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Veronica Mars is an American teen drama/mystery-neo-noir series which premiered on UPN on September 22, 2004, airing its first two seasons on the network before changing to The CW Television Network on October 3, 2006. The show stars Kristen Bell as the title character— a student, progressing from high school to college during the series — who moonlights as a private investigator under the wing (and to the chagrin) of her detective father. Said to be a little bit Buffy and a little bit Bogart, the show balances murder mystery, high school and college drama, and social commentary with considerable sarcasm and offbeat humour. The third season of the show premiered in the United States and Canada on October 3, 2006, at 9pm ET/PT on The CW and Sun TV (ET only) respectively. This is expected to remain the time slot.
Summary Veronica Mars was living any teenage girl's dream life in the sunny fictional seaside town of Neptune, California in Balboa County, north of San Diego. Her life changes forever the night her best friend Lilly Kane is murdered. The town assumes that the case is closed after Abel Koontz, a former employee of Lilly's father whom he had fired, confesses to the murder — it all seems to make sense. However, Veronica's father, local sheriff Keith Mars, suggests the actual murderer was Lilly's father, software billionaire Jake Kane. This accusation starts a ripple effect on Veronica's life. She is ostracized by "the 09ers", Neptune High's wealthy "in-crowd" she had once been a part of as a result of her relationship with Lilly and Lilly's brother Duncan, who Veronica had been dating until days prior to the murder. After Lilly's death and Duncan's continued avoidance of her, all of Veronica's other friends abandon her. About two months after the murder, Veronica is drugged at a party and wakes up without her underwear, leading her to believe she was raped. She attempts to report the rape, but when her claims are not taken seriously, and actually ridiculed by the new sheriff Don Lamb, she leaves without filing a report. She also never tells her father about the incident. Later, Veronica's mother skips town soon after Lilly's murder under mysterious circumstances. Another consequence of Keith's accusing Jake Kane, was losing his job as sheriff. He starts a private detective agency to pay the bills. Veronica helps him out with his new job after school. However, she often gets a little too involved in the mysteries, which upsets her father, who worries about her safety. Striking a delicate balance between math homework and undercover stakeouts, Veronica struggles to make sense of all the unexplained events that have plagued her life over the past year. Turning her grief into fuel, she is determined to outsmart, outmaneuver, and out-snark all those who stand in her way. Seasons The first season centers on Veronica's mission to uncover Lilly's killer. Most episodes feature two main plots, one of them a "mystery of the week" (to use the term favoured by Veronica Mars fans), which is introduced and resolved in the same episode, the other furthering the investigation into Lilly's murder or exploring some other aspect of Veronica's past. As the second season begins, Veronica's life has returned to relative normality. However, this is shattered when a bus full of Neptune High students goes over a cliff. The bus tragedy is the season's main mystery, but there are others, ranging from "mysteries of the week" to plotlines that extended over multiple episodes, including a murder within the local PCH biker gang. In the third season, Veronica has begun college. This season will feature three main story arcs, each resolved before the next is introduced, rather than a single season-long storyline. These arcs will each be run over several consecutive weeks without interruption; reruns will be shown only in between arcs. Most episodes will feature the usual "mystery of the week" as well. The first major arc involves a serial rapist at Hearst College, introduced in the season two episode "The Rapes of Graff". In keeping with the transition of the story to a new setting, and of the show to a new network, the opening credits have been altered to reflect a darker and more mature tone. In the third season Veronica Mars starts using the word "frak", a fictional word from both versions of the show Battlestar Galactica. The executive producer Diane Ruggiero is a big fan of Battlestar Galactica and the word "frak" will be used by Veronica Mars through out season 3. Current
