Date of airing: September 22, 2004 (UPN)
Nielsen ratings information: 2.49 million viewers, 1.8 rating/3 share in Households, 1.0 rating/3 share with Adults 18-49
Written by: Rob Thomas
Directed by: Mark Piznarski
”Underneath that angry young-woman shell, there's a slightly less angry young woman, who's just dyin' to beg me somethin'. You're a marshmallow, Veronica Mars. A Twinkie.”
I like my TV crime procedurals with a little more pep, scandals, and a whole other teen drama genre added to it, so here I am, getting back into VERONICA MARS, one of the finest shows of the 2000s. So fine that it spawned a feature film and a revival season after it got canceled by Dawn Ostroff, the former CW programming chief who didn't know what to do with the show when UPN and WB merged in 2006, and therefore got a weird third season that didn't do the show and its viewers any favor. But until then, there are still two finely written, partially thrilling, and excellently played seasons of television here that I don't mind rewatching over and over. Especially after the pilot episode, which already established how clever the show can be if the writers trust their viewers.
Because in this one, Veronica “solves” two cases with one neat trick: swapping video evidence that exonerates the local biker gang she kind of made friends with (and by extension Wallace, her actual new best friend), and implicating the sheriff's department in some shady dealings involving hookers doing business in the front seat of a police car. Not even one hour in, and Veronica has already established that her town's cops are very much not interested in playing the good guys. They have a badge and know how to use it to their own advantage (just like real-life cops). The show doesn't even need a murder mystery to be entertaining, because Veronica already has a corrupt sheriff and all his idiot and horny cops to deal with – that in and of itself is worthy of an entire teen crime drama.
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| Veronica Mars sends her greetings via a finger gun. |
