reviewed by Charity Bishop
           

The cancellation of Veronica Mars after its third season frustrated fans and casual viewers alike, since it had more than proven itself the previous year with an outstanding collection of episodes. Full of the same wit as previous years but a more structured plotline, I can say without prejudice that season three is the finest succession of episodes in the show's short run.

Having decided to stick around and attend a local college rather than fly halfway across the country and leave behind most of her friends, along with her tormented boyfriend Logan (Jason Dohring), Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) is now finding out that fitting in at Hurst is much easier than it was in high school. Renting out her private investigator services for $500 per case to college students, she hits the top of her class on criminal profiling and has managed to impress most of her professors. But there is more than cheating classmates and the occasional on-campus theft ring up at the renowned school. There is also a series of campus rapes that are tearing the school apart. Many of the girls believe the boys in the local sorority are privy to it, and when the guys hire Veronica to prove them innocent, it doesn't win her any bonus points with her female classmates.

In the meantime, her father Keith (Enrico Colantoni) is struggling to keep his business running smoothly without her after-school participation. Veronica's friend Wallace (Percy Daggs) discovers that he cannot play basketball and keep his grades up at the same time, and Veronica feels personally responsible when she discovers she could have prevented one of the rapes. Then there is her tumultuous relationship with Logan, and her inability to let him have any secrets, a fact that does not go unnoticed by Piz (Chris Lowell), who has a bit of a crush on her. The result is a twenty-two episode season that packs a lot of action and emotional punch into its plot lines. One thing that is different this year (apart from the more mature opening credits) is that the series does not follow one major mystery throughout the season as it did in its first two years. The rapes on campus are wrapped up midway in and then it becomes a murder mystery as Veronica and her father struggle to find out who killed a significant person on campus, and the reasons why.

This made the show much easier to follow, and that contributed to me liking it a lot better than the previous season. That, and the fact that there is not as much content, surprising when you consider the show switched networks and made the leap from high school into college. Audiences hoping to see Logan and Veronica as a couple again will be pleased with the first half, but not the second half, in which their complicated relationship begins to crumble. Unfortunately, with the show canceled, we will never get to see matters between them resolved. While the cast is always fantastic, there was a new level of maturity to their performances in this season. Bell is a brilliant Veronica, so complex in her emotions that there are times you don't know whether to scream at her or hug her. The same goes for Logan, a "bad boy" who has serious emotional issues. Some content is obvious: there is a lot of attention paid to the rape plot line, with various accusations and inquiries going on in the background. Drugging drinks at parties and getting girls high is a big deal for college boys. There is no graphic sexual content, but Veronica wakes up in Logan's bed a couple of times. She also has bad dreams about him in bed with her arch rival in one episode ("There's Got to Be a Morning After Pill"). A semi-graphic "sex tape" of her and Piz shows up on the internet toward the end of the season. Logan's friend Dick is a womanizer whose behavior is almost always inappropriate or crude. 

Veronica's dad has a brief affair with a married woman, something that horrifies Veronica, who pleads with him to break off the relationship and be the "one good role model" in her life. Chastened by her disapproval, Keith does end it, but his involvement creates serious consequences in later episodes. There is a moderate amount of violence. Things turn scary when Veronica is drugged on two different occasions. She stabs an assailant in the leg. Logan takes a baseball bat to a local police car, to ensure he winds up in the same temporary holding cell as two boys who threatened Veronica. What happens as a result is not shown. What surprised me was that in a highly controversial episode about a "morning after" pill, Christianity was actually depicted in a favorable light. Veronica suspects a local television minister might have had something to do with causing his daughter's miscarriage, but is surprised to learn that he is all about love and forgiveness. His counsel leads her to pull out of a vengeful act against a classmate who has wronged her.

There are some ups and downs this season, but for the most part, Veronica Mars was fabulous.