It only lasted three seasons, and the last one wasn’t very spectacular, but Veronica Mars is already a cultural touchstone. Smart, funny, and blessed with a female lead who could do anything her character required, Rob Thomas’s show would take its relatively short run and use it to build a show praised by critics and beloved by fans.
The story of a high school gumshoe digging into the criminal underbelly of her seaside southern California hometown, Veronica Mars also presaged the current string of cable television crime serials while also creating one of the few modern female detectives to truly make an impact. That’s no small feat, and it’s one made even more impressive when you remember it was a show about teenagers on UPN that managed to soldier on even as UPN and the WB merged and the great CW experiment began.
Its three-season stint also means that it’s easy for anyone to join Veronica’s legion of ardent followers. Yes, you too can become a Marshmallow. With less than 100 episodes, it’s possible to get through the entire show in the same amount of time it would take to read some of great detective novels, sure, but do those all have a wisecracking high school girl whose diminutive appearance allows her to get the drop on unassuming suspects? We didn’t think so.
Here’s how to spend a few glorious weeks on Neptune, California’s mystery-riddled shoreline.
Veronica Mars
Number of Seasons: 3 (64 episodes)
Time Requirements: The show’s total run comes out to just under 46 hours of television. Mystery shows tend to pick up as they go along, so while it’s possible to watch a few episodes a night and get through the show in a month, it’s more likely that as the clues start to come together you’ll want to speed along and finish a little sooner.
Where to Get Your Fix: Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play
Best Character to Follow: Veronica (Kristen Bell), duh. The show is named after her for a reason. Armed with the wit and sass of classic pulp detective characters, Veronica is what you’d get when crossing newshound Hildy Johnson from His Girl Friday and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, or Nancy Drew mixed with Buffy. She’s unafraid to walk alone, but vulnerable enough to reveal in voiceover just how lonely it gets to project a stoic, disaffected demeanor all the time.
But if you’re looking for someone other than the title character, the most interesting supporting roles still have strong ties back to Veronica. Her father Keith (Enrico Colantoni) oscillates between a stern and protective guy who to see his daughter to have a normal adolescence to a beaming proud dad-joke machine who perfectly complements Veronica’s repertoire of references. And Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring), try as he might to stay away, just can’t keep himself out of Veronica’s life. They’re like fire and gasoline: dangerous together, but the destructive havoc can sometimes be beautiful.
Seasons/Episodes (And One Movie) You Can Skip:
The final season of Veronica Mars is pretty spotty since at the time the show’s future at the fledgling CW hung in the balance. Instead of one dedicated season-long mystery like the first two years of the show, the final season sees Veronica handling a few multi-episode arcs while enrolled in her freshman year of college. Beyond that, here are a few episodes you can skip for sure.
Season 1: Episode 9, “Drinking The Kool-Aid” If there is a lowest point in the nearly impeccable debut season, it’s probably this episode, where Veronica infiltrates a potential cult called the Moon Calf Collective, only to find some mildly overeager hippies yearning for peace together.
Season 2: Episode 17, “Plan B” Veronica Mars goes out of its way in order to depict Neptune as a place where the haves and the have-nots come into conflict constantly, and those divisions often fall along racial lines. But when delving into something like a biker gang fighting with a big crime family, it loses the strong class struggle angle in a muddled turf war.
Season 3: Episode 4, “Charlie Don’t Surf” Matt Czuchry has proven against all odds that he’s not as punchable as his face suggests, turning in great performances on Gilmore Girls and The Good Wife. But as a journalist attempting to get closer to Logan by posing as a long-lost half-brother, he’s a terribly written character without much of a purpose.
Season 3: Episode 6, “Hi, Infidelity” Starting to sense a pattern? Yeah, the third season struggled to make the transition to what the CW wanted in its first year as a network. Sometimes that meant riveting, terrifying stuff—like the end of the next episode, “Of Vice And Men.” Other times, it meant a clumsy ruse where a group of feminist activists fake a rape in order to urge college administrators to take action against fraternities. Veronica Mars never shied away from hot-button issues and significant conversation topics, but it didn’t always handle them gracefully.
Veronica Mars (2014) Here’s a bitter pill to swallow: One year removed from the crowdfunded film’s release, it’s a lot easier to look back and wish the show had just remained a show. It was great to see the Marshmallow fan base rally around the Kickstarter for a film revival, but that’s basically all it was—fan service. An endless parade of cameos from beloved characters—Dick Casablancas (Ryan Hansen) the best of them, obviously—dragged down what could’ve been the start of a mystery franchise. The series of pulp novels co-written by Jennifer Graham—which feel a lot like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book continuation of a great series—are more worthy of the show’s legacy.
