Last night, Veronica Mars came to an apparent end, not with a bang, but a whimper. The CW has not elected to renew the show and it appears to be gone Daddy gone.
I only wrote about the series once, but I was a great admirer of it. It had old school rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, much like Gilmore Girls (now also gone), but once in a while you’d see Veronica’s mask slip and glimpse the pain that her bravado covered up. In my previous post, I discussed VM’s portrayal of the class warfare in Neptune. The other key feature of the show was the relationship between Veronica and her father Keith Mars. In Season One, they are incredibly close, sharing everything. But then Veronica starts keeping secrets from her father, having sex with her boyfriend and drinking. They experience that gradual divide that always comes between parent and child as the offspring heads into the adult world.
In the season/series finale, Keith Mars gives up his career as sheriff that he had spent several difficult years winning back after losing his job in the first episode. He does so to protect his daughter, even though his sacrifice turns out to be for nothing. He does it willingly because he loves her, even though she has disappointed him on several occasions over the course of the series.
The show had its soft spots, but it always seemed to find a way to come back strong and I was looking forward to Season Four, not to mention the possibility of Veronica joining the FBI. Ah, well. We’ll always have the DVD box sets.
Tags: Veronica Mars