The Future Is Now

Or at least it's just around the corner. It's coming, at any rate. I know that for a fact. I also know that it's going to overrun a bunch of people in the entertainment business.

I watched the three remaining episodes of Doctor Who online. I also watched "Blink" prior to US air. I watched them for free. This is the nightmare of many television executives. To them I say:

"How stupid are you?"

Watching "Blink" online only made me absolutely determined to watch it on Sci-Fi. And to buy the DVDs. And watch it again when it finally airs on BBC America. And watch the DVD, and then again with the commentary.

John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey knows a lot more about this than I do. He's thinking way ahead of the curve, or maybe just further ahead than I am, and one of the points that he's always hammering is that the new media world is going to happen. The powers that be may fight it, they might be able to delay it, but they can't stop it.

So why don't they get out ahead of it? The web has guaranteed that I'm clearing the next three Friday nights so as not to miss the Doctor. Isn't that worth something?

Rogers may have put his finger on it when he said that in the future "nobody will get rich, but everybody will get paid." The present system bestows amazing piles of filthy lucre upon a select few. Do you think they're going to give that up? The sad part is that they are going to lose it, and they don't have to. They might have to give up a little, but by refusing to ride the wave, they will get drowned.

And they'll blame the web.

And You'll Miss It

Steven Moffat has pureed my brain. Again. Moffat wrote "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances," the first great two-parter for the revived Doctor Who in its first season, then in season two he penned "The Girl in the Fireplace," the poignant tale of how the Doctor met Madame Pompadour. He wrote Jekyll, the BBC's intriguing retelling of the Jekyll/Hyde story. Both "The Girl in the Fireplace" and Jekyll played with timelines and flashbacks, but not to the degree that he does in "Blink," the latest episode of Doctor Who. There are a couple of reasons I'm not even going to try and describe the plot. First, if you haven't seen it, then you should experience it fresh. It's that kind of a tale. You should be allowed to gasp and giggle at every revelation. Second, the story is kind of like a soap bubble. It's beautiful and exquisitely formed, but try to grasp it and it will burst in your hand.

All time travel stories have holes. That's just a fact. Time travel stories like "Blink," stories of the "shifting-sands-of-time" subgenre, in which characters go backward and forward and sideways and around and down until they run out of ground on the edge of town, have multiple holes and even contradictions. The most you can ask is for the emotional sweep, narrative momentum, or character interaction to carry you over the rough spots like a great guide navigating through Level 5 rapids. If you're a hard-core nitpicker, "Blink" will give you plenty to gripe about, but if you're that sort of person, you're probably not enjoying Doctor Who anyway.

Just as "The Shakespeare Code" was this year's historical DW, analogous to "Tooth and Claw" and "The Unquiet Dead", "Blink" is this season's answer to "Love & Monsters." It's the episode where the Doctor is offstage, allowing another, one-off character to tell the story. Where "Love & Monsters" was a shaggy-dog affair that ended up being very sweet (thank you, Marc Warren and Shirley Henderson), "Blink" tosses up questions about the past, the future, free will, determinism, coincidence, and video technology in a concoction both dense and airy. It also has a shot of Martha Jones running down the sidewalk with a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. That may be the highlight for some of you.

While it's not the point of the story, and not necessary to see it this way, Moffat even fits in a couple of instant attraction/unrequited love beats that can be read to obliquely contrast with and illuminate the season-long Doctor/Martha arc. Russell T Davies has said that Martha's story is unrequited love. The Old Billy Shipton/Sally Sparrow scene made me think even more about that. Old Billy and Sally give us a look at just how sad Martha's fate could be if she doesn't wise up. The Doctor would still be young and vital while Martha developed (to twist Old Billy's line) "old woman's hands." At the end, when Sally takes Larry's hand, that's what Martha wants, but what she'll never get. Just because it works out once in a while doesn't mean it will work out for everyone. While I chafed at Martha's character development early in the season, as it plays out I'm beginning to think that it was simply the deadening effect of "Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks." Take away that rather stultifying two-parter and Martha's character makes a lot more sense and is much more consistent. Her brief screen time in "Blink" reinforces the initial presentation of her as a smart, take-charge woman who has, in this one instance, revealed a fateful, if not fatal, Achilles heel. She's simply fallen head-over-heels for the wrong guy.

