VERONICA MARS always had the lowest ratings of any program on network television, and the ratings kept going even lower even after the merge which eliminated a network from competition. If the ratings seem comparatively better now, it is only because the ratings have fallen for shows in general since then. As a teenager, I watched the show when it first aired and the price was right – it was free on broadcast TV. Lol. The show provided entertainment, but not necessarily entertainment that was intended by the makers. It had the same appeal as a trashy soap opera like THE OC, but with an unattractive cast. The show never won any awards that might have brought it more attention and it has always just been more liked on the internet and blogosphere. (The show provides a revisionist take on high school which appeals to many people online.) Ultimately, the show failed because, quite simply, it was not very good even by low, low contemporary standards. A lot of the mysteries do not even make sense and the show always had major contrivances and plot holes. For me to list all of the problems with the show, it will need a review of some length. (Of course, if there were only one or two problems with the show, it would not be a mediocre show at best, would it?)

The second and third seasons are not as much of a decline as people say, but the first season is nowhere close to being a "masterpiece” either. If I had to rate the seasons on a scale of 1 to 10 stars, I would give the second season a star lower than the first season and the third season a star lower than the second. The show became worse as it went along because the writers never put much thought into the show to begin. The more they added to the canon, the more unwieldy it became for them and the continuity worsened and worsened. If they had planned ahead, they would never have kept so many characters around long after their use had run out. The third season begins with a huge contrivance by having so many characters go to the same private college: Veronica, Wallace, Mac, Logan and Dick. It was more plausible on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER because Buffy went to a public college and only two of her friends ended up going to the school.

The show borrows heavily from other sources (or at least does not do a good enough job hiding those sources). The show itself is mostly a race-swapped, teensploitation version of THE MYSTERY FILES OF SHELBY WOO, a Nickelodeon show that I remembered watching as a kid. That program followed a spunky teenage girl in a coastal beach town who solved mysteries for her classmates while snooping around the local police station, including the evidence room. (Sound familiar?) She is raised by a single male father-figure with a background in law enforcement. Her friends, including a black friend, act as her sidekicks. She works as a secretary. She annoys a head at the police station by being involved in the cases. As many journalists noted and the creator verified, TWIN PEAKS was another obvious inspiration with both shows revolving around the murder of a popular, blonde, teenaged girl. Sometimes, when the show would borrow ideas from other works, they would lose the original context that made the idea seem plausible. At least the kids on TWIN PEAKS remembered the secret hiding place of Laura Palmer only a few days after her death and not a full year later. Lol. Other plot devices borrowed from previous works include the episode where Wallace moves the clock forward to trick Logan into confessing prematurely which was from an episode of THIRD WATCH. There was also a scene where Logan puts his exam in a stack after being told he failed for going over the time limit which was from a movie called SLACKERS.

VERONICA MARS was pretty tacky in its handling of sexual issues like rape and its depiction of minorities among other groups was also unimaginative. (The only “latino” character in the main cast is a gangbanger who later becomes a janitor. The “black” sidekick is a poor academic… but a great basketball player.) VERONICA MARS aired on UPN precisely because it was the kind of show UPN would air. Remember, they are the network that gave us HOMEBOYS IN OUTER SPACE and which almost gave us a sitcom about slavery (!) THE SECRET DIARY OF DESMOND PFEIFFER. The villains are always depicted as incredibly strident and one-dimensional, yet through some contrivance they never return in a later episode to punch Veronica in the face despite being humiliated by her. Lol. One of the main draws of the show for a large portion of the fans is the clichéd romance between Logan and Veronica. The romance has the same fundamental appeal as the romances in 50 SHADES OF GREY or TWILIGHT - the brooding rich boy sweeps the poor girl-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks off her feet. There are, of course, love triangles between Logan, Veronica and "a nice, normal guy.”

The best actors on VERONICA MARS usually had the least to do with the show, although the show casted a lot of weak, has-been actors in supporting roles too. I never really found Kristen Bell to be believable, but that had as much to do with the writing as anything else. The main character rings false because she is not realistic nor is she an exaggerated (but truthful) archetype. Her characterization is too intelligent, not just for a teenager, but for a “masculine” teenager. People just unfairly associate masculine behavior in a female with intelligence and feminine behavior in a female with a lack of intelligence, even though it is usually the opposite in real life. (Google: Curvy Women Are Smarter.) People born into wealth are usually more intelligent too because they have the most luxury time to spend on intellectual pursuits.