Former Family Residents of Neptune Neptune High Episodes and airings United States The third season of the show currently airs at 9pm ET/PT on The CW. Because the show will now air as a lead-out following Gilmore Girls instead of various reruns of America's Next Top Model and UPN sitcoms as it did during its UPN tenure, it is expected that the program will draw stronger ratings now that it will be following a well-established series with a similar audience. The show was also part of UPN's weekend encore lineup (which also featured Top Model) that aired on either Saturday or Sunday, depending on station. This weekend run was not retained under The CW and the show will not become part of the EasyView Sunday afternoon rerun block that is moving from The WB, as that will be filled with encores of the network's Monday sitcom block. U.S. Television Ratings Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Veronica Mars on UPN and The CW. Note: Each U.S. network television season starts in late September and ends in late May, which coincides with the completion of May sweeps. During the first season the show aired Tuesdays at 9pm ET with low ratings; consistently last in its time slot behind The WB's One Tree Hill. However, its strong fan base, regular critical praise for its witty writing and strong female protagonist, and the fact that it fit UPN's desired young female viewer demographic, were enough to convince the network to renew the show for a second season. Veronica Mars is the only UPN drama series of the 2004–2005 season to survive into the 2005–2006 season, surviving the cancellation of higher-rated UPN series Kevin Hill and Star Trek: Enterprise. In July 2005 - August 2005, UPN's corporate sibling CBS also aired repeats of the show on Fridays at 8pm ET, in efforts to increase exposure for the series. The series' pilot episode was originally tested at CBS and almost picked up by the television network. The ratings it scored during its summer 2005 run influenced more audience traction on its home network, and could be seen when the second season began on UPN the following September. For season 2, the show was moved to Wednesdays at 9pm ET. Toward the end of the fifth cycle of Top Model in December 2005, the show garnered relatively high ratings, including one of its highest rated episodes of the season, "One Angry Veronica." However, the show's ratings fell because of the failure of South Beach, which ended up losing viewers and giving Veronica Mars a weak lead-in. Lost on ABC and FOX's American Idol results show were the dominant shows in the timeslot beginning in the same month, and also contributed to ratings woes for the show. Finally, several UPN stations regularly carried college and NBA basketball games in the winter which often air during the week, causing the show to be pre-empted and then moved to a timeslot by the station during the weekend that was inconvenient for viewers. By early February, the damage done by all of these factors (mostly South Beach, which continued in a ratings free-fall) forced UPN to take drastic action in order to save Veronica Mars. On February 15, the scheduled new episode was "Versatile Toppings". Two days before, this new episode was substituted with a rerun, and shortly after it was announced that the show would go on hiatus until the beginning of Top Models new cycle in mid-March. This development met with mixed reactions, with some afraid the show would lose momentum being pulled through February sweeps, and others thankful because the rest of the second season would air uninterrupted and with a much more solid lead-in. The show resumed new episodes on March 15, but still had some ratings struggles because of the domination of the American Idol results show. UPN had tested reruns on Tuesday night at 9pm ET for a few weeks before the show resumed new Wednesday episodes to see if ratings were stable in that slot. The former Mars timeslot had been a disaster for the network since fall, with both Sex, Love & Secrets and Get This Party Started undeniable failures; both shows ended up dead last in the Nielsen season ratings chart for the 2005-2006 season.* Knowing the show might continue to have problems on Wednesday nights, it was decided the series would return to its former Tuesday timeslot on April 11th, 2006 to move away from the Lost/American Idol juggernaut. Ratings dropped in the first week, but by the end of the season, ratings stabilized. A slight improvement overall in ratings led to the show's renewal for a third season. On May 16, 2006, it was confirmed that Veronica Mars would be part of the new The CW's Fall 2006–2007 lineup once The WB and UPN ceased operations in fall 2006. The show would rank 145th out of 156 overall in the season ratings chart;• however, its fan base, and critical acclaim for the show outweighed the numbers and led to the show's renewal. Individual ratings for original episode broadcasts for season 2 can be found on the individual episode pages. MTV had