The episode creates a surprising amount of suspense, using the Weeping Angels' stop-action nature to deliver some very effective jolts of fear. This was the scariest Doctor Who ever. I yipped at least three times and my daughter asked if she could sleep with the lights on. Often the writing on Doctor Who is praised at the expense of or as apology for the technical aspects, but visually and FX-wise this was a treat. Carey Mulligan turns in a top-notch guest performance, easily carrying the story as Sally Sparrow. All in all, "Blink" is outstanding Doctor Who and plain brilliant by any standard. It would be a thrilling story if you plugged in "anonymous time traveler B." That's what makes it great; it's not dependent on the Doctor's quirks or our knowledge of the series. It's awesome and solid on its own; the Doctor is lagniappe And that's some tasty gravy

"...and it wasn't me."

"Human Nature," the most recent episode of Dr. Who, seems to be pretty pivotal to me. As much as I've enjoyed this season, it has seemed rather flat for the last couple of episodes. Martha (Freema Agyeman) has been in a holding pattern, there but not really vital. Agyeman is a tremendously appealing actress, and "The Lazarus Experiment" introduced an interesting arc-ish element (who is Mr. Saxon and why does he approach Martha's family?), but Martha still seemed a bit fuzzy, out of focus.

"Human Nature" fixes that. It snaps her into our vision clear and sharp. Martha has always looked at the Doctor with an adoration that wasn't present in Rose. Rose loved the Doctor but she didn't looooooooooove him. Alan Sepinwall has some astute observations about this development, and I don't want to tread too closely to what he says, but I think that it's both a brilliant stratagem and a good use of Agyeman's gifts. Her gaze can linger on the Doctor and melt in a way that Billie Piper's never could (and I thought Piper was great). Rose needed the doctor to rescue her from her dead-end life and reveled in the exhiliration of adventure; Martha needs him to claim her heart and hopes that her gameness will someday make him see that. When she whispered her forlorn declaration in the Tardis, I wanted to reach through the screen and wrap her up in a big hug. Agyeman makes Martha vulnerable in places where Rose was not.

The next episode, "Family of Blood," is supposed to be even better. Curse you, Labor Day, for making me wait two weeks!

Update: A viewer at Television Without Pity complained that Martha (in the viewer's eyes) has "no chemistry with the Doctor, romantic or otherwise." For some reason that stuck in my craw, but I think it digested last night.

Martha is not only in love with the Doctor, but it's the cruelest sort of love: unrequited. There will be no chemistry because he simply does not feel that way about her (at least not yet). It's a one-sided relationship. If that's intentional, it wouldn't be out of character for Russell T. Davies.

Trust Me... I'm A Psychopath!

Posting's been light due real-life busy-ness, but I'll try to resume the regularly scheduled broadcasts soon. For now, I must clean up the love-stains left by my viewing of BBC America's Jekyll.

If you have BBCA and you didn't watch Steven Moffat's mind-bending update of Stevenson's story, then check the schedule and catch it when it repeats. If you don't get into it immediately, stay with it. You won't be disappointed.

"...I think sometimes you need somebody to stop you."

He's back!!! Dr. Who is back.

Now, for a full consideration of all things Who, you should really zip over to Matt Zoller Sietz's blog. Ross Ruediger does a bang-up job of illuminating and appreciating the Doctor's adventures, and at a length I cannot hope to match. That said, how cool is it that the Doctor is back!

Season three kicked off with "The Runaway Bride." Like "The Christmas Invasion", it's a stand-alone aired on Christmas in Great Britain. It's neither season two nor season three, but a bridge between the two. It begins where "Doomsday" ended--the Doctor open-mouthed, tears on his cheeks, turning to find a woman (Catherine Tait) in a wedding dress standing in the middle of the TARDIS. Her name is Donna and she has disappeared from her wedding and materialized in front of the Doctor. According to the Doctor, this is impossible--for a guy who is 900 years old and travels across space and time, he says that a lot.

"TRB" is a rather special Dr. Who. For one thing, it's a full-on, slam-bang action piece. The stellar ratings of the new episodes must have shaken down some money from the BBC tree, because the effects and set pieces are altogether greater than anything the series has attempted before. The chase down the freeway (the TARDIS flying alongside a speeding taxi) not only allows us to see the TARDIS in motion, but it also shows us something heretofore unseen. We've always heard that the TARDIS is "bigger on the inside", but this episode lets us see it, and it's very effective.

