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Post by Anne, Old S'cubie Cat on Mar 20, 2005 15:41:20 GMT -5
Moderator's note: I decided to hijack this post and rechristen it the VM article thread--that way Anne doesn't lose the responses to the article she shared. So, if you find something out there on the net having to do with everyone's favorite sleuth, this is the place for it.
From the LA Times, Sunday 20 March, 2005
From the anti-'O.C.'
In the title role, Kristen Bell almost singlehandedly carries the sleeper detective hit "Veronica Mars." It's a teen drama from UPN that explores the darker side of growing up. By Lynn Smith, Times Staff Writer
When she moved to Los Angeles in 2003, Kristen Bell used to stare at the celebrities she saw in the mall. On a recent weekday morning, the customers in a Studio City Starbucks a few blocks from her home scrutinized her with the same sort of puzzled look, trying to figure out where they might have seen that delicate, collectors' doll face with the jeans-and-T-shirt attitude.
"I'm still under the radar," said Bell, 24, known mostly as the star of the sleeper hit "Veronica Mars," UPN's spunky father-daughter detective show. " 'Are you a friend of my sister or are you an actress?' That's what I get."
She understands why fans feel they know her. Her character, a witty, jaded and vulnerable 17-year-old, has been through the 21st century high school social wringer, and she's done it on a show that offers more wit and style than the usual run of teen TV drama. In its first season, "Veronica Mars" has found an original path: somewhere between the glammed-up melodrama of "The O.C." and "Degrassi: The Next Generation," the earnest Canadian show on The N that is wildly popular with teens but holds little appeal for grown-ups.
Like the best young adult literature, "Veronica Mars" explores the dark side of growing up and is willing to have a surprisingly jaded worldview — and not simply to pander to adult interests. It's the world through the eyes of a brainy Nancy Drew who's been around the block. Teen sexuality, for example, is not exploited for its titillation value but rather woven into the show as a fact of high school life — albeit an explosive one.
"Our show doesn't tell the high school tale of the most popular girl," Bell said. "The bottom line is, girls do get date-raped, you do get dumped by your boyfriend, your mom does leave you, and you are raised in a single-parent home, and you do experience loss at a young age," she added, referring to the murder of Veronica's best friend. Even a teacher falsely accused of sexual harassment can still be guilty of getting another student pregnant. "These things do happen," Bell said.
"The thing about Veronica Mars, as opposed to 'Buffy' or 'Alias,' " said the show's creator, Rob Thomas, "is that Veronica … doesn't fight or kill. She has to outwit people."
For the show to succeed on a small network like UPN, which is able to do only minimal publicity, its star has had to convey an out-of-the-ordinary intensity while being convincing as a normal girl. With an extensive background in theater, the Detroit-born Bell seems a throwback to an era when starlets had more going for them than willowy glamour. "She has pretty fantastic comedic timing," Thomas said. "And you buy that she's clever."
One reason she has gone further faster than most pretty blonds knocking at Hollywood's door is that she can grab roles with more than a single note. She was a murdered con artist in HBO's "Deadwood," the kidnapped daughter of the president in the David Mamet film "Spartan," a drug addict's daughter in Lifetime's "Gracie's Choice" and — as a 5-foot-1 classically trained soprano — a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles Opera's "A Little Night Music." In April, Bell will be seen again on Showtime's version of the musical cult favorite "Reefer Madness," reprising the role of Mary Lane, a "vomitously perky" teen turned leather-clad vixen, which she played off Broadway in 2001. She has an upcoming indie film, "Fifty Pills," and is considering more film roles.
A life in the theater
Bell, the only child of a nurse and a television news director who divorced when she was 1, said her own drive pushed her through a childhood of acting and singing lessons and community theater. When she was 16, she and her mother came to Los Angeles to meet with agents and go on auditions. "But when it came to the point where they were saying, 'You can be on a series, you can get on "Step by Step" or "Home Improvement" ' or whatever, I talked it over with my mom and said, 'I don't want to miss my high school career,' " she said. "It was one of the best decisions I ever made." They went back to Detroit.
