In Honor of the Hiatus: Some Lost and Veronica Mars Thoughts

Lost: The first five episodes of the season confirm my worst fears for the show, and have seriously got me wondering whether I want to keep watching. They have been slow-paced (only four days have passed since the beginning of the season), repetitive (note to the writers: the 'show the same scene from different perspectives' concept can be intriguing, but not if you take it so literally as to offer us nothing more than different camera angles), padded (Hurely gives Jack a blow-by-blow recap of "Numbers", Michael spends three different episodes searching for Walt under rocks and behind shrubbery), and uninteresting (this week, watch in fascination as we learn that Sun and Jin's meeting was completely ordinary, also, will Sun find her missing wedding ring?). Not to mention that the characters have become even more annoying and unbelievable as human beings--ask some questions, you big freaks of nature! The first ten minutes of the season premiere were interesting, fun, and a big visual treat. The remainder of the first five episodes of the season was a big disappointment.

UPDATE: The folks at Teevee.org have been having a conversation about the show, and have said everything I wanted to say (and some stuff I hadn't thought of) far more eloquently than I could.

Veronica Mars: The second season is starting off slowly and perhaps a little off-kilter, but it is useful to remember that the first five episodes of the new season are head and shoulders above their first season counterparts, and are already showing great promise. I'm particularly pleased to see that for all their alleged maturity and independence, Veronica and her two suitors are failing in believably teenage ways. All three of them are letting down the people closest to them, acting selfishly and unthinkingly, and in general proving that even if you have piles of money or PI know-how, you still need to learn how to deal with people. I'm not sure how I feel about the decision to drag Wallace into the show's games of self-discovery--I enjoyed him last season as Veronica's rock, her sole connection to normalcy. But there's no question that the Wallace-centered scenes, those from "Blast From the Past" in particular, are very strong, and as long as the writers remember Wallace's status as the show's moral center (even furious at his mother and his best friend, Wallace has the presence of mind to lambast Jackie for playing a nasty trick on Veronica), I suppose I'll be able to live with the complications in his life. At this point, I have only one serious caveat and that is that I hate Veronica's hair--I liked her so much better with the short cut she sported last season.

Oh, and because I enjoy making a fool of myself in public: I think Weevil killed Felix. I find it hard to believe that Logan's chorus line kick knocked him out for very long, and I think a scuffle ensued after he woke up and realized the PCH-ers were going to kill Logan. As for the bus? I have no idea.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow, you think Weevil killed Felix? To stop him from killing Logan? Interesting . . . hmmm, that actually makes a lot of sense and is the sort of thing Weevil might do.

But he certainly acted like he believed Logan did it when he confronted VM at the gas station in the first episode. He practically called her a whore for supporting and dating Logan and dating Duncan. That was a lot of anger and nastiness at VM if Weevil knows that Logan didn't do it.
October 28, 2005 2:59 AM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
I'm not sure how angry Weevil was at Veronica during that conversation at the gas station, given that few seconds later he was giving her a ride home (even though she obviously didn't need it desperately - it was the middle of the day on a crowded street and she was already calling Wallace), and that the next time we see him talking to her at school, they're fairly friendly.

I think the most telling part of the conversation between Weevil and Veronica in the pilot is Veronica's suggestion that the PCH-ers are no longer completely under Weevil's control. That's what got me wondering in the first place. Weevil may need to maintain a tenuous hold on his crew, which is why he's putting out the word that Logan killed Felix (also, trying to avoid going to prison).

It's just speculation, of course. I'm probably wrong.
October 28, 2005 10:15 AM

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