We also see one of the creepiest villains that DW has ever shown us, the Empress of Racnoss, a giant spider/centaur. She's a classic villain portrayed by Sarah Parish, who starred with David Tennant in Blackpool. It's also good to see Don Gilet from 55 Degrees North. I admit it; I'm a whore for BBC America.

One of the real strong points of the new Dr. is the way it hides a big point inside the plot. That big moment comes in "TRB" when the Doctor finally vanquishes the Racnoss in particularly final and effective manner. Donna is horrified by his cold and somewhat cruel demeanor; she even shouts at him to stop. That leads to her last lines to him, after she has turned down his offer to be a Companion (about time somebody turned it down, and her reasons are funny and spot-on), the title to this post.

Tennant has really seized the role of the Doctor. His brio and emotional effervescence have made his flashes of darkness even more compelling and "TRB" offers an excellent example. As he is exterminating the Racnoss, his thin-lipped mouth compresses to a flat line framed by his beaky nose and pointy chin. Tennant's eyes go cold and he looks like a great, pitiless bird of prey. It's a chilling moment and one of the hallmarks of Russell T. Davies' interpretation of Who.

So Rose is gone, right? Not on your life. Her spirit haunts the entire episode. The Doctor's references to her as very alive, and happy, and with her family are some of the most melancholy lines you'll hear on television.

"The Runaway Bride" is not only the return of Dr. Who, it's also a perfect bridge between seasons two and three. It's Christmas airing in Britain, five month after "Doomsday", three months before "Smith and Jones", probably made that status even clearer.

"Smith and Jones" introduces Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), the Doctor's newest Companion. Aside from the obvious fact that she's the first Companion of color, several important differences are established between her and Rose, differences which highlight Martha's uniqueness while also recalling Rose. Like "Rose", "Smith and Jones" is designed to introduce the new Companion and set up her relationship with the Doctor. It does that well enough, but like many of the best Who episodes, the A-story is functional while the cool stuff weaves around and through it. Take the Judoon, an alien race that doesn't want to take over the world. They're cops, there to do a job. It's a nice twist. Notice how the phrase "reverse it" occurs just as it did in "The Runaway Bride." Chuckle as the hospital administrator, one Mr. Stoker, is killed by the draining of his blood. See the Doctor plant a kiss on Martha (pretty hot, that)!

The real trick of "Smith and Jones" is how it outlines Martha Jones. Where Rose Tyler was a shop girl in a dead-end life, Martha is a medical student. Rose was bored with her life and family; Martha is just tired of the fighting and idiocy of her clan. Rose went with the Doctor to escape the numbing drudgery of her life. Martha, on the other hand, seems more drawn to the idea of knowledge, of discovery. She's almost mastered the human body; how cool would it be to know what else is out there? The show also confidently uses it's own mythology. Martha is very aware of the Christmas invasion and the Racnoss web-ship. She isn't staggered to discover how weird the world is. She knows it's weird; what's exciting about the Doctor is that he promises to show her the how and the why of that weirdness.

So he's back, he's really back. Good show.

"That is textbook enigmatic!"

SciFi ran a Dr. Who marathon today. The episodes were from the "second" series, the David Tennant episodes.

I go back a long way with Dr. Who. I went to college in Oklahoma in the late '70s. I came from a small town in Missouri. I had very, very little money, so most Saturday nights found me either studying, taking advantage of the school's free film series (I learned a lot about movies that way), or watching TV. Oklahoma Public Television (OPTV) had picked up a bunch of British TV shows on the cheap, so the typical Saturday night lineup was Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, and Dr. Who.

I'd never seen anything like it; the PBS station in my neck of the woods had only been on for two years and its signal barely reached my town. The schedule was heavy on educational and high-art programming. OPTV was low-brow by comparison. They were trying to put on a cheap, entertaining lineup. Instead of Love Boat and Fantasy Island, I got turned on to Dr. Who. That was the Tom Baker era. He knocked me out. So did Basil Fawlty, but that's another story.