The next call came when she was 22 and establishing herself as a stage actor and student in New York. Friends she'd made while working on "Reefer Madness" — director Andy Fickman, writer Kevin Murphy ("Desperate Housewives") and producer-composer Dan Studney — had returned to Los Angeles to make the film version for Showtime and asked her to join them.
"They said, 'You have to come here. Give it a try.' I finally said, 'OK, I'll trust you guys' and moved out here. I lived on Kevin Murphy's couch for six months when I first moved out here…. Andy made me feel like I had a family out here. That's the reason I stayed. I really owe my career to him."
Thomas, a former high school teacher who has written five young adult novels, said he feels lucky that Bell wasn't better known when she auditioned. "If she were a hotter commodity, maybe she wouldn't have done a UPN show. We couldn't have gotten her to forsake a movie career."
Now, he said, "it's almost impossible to hear Veronica Mars in any other voice than Kristen's.
"As we watch the dailies, we commonly refer to her as 'money.' She's always money. Of course the other aspect of that is the potential that she will end up making us both a lot of money."
Bell signed a five-year contract to stay with the show, in which Thomas says Veronica will be allowed to age naturally, going to college or maybe working in law enforcement or opening up her own private detective agency. Though she loves "Veronica," Bell says she hadn't realized how much work is required to help build an audience for a show on a small network like UPN.
As she bounces from the "Veronica" set in San Diego to publicity shoots to interviews, meetings and auditions on a few hours' sleep a night, Bell has little time to spend with her boyfriend, producer and swim coach Kevin Mann, and the two rescue dogs with whom they share their home.
"I'm glad I did this when I was 24," she said . "I'm in a very, very good place that hundreds of thousands of actresses wish they were in. Although my schedule is grueling, I have to realize how badly I wanted it — and now I have it, and how am I going to deal with it?"
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Post by Bluesman on Mar 20, 2005 18:54:51 GMT -5
Thank you for posting this article!
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Post by Anne, Old S'cubie Cat on Mar 20, 2005 19:12:27 GMT -5
Thank you for posting this article! I'm just sorry I couldn't post the pretty pictures! I'm even more impressed with Kristen Bell and Rob Thomas both, after reading it. Knowing that he writes young adult novels explains why he's got such a good handle on the teenagers, and she's got quite an acting background already. Anne, also cheered by the five-year-contract mention
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Post by Bluesman on Mar 28, 2005 0:27:33 GMT -5
San Jose Mercury News (California) February 22, 2005 Tuesday MO1 EDITION
Copyright 2005 San Jose Mercury News All Rights Reserved San Jose Mercury News (California) February 22, 2005 Tuesday MO1 EDITION HEADLINE: THE BELL FILE Born: July 18, 1980, Detroit HIGH SCHOOL: Shrine, Royal Oak, Mich. COLLEGE: Tisch School of the Arts, New York University STAGE: ''A Little Night Music'' (Los Angeles, 2004) ''The Crucible'' (New York, 2002) ''Reefer Madness'' (New York, 2001) ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (New York, 2001) FILM: ''Fifty Pills'' (2005) ''Reefer Madness'' (TV, Showtime, 2005) ''Spartan'' (2004) ''Gracie's Choice'' (TV, Lifetime, 2004) TELEVISION: ''Veronica Mars'' (2004-05) ''Deadwood'' (2004) ''The Shield'' (2003) *****
Ventura County Star (California) March 26, 2005 Saturday
Copyright 2005 Ventura County Star All Rights Reserved Ventura County Star (California)
March 26, 2005 Saturday
HEADLINE: 'Mars' landing few viewers BYLINE: Rob Owen Despite its clever plots and a charismatic star, UPN show is getting low ratings Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Finally, something fans of "Nancy Drew" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" can agree on: "Veronica Mars," a TV show with a heroine that bridges the gap between brainy sleuth and smart-mouthed, demon-destroying slayer. Midway through its first season on UPN, "Veronica Mars" (9 p.m. Tuesday) is the best character-driven mystery you're not watching -- if the ratings are to be believed. On a Tuesday night last month, "Veronica Mars" landed in sixth place in its time period in national overnight household