(If you didn't watch "Veronia Mars" this week, skip this diary. I'm too tired to explain it in much detail.)
"Veronica Mars" used to be progressive. It examined class conflict, animal rights, and feminism. Most of all, it resisted the prevailing winds of ageism, by portraying young characters repectfully.
All that changed tonight. After its 2-month hiatus, "Veronica Mars" returns to insult its most loyal viewers with an episode that could have been written by Bill Benett.
Kieth Mars finally becomes sherrif. His first priority? Hounding bars that don't discriminate against 19-year-olds. When he finds some of his officers have not enforced age-discrimination strictly enough to suit him, he fires them with no discussion, and the show presents this as heroic.
Veronia herself used to be a character with self-respect and strength. She ends this episode by apologizing for providing her friend with a fake ID, apologizing for subverting discrimination.
But the worst scene had to be the one where the sherrif gives fake IDs to two regular characters (Wallace and Piz) and tells them to help him uncover which bars are not disciminating. And they do it. A day earlier, they were drinking. Now they are selling out their own friends, brothers, college classmates, and ultimately themselves? With no motivation, to boot!
"Veronica Mars" used to have believable characters. Tonight, the writers got so carried away promoting ageism, they forgot about good story-telling, plausible characters, or even decent dialogue.
Some are speculating this is producer Rob Thomas's attempt to kiss up to "family values" bigots in a last-ditch effort to avoid cancelation. Personally, I think the opposite. I think he's accepted cancelation and is no longer putting forth the effort to make a good show.
What a waste of good talent.