Like all male Who fans of a certain age, I was madly in love with Sarah Jane Smith. The cheap, cheesy effects were a revelation; the emphasis on story and character instead of surface was a wake-up call to parts of my brain previously untroubled. It was delirious fun.

When Russell T. Davies resurrected DW, I was leery. Thirty years on, how could you do it? Sure, Battlestar Galactica had updated a '70s TV show to great effect, but could it happen again?

The new Doctor was brilliant from the first episode. Fans of a certain age (including myself) are now in love with Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). Christopher Eccleston was fantastic as the doctor. Even as CGI made better effects possible, the show nodded toward its cheesy, low-budget past (the "living plastic" arm in "Rose"). The first season was a joy and a pleasure.

Eccleston left after 13 episodes. He was replaced by David Tennant (Viva Blackpool). I had grown enamored of Eccleston's Doctor and even though Tennant was a capable actor, I wondered if he could do a good job as the Doctor.

Was I stupid. Davies upped the ante in the second season, exploring what it would mean to be an ageless wanderer. As the Doctor said to Rose, "You can live your entire life with me, but I can't live my whole life with you." The melancholy and pain at the heart of the Doctor's existence were probed and exposed, and Tennant handled every revelation with deft prowess. Take the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith in the poignant "School Reunion." Sarah Jane has aged while the Doctor has not. She confronts him about leaving her; her heartbreaking question is "What do I do with the rest of my life now that I've seen the stars?" I defy anyone with a heart to remain unmoved when she demands that the Doctor say goodbye properly. Tennant, his eyes shining and his heart bursting, says, "Good-bye" then blurts out "My Sarah Jane!" I simply cannot imagine Eccleston delivering that line with anything near the power summoned by Tennant. It's a dart to the heart, but its also one small piece of a very deft puzzle that Davies constructs throughout the season. Piper's decision to leave the series resulted in a heartbreaking farewell to Rose, but even that moment of high emotion served to illuminate the tragic nature of the Doctor's dilemma--he's a man who will always need a companion, but none of them will ever stay. His line in the fourth act of "The Girl In The Fireplace" is spot-on: "I'm all right." That's his blessing and his curse. Those he loves will age and die and leave, but the Doctor will always be "all right."

"You Look Badass!"

That's the line. That's the one that put the Heroes season finale over the top. It wasn't a perfect finale, and sometimes it seemed like it wasn't even a very good one, but when Ando (James Kyson Lee) said those words to Hiro (Masi Oka), I laughed out loud. It was a good laugh, a laugh of appreciation and identification and it kind of summed up the appeal of Heroes.

The show was a hit from the first episode and it deserved it. From the introduction of Hiro, a Japanese cubicle slave who is convinced that he can control time and space, Heroes introduced a set of well-delineated characters and put them in a well-paced story that papered over weak moments with momentum and showcased a handful of very effective stand-alone episodes that introduced and illuminated a burgeoning mythology.

Special effects played a part in this. Heroes is a beneficiary of the improvement in CGI. Earlier attempts to translate comics to the television screen (think The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man) suffered due to their inability to convincingly protray certain powers. Heroes had very little of those problems. Even the Niki/Jessica character split was the beneficiary of improvements in split-screen technology. A superhero show needs to be as seamless as possible; Heroes is fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time.

That's not enough to make a show a hit, though. Heroes introduced us to some compelling characters. Hiro was a breath of fresh air in the way he not only believed he had powers, but embraced them when his belief was confirmed. He was no dark, brooding protagonist. I think Oka's portrayal of Hiro's joy in his specialness was a big part of the show's early appeal. He was a meta-comment on the show's geek-love. Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), Niki Sanders (Ali Larter), and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) were all strong characters, capable of carrying an entire episode. And the character who kicked the plot up to another level, HRG (Jack Coleman), Heroes Cigarette-Smoking Man and Special Agent Skinner rolled into one. Zachary Quinto did really good work as Sylar, the season arc's major villain. Hey, the show's guest stars were better than most casts. Clea Duvall as an FBI agent, Christopher Eccleston and Eric Roberts as figures from HRG's past, George Takei as Hiro's father... hey, the show even got Malcom McDowell to drop by as Linderman. One thing I really like about the season was that the writers seemed to enjoy writing for the actual heroes. Too many writers get attached to charismatic villains. I understand why. It's actually easier to write a vivid bad guy; you can write him as conflicted, turned evil by a bad past, or just make him the funniest, wittiest bastard in the room. Writing for good is harder, and Heroes was able to do it.

