Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 38 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Veronica Mars...
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.21.2004
School. Veronica sits down with Wallace. He's all, "Girl, you should hear what people say about you." She points out that he's welcome to leave, but he smiles that instead of hanging out with the people who laughed at him when he was tied up, he'd rather hang out with the girl who cut him down. That's a sweet sentiment, and completely untainted by the fact that no one else in the school would spit on him if his hair were on fire. She asks if he wants to get Vin and the Diesels off his ass. That'd be a yes.
Cut to Veronica asking some stoner dork, "Corny," for a favor. Granted. Then she's telling us she's downloading some photos from the motel, which...I don't really mind the voice-overs per se -- a lot of them are necessary, both because of the genre of the show and the fact that it's an especially exposition-heavy pilot -- but I would really prefer them to exercise extreme diligence in determining their necessity on a case-by-case basis. To say the same thing with five times fewer words: if it's happening on screen, shut up about it. Anyway, Veronica's got a bunch of pictures tacked up that make it look suspiciously like she's got a Wall of Weird, but that's the last Chloe comparison I'm going to make. Even if her hair is super-flippy in this scene. Also, as mentioned in the forums, she's got a pretty sweet Powerbook on her desk there, so apparently the people who "work for millionaires" are allowed a few status symbols themselves. She prints out a picture of Jake Kane and pins it to the Wall. Of Normal.
Veronica's studying when her dad arrives home. She asks him how it went. He plays all grim for a moment, but then is all, "Who's your daddy?" Veronica: "I hate it when you say that." I'm glad my faith in her was justified. I couldn't hate that expression more if it slapped my mother. He weirdly and randomly goes off on this speech about how he used to be cool and BOC and a Trans Am and oh, wait, that was a Bruce Springsteen song, and y'all? This is the bad kind of "quirky." Anyway, Keith nabbed the bail-jumper he was after and scored $2500 as a result, he does an annoying dance and says they're going to eat "like the lower-middle class to which [they] aspire." Blech. I don't know. As I sort of alluded to before, I like that the overall tone of the show, as well as Veronica's character, is hard-edged and not overly emotional, so to see Colantoni hamming it up at every opportunity is just incongruous and weird and detracts from my viewing enjoyment. (Of course, just being familiar with any sort of "viewing enjoyment" these days is nice. Because...did I mention The Mountain?)