TV & Movie | Solving Crime as an Extracurricular

On Friday, Colin and I needed a late-night escape from the house and to our luck and surprise, we discovered that the Belcourt (our local indie movie house) was playing a late show of the Veronica Mars movie. Now, it is rare that Colin and I agree on any form of entertainment besides music. We spend more time browsing Netflix's instant offerings, trying to decide on something to watch, than actually watching anything. Our tastes are about as opposite as you can get, so when we find a TV show that hooks both of us, it's as close as you can come to a miracle.

And that's what Veronica Mars did.

If you need a bit of an introduction to this whole show/movie connection, here's the two-sentence summary: Veronica Mars was a WB-esque teen show that lasted for three seasons on UPN back in the mid-2000s. Its mega-cult following recently led to the fan-driven funding of a movie follow-up in the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever.

It was this movie that we saw on Friday, which was pretty enjoyable in its own right, but as I do anytime anything about VM is mentioned in life, I'm going to use this opportunity to highly recommend you WATCH SEASON 1!! (You need to know where it all began, right?)

When you meet Veronica Mars in her show's first season, her best friend Lilly has been murdered; her dad has been ousted as sheriff for believing Lilly's dad, the town's richest and most powerful man, had something to do with it; and Veronica's boyfriend and best friends have dropped her like yesterday's trash. Veronica's dad, Keith, has since opened his own private investigation business, and Veronica has taken it upon herself to use whatever means possible to solve the murder of her best friend, as well as her fair share of day-to-day crimes plaguing the town of Neptune. 

Yes it has mystery, murder, and mayhem, but this show is FUNNY. It has some of the best developed characters and wittiest dialogue around--like that high-quality level of Buffy that is often overlooked because it's characterized as a teen show about a girl fighting vampires and dealing with high school. The same oversimplification applies here. Veronica Mars doesn't have quite the Buffy level of seriousness and metaphor, but the writing, particularly the dialogue is fantastic. 

Season 1 is a standout collection of entertaining television that I've recommended to just about everyone I've met. I continued onto season 2 without Colin, and it was okay but not as great; I didn't even bother with season 3 after a fellow fan and coworker told me it'll anger you more than it's worth  watching. To see the movie now in theaters (and I think available on Amazon), you definitely need to see at least the first season to have a grasp of the characters and their history, but I don't think you need to have seen the rest; Colin hadn't and he got it just fine.

The best video summary I could find is a fan-created promo on YouTube, but I think it's a pretty good one to give you the gist!

Do we have any VM fans on here? If you haven't already seen it, who do you hope shows up in the movie?