Season Penfinales
So I finally saw the season finale of Veronica Mars (spoilers ahead), which my VCR problems prevented me from seeing the first time around. I had been spoiled long ago, so maybe I just got used to the idea that the killer turned out to be someone really lame, but it worked for me in the episode. Definitely action-packed. I still think it would have been better to have someone closer to Veronica turn out to be the murderer (Duncan, Logan, Weevil, V's mother).
Still, it's the second-to-last episode that I'm going to remember from this season. The resolution of the mystery surrounding Veronica's rape was played out in such a great, complex way. I've started writing a longer entry discussing everything I love about this show, comparing and contrasting it to Buffy, but for now I'm just going to discuss this episode in that context. Because I think Rob Thomas achieved something that Joss Whedon always wanted to do, but just didn't have it in him: exploring truly gray morality. The expectation is that V is going to find out who it was that drugged and raped her that night, and exact delicious revenge. Instead we find out that nobody did anything terribly evil, but almost everyone did something pretty fucked up, stupid, even bad. And this terrible, evil thing happened, but nobody can really be blamed for it. I just love that.
In that last season of Angel, Joss set himself up to work with some seriously gray moral issues, with Angel and the gang's involvement with Wolfram and Hart. But the truth of the matter is, Joss just does not think in those truly gray terms. There is a persistent morality he cannot seperate himself from. In Whedon's universe, bad things happen because people do bad things, and if they do them, they must repent. He's just too idealist to be able to focus on the good that his heroes are acheiving through W&H, instead of the moral compromise they are making. And I don't mean by that that he should ignore, or even accept that compromise, but he should at least present it as a valid argument, which I don't think he ever succeeded in doing.
The other line of thinking this has me going on is that maybe this is a new trend, the second-last episode (the season penfinale?) being better than the last episode. Certainly that was the case for HBO's Entourage. The finale was basically a filler episode, tying up loose ends and positioning players for a 3rd season, but that penfinale was one of the most enjoyable half-hours of TV I've ever witnessed, with Jeremy Piven launching his coup, being defeated, going into full freak-out mode, and rising from the flames in a puff of manic triumph, while Lloyd, a character that up until then had been a springboard for racist/homophobic jokes, emerges in one monologue as a fully formed character. I'm betting money on a Piven Emmy after that performance.
Still, it's the second-to-last episode that I'm going to remember from this season. The resolution of the mystery surrounding Veronica's rape was played out in such a great, complex way. I've started writing a longer entry discussing everything I love about this show, comparing and contrasting it to Buffy, but for now I'm just going to discuss this episode in that context. Because I think Rob Thomas achieved something that Joss Whedon always wanted to do, but just didn't have it in him: exploring truly gray morality. The expectation is that V is going to find out who it was that drugged and raped her that night, and exact delicious revenge. Instead we find out that nobody did anything terribly evil, but almost everyone did something pretty fucked up, stupid, even bad. And this terrible, evil thing happened, but nobody can really be blamed for it. I just love that.
In that last season of Angel, Joss set himself up to work with some seriously gray moral issues, with Angel and the gang's involvement with Wolfram and Hart. But the truth of the matter is, Joss just does not think in those truly gray terms. There is a persistent morality he cannot seperate himself from. In Whedon's universe, bad things happen because people do bad things, and if they do them, they must repent. He's just too idealist to be able to focus on the good that his heroes are acheiving through W&H, instead of the moral compromise they are making. And I don't mean by that that he should ignore, or even accept that compromise, but he should at least present it as a valid argument, which I don't think he ever succeeded in doing.
The other line of thinking this has me going on is that maybe this is a new trend, the second-last episode (the season penfinale?) being better than the last episode. Certainly that was the case for HBO's Entourage. The finale was basically a filler episode, tying up loose ends and positioning players for a 3rd season, but that penfinale was one of the most enjoyable half-hours of TV I've ever witnessed, with Jeremy Piven launching his coup, being defeated, going into full freak-out mode, and rising from the flames in a puff of manic triumph, while Lloyd, a character that up until then had been a springboard for racist/homophobic jokes, emerges in one monologue as a fully formed character. I'm betting money on a Piven Emmy after that performance.
posted by Chris Oliver at 1:00 PM
2 Comments:
I'll have to say also that the 2nd to last ep of Entourage made me appreciate Steve Wonder's old song. The first thing I did afterwards was to download it from iTunes and start building a mix tape around it.
Oh - in case you didn't see it - the song was "For Once In My Life" - it's the song that brings Piven's character back to earth after being f-ed over by Alex, I mean Terrence.
Post a Comment
<< Home