Veronica Mars: The Complete Third Season
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Enrico Colantoni, Jason Dohring, Kristen Bell, Percy Daggs III, Ryan HansenBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 900 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-23
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: 114297
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Hearst College, jewel of the Pacific. A citadel of higher education set amid rolling lawns and swaying palms. But since Hearst is in Neptune, California - and since Veronica Mars is among its incoming freshmen - you know it's also a noir netherworld of lies, betrayal, secrets and (of course) murder.Veronica, Logan and more of your VM favorites join cool new characters for a Season 3 of seething my
Movie Reviews of Veronica Mars: The Complete Third Season
Movie Review: The final casebook of detective Veronica Mars
Summary: 5 Stars
Warning! Spoilers littered throughout this review!
Note: I'll rewrite the following paragraph soon (pressing matters keeps me from doing more right now) but we now know from reliable sources that Veronica is not going to be back in any way. She will not be back as a college student and she will not be back as an FBI agent in a reworked format. The only reason the CW hasn't already made the announcement, according to Kristin of Eonline.com, is that they are afraid of the anger fans will heap on them. They will deserve that anger! For me the CW will always be the network that made room for a mother-daughter beauty pageant, a second season of the Pussycat Doll show, and THE FARMER TAKES A WIFE. It had room for absolutely miserable excuses for shows like these, but couldn't find room on its schedule for VERONICA MARS. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the CW.
I will revise this first paragraph as soon as we know for certain, but it is not true, as has been almost universally reported, that VERONICA MARS has been cancelled. As of today this is what we know for certain: it has not yet been placed on the fall schedule. The head of the CW, Dawn Ostroff, says that while the VERONICA MARS of the past three seasons is gone, she is working with Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell on a possible future project, which most believe means the widely reported successor series to VERONICA MARS, in which the plot would shoot to the future, to deal with Veronica Mars as a FBI agent. This would be accompanied with a completely new supporting cast and perhaps even a title change in the show. Numerous sources have reported and Dawn Ostroff herself has stated that she has until June 15, 2007 to make a decision on whether to pick this new series up. To be honest, not many insiders are offering fans much hope that this series will be picked up. But as the old expression goes, "The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings." Well, she isn't singing yet, but she might be warming up. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed that the next three weeks will bring some good news.
Certainly we need not fear for the long term future of Kristen Bell. One of the most talented actresses on TV, she is not only lovely but a gifted actress, singer, and dancer all in one diminutive package. The question is not whether she will be involved in some project in the future, but which one. Most immediately it appears that she will be the narrator for GOSSIP GIRL (this might not happen if she plays VERONICA MARS in some way, but even if she does, it might be possible for her to serve as narrator--she did do the narration for the pilot that critics saw at the Upfront in New York).
If VERONICA MARS is cancelled and we see no more of our pint-sized but large-spirited teen detective, we can, in a way, be grateful that we got three full seasons. I fell in love with this show immediately and watched it religiously through its entire run. When UPN inexplicably scheduled it opposite one of my other favorite shows, LOST, I recorded LOST and watched VERONICA MARS live. Veronica was when she debuted the latest in a string of strong female characters to have arisen in the wake of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER making TV safe for such creatures. She was, in fact, the heroine who most resembled Buffy. The first two seasons were simply glorious, two utterly perfect seasons that topped almost everything else on television. Season Three, unfortunately, represented something of a slip for the show. (I refuse it give it less than five stars, however, simply because it was still better than most else on television.) Many people have felt this and have speculated on why. My own belief is that VERONICA MARS suffered from network interference. Both Season One and Season Two were driven by deep emotional needs in Veronica to solve major mysteries. Season Three had no such deep mystery (though there were two lesser ones) and as a result lacked the emotional intensity of the previous seasons. No doubt a lot of this was the result of the network putting pressure on the show to make it accessible to new viewers. We've seen this take place again and again over the years with various shows and the brute fact is: it doesn't work. Mainly such an approach wins no new viewers and alienates many of the viewers the show already has. I spent all of Season Three with a mild feeling of disappointment, yearning for the intensity to return. Yet, sometimes it did. "Spit and Eggs," which resolved the campus rape mystery, was as stressful and as wonderful as the best Season One and Two episodes, but it turned out to be the exception and the rules.
