Day 04 - Your favorite show ever.

[osprey_archer]

Day 04 - Your favorite show ever.

Veronica Mars, Veronica Mars. Maybe I should at least briefly consider other options, but no, it’s Veronica Mars all the way.

I love so many things about this show that it's hard to decide exactly what I want to say about it. I've already posted at great length about how much I love Veronica's intelligence, anger, yearning for justice, and vengeful streak; also about my shipping preferences and my love of the show's world-building, because Neptune feels so real.

But I haven't posted yet about Veronica's relationship with her father, Keith, which is one of my very favorite things about the show. They love each other, but also like each other: they're friends as well as family. (I particularly love it when they lampoon old-style noir detective dialogue at each other. Always good for a laugh!)

Keith accepts Veronica as an equal. Although Keith clearly would have preferred it if she could have remained a child longer, he can see that the traumas of the past year have made Veronica a grown-up, and he knows better than to try to reverse that process. When they argue, it's not because he's trying to reassert arbitrary parental authority - Veronica Mars totally lacks the histrionic arguments about curfew/boyfriends/whatever that can make teen media painful to watch - but because Veronica sometimes needs someone to give her a reality check about the fact that some of her decisions are dangerous or unethical or both.

And Keith is always there to be that person. He is the rock in Veronica's life and the moral center of the show.

Which is not to say that he's always right. Another thing I love about Keith is that, when Veronica shows him that she's onto something in the Lilly Kane investigation, he's willing to put aside his objections and pursue Veronica's course of inquiry, even though he has hitherto argued strenuously that Veronica should leave well enough alone. The investigation may be dangerous, but Keith always values - and has taught Veronica to value - justice more than safety. When it becomes clear there truly has been a miscarriage of justice, Keith backs Veronica's investigation 100%.

And, of course, when everything goes wrong, he's there to save her.

And he manages all this despite the fact that the last year has been terrible for him too: he lost his job and his reputation because he bungled the investigation of Lilly Kane's murder, lost his house because he lost the job, and then lost his wife because she couldn't take the loss of status. He's lost everything, but he's still good-humored, even goofy, and supportive for Veronica. What a mensch. No wonder his daughter is so great.

Comments

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

YAAAAAAS

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Keith Mars, bestest TV dad!

There are just so many things I love about this show. Sometime I've got to post about Wallace and Mac and Weevil, because they are just all so great. And Lilly! Lilly Kane clearly deserves her own paean sometime.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

I really feel like the problem with the subsequent 2 seasons & why people like them less is because of Lilly. (LOL I could write a paean, too!) Because 1) it was so hard to find plot to connect all these characters who were important to the Lilly case with anything else [the bus crash was a good idea though] and 2) Lilly/Amanda really did have that engaging lightning-in-a-bottle, x-factor, whatever you want to call it, and that's something you can't replicate on demand, you just get lucky with it, so none of the other 'victims' were as important (to V, to the other Neptune denizens, to US, the viewer).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes! Lightning in a bottle is the perfect way to describe Lilly. The show was great from the start, but I think the episode where it really shoots into the stratosphere is the one where they dedicate the memorial fountain - because there are so many Lilly flashbacks, and she just lights up the screen. And it makes the tragedy of her death feel personal to the viewers, too, not just Veronica.