I’m currently watching the first season of Veronica Mars on DVD, and am down to the last four episodes, so I’ll probably finish it up on Tuesday. I’m really enjoying it – good overarching mystery, good individual-episodes mysteries, likeable characters, semi-realistic about HS dynamics – but am worried that, like many entertaining series, the quality goes to hell after the first season.
What say you, VM fans – are the second and third seasons worth watching?
The second series is excellent and the third is really good. The second season also features a massive mystery that lasts the entire year, but the network made them shorten the core mysteries of season 3. It has a couple big mysteries that get resolved part-way through the season, I think.
But, yes, it stays really good. It may have tanked if it kept going too long, but 3 years was not enough for it to remain fresh.
Enjoy!
Oh frabjous day! Thanks for the good news, Mahaloth! heads to Netflix to add S2 and S3 to queue
I’d scale that back to the first season is very good, the second season is good ( not as strong as the first ), the third season is kinda okay. So IMHO I’d say it does decline, but the first two seasons are worth it.
Well, I stuck out Gilmore Girls to the bitter end – including the execrable last season – so I can handle some unevenness in quality.
I’d go somewhere in between, and say that the first season is outstanding, the second is really good, and the third is pretty good, a definite decline in overall season quality but with some great episodes and totally worth watching.
And I totally feel your Gilmore Girls pain. Oh Amy Sherman-Palladino, why has thou forsaken us?!?! 
I thought all three seasons were enjoyable, but agree with Tamerlane and DianaG that seasons 2 and 3 did not live up to the first.
I’d rank the 1st as great, 2nd as good, and 3rd execrable. I wish like hell I’d cut my losses after the 2nd.
Hm. Sounds like I can safely go with S2, then decide how much of an additional drop in quality I can handle before deciding whether or not to watch S3.
Mileage may vary - I liked season 2 quite a lot, and season 3 was pretty good, but they lost some of the ideas that the series was about in trying to cover new ground for college.
Within season 3, (and consulting an episode guide,) the first arc covers 9 episodes, that’s the campus rapist storyline, and probably the strongest part. The next six installments make up the ‘profiling/murder noir’ arc, (set up in 309,) and that one’s weaker and muddled. The last five episodes of the season don’t really have a running mystery, (because the third season order was cut at the last minute and they didn’t have room for it so wrote it out?) and are the poorer for it.
Loved seasons 1 and 2; 3 not so much. Part of the reason I liked the show was Veronica’s strength of character and fearlessness. This was sacrificed in season 3 for the sake of romantic angst, which is probably more realistic behavior for a 19 year old, but I’m not always looking for realism in fiction. The character from the first two seasons was a good role model for teen girls IMHO.
I’m surprised so many of you enjoyed S3. I hated it, and didn’t cry one tear when the show was cancelled after that. The back story behind S3 is that UPN and WB were merging into the CW, and they had to put a lot of content on the chopping block in order to fill one schedule. Veronica Mars had a target on its head, and the compromise to keep it was that it had to get a bigger audience, so rather than the noir mystery arcs, it was now going to become Veronica Goes To College: Mystery of the Week show, full of wacky college antics that the kids love to watch. Well, the kids didn’t enjoy it, and neither did we.
I wouldn’t quite call GG’s ending “bitter.” That is, the Amy Palladino-less last season blew chunks, but before her exit the show was consistently high quality. It was more of an abrupt change in quality than a slow decline.
Season 3 wasn’t the best, but it was still good enough for me. Granted, I didn’t watch it until a few years ago on dvd, so maybe watching it all at once, rather than waiting a week between episodes helped.
Reruns are on a lot on SoapNet. I find that I do prefer S1 over S2 and S3, but it’s not like I won’t watch them. The last couple seasons of House, Friends? I might skip those on reruns.
Turns out I had two episodes, not four, left for Season 1, and I didn’t get around to them till last night.
Just need to vent about one thing: wait, no, two. That huge cable on the ceiling of the pool house? It would not have been that huge and visible and it would not have led directly to the recorder. Grumble grumble grumble.
More importantly, though, once Veronica and the person she was talking to finally figured out who the murderer was, why would she have gone off like that without making sure the murderer was under observation? For that matter, given that the governor was there and there was presumably a cop or two of some sort on the premises, why would she go off like that at all? That was stupid, and what’s so great about Veronica is that she’s not stupid. (A wee bit naive from time to time, but hell, she’s 17.) That really kind of pissed me off. Surely they could have come up with some other way to build some suspense into that episode without going all melodramatic.
And the cliffhanger – “I hoped it was you…” Yikes! Don’t tell me who it is – please please please don’t tell me who it is – but I’m surprised to find myself hoping it’s Logan.
Season 1 was excellent – even if it falls off a little in S2, I’m still totally looking forward to it.
I’m midway through season 2 (watched eps 9-12 last night) and am seeing the fall-off in quality. This was the series of episodes where we find out that Meg was pregnant, the baby is born, and Duncan takes off with the baby.
It was also the series of episodes where, for the first time, I thought “what a little bitch,” not “what a delightfully spunky creature.”
It also pissed me off that they brought in a new character, Astrid, with Duncan’s mom, completely failing to explain who she was or why she showed up with Duncan’s mom and his laundry. Given that she turned out to be central to the kidnapping plot, it would have helped that whole thing make more sense if we had some idea what her relationship with anyone, let alone Duncan, was. (Checked IMDb this morning – yup, the actress/character are listed for just these two episodes, so it’s not like I’d seen her before and just forgotten.)
Grumble grumble grumble.
Yeah, I could write about this in my blog – but why, when I know you guys are agog for my reactions?
S2 was pretty good – happy with who the person behind the crash was, and with how that whole story was handled. Though the murderer’s last act (blowing up the plane, which just happened to be immediately overhead) seemed a bit gratuitous. As did what happened to Aaron Echolls in that ep, when Duncan triggered a hit from Australia.
The latter incident hasn’t been mentioned so far in S3 (watched the first four eps last night), oddly, though I guess it’s early days yet. Also not addressed is why Veronica is at Hearst rather than Stanford, though it would be easy to come up with an explanation, viz that by skipping her last exam to go hear the verdict in Aaron’s trial, she blew her perfect GPA and lost the Kane scholarship. Though, as I pointed out to Mahaloth in a PM exchange, Stanford actually has a need-blind policy where once you’re accepted, they make sure the money is always there for you to attend. But I’d be cool with that not being acknowledged – not having the question of why she’s at Hearst even mentioned, though, seems like sloppy story-telling to me.
Also the whole thing with Keith in the desert didn’t really make sense to me, but whatever.
tl;dr version: Yes, there’s a fall-off in quality from season to season, but I’m still enjoying the show.
I’ve been picking up bits and pieces on SoapNet, and have really enjoyed it. I need to Netflix it and watch it in order.
Definitely good in order, Katriona, because of the multi-episode story arcs (long in the first two seasons, short in the third).
That said, the third season is definitely starting to flag. I’m 60% of the way through the season, and I gotta say, watching her and Logan break up/make up/break up is not really why I watch the show.
Yep - I’ve got the series on dvd and I rarely re-watch the 3rd season past the first 9-ep story arc and “Weevils Wobble…” I liked Ed Begley’s cantankerous dean, though (“I’ve met smarter sandwiches than that guy!”)
At the time, the rape arc started big debates on “slut-shaming/victim blaming” on the forums, I remember.