Veronica Mars: A Trip to the DentistVeronica Mars, you just raised the bar for all the shows out there with season long story arcs that will be brought to a head this May. And this isn't even the season finale for heaven's sake! I can only imagine what Rob Thomas has in store for us next week when the real killer of Lilly Kaine is revealed.
This week, we find out exactly what happened the night of Shirley Pomeroy's party. Veronica was roofied and taken advantage of (she thinks she was raped). Through a series of
Roshomon like flashbacks, the truth of what exactly happened that night emerges--and it's worse than we thought. Turns out the Veronica gets roofied up, as does Duncan, leading to the two sharing an intimate encounter. Factor in that Duncan is pretty upset about all of this since his mother revealed a few weeks before the incident that Veronica is his half-sister. (Now whether or not that little tid bit is true, I'm not quite sure. I have a feeling we'll get confirmation one way or the other next week since we saw Keith sending off a DNA test a few weeks back).
Meanwhile, back in the present, Veronica's relationship with Logan is on a roller coaster. He supplied the drugs the night of the party and he got Duncan roofied up. And he and Veronica's relationship is out in the open, thanks to a surprise party thrown by his father. But just as things seem too good to be true for our star-crossed lovers, Veronica discovers that Logan wants to seduce her in the poolhouse where there is a monitoring system. She leaves, picked up by Weevil and comes home to find mom is back home.
That's a whole lot for just an hour of television. And yet, what we see develop on screen never feels rushed. It's like a snowball headed downhill--starting slowly and picking up steam. Seeing Veronica's doggedness at pursuing the line o inquiry to its final conclusion is great. Kristen Bell does phenomonal work here and I'm almost ready to pick up the "Give the girl an Emmy" campaign I used to run for Sarah Michelle Gellar for her.
And while we're closer to finding out who killed Lilly, there are still a few red herrings and blind alleys thrown in. I admit I have some theories. Most of them somehow lead to Duncan finding his sister dead by the pool in his soccer uniform. He rushes up to see if she's alive, holds her in stunned disbelief and gets blood on his soccer outfit. Parents come home, assume he's blacked out and killed her in a rage and start to cover it up. Though we did see Duncan throw a bit of a fit when he found out Veronica was dating Logan. So, it's possible that he killed Lilly for some reason.
I love how this show still has me wondering, guessing and intrigued as we head into the finale of season one. I can't wait to see where this all leads and where we go from here....
Enterprise: DemonsMaybe I'm too much of a
Buffy fan, but I can't see Harry Groener as any other character other than Mayor Wilkins from season three. Because of that, as soon as I saw him crop up here, I said to myself--he's got to be up to something and wouldn't it be cool if he turned into a snake. (If you don't get that, you need to go and watch all of season three of
Buffy immediately!)
As
Enterprise enters the home stretch of new
Star Trek for the foreseeable future, we get an episode that shows how strong the show is and what it should have been doing all along. At last, we see the seeds of the alliance that is the Federation shown. Also, Manny Coto pays off the early season xenophobia plotline with some nicely done stuff here. Though I will take a few points away as
Babylon Five followed a simliar arc durings its five year run with the Nightwatch.
But that said, I liked what we had here. It's hard to judge very much of it becuase it's only the first half of a longer story. I am hopeful that we're seeing some things set up here that we get a payoff for next week. And it also makes me sad a bit that this is the type of stories and plotlines I craved from the show back in season two when it lost its way and the love of much of the fandom. And now, just as it's following through, it gets cut short. Oh well, there will be the novels, I suppose.
You gotta feel sorry for Mayweather. He finally gets a plotline and an attractive female interested in him and turns out she's a spy. I have to admit I found the whole "Mayweather meets girl from the past and they try to pick up where they left off " plotline a bit cliched. But I did hold out hope for a long time that maybe Mayweather was going to get the girl without her having an alterior motive. And to see him talk about settling down...made it that much more painful. Archer's quick, "Sorry Travis" when he threw her in the brig was amusing though.
Also interesting is Trip's reaction to things. Seems to me this voyage has cost him a lot. He's lost his sister, he's now got some kind of bond with T'Pol, his daughter is kidnapped--one he never knew he had. I liked his lack of enthusiasm for Groener's character taking all the credit for what
Enterprise had done in bringing the various alien races to the negotiating table. Archer's order to clap harder was a nice touch.
So, we've got two hours of new
Star Trek left. I just hope they're good. Of course, just about any goodbye from new episodes has to be better than "The Turnabout Intruder."
posted by Michael Hickerson at 5/07/2005 07:18:00 PM |
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