Veronica Mars never fully accepted what it meant to be good—until the movie
TV Features For Our Consideration
When the Veronica Mars movie was released in 2014, it was almost more important symbolically than anything else. It was proof that fans and creators could bypass network meddling, using social media and crowdfunding to produce another installment of a series canceled long before its time. Alternately, it was seen as demonstration that fandom wouldn’t let a good thing stay dead, that there was danger that everything old had to be resurrected and the potential for new ideas, drowned in fan service. Reviews for the movie itself were likewise torn, forced to spend time deciding if the film was welcoming to newcomers or if it was worth the Kickstarter money and effort. The text of the film, and where it fit into the series as a whole, seemed almost an afterthought.
But I see the movie in a different way. Looking back on the film as another part of the whole, the question is: What does the Veronica Mars movie mean for the Veronica Mars TV show? As a unique installment of Veronica Mars, what does it bring to the table that the show didn’t manage beforehand?
And there is an important answer. Veronica Mars (2014) resolves a core tension that dominates the show for good or for ill: Why does Veronica Mars do what she does? Not only does the movie give a final answer to that question, it answers it in a way that makes it an essential part of the entire text. Without the film, Veronica Mars feels incomplete. With it, the main character’s story arc receives the resolution it was so desperately missing across the original series run.
Veronica Mars, teen detective, never actually wanted the job that served as the premise of Veronica Mars, the series. The instigating event for the entire story, the murder of Lilly Kane, started her off. This made Veronica, previously shown in flashbacks as a largely passive socialite, grab the motivation to become Lilly’s avenger. Her father, already a dogged investigator, had his determination to solve the case lead him down a path that cost him his job as sheriff. He found meaning and employment as a private investigator, Veronica’s unwillingness to be passive, desire to learn the tricks of the trade, and love for her father attached her to him and his job.
But her willingness to act was always situational. In an early first-season episode she tells one of Neptune High’s rich kids that she doesn’t help people, she does “favors for friends.” When he offers her cash, she greets him with a cheerful “hello, friend!” By the second season, money isn’t even a good enough motivator; in “Normal Is The Watchword”, Veronica rejects a rich bully’s fully justified demand for help only to take on the case when her best friend, Wallace Fennel, receives the same false accusation.
Perhaps most importantly, the audience never actually sees the moment Veronica cuts her hair, puts on her leather jacket, and become a badass. There’s hundreds of flashbacks on the show, but that crucial decision isn’t one of them. We only see her fully formed, fully willing to work for her dad, fully willing to investigate Lilly Kane’s murder, but not with a stronger push for justice than those specific drives.
Getting Veronica to act was always a core tension of the show. Its success was always directly tied to the show’s success—if Veronica was motivated by a case, chances are, thanks to Kristen Bell’s monumental reservoirs of charisma, the audience was into a case. Veronica Mars refusing the call to adventure became a core part of each season and each episode, and part of the story was waiting to see how she’d accept, or resign herself to the case.
Indeed, you can trace the show’s quality by how successfully it was able to resolve that tension. In the first season, Lilly’s murder and Veronica’s direct association with her father created a perfect feedback loop, and helped that season become one of the greatest examples of single-season storytelling in its era. The second season, without that simple premise, went bigger, pulpier, messier: a mass murdering bus crash in the premiere leads to an operatic finale involving planes being blown out of the sky. In between, a series of mysteries and characters that twist themselves entertainingly and mostly successfully into narratives get the increasingly cynical Veronica to work on them.
And then there’s the disastrous third season, filled with giant problems, but arguably the single biggest among them: Veronica is mean. The switch from UPN to the CW, with Kristen Bell receiving a glow-up that turned her from the badass girl next door to a slut-shaming supermodel superhero certainly didn’t help matters, for one thing. But throughout the season, Veronica seems to only take on cases begrudgingly and sneeringly—she becomes the kind of mean girl she would have destroyed in the first two seasons.
This all changes in what used to be the series’ accidental finale, “The Bitch Is Back.” As the title implies, it’s a deliberate throwback for Veronica. Instead of being the sneering detective, she goes full avenging angel, targeting first the boys who leaked video of her having sex. Veronica then discovers that her personal case ties into a much larger issue: a secret society dominates Hearst College, which ties everything back to the Kane case of the first season. It’s a glorious return to form in many ways, but most importantly, after an entire season of Veronica only acting when acted upon, it’s like seeing an old friend when she takes command in the way that only Kristen Bell in full flight can.
