"Veronica Mars," Year Two

Some spoilers ahead.

I wasn't happy when I first saw the opening credits for the second season of "Veronica Mars." Instead of Meg (Alona Tal) or Mac (Tina Majorino) joining the cast, instead we got expanded roles for the season one background players, the Casablancas brothers, Dick (Ryan Hansen) and Cassidy, nicknamed "Beaver" (Kyle Gallner). Plus, there was Jackie (Tessa Thompson), the new African-American student who was clearly intended to be a new minority gal-pal for Veronica and a love interest for Wallace. Fortunately, Meg and Mac still had pretty big supporting roles in this season, and the new featured characters all ended up being developed pretty well.

For much of year two, it felt like "Veronica Mars" was trying to transition into becoming something else, a show that would be more sustainable over the long run, maybe. I want to emphasize how different the first and second seasons are from each other, in ways that aren't immediately apparent. The multiple flashbacks and dream sequences, which were a big part of the DNA of the early episodes, are almost entirely gone in season two. So is most of Veronica's angst about her past - Lianne and Lily are barely mentioned this year, and the Kanes' influence is hardly felt on the new storylines at all. Veronica is no longer a social pariah, and is actively trying to put that part of her life behind her, though she still chafes at the divide between the rich and poor in Neptune. If there was anything that the writers really bungled about this year is that they set up this great tension between the 09ers and the 99% at the beginning of the season, and then absolutely nothing came of it.

No, the big mystery that occupies Veronica Mars' time during her senior year is finding out who is responsible for causing a fatal bus crash that killed several of her classmates, and that may have been targeting her as well. There's a big list of suspects, including Woody Goodman (Steve Guttenberg), the local businessman who wants to become Neptune's mayor, Dick and Beaver's golddigger stepmother Kendall (Charisma Carpenter), Weevil and other members of the PCH biker gang, and the local Irish mob family, the Fitzpatricks, who have beef with them. There's some time spent examining the dysfunctions of the Casablancas family, but nothing nearly as juicy as all the drama with the Kane and Echolls clans in the first season, or as thematically interesting. Year two of "Veronica Mars" is much more sprawling, with fewer obvious connections between Veronica and her big case. Sure, we get some nice twists, but they're more convoluted, and feel even more like contrived soap opera fodder than the first time around. Teen pregnancy! Child abuse! Mad bombers! Logan sleeping with anything that moves! It would be deplorable if it weren't all so much fun.

And boy is "Veronica Mars" fun. It's very easy to nitpick this season's weaknesses, to talk about the disappearing and reappearing characters, poorly developed ideas, messy logic, and the sad neglect of some of the most important relationships and concepts from the previous year. The execution problems are obvious. However, that doesn't take away from the show still being consistently well-written, inventive, and able to spring some great surprises when it counts. I liked that the characters have more room to grow, now that they're free of the constraints of that incredibly plot-driven first season. You can see this particularly in Wallace, Veronica, and Mac, who have some of their best moments just dealing with average teenager problems instead of their fancy detective shenanigans. As much as I appreciate Veronica being so smart and tricky, and always having the perfect comeback, sometimes she's a little too good at being the omnipotent girl sleuth. This season, I didn't have that problem with her at all.

While it held my attention, the big mystery wasn't as satisfying, because the stakes weren't as high and our main characters didn't feel like they were being seriously affected by the mess this time. I think most of the story issues came down to trying to do too much, and not putting the right amount of narrative emphasis in the right places. Boy, could we have used another episode about Woody, or some more time with the Fitzpatricks to flesh them out, or a better look at what was going on in the Casablancas household. While I like that the writers kept a lot of possibilities open for the ultimate Big Bad, they ended up with a lot of extra story threads that were just too underdeveloped for me to care much about. For every payoff that did work, like the identity of our mad bomber, there was another that didn't.

Still, I got a lot out of this season, and I was happy with many of the choices that the show's creators made. I know the third season is supposed to be another step down, but so far "Veronica Mars" is going strong enough that I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep going. After all, from what I've seen so far, mediocre "Veronica Mars" still beats most shows on their best days.
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