As I spoke about two weeks ago, some great TV shows go unseen by audiences during their original air dates. They can fail for any number of reasons, but most shows are ultimately cancelled based on viewership stats. If a show isn't watched, then advertisers won't pay for commercials during that time slot, then the network has little choice but to cancel the program. Others may have just not been marketed correctly, or were on a network that not a lot of people knew about/watched. When Veronica Mars was on the air from 2004-2006, all of these factors probably played a role in its ultimate demise.
The eponymous Veronica, played by Kristin Bell, is a teenage girl in sunny Neptune, California who works for her dad, a former police sheriff turned private investigator. Veronica, still scarred by her best friend's murder and her mother running away, takes on PI jobs at her school to earn some money and get info about her classmates. With the help of her trusty friends Wallace and Mac, as well as her dad (played by Enrico Colantoni), Veronica spends her high school hours navigating seedy Neptune to avenge her friend's death, as well as knock the rich jerks that infest her town down a peg.
The dialogue throughout is fantastic and is only outdone by Bell and Colantoni's outstanding chemistry as father and daughter. Veronica's foil and later love interest Logan (played by Jason Dohring) is also great as the local wealthy asshole with a heart of gold. The show's two central mysteries during the first two seasons are incredibly compelling and equally dark. Underneath the sunny exterior of a wealthy town lies a bedrock of infidelity, rape, murder, and all the other not-so-great stuff that seems to haunt Neptune. The show takes a minor left turn in the third season when Veronica goes to college, and it's glaring that the people behind the scenes are trying as hard as they can to keep the show on the air anyway they can. The finale was utterly disappointing and unfulfilled, making the fact that there was never a solid conclusion all the more painful.
Thankfully, Veronica Mars was a much bigger success after its initial run. Countless people, including myself, caught up with it via Netflix or Amazon and added to the show's posthumously rabid fan base. Rumors about a feature film adaptation swirled around as well, but nothing serious ever seemed to materialize. Luckily, fans rejoiced in March 2013, when series creator Rob Thomas resurrected the property by launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund a movie. The fundraiser raised almost $6 million, breaking numerous Kickstarter records before the campaign ended one month later. The enormous success of the fundraiser gives renewed hope to fans of many other great shows that didn't get enough time to flourish and reach their full potential.
The entire 3-season run of Veronica Mars is available on Amazon Prime Instant Video.
No comments:
Post a Comment