That idea of vengeance informs the movie and how it shows Veronica’s perceptions of her time in Neptune. Early on, when narrating her sordid past, she says “I’ve grown up, though. That was the old me. Angry me. Vengeful me.” She also goes on to describe how she stopped being a private detective because it cost her so much in terms of relationships and friendships. Even more than that, Veronica consistently uses the language of addiction to describe her relationship with being a private detective. She’s an “adrenaline junkie,” she says, at one point. She even explicitly connects her urge to solve crimes to her mother, one of the show’s most venal villains, and her alcoholism.
But this is sleight of hand. Veronica is deceiving herself, and, to some extent, viewers and critics, by making this a narrative of her individual journey instead of a systemic one. Throughout the entirety of the series—with the possible exception of “The Bitch Is Back” — both Veronica Mars and Veronica Mars treat their cases as individual units of injustice, instead of creating a systemic case for change. Veronica and Keith certainly prefer to help the underdog, and Neptune’s stratification creates a huge number of underdogs. But they do not consistently frame their actions as private detectives as a defense against the class warfare of the rich.
Veronica Mars (2014) heightens the contradictions of Neptune, and makes it impossible for Keith and Veronica to see themselves only as individuals, as opposed to activists. The series, premiering in 2004, wasn’t exactly shy about the class divisions of Neptune, depicting the have and have-nots in almost every episode. But the movie escalates this at almost every possible level; after the Great Recession, after Occupy, it depicts Neptune as an almost apocalyptic American town, where the rich has driven the non-rich into desperation. The movie doesn’t play coy, and neither can Mars Investigations, as Keith shows in an early scene where he uses his phone to record and mitigate police brutality in the service of wealthy real-estate developers.
The film isn’t subtle about this. Nor is it subtle about Veronica’s decisions to return to the detective life—half of the monologues are about how happy she theoretically is to get out, even as her actions suggest otherwise. But it’s the combination of the two that make the film special. Veronica Mars was always about class warfare, yes, but it wasn’t always coherent about how to deal with that. Likewise, Veronica Mars was always understood to be a good person—most TV heroes are!—but prior to the movie, this was also largely incoherent. Veronica Mars (2014) succeeds at merging those two concepts—Neptune’s corruption is depicted as a synecdoche for American and worldwide capitalist excesses. Veronica’s options are defending the system that creates this inequality (the law firm that’s supposedly her “way out” defends “Fortune 500 companies from frivolous lawsuits,” i.e. the super-rich, from accountability), or throwing herself into the mud (as she puts it) in Neptune.
This is the grand success of Veronica Mars (2014). It’s not that it’s a superb mystery on its own (it’s fine). Nor is it the (largely effective) fanservice. And although it did, eventually, half a decade later, succeed at rebooting the series, that’s not what makes it special. What makes it special is that finally, after 60-odd episodes of not seeing Veronica Mars make the choice to become a private detective, she finally decides that this is who she is, because it’s the right thing to do.
In the grand scheme of Veronica Mars, the movie establishes that Veronica, who was a good detective, a good friend, a good daughter—good in so many situational ways—is also finally willing to be a good person. The language of addiction is used throughout the movie, and the ending uses it once more, as Veronica accepts that she is who she is, that being a good person means fighting for what’s right, even at great personal cost. “This is where I belong. In the fight. It’s who I am.” After three seasons of watching her struggle to realize this, it’s what made the movie a perfect ending—and potentially, a great beginning for what comes next.
61 Comments
The two books that followed made the movie much better, as they followed up on several incomplete storylines.
I read and enjoyed the first, never got around to the second. Maybe I’ll read it while the new season is running…
The fact that the books weren’t written in 1st person was so infuriating to me, i never read them .
The first one has an audiobook read by Kristen Bell, which is awesome.
Thats silly. The show wasn’t only from Veronica’s perspective, why should the books be? You’d never experience any moment that she also didn’t experience.
I remember starting the first, but not finishing. Fortunately, my library owns them both so I’m going to check them out today.
As a servant of the public library system, I fully endorse this.
Same, and I’m sure I’m the one who bugged my colleague to buy them in the first place.
I’m curious how closely the new season is going to be following the books. Some of the details seemed very similar.
If you haven’t watched yet, the books are pretty much treated as Canon just as much as the series and movie were. It’s a totally different spring break plot.
They also never resolve some of those storylines. Really hoping we finally see them resolved.
