Monday, July 22, 2019

Veronica Mars Messed Up My Weekend Plans

I mean, sure, I hadn't quite figured out how I was going to watch and do everything I had planned for next week but dropping a season while I am waiting for a water taxi is just not cool. Except it is.
The irony is that one of the things I like about Hulu's programming is that in most cases they drop it on a weekly schedule. I am less likely to binge, the person who hasn't even finished "Shrill".
But this I watched. Not all at once partly because I do like sleep and partly because as much as I like TV, I like people to and had some plans over the weekend. 
So the show. One critic I saw mentioned so many reboots try to start right where the show left off. Sure the age of the actors affected the choices here but things have moved forward in Neptune. You know, except for still being a corrupt cesspool. Oh also, it's a show about adults now. There's sex, there's swearing, there's more overt racism, and there's bombings and beheadings. I mean sure, this was a show with rape and murder as the overarching storyline of it's first season, but it definitely feels like a show on a different channel. Also, in the prior seasons, most of our scenes involved a member of the Mars family. The camera follows more people here, we get scenes without the Mars family more often. Neptune is still a town of grey, the nuance, the world where it seems like justice is elusive and everyone over or underreacts. Except of course, it seems more normal there. Neptune wasn't predictive it was reflective. 
I love Veronica even when she does things I think are just a little much. (Not the tasing. I love the tasing.) At its core Veronica Mars the show has always been about a world stacked against people, and the small attempts that can be made to get some form of justice, even as you know the ones with the power will top the balance again. And even though our main characters are no longer teenagers, the show still respects teenagers, well - some of them, as people. 
The show is imperfect, and gosh could I really do without prison rape and suicide jokes made by the people I'm rooting for. The issues of representation and treatment of characters of color in the prior seasons remain largely unchanged here. But I am glad to have it back, glad to revisit Neptune, glad to have the chance to laugh, shudder, and have my heart be stomped on.