Special Agent Mars

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You'd think if I wanted to pimp something, it'd be better than the final, super-weak season of Veronica Mars, right? Well, you should be, but I have earned 64¢ so far this year from Amazon and I want to keep that filthy lucre coming in!!!

I ordered season three for three reasons: my buddy Rat Boy; a sense of closure from owning the complete series; and the demo reel Rob Thomas shot for the execs at the CW in a last-ditch effort to get picked up for a fourth season. Since Jesse's only got a few lines in one episode, we've really got to toss that reason out. I've been known to stop dvds and walk out of theaters before, so it's not really about closure.¹ So I dropped the cash for that demo reel. And I'm glad I did.

First off, a quick look at the cast:

• Kristin Bell as herself, but "older"
• The always watchable Walton Goggins as her boss
• Perpetually smarmy and charming Adam Kaufman² as the savvy, experienced FBI agent with whom she was clearly going to be sparring intellectually and intersexually.
• Some nameless young pretty things to meet the necessary CW quota.
  

Veronica's first day. Some nice stretching and warping of time with flash- forwards and backwards. All in all? A show I'd have liked a hell of a lot more than Veronica Does College. And V could have gone *back* to high school. Her first, very quickly resolved, case was in a "federal reform school for girls". Unfortunately it was quickly resolved, so I can only fantasize about the communal showers and pillow fights. Alas.

I was left with a strange sense that something was missing, but I'm not sure what. It had great visual production values so it wasn't that. My best guess - and I'll have to watch again to confirm - is that the reel either had a more minimal score than a normal episode or just didn't get any extra audio looped so it was missing ambient sound. Not sure.

Yet again, a network made a crappy choice. Season three was weak, there's no doubt about it; however, a good chunk of that problem was the network mandate to do shorter mystery arcs. The short arcs did not work as well. But beyond the relative strength or weakness of last year, Rob Thomas put together a reel that had a ton of potential. Does anyone actually believe Veronica at the FBI would have been a weaker show than Gossip Girl or Girlfriends?

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¹ I should point out that the VM boxes really belong to TheWife, so her issues about closure are more relevant than mine. And since she just won't let me be free you can imagine that she's more obsessive about finishing things than I. You can also tell because she actually watched all of season two of Prison Break. At least Linc and Michael got to taste a little freedom. Lucky bastards.
² Bastard! I used to like you, but now I realize it is you who has stolen my sweet Poppy from me!!!