I was among many who were happy when it was announced Veronica Mars was getting a revival, I was among many who were impatiently waiting for July 26, 2019, and I was among many who were pleasantly surprised when Hulu decided to drop the entire 8-episode season 4 a week early.

I watched it over the weekend, rather enjoyed it, then puzzled over the ending.

Then I re-watched it (complete with the ending, which I swore never to do), and realized something.

The biggest problem with Veronica Mars isn’t the heroine, the on-again-off-again relationship, the anger, the issues...The biggest problem with Veronica Mars is (and always has been) the writing.

With the exception of the first season and it’s long-spanning arc of Who Killed Lilly Kane and the many twists and turns it had spawned and created, the rest was decent at best (second season, the movie) and mediocre at worst (third and fourth season).

Yes, at first viewing of the revival, I felt that it was a great revival. It got me one of my favorite, if not the favorite, TV show back on screen. It got me my favorite father-daughter fictional relationship back on screen, and yes, I proudly admit it, it got me my favorite bad-boy-turned-decorated-Navy-pilot-turned-Naval-Intelligence-Officer-and-apparently-now-a-Navy-SEAL back on screen, complete with an established relationship with the heroine.

I enjoyed the season-long serial bomber mystery arc, I enjoyed the banter (what there was of it), I enjoyed parts of the LoVe relationship...
But re-watching it, looking deeper (since knowing what happens in each episode, I didn’t have to focus so much on the story), looking into the nuances of both the characters and plot, I finally figured out what bothered me the first time I watched it.

It had no soul.

It had no bite.

It wasn’t Veronica Mars anymore. At least not the show that I used to love to watch (and still do, Season 1 and 2, from time to time).

While the first three seasons more or less worked with Veronica as the bitter teenager with a hardened shell thanks to the beatings (literal and figurative) she’s received in life, people change. No matter what, people change. For better or for worse, but they do.
She didn’t. Veronica Mars even seemed to have regressed.

As the movie showed, she was capable of change and growth (more or less), she’s proved it by creating a new life for herself outside of Neptune, getting two degrees, landing herself a “normal” boyfriend in the form of Piz (the human equivalent of lukewarm milk), but, and this is the major problem with the writing for this particular heroine, Veronica Mars is never satisfied with what she has.

Never was and apparently never will be.

At the end of the movie and all the spouting of wanting-the-normal-rejecting-the-drama, she leaves her lucrative future career, lukewarm milk normal boy Piz, and cosmopolitan New York behind to embrace her “addiction” (don’t even get me started on that idiotic metaphor) of being a P.I. in her seedy, yet sunny, little home town in California and in the arms of reformed bad boy turned Naval aviator who finally got his shit together (and even in the movie appeared to be more “evolved” than the heroine), Logan Echolls.

And that’s how we find Veronica 5-6 years later. Being a P.I. in her seedy, yet sunny, little home town in California and in the arms of reformed bad boy turned Naval aviator turned Naval Intelligence Officer (showing the SEAL trident on his NWU Type II), Logan Echolls, who is still, apparently trying to get his shit together after all these years and, thanks to therapy, accomplishing his mission.

Veronica is a woman in her thirties, in a committed relationship she herself has chosen, living in Neptune the way she wanted, working as a P.I., the way she herself has chosen.
But is she happy? Or even content? I didn’t get that impression.

For someone with deep-seated issues and trauma, she scoffs at therapy, resents her live-in boyfriend for the fact he’s not the volatile, angry jackass she’s spent three years in highschool trying to change, resents his therapy sessions and rebuffs his each and every attempt at getting her to join him, rejects his marriage proposal and then resents him not getting angry, goads him every chance she gets, while relegating him into the background otherwise, and only accepts his proposal after a hot-and-heavy sex dream about an ex-boyfriend (it’s always “the grass must be greener on the other side” with Veronica Mars).

For a woman in her thirties with various friends in various stages of development and growth (even Dick has a job, for crying out loud), Veronica Mars seems stuck in her teenage/first-year-of-college rut she should’ve climbed out (and in the movie it seemed she has) a long time ago.
She still treats everybody (except her father) as garbage and lesser than she, resents their happiness, changed lives and maturity. She’s still the only one allowed to have flaws and issues, and the only one to pass judgment on everybody, while she, of course, must remain untouchable, or she’s deeply affronted.

I blame this regression, this inability to make a character grow and mature as the world and people around her change, squarely on the writers’ shoulders.
The creator claims this is the adult Veronica, but that’s not what I saw on screen. I saw an angsty, angry, issue-ridden teenager pretending to be an adult.

Which resonates in her relationships. Familial, friendly, and romantic. She’s emotionally stunted and stuck in a rut, which is glaringly apparent when she interacts with either her father, her only friend still left in Neptune (Wallace) and the apparent love-of-her-life Logan.

