Zooey spices up Weeds + Veronica Mars
Since about episode five or six of this season, Showtime’s Weeds has fallen off a bit from the season’s strong start. That is until this week when Zooey Deshanel showed up as Andy’s exgirlfriend. It was a hilarious role and perfectly cast. Perhaps the best guest roll in television since Forest Whitaker completely took over The Shield. As an actress, Deshanel has always been best with flighty characters, and here playing someone who had spent the past 48 hours eating nothing but salmon and Red Bull, she was pitch perfect. It also didn’t hurt that she was incredibly funny, which is important on this show since sometimes it becomes a little overly concerned with its inconsequential plotting. Knowing that this is Showtime and that series rarely make it to a third season because they can’t afford to pay them, I’m assuming that Weeds will wrap itself up in the coming weeks. This is a shame, when such a great character is introduced so late in the game, but I guess that’s how things work out.
Veronica Mars seems tighter this season. (WHAT?!) Wow, that sounded horrible. What I meant was that the writing seems tighter. The story, whether it be the main mystery or the individual mysteries seem to constantly expanding. Everything is relevant to something else, and those few things that don’t seem to fit are probably just the formation of important things to come. Also, does anyone else secretly (or not so secretly) want Veronica and Logan to split? While I did find the end of last night’s episode to be mostly romantic, Logan is best when he’s bitter, and frankly he just doesn’t seem all that bitter when Veronica is on her good side. This is a shame as Logan’s quips rank among the highlights of previous seasons.
Also, you can add the line, “Larry, you’re entering a world of pain” to the long list of Big Lebowski homages. And let’s not forget the seemingly late arrival of Weevil to the Hearst campus. It was actually probably a good idea to wait a couple episodes so that his joining the school’s custodial staff didn’t seem quite so forced. Now we have all the major players perfectly aligned for some sort of horrible future conflict. But first, perhaps we should figure out who’s the rapist?
October 18th, 2006 at 8:11 am
V Mars pissed me off last night man. Pairing Weevil with Keith was a stroke of genius and they threw the idea away in less than half an episode! Freakin morons! Although his firing was perfectly in sync with his character, they could have easily had the same resolution a couple of eps down the line. Seriously, whats better Weevil as a private detective or Weevil as a janitor? LLLAAAAAME!
October 18th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
I’m with AK on that. I don’t think Weevil needed to stay with Keith forever, but it seemed like there was more to explore there, and it was kind of heartwarming to see how excited Weevil was over figuring something out. Could have at least squeezed a good month of episodes with solid fun Weevil/Keith B storylines, and it would have been a way to work Keith in a little more without forcing it. Whereas now, it seems Keith really has a lot less to do with the show with Veronica out at college, even if she is commuting.
A side note–did Weevil just go f’n nuts on cupcakes over the summer? Is it just me, or did that dude get chunky? Is there a story there, with the actor? And on the other end of the spectrum, Logan is clearly on ‘roids this season.
October 18th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
I think Weevil ate the rapist. Just a theory, but I’m pretty sure I’m correct.
October 20th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Weevil was puffy town. He looked sort of unwell, like it was from some medication he had to go on (see Jerry Lewis). Maybe since the show might not last a full season (this is the reason for 13 episode story-arcs, yes?), they took something that clearly could have been explored more and cut to the chase. We know Weevil would have been a loose cannon and eventually parted ways with Keith so maybe they wedged it all in one episode in case they get cancelled. Joss did a lot of that with Firefly and Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars was nothing but.
I know this doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion but Weevil is Frank Capra’s grandson, right?
I liked the ending too because a) I’m a girl and b) Logan and Veronica have championship chemistry, but it’s hard to swallow Logan being that well adjusted.
Last question: how are VM’s ratings? I have a “hands off” approach to my FTL team so I don’t know.
October 20th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
VM ratings have been decent for the show, but lousy in comparison to everything else. I think it’s been getting somewhere between a 1.5 and a 2. In comparison, Top Model, The CWs best show, gets about a 5, and Grey’s Anatomy, the number one show on television is averaging somewhere around a 15.