My mom has become absolutely obsessed with Veronica Mars recently.
So your mum’s in a Good Place right now? The good place perhaps?
I’m finally bingeing Veronica Mars the series even though I’ve already seen the movie. I really love Kristin Bell
the main appeal of the show from the start, apart from Kristen Bell’s face, was the explicit way it addressed class. I like the point above about the defense law-firm…the only way to become a have is by supporting the corrupt system. “I didn’t sell out, I bought in!” the Jerry Rubins of the world cry (and the guy’s dad in SLC Punk)…you can struggle to buy unsubsidized school supplies for your class and have roommates until you’re 50 or you can afford to procreate by perpetuating the cause of your entrapment and misery. Cheers!
I wanted them to lean more into the class divide, especially in the second season. People tease Veronica about giving it up to the rich kids, but she’s still the hero and it still rings kinda hollow for me. We see the PCH vs the 09ers in season one, now let’s see more of the actual town.
Weird that there’s no mention of Weevil in this article. His attempt to go legit, and the way the town refuses to let him, was the most striking thing to me about the movie. It was heartbreaking to see him return to the PCH life at the end.
Weevil did go legit and made it work. Then corrupt Cops set him up for a car jacking, because a rich Chick was terrified and accidently shot him. The entire life he had built was destroyed in a few minutes by him trying to do the right thing and getting shot for his trouble.
I wish that was expanded upon. I may or may not have burst into tears when he told Veronica off. “I got shot Veronica, and they arrested me!” FUCK.
Time to retire “badass”, which, like “epic”, now obscures more than it describes
In my day, a “bad ass” was an immoral donkey, and that’s the way we liked it hrrmph!
Don’t worry Doom Patrol solidly re-establishes that meaning in the cultural vernacular.
OMG. OMG. Veronica Mars is BACK!!! Dreams do come true. If only I had someone to watch it with.
The problem has always been Logan. I know fans wanted it but they never justified how she liked Logan. And he was more than just the bad boy. He was the dude who set up bum fights for fun. And I haven’t been able to like it since
I kinda got it during the run of the show . . . teenagers are stupid and even the really smart ones sometimes fall for assholes and scumbags. Turning it into some sort of grand romance for the movie, though, fell very flat for me.
Yeah if she eventually turned away it would have been worth it but now they’re getting married? It’s probably why I won’t watch the new series.
I highly recommend watching it! It’s a great season, and honestly, the actual mystery of who is bombing Neptune is the much bigger focus than anything else on the show (plus so much Keith and Veronica banter!) They do address Logan’s asshole-ness in a way that I think anti-Logan fans will appreciate.
Logan is AWFUL. So, so awful.
He’s the mystery and the addiction personified. The new season gets into this (as some of you have probably already seen). Jason Dohring is trying hard to be a real person under all that concept. I guess I’m a fan of his effort more than a fan of Logan himself. IRL you’d wish Veronica could find a better fit – but they’re in their 30’s now and it kind of makes logical “been-there done-that” sense that they, as a couple, have narrowed their focus to each other… and discarded any other paths in life.
I LOVED him in s4. I agree that Dohring himself is much, much lovelier than the character of Logan, and that absolutely shines through. That being said, s4 is his best work. He’s much lighter and happier, and you can see the work that Logan has put in to change his life. The scene on the beach where they flirt in front of the college girls more than had me excited for the tone of their relationship this time around.
uhm, have you seen that dude with his shirt off? cut the girl some slack… plus, teenagers do stupid shit. i wouldn’t want to be forever associated with some of the shit i did at that age and, if you think about it honestly, you probably don’t either.
I don’t mind that she dated him as all. It’s more the framing it as they’re meant to be together that they’ve done since.
I actually really loved his character development from abused kid to asshole teen to Navy dude to grown up actively working with a therapist to address his asshole tendencies. I thought it was a realistic enough arc (over the course of 15 years) that was quite interesting. I would argue that in season 4, Veronica has grown much less than Logan and that is more glaring than anything.
Having watched now through S4 e6 I’d like to give you more Stars. ^this^ is the truth.
I think you could argue the first season is just one of the best first seasons of any show ever. VM was incredibly dark for a show about a high schooler… at the time. It really laid the groundwork for all of the dark teen shows we have now. It pretty much created a genre and I don’t think anyone has done it better yet.
THIS. Its a practically perfect season. So hard to do for a show that is finding its legs.
