Shows about something

Will Baude surveys four supposed camps of criticism concerning Season 2 of Veronica Mars and its deficiencies in comparison to Season 1.

Camp One: the collection of assorted technical nitpicks-- arguable procedural errors during the trial of Aaron Echolls or One Angry Veronica, retrospectively odd behavior by Beaver, lots of college-application and computer-security errors, and so on...

Camp Two: complaints about the pacing of the season, in particular the basic problem that "nothing happens" with respect to the bus crash investigation for basically the first half of the season, and then suddenly in the second half, and especially the last two episodes, everything takes off...

Camp Three: the complaint that important events happen off-screen and are only revealed to the viewer later...

But really these are all linked to each other and to the fourth complaint, which is mine.

Camp Four: complaints about the allegedly passionless Veronica Mars of Season 2. As one commenter put it:

The best criticism I've seen of Season 2 is that Veronica just doesn't care about anything. Lilly drove her the first year. This time she's just drifting and taking things as they come.

And this is a problem why?

Because it's boring. A crusade, a race against a deadline, a competition against an enemy - those are all dramatically interesting in of themselves. Take that narrative structure away, focus drift along on the minutiae of random, messy life, and you're left with only the hope of snappy dialogue or random weirdness to keep things more interesting than a documentary on the clerk at your local 7/11.

Now VM does have snappy dialogue, and Season 2 is even somewhat better in this respect than its predecesor. But the point is that it had to be in order to be worth watching at all. And the "random weirdness" wasn't Seinfeldesque quirkiness, but contrived plot turns that didn't make much sense in a larger context...if there'd been much of any larger context the second time around.

Camp One's technical/continuity mistakes, Camp Two's slow/random pacing, Camp Three's disgruntlement with violation of the "show, don't tell" principle, and my complaint about a lack of passion all feed on each other to make the second season less interesting. Because Veronica doesn't care as much about what's going on, I don't care about it as much, and the writers have an excuse to be lazy about pacing. When the pacing problems catch up with them, they have to rescue themselves with sloppy kludges that suspend disbelief or break continuity and ruin past characterizations and plot resolutions.

Season 1 had a fantastic balance of various elements. We had consistent yet surprising and interesting character development. Steady yet not monotonous progress on the central season mystery. Fantastic continuity on even small matters that made the city of Neptune and its inhabitants seem like a real place inhabited by real people.

Season 2 didn't have any of that. Instead, it had slightly better weekly one shot mysteries, even snappier dialogue, and...not much else good, with plenty bad. The mysteries tied more into the overall plot(s), but those were a confusing train wreck that often just sort of stopped rather than being resolved. The dialogue made you smile for a few seconds, but with less potential for a secondary payoff nine weeks later when a subtle reference to it pops up again. These were people and a place still worth watching, but they weren't plausibly real or particularly special anymore.

Don't get me wrong, Season 2 was good. But it was missing several things, including a couple of Loretta Cancun type moments, that would have made it as great as the original. If Season 3 (next Tuesday at 9 EST on CW, folks) is as good as the last (and doesn't get canceled due to continued low ratings) I'll be satisified. But something's been lost nevertheless.