This is Veronica Mars to me, this is what it’s all about. To me Veronica Mars was never a detective show, was never a one-bitter-woman show the way they’re apparently trying to convert her into. Veronica Mars, the show, was always an ensemble, a motley crew of characters from different circumstances and backgrounds that somehow found themselves orbiting this central female character. It were the characters, the relationships and interactions between them, that made the show what is it.
Veronica Mars by herself is a bitch. And a boring one at that. An angry, bitter woman solving a crime and then moving onto to the next. There are only so many cases to be solved before it all starts to get repetitive and dull.



And now for the ending. And the death of a major character.

Logan Echolls didn’t have to die. Not really. The creator claims it was a creative decision to push the story forward, to get rid of the teenage drama, because established relationships that result in marriage aren’t interesting.

I call bull on all of it.

Logan’s death was lazy. It was exploitative. It was cheap.

He didn’t have to die. You had drama galore set for the future with these two particular characters enjoying their “marital bliss”. The entire season 4 was written to create tension in this new iteration of their relationship.
All the unresolved issues between them, Veronica’s unresolved trauma and her determination not to accept help and/or go to therapy, Veronica’s emotional cheating, her inability to be happy with her new life and what she had, Logan’s job...

Heck, his mysterious job was a perfect excuse to keep him off-screen for most of the time, keeping Veronica alone and angry (for some other reason than her husband being dead).

But no, they had to go for the shock value and kill him off.

Fine. They killed him off, it was their prerogative, but at least they could’ve given him a decent send-off. Have him die in the line of duty (if they wanted to do it off-screen), have him die to protect Veronica, have him die while dismantling a bomb in order to save someone.
And yet they went with the cheap, lazy cliché ending of the two getting their happily-ever-after and then one of them gets fridged (because that hard-boiled P.I. wife of his is suddenly too stupid to check the bag the accused bomber left in her car—if that isn’t lazy writing, I don’t know what is). And we don’t even get to “enjoy” it.
All this guy got was an off-screen blast and a “one year later”. Not only was it a disservice to the audience, it was a disservice to the character and the series he helped create and mold.

It looked like they had no idea how to write Logan anymore. They created this perfect redemption story, a man who single-handedly remade himself, and continued to grow, mature and work through his issues (of which they were many) through therapy, and they had no idea what to do with him.
He spent most of the series 4 twiddling his thumbs on the sidelines, while they could’ve used him to help Veronica in her case (that one scene worked very well).
He seemed sanded off, because the writers made him so. There were options to make him the Logan we knew and liked/loved. Jason Dohring, though some compare his emotional range to that of a wet sock, knows his character, knows how to make him work, if only he was given a decent script to work with. There were Logan-esque moments with dry wit quips, but not enough and seemed to be inserted as mere afterthoughts.

The creator’s explanation that it was meant to rid the series of teenage drama is also a load of crap. Who wrote the teenage drama in the first place? And who wrote the teenage drama into season 4, where all the characters were supposed to be more-or-less mature grownups?
If the writers didn’t make Veronica’s character regress, stomping all over her development shown in the movie, turning her back into an ill-adjusted, emotionally stunted teenager who had no idea what she really wanted and always wanted something else from what she had, if the writers didn’t write the stupid ass would-be love triangle (the epitome of “teenage drama”) between Logan, Leo and Veronica, if they didn’t make her cheat on Logan emotionally (but let me tell you that if they had the balls to write it, she’d cheat physically as well), if they didn’t make her accept Logan’s proposal out of guilt for the emotional cheating, there would’ve been no drama.
She could’ve accepted from the start, they would’ve been happy for a while, and then, maybe, Logan’s death wouldn’t have felt so cheapened and lazy.

The way the season 4 ended spells the end of Veronica Mars, the series, as we know it. All the work Logan did throughout the season, pushing Veronica to go to therapy, acknowledge her issues with him and them, face her own inability to be content and/or happy, trying to make her see she could be more than the hardened, bitter, unable-to-trust Veronica, is completely demolished by that last voicemail message in which he condones her further descent into darkness, her further burrowing under the rock bottom she’d hit a long time ago.

That, too, was a disservice to the series as a whole and the person Logan has become.



It was all done to make more Veronica Mars, the series, again, forgetting just what made this series great. What made it tick, what gave it heart. It sure wasn’t Veronica Mars, the character that gave it its title, it were the other characters making Veronica real, keeping her grounded. It was the little town of Neptune with its class system and inequalities...

Now, with the title character having left Neptune behind to once more look for a greener grass elsewhere, and one of the three characters that were more-or-less the core of the show (Veronica, Keith, Logan) gone (and badly and lazily as well), the show that we know is also gone.

They might do more seasons of Veronica Mars, but all they’ll have in common with the cult series is the title. And the series will end up being just like its main character, an empty shell.