ratings with just 2.6 million people watching. The WB's competing teen soap "One Tree Hill" had almost double the number of viewers. Season-to-date, "Veronica Mars" ranks No. 159 out of 214 prime-time broadcast network series. Fans of quality TV are missing out. "Veronica Mars," filmed in San Diego, offers a mystery of the week plus a strong female lead reminiscent of "Buffy." But unlike the vampire slayer, high school student Veronica Mars doesn't fight demons, at least not of the scaly-skinned, green-blooded variety. Veronica lives in the fictional upscale California community of Neptune with her private investigator father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni). She helps him with his work, but pursues her own investigations, too. Veronica also has an ongoing project: investigating the murder of her best friend, Lilly Kane, whose demise set in motion a variety of changes in Veronica's life. As is pretty much always the case with the best shows on TV, "Veronica Mars" qualifies by virtue of its writing. "I think that's what people are responding to, a female heroine they can relate to in a different sort of way," said "Mars" creator Rob Thomas at a UPN party in January in West Hollywood. Thomas has a history of working on critically acclaimed, low-rated series, most notably ABC's 1998-1999 romantic drama, "Cupid," starring Jeremy Piven as a man who thinks he's actually the god of love. Network supports the show Despite low ratings, UPN seems supportive of "Veronica Mars." Ratings are slowly growing, and "Veronica" routinely improves upon the ratings of its lead-in, the incompatible sitcom "Eve." "I'm confident UPN wants desperately to pick us up," Thomas said. "I think if they have any excuse to pick us up, if (our ratings) go up at all in these last 10 episodes, I think we'll be back next year." In an effort to goose ratings further, Alyson Hannigan, a co-star on "Buffy," joined "Veronica Mars" in a recurring role last month as the spoiled brat sister of Veronica's one-time nemesis, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring). The next new "Veronica" episode airs Tuesday . Growing interest in the show can't only be attributed to the smart plots or the ongoing mystery of Lilly Kane's murder. A lot of the show's success goes to its star, Kristen Bell, a smart, funny, self-effacing actress with a theater background ("The Crucible" and "Tom Sawyer" on Broadway) who appeared in the first season of HBO's "Deadwood" as a young con artist who met an ugly fate. "Halfway into shooting the pilot, we said, 'She's a star,' " Thomas recalled. "I knew I had the right girl for the part." Bell plays Veronica as a young woman confident in her detective skills and her ability to adapt to the hand life's dealt her. Strong character At a January press conference in Universal City, Bell said she had a good high school experience and never felt like an outcast, but she understands how Veronica appeals to teens who are made to feel unwelcome in their high school hallways. "That's the cool thing about Veronica. "She doesn't let it affect her, or she's made a decision in her life not to let it affect her," Bell said. Despite her sad state in the premiere episode -- friendless, date-raped, abandoned by her mother, dumped by her boyfriend -- Veronica bounced back. Though it's generally lighter in tone since the pilot, viewers continue to see flashbacks to Veronica's old life that advance the show's ongoing murder mystery and depict Veronica's growth from naive teen to a savvy, sassy private eye. "The sad realization is there are a lot of kids that have that kind of hand dealt to them at a young age, and that's why you're sort of prematurely jaded and bitter," Bell said. "What I love about Veronica is that she makes the decision to turn her life in a different direction. "She could be crying in her bedroom all day and she could be reclusive, but she's not." ***** www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/03/29/rob_thomas/index.html <-- good interview with Rob Thomas; no spoilers that I spotted. ***** www.salon.com/ent/feature/2005/03/29/veronica_mars/index.html <-- article about show. ***** Reasons to Love Veronica Mars: www.suntimes.com/output/wiser/cst-ftr-paige29.html
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Post by Pixi on Apr 13, 2005 12:09:29 GMT -5
A fun site for Veronica/Logan shippers ishttp://fan-sites.org/love where it's all about the LoVe. Plus lots of episode clips to download.