My own thinking on the "how to win new fans" issue with series is that watering down the show never works. Instead, I think the way to go is to rely on online streaming and DVD to get potential fans caught up. I didn't, for instance, start watching FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS last fall when it debuted. But I was able to catch up by watching it on NBC.com. The CW put up a few episodes for streaming, but only a few. What they needed to do was place the entire season online for its shows, much like NBC does. Serial dramas like VERONICA MARS can attract and build up a fanatically devoted fanbase, but you keep that fanbase by continuing to produce a high quality serial drama, not by forcing it to become more and more episodic. The truth is that networks almost always complicate rather than improve a series through their meddling.
Another perplexing problem with Season Three was the near disappearance of several supporting characters. At times I wondered if Wallace was still part of the show. And Weevil played less and less of a role as the season went along. My understanding is that Francis Capra, who plays Weevil, had some health problems during the season (and that medication he was taking led to a rather startling weight gain early in the year with accompanying skin problems--these seem to be on the way to clearing up by season end). Mac became an opening credits character, but she didn't seem to play any more important role than she had in the past.
Still, some things remained really great about the show. Veronica and her father continued to have one of the most satisfying, if not the most satisfying, father-daughter relationship on TV. Veronica continued to impress and overwhelm all those disposed to doubt her. And as a huge BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fan she made the best frakkin' BSG references on all TV (though Dwight Schruette of THE OFFICE and Seth Cohen of THE O.C. gave her a run for her money), even helping one client find a woman she met at the BSG session at Comicon. But a lot of the passion of the previous years was gone. TV critics noticed. For its first two seasons, VERONICA MARS was probably one of the five most critically praised shows on TV. In Season Three it probably dropped out of the top ten to somewhere in the 10-15 spot. I blame this entirely on network interference.
The most heartbreaking part of the season came with the finale, which left several plot lines unresolved. This was not entirely the network's fault. Rob Thomas obstinately refused to do a "just in case" ending for the season. He apparently wanted to increase the pressure on the network to renew the show. That is one philosophy, but I prefer Joss Whedon's when he was on BUFFY. His idea was that you never knew whether you would get cancelled (fortunately BUFFY never did, though both ANGEL and FIREFLY would be), so you leave the end of each season in a place where it could both lead into something if you get renewed, but it would be satisfying to the fans if you don't. EVERWOOD filmed two versions of its Season Three finale in case it didn't get renewed. It didn't, but thankfully a finale existed that wrapped up the show Now, unless the FBI Agent Veronica Mars series materializes, we are left with a dangling show. Moreover, it will dangle most likely regardless, since a time shift to several years in the future will take the show well past the subsequent events on the show. Networks should do a better job of ending serial drams with dedicated fanbases, but the executive producers need to take some responsibility as well. I can understand Rob Thomas's reluctance to not go gentle into that good night, but I wish he had filmed an episode that did a better job of wrapping up the series. As it is, we are left wondering whether the homicidal nutjob Logan beat up got his revenge, whether Jake Kane was once again a part of the show's story, and whether Vinnie Van Low was the new sheriff of Neptune.
Television is going to miss this show. Although NBC debuts THE BIONIC WOMAN in the fall of 2007 (with a crackerjack production staff, a strong cast, and some very good writers, making this look like a more like one of the more promising series of 2007-2008), television is lacking somewhat right now in strong female characters. In fact, only BATTLESTAR GALACTICA with characters like Laura Roslin, Sharon Agathon, and Starbuck has much in the way of strong women. I'm delighted that we got to see Kristen Bell portray Veronica for three wonderful years, but I'm still going to miss her mightily.
Summary of Veronica Mars: The Complete Third Season
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