Year three finds Veronica (Kristen Bell) now graduated from Neptune High School and turning to her first year at Hearst College. Her romance with the wealthy and emotionally conflicted Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) continues, while old friends Wallace Fennel (Percy Daggs III), Cindy 'Mac' Mackenzie (Tina Majorino) and Dick Casablancas (Ryan Hansen) join her on campus as new students. Former gang-banger Eli "Weevil" Navarro (Francis Capra) takes a job as part of the Hearst maintenance grew, while loving private investigator father Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) suddenly finds himself thrust back into the position of town sheriff midway through the season.
While I'd seen a few episodes of the program and definitely enjoyed them, my normal job as a film critic kept me from really taking full stock of the show until now. For whatever reason, I never felt the need to tape the darn thing and watch it later like I always did with that other female driven mystery/suspense series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Both seasons one and two had plots so multilayered and connected if I watched an episode in September and didn't see another until the following month I was suddenly completely lost, the energy required to catch up on it all not effort I felt remotely in need of exerting.
Season three's mysteries aren't as complex; most of the episodes stand alone entries not requiring viewers to have paid so much minute attention. There are exceptions, of course, a plotline concerning a rapist running around campus taking up a good two-thirds of the season while another revolving around the death of a semi-major character playing apart in a good six or seven programs. But these are exceptions, not the rule, and for the most part the majority of Veronica's investigations are resolved by the time of the end credits.
This is both a good and a bad thing. For someone like me who has never gotten a chance to get involved with the world of Neptune, California this is a great way to become familiar with Veronica, her rapier wit and her beguiling ability to tackle just about any challenge. On the other, this new point of view causes the majority of the supporting players to fade very deeply into the background, while the interpersonal relationships between everyone can't help but suffer as the show makes its way to the end of the season.
Still, watching season three it becomes immediately apparent why "Veronica Mars" generated such a passionate following. Like Buffy Summers before her, this pint-sized dynamo of investigative prowess is one of the most passionately created and singularly intelligent women to ever grace the television screen. Bell portrays her beautiful, unafraid to be completely unlikable in some moments, downright mean even at times, yet still cradling a full measure of emotional sensitivity making her undeniably human. Her scenes with Colantoni are a sublime joy, both actors working off one another with such dexterous believability it is nearly impossible not to believe the two of them are not father and daughter in real life.
All that said, this DVD release of the series' final season can't help but feel a bit like a giant middle finger to the network for canceling it. From the frustratingly open-ended final episode leaving a flurry of plot strands dangling never to be resolved, to a pair of special features virtually begging the CW to take a chance on a radically different direction for the program, a lot of this set has the distinct odor of creator Rob Thomas (not the singer) running around the studio lot whining like a petulant five-year-old. There is annoying sanctimonious we're-so-good-I-can't-believe-you're-doing-this-to-us vibe almost impossible to shake, and while I'd loved to have seen more adventures of Veronica and her dad crying about it like a cantankerous little baby isn't exactly going to make that happen.
As for that aforementioned pitch for season four, if it is going to happen here's hoping it doesn't it the way Thomas sells here. His vision fast-forwards Veronica into the future and has her working with the FBI. Gone is the complicated love-hate relationship with Logan, vanished are the intricate relationships with her friends, disappeared are the bizarre mysteries revolving around Neptune's wealthy and powerful. Most of all, gone is the relationship between Veronica and Keith on which the whole show revolves, and if time warping the series forward erases that then I'm pretty positive the only thing new the creators' would be looking at would be outright failure.
Be that as it may, this final season set of "Veronica Mars" is pretty much pure entertainment anchored superbly by the beautiful and talented Bell. It didn't change my life and it didn't blow me away but I did have a good time, and if I was going to spend a weekend or two spending some lazy time to myself taking stock of the gang in Neptune, CA would certainly be a grandly pleasurable way to do so.