Board 8 > seabassdebeste watches veronica mars (spoiler)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Up from Nicaragua
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watched last night, writeup tomorrow probably

enjoy nicaragua!
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Season 1, Episode 11

Recap: Veronica's Girl Detective rep is spreading at school, and with it a burgeoning business. One client: the hacker chick from a slightly less rich home, who was switched at birth. Meanwhile, Keith is called back in to consult on a copycat of an old serial killer case of his, involving a guitar string strangler. Veronica seizes advantage to investigate the Kane case further... and winds up fucking over a young cop.

I think this might be my favorite episode to date. Mac was a cardboard cutout type in her first appearance (cool hacker chick!), but giving her something to struggle with makes her much more interesting. Veronica also gets a minor moment of vulnerability here, as she admits (and at least acknowledges) that she ducked the question of her own paternity. Almost takes some of the edge off that irritating decision.

The buddy cop routine between Sheriff Lamb and Detective Mars is a little obvious here, but for the most part, it's still quite entertaining. Lamb has consistently been one of the cringiest parts of all of his episodes, but here you can see his position: he's been promoted into bigger shoes than he was capable of filling; he's threatened by Keith despite having won over him politically; he's not the strongest investigator and is embarrassed and insecure about maintaining what he's won. I really enjoyed Keith and Lamb's joint presentation of the case to their fellow officers, where he keeps trying to be the one to state each punchline. Nice fleshing out of a minor character.

It's also just cool having this storyline as co-A-plot. Keith's little quest here is completely irrelevant (at least thus far) to the overall story arc, and it's not an offshoot off Veronica's main plot, but it just hits the right notes. And we get to see Keith doing what he's good at.

Also, Veronica' little fling with the young cop is nice, but gods, I'm annoyed by the ending to it. Or more specifically, Veronica's comment about the ending. The cop is dismissed because Veronica took advantage of him to break into the evidence locker, which shows us a real consequence to Veronica's moonlighting as the investigator on a closed case... and yet Veronica's voiceover tells us that the ending is 'girl falls for boy, girl gets what she deserves.' Girl gets what she deserves? All she loses out on is a possible cute boyfriend. How about the life you ruined?! Kind of a shitty taste at the end of a really nice episode.

Anyway, hype for Veronica going after Clarence Whitfield (or whatever his name is)!

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* Breaking Bad's Jesse and New Girl's Schmidt in the same episode! They drastically improve the viewing experience.

* Don't have my notes on me, but love the exchange between Lamb and the guitar shop guy, where they throw shade at one another for picking their profession to try to deal with their senses of inadequacy.

* Don't know where to squeeze this in or how to expand on it, but I really like Veronica's little business she gets going in general. This episode is filled with the Mars just doing what they're good at.

* Would not have picked Keith as Good Cop to

* The Girls Gone Wild filmmaker's written confession: I WANT A LAWYER.
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Yep, that was a good episode.
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uppp
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upp
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Up again
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thanks! been traveling, i'm back!
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Season 1, Episode 12

Recap: Falsely accused of producing fake IDs, Veronica tracks a secret society known as the Tritons, featuring Duncan Kane as a pledge. Turns out Eric, the original accuser, was the perp. Meanwhile, Veronica bugs the counselor's office and learns about Weevil, Logan, and Duncan's relationships with Lilly. Logan's mom commits suicide.

Another good episode! WE'RE GOING STREAKING!

It's kind of a silly conceit, and incredibly creepy, for Veronica to spy on people's intimate attempts to deal with grief. It's extremely voyeuristic, and I'm really grateful that she doesn't act on them. (Honestly, it's a pretty uncomfortable subject for the protagonist.)

