Veronica Mars and me: We used to be friends. But not anymore. And not just because her show got canceled.
In hindsight, the death knell for one of my favorite shows on TV, "Veronica Mars," was the de-amped version of the theme song at the start of Season Three. The original song, "We Used To Be Friends," by alt-rockers The Dandy Warhols, was sassy, youthful and defiant. It was the soundtrack to skipping school and to peeling out of driveways; it was the music playing the first time you smoked a joint and the tune you wanted to hear after you told off your ex-BFF. It was the song you blasted when you thought you were living on the edge, before you grew up and realized how steep the drop-off was.
When the CW took over from the WB after Season Two, just as Veronica was starting at Hearst College, the network decided they needed a new theme song to reflect the show's new dark, noir-ish image. Of course, VM fans know that it had always been dark and noir-ish, but the CW really wanted to pound the point home. They took that classic theme song, silenced whatever musical instruments made it so rockin', and snuffed out all the energy. The Dandy Warhols now sounded moody and muted, like they were singing under water. Is this what growing up is supposed to sound like?
The producers also messed with the opening montage. The old credits showed close-ups of the characters in action, with little notebook-paper nametags scrawled with a symbol alluding to the show's central mystery. A little cliché, sure, but cute. And fun! In the CW's too-cool-for-school credits, the images of the characters looked like paper dolls, sepia-toned and mood-lit, peering out of dim corners and staring pensively off into space. The nametags were gone. Worse, the CW commercial breaks featured a sexed-up Veronica strutting down a runway in a hideous shorts-and-suspenders getup that would have been perfect for meeting Dylan, Kelly and Brandon at the Peach Pit, but wasn't very appropriate for running around Neptune solving crimes.
After sticking out the entire third season of Veronica Mars, I have to admit, I'm not that disappointed that the show has come to an end –- albeit an abrupt and rather unexpected one. The show, and its heroine, have changed. Like the theme song, they've become less interesting, less sassy and less vibrant. I've realized that the charming, beguiling Veronica I fell for in Season One left long before the last episode.
Let's backtrack. At first glance, Veronica Mars could be mistaken for any other network starlet. She has shiny blond hair that would prove to be impressively malleable (at least one new 'do in every episode), a chirpy, take-charge voice and an enviably cute figure. If your first encounter with Ms. Mars happened to come halfway through a mid-season episode (like mine did), before you knew who she was or what was going on, you might be so turned off by ten seconds of Veronica's petite perkiness that you would turn off the show, never to return…until Season One made it to DVD and you decided to give VM another chance (hey, millions of ecstatic viewers couldn't be wrong). After watching an episode of the show in its entirety, you would surely realize that there was much, much more to Veronica than met the eye.
Veronica was a true outsider, cruelly mocked and despised by just about everyone at her high school –- and her town. She'd just taken a nasty tumble from the highest perch of popularity, and it had left her bruised and broken. Her best friend had been brutally murdered, her boyfriend had dumped her, she'd been mysteriously drugged and raped at a party -- even her mom had let her down, by cheating on Veronica's dad, giving in to her alcoholic tendencies, and deserting the family. That's a lot for a sixteen-year-old to handle. But Veronica didn't react by locking herself in her room and whiling away the days until college by writing bad poetry and listening to Tori Amos. She responded to the crappy hand life had dealt her by …. well, by dealing with it. She went to school; she walked, one painful, humiliating step at a time, through the halls; she struggled with her homework; and she ate her lunch -- alone. Alienated from in-crowd, embarrassed by her status as a pariah, she threw herself into helping her dad (her hero, the one bright spot in her life) with his private investigator business.
Veronica was emboldened by her new role as PI, and the professional nature of her relationships with her "clients." Before long, she had stopped worrying about what people thought or said about her (she'd already heard the absolute worst, anyway). This freed her to take risks that would terrify most teens –- most women, in fact. Veronica could walk up to just about anyone--security guards, streetwalkers, CEO's, sheriffs, ex-boyfriends, con artists, Irish thugs—and, with a little sweet and/or salty talk, convince them to give her the goods. She spoke her mind, followed her instincts, and developed into one helluva PI. She'd help anyone, even the popular kids who delighted in tormenting her -– for the right price, of course.
But even wisecracking, case-cracking Veronica was still human (and still teenager) enough to break down every once in a while, and to mourn her old dance-squad, party-girl popular way of life, and especially, her dead best friend, Lily Kane, and her BMOC ex-boyfriend (and Lily's devastated brother), Duncan Kane. Veronica's gigantic losses, and her tragic fall from grace, had made her vulnerable and empathetic. In the course of a summer, she'd gone from being a carefree sophomore concerned only with dances and dresses to a hardened old soul. She was deep, man. And she was terribly, achingly lonely. That's what motivated her reach out to new-kid Wallace Fennell and computer-geek Mac. That's also what made her so different from other teens on TV, a unicorn in the stable of stock characters like jock, nerd, prom queen and Goth girl.