Seasons/Episodes You Can’t Skip:
Season 1: Episode 1, “Pilot” Who killed Lilly Kane? That’s the question that lingers over the Veronica Mars pilot, and the mystery that begat one of the strongest debut seasons of the century so far. Introducing Veronica as the once-popular daughter of disgraced sheriff Keith Mars, and as the ex-girlfriend of Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn), her best friend’s brother. Most of the show takes place around Neptune High School, an area divided between the 09-ers, rich kids who can get away with anything, and the kids from outside that zip code, often represented by the PCHers, a Latino biker gang fronted by Eli “Weevil” Navarro (Francis Capra), who likes Veronica enough to help her out when she needs something on a case.
Season 1: Episode 18, “Weapons of Class Destruction” Like almost every other investigative show on television, Veronica Mars mixes the serialized mystery of Lilly Kane’s murder with individual cases that Veronica tackles each week. This time it’s about a string of bomb threats at Neptune High. But honestly, that’s not really as important as the episode’s romantic milestone: Veronica and Logan sharing their first volcanic kiss.
Season 1: Episode 21, “A Trip to the Dentist” Credited 17 times as a writer throughout the series, Diane Ruggiero is as important to the success of the show as Rob Thomas. The penultimate episode of the first season resolves the other season-long mystery surrounding Veronica being date-raped at a party. The information she uncovers is staggeringly heartbreaking, and the way in which the show handled the arc pays off with complex, difficult confrontations. Making Veronica a rape victim was contentious when UPN first picked up the series, but the critical acclaim for the plot line made it worth the dramatic risk.
Season 1: Episode 22, “Leave It to Beaver” Introducing a compelling mystery is easy. Finishing off those cases with an even better conclusion is incredibly hard (see: True Detective). But the initial season of Veronica Mars concludes with a grand twist and a deeply suspenseful climax, building to one helluva romantic cliffhanger. If the show had somehow been cancelled right after this, it would still rank as one of the best series in recent memory.
Season 2: Episode 11, “Donut Run” Duncan gets a bad rap because he just doesn’t have the chemistry with Veronica that Logan does. But that doesn’t mean the two don’t still care about each other. But the long con Veronica pulls to ensure that Duncan can flee the country with his child—even roping in the doofus private detective Vinnie Van Lowe (Ken Marino)—is nothing short of staggering.
Season 2: Episode 22, “Not Pictured” Cassidy Casablancas (Kyle Gallner) is the grand tragic villain of Neptune, California: Neglected by his family, derided by his brother’s friends, utterly forgotten by almost everyone but Veronica’s friend Mac. Season 2’s mysterious bus crash has a higher body count than the murder mystery in Season 1, but it’s not as focused as Veronica’s crusade to avenge her best friend. Still, the second season finale throws every bit of drama it can into the fold. In revealing a tangled web of child abuse perpetrated by Woody Goodman (Steve Guttenberg), Cassidy comes clean about his murderous plans for vengeance. Once foiled, in a rooftop confrontation that momentarily leaves Keith’s fate uncertain, Cassidy’s screams to Logan about what he has to live for equal the first-season’s memorable ending.
Season 3: Episode 20, “The Bitch Is Back” All the ups and downs of a college freshman season aside—and let’s leave any discussion of Logan-versus-Piz (Chris Lowell) out of this, since it’s not worth getting into how wrong people who favor the latter are—Rob Thomas found a way to end a tumultuous final season with a bookend that rewarded fans with one last glimpse of the sparks between Veronica and Logan, before finally settling on the father/daughter relationship that grounded so much of the series.
Why You Should Binge:
When Veronica Mars was on the air, it competed against California teenagers in The O.C. and Laguna Beach. It hit the air when the biggest police dramas still included the original Law & Order. And yet, it still feels fresh to watch a fiercely intelligent and uproariously funny female lead dominate scene after scene against any opponent because of how great the writing is and how natural Bell slips into the role.
Thomas would go on to create Party Down, another hilarious and astute series about a different aspect of southern California life. But the world he and his writing staff created in Neptune effortlessly combined messages with mysteries and romance in a way that never lost steam. It’s a near-impossible balancing act, and Veronica Mars pulled it off for three whole seasons.
Best Scene—Keith Saves Veronica:
Oh, this one is tough. There’s Logan and Veronica’s first kiss, the nearly silent coda of Beaver’s final scene in the second season finale, or any number of verbal tennis matches Veronica wins over various rubes.
But for sheer heart-pounding catharsis, there’s nothing like the climax of the first season finale, when Keith saves Veronica from burning to death. Sure, her father rescues her, and that’s a little disappointing—but even the best detectives need help once in a while.
The Takeaway:
Sometimes it’s OK to be a marshmallow.
If You Liked Veronica Mars You’ll Love:
For the same mystery-of-the-week-plus-serialized-overarching-plot format, look to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Or, for those not ready to let the tragicomic crime-solving sensibilities of Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero go, their new CW show iZombie premiered last week.
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