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Post by Sara on Apr 19, 2005 8:23:19 GMT -5
A Season-Long Whodunit Must Soon Say Who Did By KATE AURTHUR
In the premiere episode of UPN's "Veronica Mars," we first saw Lilly Kane in a flashback. She and Veronica, her best friend, were washing cars to raise money for their school soccer team. Veronica asked Lilly why she seemed so happy. "High on life, Veronica Mars," Lilly replied. "I've got a secret. A good one." In voiceover, Veronica told the audience that Lilly had been murdered that night.
The question of who killed Lilly Kane has been driving the plot of "Veronica Mars" since its September debut. The show takes place one year after Lilly's death. The 17-year-old Veronica, who during that year became an apprentice to her father, a private investigator, has unraveled the mystery bit by bit over the course of the season. Was Lilly killed by one of her billionaire parents? Or by her loving brother, who sometimes goes into epileptic rages? Was it her boyfriend, or the hoodlum she was seeing on the side? The show's small, cultish audience will find out in the season finale on May 10.
The show's linchpin is that viewers must care about Lilly and see why Veronica (Kristen Bell) loved her: if they don't, why watch? So for a dead person, Lilly, played by Amanda Seyfried, is on screen quite a bit. She has been featured in eight of 18 episodes so far - in flashbacks, dreams, hallucinations and Veronica's imagined scenarios of the crime. In all of her scenes, Ms. Seyfried said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, "I want to make people forget she's dead in the first place, like they're learning about her like a normal character."
In flashbacks, she's the hell-raiser spurring her friends to action, which allows the audience to see more vibrant versions of the characters, who are now depressed. Rob Thomas, the creator of "Veronica Mars," said that he wanted Lilly to "represent Veronica's id." In a telephone interview, Mr. Thomas said, "That devil-may-care, 'I don't care what people think of me' attitude has greatly informed who Veronica is."
The show's fourth episode ended with a video tribute to Lilly assembled by her boyfriend - she popped Champagne, mooned passers-by from a limo and mugged at the camera. Ms. Seyfried, 19, said it was fun to play someone so irrepressible. "She has such charisma. It was exciting to say the things she said."
Since Lilly's death, the people in her life have been haunted by her memory, whether because they simply miss her, like Veronica, or for more insidious reasons. When Duncan, Lilly's brother, went off his medication and began to hallucinate, she appeared to him as a ghost with a bashed-in skull, and warned: "The truth is going to come out." At the time, she said, she didn't know whodunit: "I thought about it after I found out. I was like: 'Could I have changed anything? Could I have made it more mysterious?' "
"Veronica Mars," which UPN renewed for a second season on Monday, is not the first television series to extract its dramatic arc from the mysterious death of a beloved character. This season's most successful new show, "Desperate Housewives," as well as "The Fugitive" and "Twin Peaks" before it, have all utilized that structure. "Twin Peaks," in particular, is rife with similarities to "Veronica Mars": a pretty, popular high school girl is killed, and everyone around her is a suspect. But where the murder of Laura Palmer on "Twin Peaks" veered into the supernatural and the psychosexual, Veronica's investigation of Lilly's death has been a realistic portrayal of a bereft girl who has lost her best friend.spoiler Aware of that, Mr. Thomas promises that the May 10 episode will provide both a concrete resolution to their relationship and an answer to the mystery. "Our final Lilly moment is just beautiful," Mr. Thomas said. "I think Veronica and Lilly saying goodbye to each other is what people want to see. As much as who killed Lilly Kane."end spoiler
*Trying something new, I switched the color of the font for the spoilerish info at the end of the article into white--if you want to read, simply use your mouse to highlight the area between my spoiler tags.
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Post by Sara on May 11, 2005 12:12:46 GMT -5
Whodunit -- and so much more Lilly Kane's killer is exposed on "Veronica Mars" -- but our heroine still puzzles over the mysteries of life.