I’ve been seeing ads for the CW’s upcoming dark-in-the-vein-of-Riverdale Nancy Drew show and all I can think is that it seems like a total Veronica Mars knockoff. They even have someone drawl out her name similar to how people would acknowledge Veronica when she popped up in their lives. It’s so ironic since, “So… she’s like Nancy Drew?” is how people would write off the series at first.
That was my first thought when I saw it, too! “Uh, we already did this, CW, and it’s called Veronica Mars!”
Season 3 had many problems, but there’s still great stuff in there. And because of her rape, lifestyle and general trauma, Veronica was always a judgy, guarded person especially about sex and relationships. And it turns out just because you leave the place where you built those walls, it doesn’t always mean you can just flip a switch and demolish them so easily. Veronica being “mean” made perfect sense to me, it may have made for a more uncomfortable experience for some viewers, but I liked it. It was more realistic than if she was suddenly a nice, eager to help, eager to please person.
yeah, S3 Veronica never seemed “mean” to me so much as out-of-fucks-to-give. plus, i mean she was basically stuck going to community college when she had, in high school, been planning on going to Stanford or some shit – in that situation, i wouldn’t have a lot of patience for the same old gossip-y bullshit, either.
She was going to an expensive private liberal arts college. It’s not Stanford, but it damn sure wasn’t supposed to be anything close to a community college.
Just wanted to say this was well written and I enjoyed it! I had a whole “key episodes” rewatch schedule for next week planned and now they’ve released it early, but I think I’ll probably stick to the schedule. Need to find my kickstarter backer shirt…
Watching Veronica Mars for the first time.Not that far into it.Think it has surpassed The OC on the “egregiously no way any of these actors pass for 17 years old” scale of TV.And I do have a few complaints, though my biggest so far is that Logan and Deacon characters are terrible and not very good actors, at least 8 episodes in.
The Logan arc doesn’t come full circle until much later, but it’s because it’s a character that they wanted to fully flesh out. He’s broken, but with some redeeming qualities. Almost every character in the show gets to explain their actions by the end of the first season, and side characters and their small storylines get a callback in one or more episodes later on, which made it so satisfying as a viewer. That’s what made VM a good watch for me. The writing was so sharp and thoughtful.
Omg deacon 😂😂😂
Literally no one cares about Duncan, so you’re not alone. He will disappear at some point into the original run and will never be mentioned again. Logan will show some depth fairly soon, don’t you worry.
That’s just not true. He’s mentioned at least twice. 😉
Haha you are correct, I am mistaken! He is such a non-entity I barely registered it. A friend of mine has recently just started the show, and she asked me about Duncan. The only descriptor I could think of was “mayonnaise.” He doesn’t even register. His father makes a bigger impact on the overall series!
I absolutely agree… as opposed to some shows that end with deeply questionable movies.
loving ep1 of S4 so much. it is so fucking amazing to see Veronica on my screen again. The title sequence reminds me of True Detective but who cares, It’s just so fucking nice to be in this world again.i would love tessa thompson to guest star. always loved Jackie.
Jackie and Mac were two people I missed! I did a little cackle of glee when I saw Parker (Julie Gonzalez is literally so beautiful and ageless) just her shit talking marriage made me laugh.
For me the biggest thing the movie lacked was the essential premise of the show is now gone. She is a teen detective; high school as noir. I haven’t watched the new series yet, but to me that is essential to the entire concept. It should have a 2-3 year shelf life and that’s it.
I might agree with you if the show’s name was Teen Detective, but it’s Veronica Mars so I think they’re good.
two questions:how old is Veronica Mars supposed to be? i get that Kirsten Bell will remain luminous into her 60s and beyond, but if Veronica-the-character was a college freshman in 2007, that would make her 19 or so… then, the movie is “10 years later” and set during the 10-year class reunion, in, what, 2014 or so? so that would put her and the rest of them at roughly 28, assuming most graduated at age 18 or so – although anywhere from about 27-30 could probably be reasonable for any individual character at the reunion. whatever – it’s now, what? five years since the events of the movie, so that puts Veronica in the 32-35 age range, right? i don’t know if i’m missing something or if it was ever revealed Veronica was Doogie Howser-ing her way through high school or something…second question: since she didn’t take the prestige law firm job, how likely is it that Veronica has fairly crippling levels of student debt? i mean, she never did get the Kane scholarship, right? so wouldn’t it make more sense for her to work as an attorney at least part of the time, just on the basis that even attorneys who are fighting for the little guy are entitled to charge more money, presumably, than private investigators?
i dunno, i get following your bliss and all but you gotta get that paper, sister…
First question – correct, they’d be early 30s, 33-35 by my estimates. Most of the cast are 35-40 so it doesn’t seem too out of line for me to believe it. Second question – they address the debt issue. It’s basically known that Logan works extra where he can to pull in extra money for rent, Veronica takes any and all cases to cover what she can, and Keith would be, as always, doing anything he can to help. I’m sure she’s paying copious amounts of debt.
The movie officially retconned their graduation back a couple years to 2004. So 33-34 would be the normal age for them. Which leaves them a bit younger than their actors (Bell is 39, Dohring and Daggs both 37, Capra 36)AFAIK, she never ended up sitting the bar.
I loved the original show – I know season 3 wasn’t perfect, but I still enjoyed it. The movie was pure fan service and so much fun. **SEASON 4 SPOILERS (VERY LIGHT I HOPE!)**I watched season 4 last night. I have to say, I was genuinely thrown by the twists and turns. I was really kept on my toes, and the tension I felt in the last episode was real. I was heartbroken by Keith’s ailing health; he was always the heart of the show to me. I wish we got more Wallace, and I wouldn’t have said no to more Little Dick and Vinnie Van Lowe popping up each episode! I was rapt to see Leo back, but the Eli subplot needed expanding upon. JK Simmons was a damn delight, and watching Keith make a friend was lovely!Okay – Logan and Veronica. A lot of fans think they don’t make sense, but I think they do; they are both intensely damaged people looking to create friction in their lives so they have something to fight against. I actually thought Logan’s character development through the movie and s4 were incredible. Him recognizing his childhood abuse made him actively destructive, and enlisting in the Navy and going to therapy was incredible to see. It showed real growth. By comparison, it made Veronica seem sadder and sort of .. less?Logan wanted to change, and grow. He wanted a marriage and to raise babies and he wanted to emulate the happiness he saw around him in people like Wallace, and not to repeat the mistakes of his parents. Veronica loved Logan when he was destructive, and was bored when he wasn’t. That scene in the kitchen when he says that to her and then she fucks him … honestly made me very sad. I love Veronica Mars. And I understand why the last few minutes of s4 happened – because Veronica doesn’t grow and change unless she is forced to. She doesn’t seek to better herself; she just is. I understand why Rob Thomas (curse you) gave us the ending that he did. But damn, I was really impressed with the growth of Logan. I’m sad that he’s been removed from the equation just so Veronica can be forced into growth. After all of that trauma and pain, Logan had a real chance … and now he doesn’t. And someone like Veronica, who some might say is less deserving, is left behind. I personally didn’t love that.
I completely agree with you re the spoilers and Logan’s growth. The show, however, absolutely didn’t need to literally blow up Logan to let Veronica grow up. If Logan could become a well-adjusted person through his own means, so could Veronica through and with him. The show didn’t, to quote Rob Thomas, “need to lose a limb to save a life”. If anything, his death added more trauma to her already traumatic life.
Yeah, I’m really confused at this whole “we had to lose him so Veronica could grow” shit Rob and Kristen have been spewing. And Jason has been very vocal about not being happy with it either. This season did really strong work with the bomb storyline, and the Matty/Big Dick stuff, but the Logan/Veronica thing made little sense. They’ve both been through enough trauma to last a lifetime, but because Veronica is a less developed character than Logan, you had to give her more trauma to force her to grow, when that hasn’t worked in the past? My frustration stems from the Logan development. Here is this character who has arguably been through much more trauma (I know Veronica has been assaulted, raped and Lily was murdered, but Logan’s childhood abuse, mother’s suicide, girlfriend’s murder and the myriad of other things point to a longer, systemic inability to function normally than Veronica, who had a charmed life until she was 16) and they act like that wasn’t important or good enough next to this character who simply didn’t want to better herself. “Having to cut of a limb to save a life” makes zero sense when you compare Logan and Veronica. Logan wanted growth, Veronica didn’t. I really don’t see how she’s going to grow up now after this. She’s proven time and again she isn’t capable of it.
Have to say I agree with a lot of the comments and appreciate people looking more deeply into this really high level show. Want to add that it is really funny as well, Which for most drama long-form story shows, is the hurdle they just can’t clear. Most difficult one really. Some really great joke writing in every episode -and to decipher the clever obscure cultural reference is fun.
Rich people bad! BAD!