There have been a few reports showing up in various parts of the interweb (the main source is on Entertainment Weekly's site) giving tantalizing hints of a possibly Veronica Mars movie. When I first heard about this, I was very excited, since Firefly proved that dead TV shows can be resurrected as movies (a trend which Arrested Development looks to follow). Unfortunately, then I remembered that Serenity, despite being incredible, barely broke even at the box office. Most of the money it has made has been on DVD sales (there have been two DVD releases, it was a flagship HD-DVD release, and a Blu-ray release is upcoming).
Rob Thomas is involved with a few different shows, and Kristen Bell is working on Heroes, but it's clear that each would love to return to Neptune to finish the story of the world's cutest hard-boiled detective. There are plenty of stories that I (and many other fans) would like to see resolved, including the results of the election (though it was pretty obvious what was going to happen there), the fallout from the various attacks on The Castle, and the state of Veronica and Logan.
This story has made me temporarily happy, but I am not yet willing to believe that this movie will happen. Still, this is an interesting thing to know.
#8 Number of Seasons: 3 Years Active: 2004 - 2007 Networks: UPN, The CW
Veronica Mars, girl detective. It sounds stupid, I know. I know this because when I first heard the premise of Veronica Mars, I thought that it sounded like a terrible idea. But then I kept hearing good things about the series. In fact, the reviews claimed that this is the type of show that would seem like a guilty pleasure, but it is so good that it is just a pleasure, hardly a guilty one. And that is a correct statement; plainly stated, Veronica Mars was a pleasure to watch.
Ok, so Veronica is a teenager with detective skills, but Nancy Drew she ain't. Her father is the ex-sheriff of Neptune, CA and is currently an expert PI, and he has taught her a few tricks of the trade. But her desire to learn said tricks wasn't to indulge her cute fantasies or some such. She chose to learn from him in order to give herself tools to handle herself in life. She had a tough sophomore year of high school, wherein she changed from wide-eyed naive socialite to hardened, cynical counterculture outsider. After a series of horrible events, with the death of her best friend at the focal point, she lost her innocence (along with a few other things) and resolved to never be a victim again.
The series begins in her junior year, where she uses her newfound skills to help her classmates for a price as well as help herself stay ahead of the pack through bribery and blackmail. She tends to associate with the lower class of Neptune (there is no middle class, which leads to some strained relations between the haves and the have-nots), because of her prejudices towards the rich. Granted, a lot of them are not unfounded; like the town on Twin Peaks, there are few innocents in Neptune. Of course, this extends to the people in the lower class as well.
The first two seasons have a season-long mystery (due to network mandates, this format was changed for the final year) that guide the course of the story. Individual episodes tend to have a mystery of the week that takes up most of the plot each week, with a few clues and revelations about the big mystery popping up every now and then. But, like most of the series on this list, the character growth is as important, or perhaps moreso, than the plots, and this is something that is present in ever episode. The characters react to the situations that occur, and they change their behavior accordingly (the only character who is slightly resistant to this growth is Wallace, who never got the respect he deserved from the writers).
Like many shows that are a little too clever, Veronica Mars was canceled before its time. The bright side of this is that the show got three great seasons as opposed to one. In an effort to keep the show going, though, the creators changed the formula up for the third season, and even tried to move up their timetables for a fourth season that wasn't to be (basically, they were willing to jump ahead in time 4 or 5 years to do a story that was originally going to be for around Season 7). But as I said, we got three great years, so at least that's something.
So what does a one hour drama grounded in reality and featuring a protagonist whose personality was forged in pain have to do with a half hour comedy involving some of the wackiest characters ever to grace the small screen? Surprisingly a lot, including insignificant details, witty writing, and even actors.
Let's start with each show's lifespan. Arrested Development premiered in the 2003-2004 television season, and Veronica Mars debuted the following year. This was a very important time for scripted television; reality television shows were starting to peak in their popularity (though they are far from gone four years later). Arrested was hailed as the comedy that would save the scripted sitcom. It was a single-camera documentary-style show without a laugh track that defied sitcom rules. The next year, another single-camera mockumentary appeared: The Office. That same year, Veronica was one of five new shows that restored the public's faith in dramas (the other four are LOST, Battlestar Galactica, House, and Desperate Housewives). Sadly, while these other four dramas and The Office all became critical and commercial successes, Arrested Development and Veronica Mars could never build the audiences required to stay on the air for very long.
Each show only lasted three seasons. Many of the reasons given for why each show couldn't build an audience, whether it be due to the highly serialized nature or unlikable characters (that one was lodged against Arrested), don't seem to hold up, since all five other shows were serialized, and Desperate Housewives' characters showed many of the same character traits that led to some people referring to the Bluths as "unlikeable" (one example is my mother; she loves DH, but can't stand AD due to the nature of most of the Bluths).
