Veronica Mars — “The Bitch Is Back” (Season/Series Finale)
It all comes back to the Canes.
Now that felt like vintage Veronica Mars. For perfectly logical reasons, the show has always been at its best when the character had something on the line. In last night’s finale, Veronica was trying to save her reputation and sometime in the process completely destroyed her fathers career. It’s a dark note for the show to go out on, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right note. More thoughts on the episode and the end of the series after the jump…
Like any good mystery, the more layers that were peeled away, the greater the stakes became, and in last night’s final hour Veronica goes down the rabbit hole (or through the doggy door) to discover the dissemination of a sex tape was by the hands of none other than the Illuminati. And why not, really? She had all ready brought down a rich actor/murderer, a disgruntled explosives expert and son of a software engineer, a rapist, a killer teaching assistant et al. The only people left in Neptune, California that hadn’t met the wrath that was a 19-year-old private investigator was a hidden society with plenty of secrets to keep.
Along the way our supporting cast members finally got to return to the behavior we knew they hadn’t forgotten. Mac cracked a password encryption with the help of a giant mainframe. Weevil got in trouble, got out of trouble and presumably will get in trouble again (and seemed to have cut back on eating the missing cast members). Wallace did his best to help his friend get to the bottom of the case. Dick reminded Logan that the “Pound-explosion” is “still a thing” (though he’s recent moralizing did come off as strikingly uncharacteristic). And yes, Logan, finally put away the mopey face and returned to his former glory of beating the living piss out people (two people, in this episode!), even if one of those people could ultimately lead to his own untimely death.
It was such a charming episode, which is great because it’s going to be all we have for the rest of our lives. It’s probably for the best. Better to burn out than to fade away, right? The catch is that a character this rich doesn’t come along every day. This isn’t to say there aren’t amazing characters on television these days. All you have to do is watch a few episodes of The Wire or The Sopranos or Friday Night Lights or The Shield or any number of outstanding dramas currently on television. The difference is all of those series go to great lengths to present stories deeply rooted in reality — almost to the point of losing that escapism that television naturally provides.
What Veronica Mars succeeded at doing so brilliantly was creating a storybook world of murderers and street gangs and rich kids who get away with whatever they want and a young would-be private eye doing her best to bring some justice (or at the very least Karma) to that world, and then presenting these familiar-but-not details as hand-to-god honesty. It was an absolute cartoon that demanded to be categorized with Shakespeare (or at least with NYPD Blue), and it will be missed.
Listen to “It Never Rains In Souther California” by Albert Hammond