Anyway, it's good material. The Weevil/Lilly subplot still reeks to me, but Weevil shows genuine emotion for a change, and we don't tie this instance in with the often-unwatchable Weevil/Logan antagonism. The nature of Logan's on-and-off relationship with Lilly - unclear to me until now - is made explicit here, and we get to see why Logan hates both himself and Veronica for letting Lilly down. And perhaps most unexpectedly, Duncan actually opens up to the counselor as well - and his confused, drugged up account of his feelings further deepens the mysteries around Lilly's death.

The Echols family is getting more run than the Kanes, and so far, it makes sense - they're still in the middle of their decline, whereas the Kanes are in their rebuilding phase. Logan can't help seeing his father as a success, though he fully hates him. With the latest news about his father hitting the tabloids, high school does not sympathize with him, but rather cruelly turns his mom into a public sex symbol. Combined with his massive self-esteem issues, self-loathing, and general resentment for everyone... "What's so great about living?" It's a chilling bit of foreshadowing for Logan's mom's suicide attempt.

As for the secret society plotline, it's okay too.

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* I think part of the annoyingness of Veronica's smugness is her tendency to finish others' sentences. The way she responds to the counselor and Sheriff Lamb just annoys me.

* Logan's family's final interaction is framed hilariously, with the three sitting in a row under a bunch of signs about using "SOAP." Fits the soap opera-y nature of it.

* "Veronica Mars is smarter than me." Aw yeah.

* Really like the little detail where Eric (?) tells Veronica that there are six pledges for Triton. It's a hint that Triton wasn't involved in Eric's issues when Veronica crashes their initiation and there are six inductees. And they're not so bad after all. :3

* On the less good side of things: "Your dad was hired to track down a hedge fund manager for embezzlement. THAT WAS MY FATHER!"

* Kristen Bell singing "One Way or Another" YES PLEASE.

* Laughed a lot at Duncan only being able to say "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Duncan is just great overall. The hazing ritual for the Tritons apparently involves public humilitation/torture... karaoke. Duncan fucking loves karaoke. And his final comment to Veronica: "Who are the Tritons?" Duncan's rising for sure.

* Veronica sitting in her car under a tarp is fucking hilarious.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

* Kristen Bell singing "One Way or Another" YES PLEASE.

So good.

And that may be the best Duncan episode. At least I remember it being a great Duncan episode.
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It was!

episode watched, writeup maybe later today!
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Season 1, Episode 13

Recap: A girl at Veronica's school - daughter of a hip hop mogul with shady connections - has gone missing under suspicious circumstances. Veronica assists her father with the case, which makes use of (and triggers memories of) her one-time friendship with the victim. Turns out she ran off and the brother staged the "kidnapping." Meanwhile, Logan reveals to Duncan, at a wake for his mother, that he doesn't think his mother is dead.

Ups and downs, but overall it's a solid episode.

In the A-plot, Anthony Anderson's character is money - overwhelmed with the appearance of power, but . The red herrings - a crippled lawyer, an extorted thug - reveal information about the client and are interesting in their own right. The culprit is logical (and fairly easily deduced), but it doesn't feel like a cop-out that there's no explicit violence here. (Compare the "how we got here" episode with the pregnant girl; the difference in narrative quality is staggering.)

Pairing Veronica and Keith by narrative convenience of Keith's back pains? Gimmicky, but it achieves its goal without detracting. Veronica and Keith outwitting the brother using rubber duckies in an obvious disposal spot is really fun.

In the B-plot, I'm not thrilled about the "stuffed into a fridge" handling of Logan's mom. Throughout the episode, it very much appears that the hysterical, tragic woman-victim will be used to explore the relationships and psyches of these two DEEPLY TROUBLE MEN. It's not that the Echols men are not interesting characters, but killing the mom is not an interesting trope to use to explore them. The twist at the end, however, is excellent (though ridiculously implausible that there's no police investigation without a body). Also, shout-out to Duncan for being a great bro to Logan here.