- - - - - - - - - - - - By Stephanie Zacharek
May 11, 2005 | Tough-but-tender blondes who harbor deadly secrets; upstanding citizens with reputations to protect; kids from the other side of the tracks whose common decency always shines through: There are a million stories in the naked city, but there are a million more in high school. "Veronica Mars" has dug up some of the best ones.
In its first season "Veronica Mars," which its creator, Rob Thomas, originally envisioned as a series of noir novels for young adults, neither sentimentalized the high-school experience nor milked it for Janis Ian-style pathos. Instead, Thomas and his writers took the seemingly mundane matters that seem like life-or-death issues to a teenager (What does it say about me if I'm invited to eat at the rich kids' table? How do I feel about my old boyfriend going out with another girl?) and turned them into something more than just metaphors.
The show's heroine, Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell), who helps out part-time with the private-investigation business run by her dad, Keith Mars (the wonderful Enrico Colantoni), is so well-adjusted and self-possessed (and so sharp with a one-liner) that she barely fits in with the adults around her, let alone the kids. Formerly part of the "in" crowd in the Richie-Rich town of Neptune, Calif., she and her dad are now financial and social outcasts. (He used to be the town sheriff, but lost his job when he refused to go along with the easy and, of course, incorrect assumption regarding the perpetrator of the town's most scandalous murder.) Veronica is the perfect gumshoe loner, like a much prettier Bogey in jeans and a hoodie, and on last night's season finale, she finally unlocked the secret to the mystery that has tortured her for the better part of the school year: She caught the murderer of her best friend, Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried), who, the year before, had been found near the family pool with her head bashed in. (The murder weapon, we learn, was a red crystal ash tray, costly, weighty and deadly.)
The season finale of "Veronica Mars" -- the show has, thankfully, been renewed for another season -- was just the sort of satisfying capper you look for in a series that, week after week, keeps you asking questions. We found out whodunit (Aaron Echols, played by Harry Hamlin, the movie-star father of Logan Echols, Lilly's boyfriend) and why (he was sleeping with Lilly, and there were incriminating videotapes). But in keeping with the show's sharp, inquisitive sensibility, in addition to answering all our questions this season finale opened up some new ones: Veronica's mother (Corinne Bohrer), who left the family suddenly and mysteriously only to return after a stint in a rehab joint for alcoholics, apparently hasn't kicked her habit -- and while we all like to think, wistfully, that it's always better for families to remain intact, "Veronica Mars" has the guts to explore the idea that some families are better off splintered. We don't know what has happened to Logan (Jason Dohring), whom Veronica at one point suspected of having murdered Lilly; he was last seen teetering, drunk and depressed, on the edge of a bridge. (The additional complication is that he has fallen hard for Veronica, a turn of events that has given him some complicated, fascinating angles, as well as upped his charm.) And in the episode's final scene, Veronica, having dropped into bed, exhausted (she's just saved her father's life), is awakened by a knock at the door. She opens it, and we can't see who's standing on the doorstep, but Veronica's face glows with a relieved, relaxed radiance we haven't seen in her for several episodes.
"I was hoping it would be you," she says, with just a hint of flirtation. And just at that moment, the image of her standing in the doorway fades away from us, a gentle, soothing cliffhanger to keep us suspended until next season.
It's fitting that the first season of "Veronica Mars" ends with more questions than answers. The answer to "Who killed Lilly Kane?" has turned out to be relatively clear-cut. But the whodunit structure of "Veronica Mars" is something of a red herring, because what really entangles us, and keeps us on the hook, are the bigger questions -- they're the key to the show's momentum, its sly sense of fun, and its emotional resonance. Veronica is played by Bell with such eminently reasonable self-assurance that we're almost fooled into thinking we don't need to worry about her -- with her small frame, no-nonsense blond locks and dark, glittering eyes, she seems both sophisticated and mischievously elfin. Veronica can, and does, take care of everything: She tries hard to help out with the family finances, and she gives up her own hard-earned college savings to help her mother straighten out so she can come home. Each successive episode only confirms Veronica's perceived invincibility -- which is why it's so devastating when we see her confused or afraid, or when she's overcome with missing her mother. And in some ways, I think the show's most shattering revelation occurred in last week's episode: Before Lilly's death, Veronica attended a party with her upscale friends, only to wake up in a strange bedroom the next morning, unable to remember what had happened to her. Her panties had been removed, and she knew she had been drugged and raped -- but she didn't know who was involved, or how many people were involved.
