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osprey_archerDay 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show
How can I pick just one episode of Veronica Mars? I love them alllll (well, most of them. Certainly I can’t think of any that I would chuck out of season 1), and also everything in the show is so dependent on everything else that it’s hard to pluck just one episode out and say “This one. This is the best.”
The pilot packs a stunning amount of backstory, character detail, and sheer awesomeness into one episode, and I love it for that, but I think I would have to choose the season 1 finale as my favorite episode. It’s harder to land a good ending than a good beginning (as so many shows which start well then peter out show), and VMar’s first season finale is not merely good but practically perfect.
(I say “practically” because one could argue that Veronica ought to be more sensible, and then the climactic sequence need never have happened. But I’m not sure which show you’ve been watching if you think that “sensibly asking for help” is within Veronica’s emotional repertoire.)
The finale ties together all the different subplots of the season, offers an utterly satisfying, psychologically plausible, and yet still surprising solution to the season’s mystery - and, even as it weaves this utterly satisfying solution, preserves a certain essential bittersweetness. For all that Veronica Mars is a detective show, it is not a show about fixing things; it’s a show about learning how to live in a broken world.
There’s a tug-of-war in Veronica’s character, because part of her would like to heal, and part of her sees that as a kind of betrayal. It’s a betrayal of Lilly, because healing will mean forgetting (at least in the sense that Lilly will no longer be in the forefront of Veronica’s mind), but also in a way Veronica would be betraying herself by accepting that the world is unjust, and no. She just can’t.
How can I pick just one episode of Veronica Mars? I love them alllll (well, most of them. Certainly I can’t think of any that I would chuck out of season 1), and also everything in the show is so dependent on everything else that it’s hard to pluck just one episode out and say “This one. This is the best.”
The pilot packs a stunning amount of backstory, character detail, and sheer awesomeness into one episode, and I love it for that, but I think I would have to choose the season 1 finale as my favorite episode. It’s harder to land a good ending than a good beginning (as so many shows which start well then peter out show), and VMar’s first season finale is not merely good but practically perfect.
(I say “practically” because one could argue that Veronica ought to be more sensible, and then the climactic sequence need never have happened. But I’m not sure which show you’ve been watching if you think that “sensibly asking for help” is within Veronica’s emotional repertoire.)
The finale ties together all the different subplots of the season, offers an utterly satisfying, psychologically plausible, and yet still surprising solution to the season’s mystery - and, even as it weaves this utterly satisfying solution, preserves a certain essential bittersweetness. For all that Veronica Mars is a detective show, it is not a show about fixing things; it’s a show about learning how to live in a broken world.
There’s a tug-of-war in Veronica’s character, because part of her would like to heal, and part of her sees that as a kind of betrayal. It’s a betrayal of Lilly, because healing will mean forgetting (at least in the sense that Lilly will no longer be in the forefront of Veronica’s mind), but also in a way Veronica would be betraying herself by accepting that the world is unjust, and no. She just can’t.
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Date: 2014-07-04 04:09 pm (UTC)Yes. This is why I like VM when I'm not really into mystery as a Thing--I'm always annoyed when the stories yank these imperfect broken people out of my hands and tie them up into a tidy little bow. What Veronica keeps finding, though, is not that the truth will set you free, but that it hurts.
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Date: 2014-07-05 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-05 07:23 am (UTC)The first episode I saw was Mars vs Mars, and I think it remains my favorite to this day. It had ahead-of-the-curve casting with its amazing guest stars Adam Scott and Leighton Meester, and the storyline in which Keith implicitly believes a teenage girl about having been manipulated into a sexual relationship with her teacher is probably one of the most important things to happen ever in a "teen" show. I also liked that it let Veronica be wrong, because she IS just a teenage girl. And seeing how she reacts when she realizes she's wrong is also something important for a "teen" show, too.
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Date: 2014-07-05 01:32 pm (UTC)And Mars vs. Mars is a great episode, too - one of the most quietly devastating in the show. Veronica with all her trust issues goes to the bat for this dude, and he turns out to be exactly as sleezy as Carrie Bishop said... and I love the scene where Veronica goes to Susan Knight's house to encourage her to come forward, and tells her "They didn't - we didn't support Carrie." Because she's forcing herself to take responsibility for her error.
I also liked that even though Carrie Bishop and Susan Knight haven't been very nice to Veronica (as we see in the flashback), they are fiercely loyal to each other. The future they got in the movie just killed me.