In flashback-land, it's always fun to see Lilly in that eerie non-life. The principle of the flashback isn't the most exciting material - "whoa, this chick seems hot, let's add her to our crew" - but I love the execution and the significance. The continuity with Logan's guilt because he kissed another girl? Hell yes. And this episode, Lilly shows her fangs a little - the way she erases Yolanda entirely is cold-blooded. We already know she was less of a 'good girl' than Veronica in her lifetime, but this is a unique look at her dark side.

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* Dat intro. "You know her" / "Yeah... we used to be friends... a long time ago." cut to the theme song: A long time ago, we used to be friends...

* "You, watch your back. I mean that medically."

* "His posse, dad. The Eagles had a bunch of dudes." - I had no idea "posse" was a racially charged phrase before Phil Jackson got called out for using this term on LeBron. This episode definitely seems to support that, though.

* Veronica: "If you're ditching, then Yolanda and I will be partying for three." / Lilly: "Which means Yolanda will have to be partying for two and a half." SAVAGE.

* Rapper: "This is like me holding you out of a window." / Client: "Damn, man."

* DAT cliffhanger. Logan's already slightly less antagonistic since the memorial for Lilly. Now that he's coming to Veronica for help... we'll see. And we'll also see if this ties into the Lilly case at all.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

* Dat intro. "You know her" / "Yeah... we used to be friends... a long time ago." cut to the theme song: A long time ago, we used to be friends...

I think this is one of my favourite moments in the whole show.
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i love cold open interactions, so me too!
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SeabassDebeste posted...

CoolCly posted...
Also I was wondering, are you familiar with Overwatch and all the animated shorts? If not I'd be super interested in seeing your reactions and writeups to those bad boys. If you are familiar then nvm carry on.

i'm not, but isn't overwatch a video game and not a TV show?

I've been meaning to respond to this since this was when I went on my trip

Yeah, it is a video game. But they've been making short form episodes called Animated Shorts to flesh out the characters and show important events in the game's lore.

Overwatch is a team based shooter like Team Fortress 2, with unique characters with very unique abilities and designs. The game is pretty much just objective based multiplayer matches like escort the payload or capture the point type game modes, but there's no story mode or anything. The only in game lore comes from the banter the characters have and the details found in the in game maps (which is all kicked up a level from TF2)

Since the game isn't really telling the story behind these characters, they decided to use cinematic Pixar quality level videos.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with Blizzard, but they have always been very highly regarded for their cinematics. They are basically the best in the business at it, and they've been doing it since the late 90ies when CGI looked terrible. But their videos up until now have always been either cinematic hype trailers for a new game, or excerpts of a scene in a game that could be better shown in a cinematic, and thus is very dependent on the context of the game.

This means the videos were very high quality and showed something really cool, but didn't really tell complete stories. Just cool snippets of a story.

EXAMPLES OF HIGH QUALITY (you don't have to watch these, they are just examples of what they are capable of)
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth trailer (the newest one they've made)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJr3dXZfcg
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King trailer (my favourite)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCr7y4SLhck
Starcraft: Kerrigan at New Gettysburg (a very classic and pivotal moment for a huge character in Starcraft)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V1PwpoDqzM

Even the best examples of their cinematics like these are only a few minutes, and don't really tell too much of a story.

But they realized that with Overwatch's lack of an ingame story, they could take their skill making cinematics to make fleshed out animated shorts. These still aren't super long, but they are easily over double the length of their usual cinematics, typically about 8 minutes, and that gives them more room to breathe and tell a story. They provide backstory to the world, they offer some characterization, and sometimes have cool fight scenes.

That's why it'd be fun to see your thoughts about these cinematics, since you love to break down narrative choices, so your analysis on these shorts would be neat.

If your interested, these are the first few

The first one is a bit more like their usual trailers, since this was what was originally showed to us when they first announced the game at Blizzcon. It was described as The Incredibles meets Team Fortress 2, which I think is pretty apt.