continued in the next post
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Post by Sara on May 11, 2005 12:13:01 GMT -5
continued from previous post:
The sexual assault was never a key plot point in "Veronica Mars" -- it was more of a heavy specter hanging over the show from week to week, rarely mentioned but always present. And while Veronica was humiliated and hurt by the experience, she never allowed it to define her or to drag her down. But naturally, she did want to know what happened to her. She asks questions of her classmates and friends, and entertains numerous what-ifs before finding the answer: It turns out that her then-boyfriend, Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn), Lilly's brother, who had also been drugged at the party, had discovered her zonked-out in a guest bedroom and, in his own impaired state, decided it would be romantic to make love to her. The revelation is significant because it deals, in a shatteringly adult way, with the gray areas of human sexuality.
Did Veronica have sexual intercourse without her knowledge, and thus against her will? Yes. But was it her boyfriend's intent to rape her? No. It's made clear that, in Veronica's out-of-it state, she was happy to see Duncan, and she sent out signals that he understandably misread. The revelation doesn't allow Veronica the comfort zone of claiming easy victimhood, of railing against an unknown aggressor who intended to do her harm, because in some ways, Duncan was a victim too. The incident was tragic for both of them, an unpleasant (and potentially controversial) reality that the show wasn't afraid to crack wide open.
At the beginning of the season, in particular, "Veronica Mars" seemed like just the salve for all those still-in-mourning "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fans out there (myself included). The two shows are similar in some ways. They both feature teenage girls -- blond California girls, to be exact -- with heavy-duty responsibilities: One has to solve a crime that has affected her deeply; the other merely has to save the world. But perhaps because of those broad similarities, it's become fashionable in some circles to trash "Buffy" in order to praise "Veronica Mars," as if all shows with teenage girls as heroines were required to be judged along some mysterious sliding scale of how "realistic" or "unrealistic" they are.
"Buffy" was a very different show from "Veronica Mars," with a markedly more fatalistic tone and an almost operatic sense of tragedy. But it did lay some crucial groundwork for "Veronica Mars": While both shows pretend to be geared toward a teen audience, it's really adults, well past the trauma of teenagerhood but still all too aware of how much it can sting, that gravitate toward them. The character Veronica is very much grounded in the real world: Formerly a member of the rich, cool crowd, she's now a pariah at her school; she has good reason to believe she's the victim of a rape, but she can't remember it; and, worst of all, her best friend has been murdered. To people with only a passing knowledge of "Buffy," the vampire slayer was a perky-but-serious teenager who spent nights trolling her town for the undead instead of studying for exams. But "Buffy" ultimately wasn't so much about the supernatural as it was about all-too-earthly confusion, suffering and fears. Recall how Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) woke up on the morning after her 17th birthday, after having slept with her boyfriend, the "good" vampire Angel (David Boreanaz), for the first time, only to discover that he's not the man she thought he was -- in fact, he's no longer the man he thought he was. He has turned against her; he's unspeakably cruel to her. (It's not completely his fault -- he's been cursed.) But that turn of events was one of the most wrenching I'd ever seen on television, a supernatural version of a very realistic teenage fear: If I have sex with my boyfriend, will he, as the Shirelles once asked, still love me tomorrow? In Buffy's case, the answer was a horrifying no.