The show also knew that for us to believe that characters are in jeopardy, you have to kill one every now and then. At least six characters who were in multiple episodes bit the dust during the season. Every time one of them died, the stakes were raised for the others. There's no such thing as a compelling drama where everyone is safe.

The show wasn't perfect. One of the main characters, Peter Petrelli, was played by Milo Ventimiglia, an actor who makes my skin crawl every time I see him. The subplot about Matt Parkman (the awesome Greg Grunberg) and his wife was cliched and went nowhere. At least it tailed off fast. Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) wasn't much more than multi-cultural eye candy. The finale was poorly paced and the resolution of Peter's storyline was unsatisfying to say the least.

But I watched and I enjoyed, and my daughter watched it with me and we shared the experience. Heroes wasn't perfect, but it was a whole lot of fun, and I'll be watching next fall.

If You're Out On The Road...

Gilmore Girls ends its run on the CW/WB on May 15. It's a good thing that Lauren Graham and Alexis Bleidel turned down the offer of a 13-episode run in 2007-08. GG has staggered this season due to the loss of creator/exec producer Amy Sherman-Palladino. It reminds me of the demise of Designing Women, a show that for about four seasons in the late '80s and early 90s was about as funny as you could get until Delta Burke and Jean Smart left the cast in quick succession. Linda Bloodworth-Thomason had created the show with four strong, distinctive voices and losing two of them crippled her. Oddly enough, while Smart is the more esteemed actress, the loss of Burke was probably the one that Thomason couldn't overcome. Burke's Suzanne had become not only a reliable provider of screwball plot twists and character bits, but Burke's syncopated line readings proved impossible for gifted comediennes like Julia Duffy and Judith Ivey to duplicate. Try and replicate Burke's inflection of the lines "Well, I guess she didn't know!" and "I guess she knew!" from 1990's "The Mistress." It can't be done. In addition, Suzanne seemed to be the character most identified with by Boodworth-Thomason. She has said that her planned finale for the show was for Suzanne and Anthony (Meshach Taylor) to elope. What a perfect ending.

But something else connects Designing Women to Gilmore Girls, and that is the love of language. Anyone who ever experienced the dizzy delight of one of Dixie Carter's screwball monologues never forgot it. Here's a sample:

after Charlene turns juror Julia in for discussing her case outside of court
Charlene: [on the phone] Now Julia, you sound overwrought.
Julia: Yeah, well you're gonna think overwrought. If I miss my dinner with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter because of this, you're going to pay and pay big. I'm going to find you and hunt you down like a dog! I'm talking about you running through the woods in the snow with blood hounds ripping your clothes off! And remember Charlene, I have your address. You'd be wise to ask yourself "Do I know where my baby is?"

And another:

Yes, and I gather from your comments there are a couple of other things you don't know, Marjorie. For example, you probably didn't know that Suzanne was the only contestant in Georgia pageant history to sweep every category except congeniality, and that is not something the women in my family aspire to anyway. Or that when she walked down the runway in her swimsuit, five contestants quit on the spot. Or that when she emerged from the isolation booth to answer the question, "What would you do to prevent war?" she spoke so eloquently of patriotism, battlefields and diamond tiaras, grown men wept. And you probably didn't know, Marjorie, that Suzanne was not just any Miss Georgia, she was the Miss Georgia. She didn't twirl just a baton, that baton was on fire. And when she threw that baton into the air, it flew higher, further, faster than any baton has ever flown before, hitting a transformer and showering the darkened arena with sparks! And when it finally did come down, Marjorie, my sister caught that baton, and 12,000 people jumped to their feet for sixteen and one-half minutes of uninterrupted thunderous ovation, as flames illuminated her tear-stained face! And that, Marjorie - just so you will know - and your children will someday know - is the night the lights went out in Georgia!

And that's from early in the show's run, before Bloodworth-Thomason really found her stroke. I can't find an exact quotation of Carter's brilliant diatribe at the end of "La Place Sans Souci", and I'm not going to try and recreate it. All I'll say is that I always wait for it when I see that episode on Lifetime or Nickelodeon.

