I filled out this questionaire for the documentary being made about the Veronica Mars fandom re: S4 and wanted to share some of what I wrote, since answering the questions helped me to sort through my feelings a little bit.
[Obviously spoilers for S4 abound, so scroll past if you don’t want to see them!!]
What most upset you about Veronica Mars S4?
It wasn't so much the death itself. Character's die. Sometimes the actors want to move to other projects. Sometimes the narrative necessitates a death. Sometimes the genre itself necessitates that characters die frequently. It's fine, I love a lot of shows and book series where death is to be expected.
So it wasn't the death itself. It was how it was done. It really felt like a slap in the face - or more even like a punch to the gut, frankly. They treated the relationship as mostly happy but rocky throughout the 8 episodes, which is fine. As much as Veronica and Logan love one another - they have a lot of issues both individually and as a couple to work out, and I was happy to watch them navigate all of that. But to have them finally come to a point of being happy, to watch them struggle through some of that and come out the other side just to watch Logan die violently in an attack meant for Veronica? That hurt.
And on top of that to have it be the climax of a mystery that really should have been solved a lot quicker than it was - I mean Patton Oswalt's character basically TELLS her what he's doing and Veronica is Smarter than THAT. So to have it happen that way, so violently, and against all narrative reason just really bummed me out.
Then to get online and read that the whole purpose of it was to get Veronica on her own and free to be out and about solving mysteries by herself? Another gut punch. The show was never about just Veronica. I love Veronica, and Kristen's portrayal of her, but I also love all of the other characters in the show. I love the town of Neptune and all of the darkness and corruption just waiting to be dug into and resolved. It was never a murder of the week show. That's not what it was about. It was about some very flawed and troubled characters doing their best despite their surroundings and circumstances.
Do you feel like you were misled by Rob Thomas regarding the new season?
Yes. Big time. If what he wanted was basically a sleeper pilot for the kind of show he really wanted to be making? He could have just done that. Should have just done that. Just cast Kristen, make the Logan death a backstory, and start with her already on her own. He didn't have to drag us through what was mostly a good season just to give a terrible end that soured us all on the whole thing.
He obviously knew most of the fans would not be on board for the vision he had. So it was very misleading and disingenuous to pretend to be giving us what we wanted only to yank the rug out from under us by the end.
What did Veronica Mars mean to you? Has that changed since the new season dropped?
It meant a lot to me. Beyond just being an entertaining show, with a fantastic romantic ship, and a delightful cast, it meant more personally to me. I struggled a lot in high school myself with a lot of bullying in a similar kind of community as Neptune - with most folks being either very rich or very poor. I did my best to stay strong and stand up for myself and others. Years later, watching Veronica pick herself back up after all of her traumas and tragedies and come back swinging and very often winning against people much more powerful than herself was empowering to watch.
Her close relationship with her father was also very special, and rare to see on a TV show. To watch Logan overcome his own traumas and tragedies to become a better version of himself was amazing - and the way he loved Veronica was wonderful. To see such a troubled young man stand by a strong woman and encourage her and accept her definitely meant a lot to me. Getting to see Weevil, Mac, Wallace, Jackie, and so many other characters learn to step away from the problems holding them back and really shine was incredible.
The show never did handle stories around sexual assault very well, in my opinion, but at that time - dealing with that subject matter in a serious and sensitive way at all was rather new and also meant a lot to me.
And yea, a lot of that has changed for me since season four, and especially since seeing Rob's interviews about it. I feel like he really doesn't understand what it takes to make a strong female character. That instead of wanting to allow Veronica to grow and become better and stronger - he wants to keep holding her back and re-traumatizing her over and over again. He doesn't seem to care for the other wonderful characters he's created. Weevil and Wallace have stagnated, Keith didn't get much development-wise, and Logan? Logan got all kinds of development just for him to be violently and needlessly killed in the end.
So yes, the new season has colored a lot of how I feel about the entirety of Veronica Mars. The negatives feel more negative, the positives feel ... confused. Like maybe the things I loved most about the show weren't even the point for the showrunners. Like maybe they just lucked into those things that I valued most about it, and the things I viewed as errors or mistakes were what they were actually going for all along.