The heartbreak Buffy endured in Angel's bed is neither more nor less realistic than anything we've seen on "Veronica Mars." I think the fairest and most accurate way to compare the two is to accept that "Veronica Mars" is a continuation of a broad theme that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" set in motion -- the idea that teenagers, as both Shakespeare and the Shangri-Las realized, are near-adults whose seemingly innocent disappointments and fears aren't really innocent at all: They're just nascent versions of our ongoing grown-up ones. I'm glad Veronica Mars solved the mystery of Lilly Kane's murder in this season closer, but what meant more to me was the way Veronica crumpled into her father's arms when he told her that he now knew for sure that he was really her father. (Some previous infidelities on the part of Mrs. Mars had made his paternity questionable.) The moment, played by two superb actors with ardent emotion and, amazingly, zero sentimentality, is a small instance of television perfection. Veronica and her dad are in charge of saving no world but their own, and that's enough.
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Post by artemis on May 11, 2005 15:43:23 GMT -5
great article, sara. where is it from?
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Post by Sue on May 11, 2005 17:06:38 GMT -5
EEEEETAH!
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Post by Lola m on May 11, 2005 21:26:22 GMT -5
Wonderful article!!!!
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Post by Sara on May 14, 2005 13:26:00 GMT -5
great article, sara. where is it from? Sorry--it was from salon.com.
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Post by Karen on May 14, 2005 16:54:41 GMT -5
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Post by Lola m on Oct 8, 2005 22:42:16 GMT -5
It had to happen. Joss reviews the DVD for Veronica Mars First Season for Entertainment Weekly.
I kid you not. He's such a fanboy. ;D
(Link won't work, so here's the text.)
Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season Reviewed by Joss Whedon Last year, Veronica Mars' best friend was murdered. Some months later, she was drugged at a party and raped in her sleep. Welcome to the funniest and most romantic show on TV, collected on DVD in Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season.
On the surface, VM is a simple Nancy Drew update: High School Girl Solves Mysteries. It's impressive how well it works as just that, because week to week, nothing is harder to pull off than a genuine whodunit, and no show does it better than VM.
But obviously, it's what lies deeper that not only makes the show remarkable but defines it. Mysteries are its central metaphor; Veronica solves little puzzles because she, like all of us, cannot unravel the bigger ones. Her life now turned upside down (additionally, her sheriff father's been fired, her mother's run out, and her True Love has inexplicably deserted her), she's developed a knack for seeing through people and their inevitable fictions. She also has cameras, audio taps, and databases, courtesy of the reduced-to-private-detective dad she works for. She's a super-sleuth, but the show never forgets that her power is born of pain, and that the kids who don't need to see — or avenge — every secret wrong are actually happier and more well-adjusted. Yet our identification is always strictly with Veronica, the girl buffeted by the base duplicity of her peers and the unfathomable vagaries of her own heart.
The teen-soap element of the show is just as compelling as the season-long murder mystery. Nobody is who you think they are. Everyone shifts, betrays, reveals — through their surprising humor as well as their flaws. The show is filled with deft, glorious wit. Creator Rob Thomas and his scribblers give VM more laughs than many sitcoms, and they never grate against the emotional brutality. (So where's a commentary, Rob? The extras are frustratingly thin.) Almost everyone in the ensemble shines, particularly Jason Dohring as Veronica's hypnotically incorrigible nemesis, Logan, and the always impressive (Galaxy Quest, anyone?) Colantoni as Keith Mars, the world's greatest dad. (Seriously. Greatest. There should be a mug.)
At the center of it all is Veronica herself. Bell is most remarkable not for what she brings (warmth, intelligence, and big funny) but for what she leaves out. For all the pathos of her arc, she never begs for our affection. There is a distance to her, a hole in the center of Veronica's persona. Bell constantly conveys it without even seeming to be aware of it. It's a star turn with zero pyrotechnics, and apart from the occasionally awkward voice-over, it's a teeny bit flawless.
Season 1 works as mystery, comedy, and romantic drama, often simultaneously. But what elevates it is that in a TV-scape creepily obsessed with crime-solving, VM actually asks why. It knows we need our dose of solution as a panacea against the uncontrollable chaos of life's real mysteries. And it shows, feelingly, that having the answers is never enough.
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Post by William the Bloody on Feb 16, 2006 9:51:58 GMT -5
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