Overwatch Cinematic Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqnKB22pOC0

These next two are more like the rest of the shorts, though they feature the same characters the cinematic trailer. The later ones use many different characters

"Recall"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB5zlHMsM7k

"Alive"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U130wnpi-C0

If this sounds interesting and you enjoy these first videos, I'll make a list of the order of all the others to watch. If it all sounds lame, then pls ignore
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up, haven't found time to do the writeup (or watch the overwatch vids) but i'll try for both!
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Season 1, Episode 14

Recap: Veronica supports a HIP HISTORY TEACHER against allegations of an affair from a student, while Keith takes the accusers' side. Inconsistencies in Carrie's case enable Veronica to win the case, but she deduces that Carrie was speaking on behalf of another girl. In sideplots, Veronica investigates Logan's mom's disappearance and snoops on Duncan's medical history.

Twofold look at Veronica here. The show is very, very insistent upon cynicism, and Veronica usually embodies that. However, this episode examines Veronica's biases: she's got idealistic, naive belief in her super-cool teacher's innocence, and she's super-suspicious of the mean girl's claim... but only because Carrie was mean to Veronica.

I don't have a problem with Veronica's skepticism about Carrie, which is a great little twist on her default suspiciousness (also shout-out to the actress, who I'm pretty sure is Blair from Gossip Girl?). As for the former... well, the show didn't earn that. Adam Scott gets about two minutes of establishing cred as a good teacher, by engaging the kids during a history review. It does seem fun, but nothing about Neptune's student body thus far suggests that they'd have enjoyed anything from a teacher. Also, Adam Scott's believability as a cool dude is just... almost non-existent.

Not nearly enough is given about why Veronica trusts him. So if we're supposed to take Veronica as being illogical due to her affection for the teacher - which I can buy - then not nearly enough is established about why Veronica likes him. This is a single parent teaching public school who somehow has a sweet-ass condo in Southern California with a private pool!

The conceit and execution of the episode itself are pretty solid, the underlying issues aside. Veronica and her dad, right after being contrived as partners, are immediately antagonists. And because of the weirdness of the contradictions in Carrie's diary and the non-conforming preponderance of evidence, it's actually unclear what the hell happened between Carrie and the teacher. The answer is satisfyingly weird, and it reverses Veronica's (obviously incorrect) assumption about Carrie. The look exchanged between the pair in class is a really satisfying end to this little episode.

Logan's mom's disappearance is almost impossibly contrived, in the sense that police somehow haven't treated this as missing-person instead of a suicide. No freeze was apparently placed on the credit cards, and for some reason, whoever has them is actually using them. Can only presume desperation or something. In any case, despite the mind-blowing suspension of disbelief required to pay attention here, I'm curious to see what happens.

I'm also pretty excited about Veronica's narcolepsy dirt on Duncan. Very obviously, the symptoms of memory loss and disorientation played a role in Duncan's blackout surrounding Lilly's death. However, it's not clear whether the illness is real. Duncan has stopped taking those meds, and his lucidity seems to be better than before. Certainly we're not seeing memory loss symptoms now. The manipulation of Duncan's prescription is going to be another interesting dangling thread.
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* Weevil continues to be almost unwatchably cringe-y. Wallace is also... I feel like he's intended to be cool, but it's absolutely impossible to see him that way given that he's Veronica's lapdog.

* Veronica smugly unlocking her dad's safe gets her a hilarious comeuppance, with blue ink splattered on her face. Gotta love Keith's snide amusement during the ensuing exchange: 'You don't have to get all blue in the face.' / 'You're patronizing me!' / 'Well, I am your patron.'

* 'There's a jungle tribe that worships Donald Trump's hair.' FFFFFF

* One final shout-out to the main girl of the episode, who's quietly very heroic - not just for standing up for someone else, but for demanding zero credit and accepting the ostracization for it.

* One mystery resolved: why Koontz confessed. Probably the most definitive unraveling of the plot thus far.
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