Veronica Mars Returns to Hulu in Rare Successful TV Reboot | TV/Streaming
The result is a captivating, deliberately frustrating season of television that’s very nearly as good as the show’s first and considerably more compelling than its second or third (to say nothing of the sporadically vibrant and tissue-thin movie). “A long time ago, we used to be friends,” the theme song says (now sung by Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders), and for the first time, it sounds true. The truth, as it so often does, hurts—but it’s great television.
The events of this unexpected fourth season (hopefully, considering the strength of these eight episodes, not the show’s last) pick up about five years after the events of the fan service-heavy film. (The storyline includes the events of two Veronica Mars novels, released after the film, but neither is essential to following the plot here.) Veronica (Bell, as good as she’s ever been), two fancy-ass degrees in tow, is still in Neptune, using the P.I. license she got for her 18th birthday and harboring the same well-worn resentments. Sure, she’s got a new dog (Pony, taking over for poor old Backup) and a new rent-controlled beachfront address, and sure, she’s still in a relationship with the new and improved mostly-stable Logan (Jason Dohring, appealing as ever), but the damage is all very familiar. She’s stuck, tied inextricably to the person she was at age 16, but she’s nevertheless showing signs of wear and tear. That invaluable capacity for empathy is a little harder to access; that hope for something better and kinder greatly diminished.
That’s not true of everyone in her orbit. Poor old Weevil (Francis Capra, terrific) has lost his grip on the stable, chino-wearning life he built for himself, and once again rides at the front of the 09ers (a group that now includes “American Vandal’s” Tyler Alvarez), but Wallace (Percy Daggs III) has a wife and a son now, having left the days of swiping files from the principal long behind him. Logan’s change is even more dramatic. Revealed to be a Navy pilot in the 2014 film, he’s now an intelligence officer who’s on great terms with his therapist and concerned by his girlfriend’s apparent desire to get the old rage-filled, self-destructive Logan back from time to time. And then there’s Keith (Enrico Colantoni, doing series-best work in a career-best role), still recovering from a brutal car accident five years after the fact with little-to-no hope of improvement, but trying to make way on the long, hard path that leads to whatever comes next.
Most of all, however, it’s Neptune that remains the same. There are some new faces, namely J.K. Simmons as a mysterious associate of Richard “Dick Sr.” Casablancas, Patton Oswalt as a pizza guy with terrible timing, Izabela Vidovic as a local kid with a whole lot of trouble on her plate, and Clifton Collins Jr. as a new ruthless adversary, but the stark class divide and the simmering tension that comes with it is as prominent as ever—perhaps moreso. The biggest difference on the Neptune front, however, is how beautifully it’s shot. Never do the show’s directors descend into what you might (with great respect) call “Brick” territory; there’s the occasional atmospheric, intentionally Dassin-esque shot, particularly in the Mars Investigations office, but for the most part, the noir elements can be found in tone, dialogue, and story. Instead, we see Neptune as Veronica and Keith Mars see it: Sometimes small, sometimes grand, nearly always either empty or totally claustrophobic. That’s always been true, but now there are fancy cameras and Hulu money; never, not even in the film, has the show looked this good.