Sadly, we can only now wonder what would have happened if these shows had been more fortunate. So let's look at the other similarities. One of my favorite things about both shows was how the played with names. On Arrested, many of the side characters had some of the silliest names ever to grace the small screen. Names like Gene Parmesan, Cynthia Lightballoon, Bob Loblaw, J. Walter Weatherman, Annyong are intended to draw further attention to the fact that the people who inhabit the world of AD are not exactly sane or normal. Sometimes, the supporting players make the insane Bluths look downright functional.
Characters in Veronica Mars tend to get names that tie in with the episode's mystery or reflect on their characterization. For example, in one episode, the three important characters related to the mystery that week are named Rooks, Bishop, and Knight. In another, the perpetrator is named Gilbert T. Pardy, or Gil T. Pardy. Or take Tim Foyle, played by James Jordan, who acts as a foil for Veronica in the third season. Series creator Rob Thomas admits that the name was created when, in story pitching meetings. the writers wanted to create a foil character, and for a while, did not have a name for him. In scripts, they merely wrote "Foil", with every intention of giving him a non-clue name. But when someone said, "Tim Foyle", the writers thought it was too funny not to mention. Other name work in VM had to do with puns and coincidences, not unlike how names were dealt with in Arrested. Veronica MARS lived in NEPTUNE, and in Season 3, drove a SATURN (all names of Roman gods). At Neptune High, the secret society was called the Tritons (Triton was the son of Neptune), and at Hearst College, there was The Castle (William Randolph Hearst, the real-life analogue to Hearst College's fictional founder, built a castle in California). Hearst's granddaughter Patty Hearst even guest-starred in one episode and played a character named Selma (Simpsons fans know the joke here). Both shows also used name games for episode titles. Nearly every episode of Veronica Mars was a pun on a book, film, or television show, including "Leave It To Beaver", "Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang", "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week", "Lord of the Pi's", and "Ruskie Business". Meanwhile, many Arrested Development episodes had clever puns for titles, some of which were references like VM, some of which were puns on episode events, such as, "Pier Pressure", "Altar Egos", "The Immaculate Election", and "Prison Break-In", which had some amazing Prison Break references (my favorite involved a map on someone's body).
Both shows began referencing the other once they entered their second and third seasons. Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat, two AD regulars, showed up in the same episode of VM (but they sadly didn't have any scenes together; I was hoping that they would play lovers). A few weeks later, on Arrested, Cera's character asked Shawkat's character if she wanted to watch Veronica (the show title was bleeped, but we can hear "Ve(bleep)rs", and a subtitle "Reference to off-network teen detective show"). Unfortunately, these were in the third and final season of AD, and they were unable to have too many more references. In the third season of VM, a few more references were made, including Sheriff Lamb yelling "No touching!", a recurring line said to George Bluth, Sr. while in prison.
Both shows also dealt with the lead characters' fall from grace. The Bluths had all their accounts frozen in the pilot and became a public joke, while Veronica had to deal with her loss of status (among many other things) prior to the pilot. But what be the best similarity is how both have possible futures...
Arrested Development ended with a suggestion of a feature film, and Veronica Marsended with the possibility of a fourth season as a retooled show. Sadly, the Veronica Mars: FBI show will probably only be seen on the third season DVD, and most likely, the film prediction at AD's end was probably nothing more than some fun by the writers, but still today, there are rumblings of both shows continuing. Numerous polls on the internet exist trying to get the AD film made, and cast members like Will Arnett have alluded to it in interviews. Meanwhile, rumors about a VM movie have started cropping up, along with talk about a comic book continuation, similar to the canonical Seasons 8 and 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, respectively. I know that these may sound like pipe dreams, and they most likely are, but then again, one must only look at my early posts about Firefly and Serenity to remember that nothing is impossible...
Up next: His Dark Materials and their possessors...
Veronica Mars was a noir show often misrepresented as a cliched teen drama. Sadly, I'm not sure how else it could have been marketed, since a noir show featuring a petite blonde teenageer as a lead is a pretty hard sell. I must admit that when I first heard of the show, I thought that the concept sounded pretty lame. But then the reviews started coming in...
Neptune, California is a city cursed without a middle class. It is home to some of the richest people in America, including a Bill Gates-esque software designer, a high-priced actor, and a real estate magnate. The children of these multi-millionaires are known as '09ers at high school because they live in the 90909 zip code area of the town. The rest of Neptune is home to lower-class laborers who work for 09er families. As Veronica points out in the pilot episode, in Neptune, your parents are either millionaires or work for millionaires. But without a middle class to buffer the relations between rich and poor, things sometimes get heated between the two groups.