Veronica didn't let her emotional baggage drag her down as she plowed through case after case after case. She was a scrappy little fighter, and, when the opportunity presented itself, she even liked to have a little fun. Cue The Dandy Warhols!
That was the Veronica we knew and loved through Seasons One and Two. But in Season Three, Veronica suddenly went from smart-ass to bad-ass. She strutted onto the Hearst College campus, eyes blazing, navel bared, ready to solve some mysteries and pass judgment on some losers! Veronica had developed a solid reputation by this point, and clients were coming out of the woodwork to hire her. It was a good thing that she now possessed an uncanny ability to balance work-study at the library, after-school work at Mars Investigations, schoolwork, a boyfriend, and a social life.
Veronica was the boldest freshman Hearst had ever seen. She'd sharpened her reliably witty comebacks into mean, cutting little barbs, and she let them fly indiscriminately, at students, teaching assistants, professors, even bigwigs like the dean of the college. She brushed off a counselor's sincere efforts to get her to open up about her troubled high school years, smirking at the idea of talk therapy. The new, nasty Veronica seemed to delight in disrespecting authority and telling people off. Everyone annoyed her: the earnest activists, the frat boys, the girly girls, the couples, the loners, the over-achievers, the slackers. It wasn't clear if the dangerous, life-threatening situations she'd faced in the past two seasons had hardened her (in which case, you really couldn't blame her), or if she'd simply developed an uncrushable ego and a snarky 'tude (in which case, you could). Our once-uncertain and searching teen was now blithe and blasé. It really seemed like Veronica had gotten too big for her size-0 cropped britches.
In her passage into adulthood, Veronica had also left some of her compassion behind in high school. Early in the new season, Veronica went undercover during Sorority Rush Week. She allied with the radical feminists at the college paper (don't even get me started on that lame stereotyping), trying to figure out who was behind a string of recent campus rapes. The sorority sisters really tweaked Veronica's ironic-yet-flirty pigtails. She could barely hide her contempt and disgust for them, even though one of the girls who tried to befriend her seemed nice and down-to-earth.
Veronica was also at a total loss to understand why anyone would ever want to be a part of a sorority. The old Veronica most definitely would have related to the loneliness of being a college freshman, and the desire for easy friendships. She may not have become a pledge herself, but she would have been able to see where these wide-eyed young women were coming from. But the new Veronica didn't need friends, never mind sisters –- she had her own clique, thanks.
That's right: flanked by her "new and improved" high-school pals like sportstar playa Wallace, geek-chic Mac, and the newly-sensitized boyfriend Logan, as well as college friends like WASP princess-with-soul Parker and emo-boy Piz, Veronica started to look more and more like … a popular chick! And sadly, despite her best efforts (and the support of countless real-life outsiders), she started to resemble that lamely prototypical teen starlet.
At her worst, the new Veronica wasn't just cool, she was ice-cold. In that same sorority episode, she outed an advisor for growing marijuana on school premises, even after learning that the woman was using it to ease her cancer-related pain. Have a heart, Veronica!
I suppose one could argue that Veronica eventually redeemed herself with small acts like bringing cookies to a student she believed had been wrongly incarcerated, and being a good (excellent, really) sport about Logan's budding romance with Parker. But she was never able to regain that vulnerability, that rawness, that insecurity, that made her so complicated and compelling in high school. Of course, we expected Veronica to come into her own and mature over the past three years, but I don't think she stayed true to herself.
Perhaps the writers could have addressed this with storylines that incorporated Veronica's long-lost mom (whatever happened to her, anyway?), a falling-out with her dad, or some sort of comeuppance for VM herself. Unfortunately, the brains behind the show were creatively and logistically shackled with an uncertain future, a weird two-part season that encouraged viewer drop-off, and a one-stand-alone mystery-per-episode mandate. This didn't allow for long story arcs or rich, complex character development. So by the end of the season, even though I never stopped respecting the indomitable Veronica Mars, I kind of stopped liking her.
And that's why, unlike most die-hard, live-for-Tuesday-night VM fans, I'm not tearing my hair out over the cancellation of the series. Yes, I thought it was amazing TV, fantastically well-written and amazingly well-acted (this last part is especially apparent after watching tonight's dreadful pilot of "Hidden Palms" on the CW), and yes, I'm really going to miss the old Veronica, and the feeling I got from watching her trying to find her place in the world. But it's time to move on. We used to be friends, a long time ago, but we've since outgrown each other.