Full Disclosure Notice: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.
Okay, let me get this out of the way first, this is a review of the DVD Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season (2019) which is kind of stupid and a little confusing. Yes this is the new season, listed as number four on Hulu and called season four by everyone except apparently Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. But it will not be too hard to tell apart from the original first season as Kristen Bell has long hair in the new season and is sporting a gun which she never used when she was on free television. The 2019 version with just two disks is significantly smaller and is as thick as the movie version of the show.
The first Veronica Mars first season launched the same year as this blog and topped my very first Best Television Shows of the Year… and the second… and the third. Unfortunately it was eligible for a fourth because The CW unceremoniously canceled it so they could air shows like Farmer Takes a Wife and Pussycat Dolls Present. By some miracle they were able to revive the show via Kickstarter which was a trial balloon that was not that successfully since no other major studio tried to revive a show or movie that way since.
Then last year I was scrolling Deadline when something popped out like a fever dream: a Veronica Mars reboot was coming. I had to read the article a couple times to make it sink it and realize just where it was being revived, which thankfully turned out to be Hulu, a streaming site I already subscribed to. Then it was a long wait until it debuted. Sure there was plenty of casting notices (it was weird that Dick Casabancas Sr. was announced before Junior), trailers and other cast interviews to pass the time.
And then it premiered and it was like seeing old friends again. Sure calling this season one was silly, but maybe Warner Bros. Home Entertainment because it is not the same show anymore, and really it should not be. With Veronica in thirties now, you cannot have silly high school cases like missing dogs and test cheats (though there is a new character who seems like a young Ronnie fill in if they chose to go that route later). Then with only eight episodes instead of twenty-two, gone are the cases of the week mysteries, replaced with one long case to take up Ronnie’s time.
Rejoining Kristen Bell is Enrico Colantoni as her father Keith and Jason Dorhing returns as the obligatory psychotic jackass turned beau Logan who has been dating Veronica since the movie. Those three are the only characters that get the main title sequence but we get multiple episode from Dick, Wallace, Weevil, and Deputy Leo who has gotten a promotion but will always be Deputy Leo to me. There are also plenty of cameos from the original seasons including a few that they could not quite fit into the movie.
Among the new cast are Oscar winner J. K. Simmons who plays an associate of Dick Sr. from his stint in Chino (we saw Dick Sr. flee the country because of SEC violations and turned himself in at the end of season three). Patton Oswalt plays a pizza delivery boy by say/true crime aficionado by night who gets caught up in the first crime. Bell’s The Good Place co-star Kirby Howell-Baptiste is a bar owns in Neptune. Then there are a few more recognizable cameos throughout the season including someone Dick unsuccessfully hits on who has spent the last decade on one of the most popular sit-coms.
The case in question is a serial bomber that has attacked Neptune at the height of Spring Break. The problem with a single case taking an entire season to solve is that many episodes that just devolve into a red herring of the week. There are multiple suspects that are fingered through the season but at the end, most just turned out to be insignificant.
Still, of all the single season to solve only one mystery shows, Veronica Mars is one of the best with its witty banter and the chemistry between the Mars’ who just continue to make their claim as the best father-daughter team on television. Veronica Mars also goes straight to the top of the otherwise lackluster best television show reboots of all time. The DVD is kind of bare bones in terms of special features; there is just the 2019 Veronica Mars Comic-Con panel that runs about twenty-six minute. But I believe this is the first time the show will be available to watch in Canada (sorry non-North Americans, you will still have to wait unless you have the right DVD player).
The show was on the bubble during its short run last decade but we are in different times and a show with a dedicated on a streaming site may have a better chance at renewal (Veronica Mars has been in the top five on Hulu’s popular tab for most of its run). We are also in a time when shows do not need to air once a year. So hopefully Kristen Bell, creator Rob Thomas, and Hulu will hopefully agree to give us a fifth season of Veronica Mars in a year or three (just do not make us wait like as song as we did for the movie or fourth season). Or as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will likely call it: Season Two (2020ish).
Own VERONICA MARS (2019): THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON on DVD today (October 22).
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