And why shouldn't they? There is corruption on both sides of the socio-economic fence, and each side blames the other for their problems. The 09ers exploit everyone else and get away with murder (both literally and figuratively) due to the attitudes of local law enforcement. But this doesn't mean that the less fortunate are innocent victims. Some join gangs, others steal from their employers, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in Neptune who is innocent.
That's where Veronica Mars comes in. Although the Mars family was never among the 09ers, she lived the life at one time in her life. Her father, Keith, was the sheriff of Balboa County, which Neptune was a part of, earning the family some prestige. But even more important were the members of Veronica's inner social circle. She used to date a boy named Duncan Kane, the son of the richest man in town, and her best friend was Duncan's sister, Lily. Jake Kane, Duncan and Lily's father, is a software designer who pioneered streaming video. The incredible rise in value of Kane Software stock made everyone who worked for the company richer than their wildest dreams, making Jake Kane one of the most beloved men in Neptune.
Everything changed for Veronica at the end of her sophomore year of high school. Lily was brutally murdered one afternoon, and Keith's prime suspect was Jake Kane, Lily's father. This didn't sit well with the residents of Neptune, and an emergency recall election got Keith pulled from office. His replacement, Don Lamb, was barely competent and a complete asshole to non-09ers. When Veronica stood behind her father, her so-called 09er friends turned on her. Led by Logan Echolls, Lily's on-again/off-again boyfriend and angry son of a self-centered actor, rumors about Veronica were spread by the 09ers. In an effort to prove that the harsh rumors didn't get to her, Veronica crashed an 09er party, where she was raped. These experiences left her jaded at best.
Mind you, all of those events happened before the events of the pilot and were relayed to us in flashbacks. Our first glimpses of Veronica were of an angry young girl who worked at her father's private investigation firm. As we watch her befriend both a new kid named Wallace who was duct taped to the school's flag pole as well as the biker who put him there, we begin to see troubled person she is underneath her tough exterior. The flashbacks of her hellish sophomore year coincide with the struggles of helping out both Wallace and Weevil (the biker), which end with her visit to the sheriff's office the morning after the rape. Let's just say that Lamb was less than professional.
Soon, it becomes apparent that the man that was arrested for Lily's murder is not the one who killed her. The first season follows Veronica and Keith's search for Lily's true killer, but along the way other multi-episode mysteries are introduced and investigated, including what happened to Veronica's mother after Keith was removed from office and who raped Veronica. Of course, each episode also had a self-contained mystery.
Both the overarching and self-contained mysteries shed light on various characters in the town of Neptune. One of the best parts of the show is the sheer depth of the cast of characters. Even tertiary characters get fleshed out stories and can sometimes become regular cast members (watch how Dick Casablancas starts out as a random kid in the second episode, and is listed as a regular in Season 2). But as I said, in Neptune, no one is innocent. Even characters like Keith and Veronica have their secrets, and the events of the show force people and their loved ones to deal with things that were supposed to stay buried. Greed and corruption are important motivators for people in Neptune, but since this is noir, often, some of the worst things done on the show are done due to the good intentions of the people doing the action (such as the feminists in the third season, Logan "decision" the night of Veronica's rape, and Duncan and Veronica's second season kidnapping).
Furthermore, the show likes to take stereotypes and turn them on their heads. People and groups who have negative stereotypes associated with them are often used as red herrings and initially cast in a negative light. But in Veronica Mars, nothing and no one are what/who it/they initially seem. In Neptune, cults may not be evil, fraternity boys may not be moral-less degenerates, and animal rights activists aren't all crazy.
Veronica Mars is more than just a mystery show. It is an examination into the motivations and mindsets of its inhabitants. And they were extremely diverse and entertaining. People were almost always much more than they originally seemed, and this led to some phenomenal storytelling twists.
Sadly, due both to the poor marketing and the serialized nature of the show, it was never able to build an audience. The networks it aired on (it started on UPN, but between its second and third seasons, The WB and UPN merged to form The CW) had a lot of faith in the show, and kept it on the air for three years, hoping that it would finally earn the viewership it deserved. Along the way, there were some network-mandated changes (mostly in Season 2, but the lack of overarching mystery at the end of Season 3 was the final attempt to earn viewers), but the show never lost its voice.
Interestingly enough, Arrested Development followed a very similar journey, which is the first similarity between the shows...
There have been a few reports showing up in various parts of the interweb (the main source is on Entertainment Weekly's site) giving tantalizing hints of a possibly Veronica Mars movie. When I first heard about this, I was very excited, since Firefly proved that dead TV shows can be resurrected as movies (a trend which Arrested Development looks to follow). Unfortunately, then I remembered that Serenity, despite being incredible, barely broke even at the box office. Most of the money it has made has been on DVD sales (there have been two DVD releases, it was a flagship HD-DVD release, and a Blu-ray release is upcoming).
