagging sense that she's got too many secrets. The Maloof family is the weak link, but only because the show doesn't do nearly as much with them as we know that it could.
I'd have liked another episode or two to let the plotting breathe a bit, but the fourth season of "Veronica Mars" is one of its best. I think it's stronger than the second and third seasons by a wide margin, because of the tighter serialization and lack of extraneous characters. Also, as unpopular as some of the creative choices may be, it's also set up a scenario where Veronica could go to more interesting places in the future. And change is good, especially for a show with such an eventful history and so much unrealized potential.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment