Veronica Mars gets a Hulu revamp

The section below is filled with spoilers from the new season (and past ones) of Veronica Mars. If you think you *might* start the series or if you haven't fully caught up yet... skip to the end of the newsletter, so I can talk to you about musicals instead!

Before fully digging into the newest season of Veronica Mars, I decided to re-watch the original three. It's been years since my first viewing, and I was hoping that by revisiting the original episodes, I'd be reminded of the many characters, the mystery intricacies and gain a better grasp of where the characters are and how they've changed (or haven't changed) since the early 2000s. Midway through my re-watch, the new episodes were released and I couldn't help but hear bits and pieces about how audiences were reacting to the revival. It was then that I was hit with a huge spoiler. It was really my own fault. I wanted to hear that spoiler, and I "accidentally" lingered on a Twitter video long enough to see Logan Echolls, problematic boyfriend, dies in the final moments of season four. Knowing this information in advance did cloud my rewatch and my initial viewing of the new episodes, but I'm glad I had this news in the back of my head going in. When I first heard Logan would die shortly after marrying Veronica, I was upset. When I read the reasoning behind Rob Thomas' decision, I was frustrated. And when I watched the episodes and got to the final moment myself, my initial reactions were further cemented. Rob Thomas created Veronica Mars to be a noir show with a female lead (he actually initially created it to be a noir show with the typical male lead... thank god it changed, but that does give you some insight into his headspace), meaning the show will be inherently cynical. It's not the place to find happy endings, and you all know how I love a happy ending. 

But that's not my problem with the revival's conclusion. Throughout season four, Veronica and Logan are in a committed relationship (and they have been for about five years) and are living together full-time (or as full-time as it can be, when your boyfriend is a naval intelligence officer for the government). Immediately in the first two episodes, the audience begins to see the cracks already present in Logan and Veronica's relationship. Throughout the show's original run, Logan and Veronica had a pretty consistently tumultuous bond. They only dated for small parts of the show and Logan's bad boy energy frustrated Veronica, while also drawing her towards him time and time again. These two tortured souls bonded because of their darkness and the trauma they've both experienced at a young age. They understood each other, despite being sometimes frustrated by their stubborn tendencies. While Veronica plunged into dangerous scenarios for the sake of solving a case, she kept most romantic and friendly bonds at arms length. Logan had that same urge to enter into danger, coupled with impulse control problems and a penchant for getting into fights, but instead of running from emotional connections, he fell hand over heels for any romantic attachment around him. While the most ardent Logan and Veronica shippers cite Logan's season two declaration about their love story being "epic, spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, bloodshed," as the perfect way to sum up these star-cross LoVers (their official ship name), what I think is more telling is what comes after. Logan makes this drunken declaration. Veronica pushes him away and leaves. She comes back the next day to say she does still have feelings for him and he's already hooked up with someone else and admits he doesn't remember anything he said the night before. While this back-and-forth appears in season two, our present day couple hasn't grown much beyond that, but that might be because of Veronica's lack of emotional growth. In season four, her guard is still up but Logan is the one who has transformed in the years since we've seen him. He's going to therapy. He proposes to Veronica. He talks about kids. He has a stable job. And he's not randomly breaking into fits of anger. While some have argued that the show has ruined Logan by turning him into the perfect man, I find it a fascinating exploration of someone who took a troubled up-bringing and turned to healthy coping mechanisms, craving the stability now that he didn't have as a teenager. This is contrasted in a fascinating way with Veronica, who has remained fairly stagnant in her emotional growth through the years. The onslaught of trauma she's suffered means she's distanced herself from friends and struggled to trust anyone around her (and justifiably so!) and this pattern of behavior only continues. The season three finale of the show ended on a bit of cliffhanger, as the creators thought it would be picked up for a fourth season on network TV, and the movie adaptation showed that Veronica left her hometown, went to law school and was about to join a prestigious law firm. The inciting incident that pulls her back to Neptune is Logan, who calls and begs for her help to get him cleared of murder charges. In the movie, Veronica's return home is seen through the lense of her addictive personality. She's addicted to the adrenaline of solving cases, driving around with the troubled Logan and the danger that Neptune constantly puts her in. Because of the corruption in Neptune, at the end of the movie Veronica elects to stay put and work with her dad as a P.I., despite his pleas that she leave and find a better life for herself. Since the start of the series, Veronica has always placed her father on a pedestal. Her decision to make back is partly inspired by her desire to emulate him and party field by her need to solve crimes to cope with her anger, while maintaining some control over justice.
When we find Veronica in season four, she's tired, frustrated and further weathered after spending these last five years in Neptune. She acts as if she's forced to stay there, instead of acknowledging that she made an active choice to return. She rolls her eyes at Wallace's lifestyle, as he now lives in the rich part of town. She mocks Logan for going to therapy, says she misses the angry Logan and goads him until he punches a wall in their apartment. It's a fascinating look at how the situations Veronica faced in her teenage years turned her into an even more troubled adult.While Veronica acknowledges her flaws, she doesn't take any action to change them. The spats between her and Logan mostly hang there throughout the episodes and are supposed to magically go away when Veronica has yet another near-death experience and decides to say yes to his proposal after turning it down initially. We're supposed to see this as win for her -- that she's making a healthy choice for herself after all these years. However, having Logan and Veronica get married seems like an unhealthy option, after we've witnessed them continuously misunderstand and sometimes emotionally hurt each other throughout season four. I don't need to see these two get married. Honestly, I think they should have broken up. Which is why it's all the more frustrating that the catalyst for Veronica to finally make an appointment with a therapist is Logan's sudden death (although we never see a body, so...).
In interviews since the new episodes have aired, Rob Thomas has emphasized that this isn't a normal TV drama, it's noir, so he needs Veronica to continuously be the underdog. He says she can't be in a happy relationship and that once Veronica and Logan get married, it would be too much of an anchor, dragging down the plot. He says, "The fan service is that they actually got married. I know that sounds funny, but I feel like the fans would forgive that more than if Logan became such an asshole that they broke up, or if Veronica had cheated on Logan with Leo... It’s just hard to imagine a detective show with a 35-year-old woman with a boyfriend. I just don’t want to write that... But I feel like for this show to work as a detective show, it has to be with Veronica as a single woman... I think it’s more interesting to write. If you can’t have your detective have romantic interests, it’s hard. And it teeters on phony trying to get Logan involved in the case somehow to keep him present. If he’s just going to be the boy she goes home to at night, that’s less interesting to me. I can’t say that it’s impossible. But it didn’t appeal to me as much." The issue here is that Logan was always more than a romantic interest in the first three seasons. He had his own storylines that took place without the presence of Veronica and his own personal journey of growth. Integrating him in the series going forward would have required some creativity, but given the nature of his job, it would have been easy for the writers to make Logan present in some seasons going forward and absent in others, without taking anything away from Veronica's journey. Of course, this is Veronica's story and she does not need a love interest present for me to continue to watch the show. However, I'm a bit unsure of its direction going forward. Veronica has been through a lot. We've seen her suffer and no one can say that the show has ever given much happiness. Piling the death of Logan on top of all of the other tragedies she's faced feels like it's just too much -- she was raped, her best friend was murdered, her father was shunned by the town, Veronica was shunned by the town, she's experienced many close calls with death, she was almost raped again in season three, her classmates and one of her good friends died a bus accident, her favorite teach and mentor was accused of murder, her father almost died on several occasions, her alcoholic mother abandoned her and stole her money, her first love had to go on the run and permanently disappear, the list goes on and on. Veronica has faced plenty of trauma. I don't understand why Logan's death was needed to fuel anything else, and I don't necessarily believe it would have pushed her to go to therapy. If Veronica spent her time running from marriage because she was afraid of getting hurt, wouldn't this further those beliefs? Wouldn't Veronica add this to the list of reasons why she can't trust people and double-down on her unhealthy coping mechanisms? As we see it, instead it fuels her decision to leave town for a while and work on a case. Is the catalyst that Veronica needed all along her epic love story coming to an end? It's just not satisfying for me. I also reject Rob Thomas' premise that writing a show about a woman who has a boyfriend or husband sitting at home waiting for her is inherently uninteresting. Veronica and Logan have so much emotional baggage that their relationship would never have been smooth sailing, and a relationship doesn't stop growing or changing or being filled with conflict after vows are said (especially not a relationship that was using marriage as a band-aid, like this one was). We've seen plenty of TV shows and movies throughout the years that have female characters relegated to the sidelines as supportive wives/girlfriends, providing emotional support and C-plots, and I think it would have been nice ifVeronica Marsflipped the stereotype and gave Logan this secondary role, if they did want to minimize his part of the show going forward. Veronica's relationship status has never been the most important part of the series, so I'm more interested in how this plot twist affects her going forward. In the closing scenes of season four, a voicemail message from Logan plays as Veronica drives out of town. In it, Logan talks about how strong Veronica is and how she's a fighter who can work through anything. Veronica's face is blank as she leaves Neptune. Yes, she's moving forward, but in a way, she's running away instead of working through her grief. Yes she attends on therapy appointment, but when asked if she will return, she's noncommittal because she'll be leaving town. Will this tragic experience fuel a different path for our heroine? I'm not sure. I don't want to watch a Veronica that is frozen in time -- permanently unhappy and unable to grow for the sake of the noir drama.
While it may not seem that way, despite these problems, I really, really enjoyed season four, which is perhaps one of the reasons I found this last-minute twist so frustrating. The series felt sharper, funnier and truly different from the movie or any of the earlier seasons, and it's Hulu-hosted destination now allows what was always a dark show to lean into it's darkness a bit more, with swearing, sex and some gore (I could have skipped on the gore though, thank you). With the addition of a police force (instead of rehashing the sheriff shtick), the tension between the Mars family, the authorities and the clients feels fresh. The appearance of Leo is always a plus. Veronica's friendship (does she ever have a normal friendship?) with club owner Nicole leads to many winnings scenes. The tension between Veronica and Weevil is upsetting but makes sense and again shows how hardened she has become as of late. And the mystery of the bombs is enough to fuel tension throughout the eight episodes. I'm excited for moreVeronica Mars, and I hope any backlash to the Logan decision does not keep us from getting more. I want to see Veronica's story continue -- I just hope along the way we get to see her inch closer to a happier or more content place and grow a little bit along the way.

Bonus Pick:If you're interested in reading some of Rob Thomas' post-show interviews you can find them inRolling Stone,VultureandThe Hollywood Reporter. And if you're interested in reading season four takes from some other frustrated fans, take a look at reviews fromLinda Holmes,Caroline FramkeandLinda Hill.

Required Reading

For those of you who are musical theater nerds, you know that Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein are both Broadway stars and best friends, so when I saw news that these two were set to appear in a movie-adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along together, I was ecstatic. These two, along with Blake Jenner (of Glee), will play the starring roles in an adaption of the musical directed by Richard Linklater, which will be shot as the actors age over 20 years. Yes, you read that correctly. The director of Boyhood is back with vengeance. You won't give him an Oscar after he spent 12 years filming Boyhood? He's giving you a Broadway musical about the entertainment industry filmed for almost double the time. What will the Academy think about that?