an encore run of the series through the first half of the first season, usually on an eight-day delay, airing Wednesdays at 7pm ET. International Since Canada's CTV began airing the series in June 2005 and Britain's LivingTV in October 2005, the show has expanded internationally to around twenty other countries who have joined them. DVD releases Critical opinion "In this smart, engaging series about a former popular girl turned crime-solving high school outcast, the hard-boiled dialogue comes from its teen protagonist's mouth in a way that stabs any potential cutesiness in the heart with an ice pick"• "On Veronica Mars, wholesome is out; gritty reality is in. The show never soft-pedals the timeless, fundamental truth that high school is hell" "Veronica Mars is a character study masquerading as a high-school drama"• "Veronica Mars is a sharp teen noir in the making. Tinged with class resentment and nostalgia for Veronica's lost innocence, this series pulses with promise"• "Equal parts intrigue, drama, and humor, Veronica Mars is also a lesson book for the disenfranchised. Few tv series aim so high; even fewer succeed so well"• "One of the 6 best dramas on TV"• "Best. Show. Ever. Seriously, I've never gotten more wrapped up in a show I wasn't making, and maybe even more than those. (...) These guys know what they're doing on a level that intimidates me. It's the Harry Potter of shows."• "Veronica Mars is, hands-down, the best show on television right now, and proof that TV can be far better than cinema."• "Nancy Drew meets Philip Marlowe, and the result is pure nitro."• "Why is Veronica Mars so good? It bears little resemblance to life as I know it, but I can't take my eyes off the damn thing."• "The best mystery show ever made in America." "Much of the show... plays right down the middle between empowerment and pornography... Overall, the series has been sexually very creepy in innumerable ways... The sordid world of noir is here intensified and then made ten times more sordid by its transposition into a teen setting."• Fan campaigns Veronica Mars has attracted an extremely loyal and devoted fanbase that includes internet communities of Veronica Mars fans. Many of them have taken part in minor and major campaigns to bring more viewers and publicity to Veronica Mars in an effort to ensure the show's success. A group of especially devoted fans on LiveJournal who call themselves Cloud Watchers have been dedicated to this effort since the spring of 2006 in light of the approaching merger of UPN and The WB into The CW. On May 9, 2006, the group hired a plane to fly between the UPN offices in Los Angeles and the future site of The CW headquarters in Burbank, pulling a banner that read "RENEW VERONICA MARS! CW 2006!" to get the attention of network executives, the press, and anyone else in the Los Angeles area. They had previously sent future CW executives, those in charge at the new network's parent companies, and influential people in the entertainment media care packages including binoculars, information regarding the plane's flight plan, and Veronica Mars-inspired gifts.* Veronica Mars was officially renewed for a third season on May 18, 2006, to air on The CW Tuesdays at 9pm ET starting on October 3, 2006,* but the fans have not stopped campaigning for their favorite show. The Cloud Watchers have started a new campaign, this one to bring a larger viewership to Veronica Mars by donating DVD sets of the first season of the show to libraries all over the United States, with a goal of reaching the top 100 Nielsen markets, and each of the fifty states. As of August 14th they have reached their goal of all 50 states and the top 100 Nielsen markets. As of September 5th, they have reached their new goal of 500 donated sets.* Music The theme song for the show is "We Used to Be Friends" by The Dandy Warhols. Starting with the third season, the theme song was remixed in a softer piano style with dark electronic beats to reflect the more noir-influenced opening credits. The composer for the show, Josh Kramon writes the original music heard in the background of most of the show. The sound, different from typical television scores, is constructed to convey the film noir themes of the show, highly reminiscent of Air and Zero 7, *; Air's music has been featured in certain episodes. Filming location The show's setting of Hearst College is fictional, and scenes are primarily filmed on the campus of San Diego State University and the University of San Diego in San Diego, California (link). As of 2006, some scenes were filmed at the University of California, San Diego and at the private Academy of Our Lady of Peace, not far from SDSU. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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