Veronica Mars

After reading quite a few comments from people who thought this show is "horrible," I was really surprised with their reasons. First of all, there are very few TV shows out there that are in every way true to life. Of course the situations aren't completely plausible! That's why we watch TV shows in the first place - we're entertained by things that we would not normally do or see. If I wanted to watch something "realistic" I'd just tape myself and watch it at the end of the day.

What's real in this show is that every character is complicated and has layers in their personality. The bad guy isn't all bad, and the good guy isn't so great either. There's just this gray area - just the way people are.

Then there's the complaint that Veronica Mars is "too smart." And that's a bad thing because...? I'm sick of mindless shows that give away the ending in the first minute and/or have the same tired plots. If witty is not your thing, that is sad and someone needs a good dose of "sense of humor." Maybe everything we watch on TV should be bland and predictable from now on? By the way, detective work is supposed to be logical - not flashy. When you want to look for someone, you'd automatically put a trace on things they own. What did you expect would happen? Some kind of laser tracking thingy?

The writing on this show is amazing, as are the actors and everything else. The artistic value is also incredible. If TV watchers can't appreciate that, then I really am worried about the population.

Season One: 8/10

Themes: Mystery, High School, Drama, Private Detective, Crime, Suspense, Murder Investigation, Lies, Blackmail & Relationships.

Review: This show has some really interesting and compelling things going for it. The main character being a smart, sarcastic bad-ass being amongst the first of those things. It's very easy to root for her and get sucked in with her shenanigans. Then again, I did find some of those 'adventures' to be a bit more on the boring side; especially when they focused on a storyline only related to one specific episode, rather than the over-arching plot of the whole season. I just felt like sometimes the show lacked direction and tended to drag. It still managed to be pretty entertaining but I definitely had a preference for the episodes that tended to be a bit more meaningful for the general plot and the character's relations to each other.

Top three character: 1) Veronica Mars, 2) Logan Echolls and 3) Eli 'Weevil' Navarro.

Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) was previously a popular girl in school next to her rich best friend Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried). When Lilly was murdered, her father Sheriff Keith (Enrico Colantoni) arrested Lilly's powerful father, but later someone else confessed. They ran Keith out of office and Veronica became a pariah. Now she investigates the deep dark secrets of her school divided between the ultra-rich and the poor minorities.

Rob Thomas has created a high school Nancy Drew with an edge. She's as smart as Sherlock Holmes. Only she's a girl trying to survive the High School world. It works as both a murder mystery, and a high school teen drama. This is Kristen Bell's break out role. She really gives a funny spunky likable compelling performance. This is a teen drama for smart people.

Veronica Mars is a fantastic show - the greatest since Twin Peaks. I feel very sorry for those who can't appreciate its incredible acting, suave and wry humor, amazingly detailed storytelling and hyper-complex characters. The massive amounts of angst and intensity among these high schoolers is the only unrealistic (or rather, surrealistic) aspect of the show, and it is forgiven because this is an superbly crafted exercise in stylized fiction and symbolism.

The names, for one thing - Neptune, Tritons, Mars -, are not only planetary, but mythological. Neptune is a cold, distant place, but reluctant gods of war inhabit it. Keith and Veronica Mars do not instigate war, but when others declare it on them, they prove supremely good at it.

The show represents one of those very rare couplings of a great concept, great writing and great directing with a remarkable actress who totally "gets" the whole complex atmosphere of it, and can act the part perfectly. Kristen Bell is an incredible actress (I, for instance, became aware of this show solely because I took an interest in Bell after seeing her tiny but impressively acted part in the movie Spartan); she has every conceivable facial expression completely nailed, and on top of that she is also fabulously gorgeous - all the more so because of her obvious intelligence.

Veronica Mars is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the two best American TV-shows I've ever seen, and my rating of it would be 9 or 10.

This show WILL go down in history as a timeless TV classic.

The story of Veronica and her search for the truth in the spoiled and famous Nepture is far more compelling that your average UPN teen drama.

Real characters, complex situations and issues and topics beyond who is hooking up with whom. The detailed story arc might make it a bit challenging for new viewers to pick up the threads, but each episode stands alone.

Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars mixes, humour and pathos, into both complicated life and death issues and high school life. Just as Buffy was about more than surviving high school with a social life, Veronica Mars looks at real things with a sceptical eye and an ironic twist.