CastKristen Bell
Percy Daggs III
Teddy Dunn
Jason Dohring
Francis Capra
Enrico Colantoni
Creator
Rob Thomas
Running Time
935 Minutes NTSC
Aspect Ratio
Anamorphic Widescreen
A little bit Buffy. A little bit Bogart. A dash of Nancy Drew. Veronica Mars takes the best and brainiest of the American culture of crimesolving and adds a unique vision of its own - brooding, edgy darkly funny and just plain dark - to become one of the hottest, sleekest series of the new century.
Veronica (Kristen Bell) is an outcast in a trendy SoCal beach town. Once she ran with Neptune High’s in crowd. But she’s on the outside after her best friend is murdered and her sheriff father accuses the wrong man as the perp: the dead girl’s billionaire father. Dad loses his job, Veronica loses her popularity and both struggle to build a detective agency and new lives. E-mail scams, cults, car thefts — you name it, Veronica investigates it. But her obsession is the murder of her friend. And she’ll take any risk to solve it.
CastKristen Bell
Percy Daggs III
Teddy Dunn
Jason Dohring
Francis Capra
Ryan Hansen
Kyle Gallner
Tessa Thompson
Enrico Colantoni
Creator
Rob Thomas
Running Time
929 Minutes NTSC
Aspect Ratio
Anamorphic Widescreen
[If like me you come to this cold there are minor spoilers on the back cover blurb and you might want to avoid looking at a name on a folder in the inside art]Who knocked on Veronica’s door at the end of Season 1: Duncan? Logan? Someone even more surprising? "I was hoping it would be you," the teen sleuth said. Now you can see who rated that rare Veronica smile, then uncover the newest mystery to envelop the town of Neptune.
It begins when Veronica misses the bus — a school bus that minutes later plunges off a cliff into the Pacific. It may be a tragic accident. Or suicide. Or murder.It may (or may not) be tied to Lilly Kane’s murder. But you know Veronica’s on the case, even when other mysteries lead to danger and double crosses, even when her love life takes a couple of dives onto the pool deck, even when.. well, wait and find out.
Season 2: new characters, new revelations,drop-dead dialogue and dead-on cool. Return to Mars. It’s everything you like about Neptune.
I really love these! I raced through the first box set, bought the second and did the same, they're just amazing. I watched the show for the first time on DVD, not really knowing anything about it, other than Joss Whedon [who has a cameo in season two] had said good things about it. So the recent news that the show was cancelled after the third season comes as a blow.
The first season has the through plotline of the Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried) murder case driving it, which is usually a B-plot in most episodes until the finale. The second is more fragmented in it's overall structure but just as good. The depth of continuity this show has, especially in the season two finale is jaw dropping. I love the sustained darkness and pessimistic tone of the show [there's even a downbeat Xmas episode] with Veronica up against impossible odds armed only with her wits, backbone and a stungun, fighting the world in defense of her father and to bring her best friend's murderer to justice. It's just an amazing story, brilliantly told.
If I had to give any criticisms of the show it would be that several characters seem to drop off the face of the earth for multiple episodes, a couple because they physically left town, but others for seemingly no reason. In one of the featurettes Kristen Bell says the second season focuses more on the community of Neptune although I think this could have been done much more, because the more tangible a world she lives in, the better. The absense of supporting characters who Veronica surely sees on a daily basis is surreally strange.
The cast are all great but Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring stand out. Buffy's Alyson Hannigan appears in the first season, I think she was a little miscast and is joined by Charisma Carpenter in the second.
The first episode of the first season is slightly longer than originally aired and that set has some extra scenes on the last disk, they strangely seemed to have had foley sound added which you don't normally get, why weren't they edited back into the episodes? The menu on the first set is odd, the first 5 discs have a "Special Features" sub-menu screen which contains nothing, but on the last one it contains just a single item the compiled deleted scenes. There are no commentaries on either set which is a pity [although yes, they are usually disasters]. There's a specific episode during the second season where a major character leaves, it would have been a fascinating insight into the mechanics of the show to have had one with Rob Thomas and the Actor. The deleted scenes of the second season are on each disk accessible through the "Special Features" and episode sub-menu screens. There are two featurettes and a gag reel on the second set which are great, I just wish Warner Brothers had loaded these sets with wonderfull stuff and maybe more people would have got them and the show would still be going.