[When I refer to Veronica as masculine, I am not talking about her looks so much as her behavior. I do not think Kristen Bell has particularly masculine or feminine looks either way. When I refer to masculinity and femininity, I am defining them as expressions of testosterone and estrogen respectively. Testosterone and estrogen affect behavior as much as they affect looks. Sarcasm is a form of anger and anger is an expression of testosterone. This is why some people on steroids go into rages, because their bodies have an excess of certain hormones. People also generate more testosterone when they are on their own, which is why “rugged individualism” is associated with masculinity.]

In the pilot episode, it says that the rape of Veronica occurs during the summer before her junior year in high school. That means you are supposed to believe she went from the naïve, innocent girl before her rape to the jaded detective who can deal cards like a shark in a couple of months! They would later “retcon” her rape in the episode at the end of season one where Veronica learns the identity of her rapist (which turns out to be a big cop-out) so that her rape occurs during the winter holiday of her sophmore year. Even with the retcon, it is hard to believe she gained all of those skills in that period of time. Between solving mysteries and working in a coffee shop, Veronica manages to get strong enough grades to put her in contention for valedictorian despite the fact the we barely even see her crack open a book. At the end of season two, Veronica learns that Cassidy did indeed rape her at the encouragement of Dick. And yet, she and Dick continue to have the same cutesy exchanges as if nothing happened. Veronica even takes a swig from his flask on the way to a party! She also leaves her drink unattended at a college with a serial rapist on the loose. Then, when she begins to feel the effect of the drug, she wanders out into an empty parking lot instead of remaining where there are other people. Veronica does not undergo any character development for the entire show.

I am a big fan of the mystery genre and I can truthfully say that anyone can write mysteries the way they are written on VERONICA MARS because the clues are not layered organically into a storyline. It is not much fun when the audience can not solve mysteries along with or before the detective because clues are withheld until the reveal. I ended up solving a lot of the mysteries the cheap way. It is too expensive for a show like VERONICA MARS to give an actor lines who is not somehow important to the plot. If an actor has lines but is only tangentially a part of the storyline, he or she is the culprit.

A lot of the mysteries on the show get solved when characters preternaturally receive some information or knowledge not given to the audience. The father has an epiphany as to the identity of a serial killer when he remembers that a music store owner he talked to randomly about guitar strings had sound-proofing in his store. Wha? A lot of music stores have sound-proofing. How do you go from that to the man being a serial killer? In another episode, Veronica and her father suddenly know that an extortionist is going to make his victim put a ring in a rubber duck and send it down a rain pipe, so they instantaneously produce their own rubber ducks with tracking devices to find out where the drain goes. There are just too many contrivances on the show to list. In the first season, Veronica steals from the evidence room at her local police station not once, but twice! The second time is even easier for her. She just has someone distract a police officer while she goes into the locker behind his back. Later, the mother steals a check made out to the father. Even if they were still married, she should not have been able to cash it but apparently does.

The whole season two mystery does not even make sense to be honest. The villain wants to recreate a scene in a movie in which a bus goes off a cliff. In order to do so, he consults the stunt driver from the movie to teach him how to set up a bomb next to the driver that will explode and cause him to veer off the cliff. Huh? Why would a stunt driver need a bomb to go off next to him? He would just turn the wheel. Also, you would think the killer would try to kill the two boys before they met the mayor, since they could have revealed the truth right there to an audience. Or was it just a huge coincidence the boys died on a field trip to meet the one person at the center of why they died? Lol. The trial at the end of season two was also absurd. Logan steals the videotape showing his father having sex with Lily. Later, he is the only person called to the stand to testify what he saw on it! Obviously, a lot of police would have seen the tape before it was stolen and would have also been called to testify. When Veronica testifies, the defense attorney illegally reveals details about her medical history which is particularly outrageous as she is a teenage girl. Aaron Echolls may have had a lot of resources to fight the charges, but the Kanes had even more resources to make them stick, yet they are almost completely absent during the trial. Those are just some of the things that I can remember from the top of my head.

I could go on into more nitpicky stuff: the actor with the strange, painted-on abs (do not ask); the boy in the second episode that was supposed to be in the second grade when his father left, but then later says that he was eleven when he last saw his father; the crime scene photo of Lily that is actually a screencap of the first episode; punny titles like “The Rapes of Graff”; the awful change of title music in season three; and so on. (By the way, should the phrase not have read, “Veronica Mars is smarter than I [am].” Lol.) There are people who think that a band is automatically better just because they are not well-known. The same phenomena happens with movies, shows and actors.