But this is about the end of Gilmore Girls. What it truly shared with DesigningWomen was a love of character and language. And what language!!! Sherman-Palladino whipped up the fastest dialogue since His Girl Friday, but she had the cast to deliver the goods. Lauren Graham never even got nominated for an Emmy, which is one more reason awards suck, but look at the rest of the cast: Bledel, the brilliant Kelly Bishop (Emily Gilmore, you truly rock!), Edward Herrmann... Edward Herrmann!!! FDR, Sunrise at Campobello, voice of the History Channel. Yanic Truesdale, Liza Weil, hell, Keiko Agena. I think that GG may be the last show to really feature dialogue, extended conversations between two or more characters. I'm pretty sure it will be the last one to assume that both characters and viewers will be smart. Television will feel a little dumber for that.

One other area of Gilmore Girls deserves special notice. I can't think of another show that so venerated and featured music, and not just music as product placement ("Tonight's episode of Smallville feature music by--"), but as lifeblood. Not only did Rory and Lane have great conversations about bands, but Lorelai still thought music was important, and not the music of her high school days either, but new music. The show featured wonderful pop songs and had Sam Phillips provide what Television Without Pity calls "the strummy-strummy la-las." Grant Lee Phillips had a recurring role as the town troubadour. It even made Sebastian Bach seem cool. Tell me Sherman-Palladino can't raise the dead.

The only real gaffe in the show's run was the too-long attempt to shove Milo Ventimiglia down our throats as Jess, but even that paid off when succeeding seasons established that, for all her smarts, Rory is an idiot when it comes to choosing men. The show was that good. It could make one of the things I hated about it into a character trait.

So, away with you, Gilmore Girls. Rest easy. I will remember you, and I'll choke up a little every time I hear Carole King sing, "If you're out on the road..."

The Freshman Fifteen

It's been almost thirty years since I graduated from high school. One of my classmates was a very, very smart girl. She not only had a fine mind, but a good work ethic and admirable study habits. We graduated and some of us trickled off to college (I graduated in a very small town where the majority of folk still thought of college as a way to delay growing up). I returned to the old native soil for midterm my first semester. Another classmate took it upon himself to organize a get-together for those of us who were back from college. As we pulled into the parking lot at Pizza Hut, she was getting out of her dad's pickup. I was struck, even in my narcissistic 18-year-old haze, by how drawn and tense she looked. While most of us were giddy about the new world of higher learning, she was not. At Christmas, she withdrew from school. Thirty years later, she's still in my hometown. She's still smart, still capable; college wasn't too hard for her academically. She just couldn't adjust.

Great TV shows set in high school often suffer the same fate. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was genius as long as its inhabitants roamed the halls of Sunnydale High; once they moved on to UC-Sunnydale and other pursuits, the show slipped and, even though it was capable of brilliant moments, it never again achieved that sustained level. We all know that Saved by the Bell: The College Years was a vastly inferior product compared to the original (/sarcasm). Many of us are sad that Freaks and Geeks was only around for a handful of episodes, but maybe that's a blessing in disguise. We never had to endure a clunky transition out of high school.

That's why the annual drama surrounding the impending cancellation/renewal of Veronica Mars is such a conundrum this year. The first season of VM was great. Rob Thomas seemed to tap into the same vein of pop culture as Joss Whedon; the show's dialogue snapped and it was blessed with a really good ensemble cast, led by a marvelous performance from Kristen Bell. Like Buffy at its best, VM's plots served as an examination of and commentary on larger social issues and themes. Also, the soundtrack killed. Season two was not as good, but it suffered only in comparison with the high standard set by season one. Plus season two featured "Dakota" by Stereophonics. That's a plus.

Which brings us to season three. As college transitions go, it hasn't been bad, but Thomas misses the self-contained world of high school, where you are so often forced into close proximity with people you cannot stand. Antagonists can be kept in constant contact without stretching credibility too much. Collisions between characters that are inevitable in high school become contrived when shoehorned into the more open, autonomous world of a college campus.Take Eli Navarro/Weevil (Francis Capra). At Neptune High his continued presence as Veronica's nemesis/conscience/sometimes accomplice was easily explained; season three's attempts to fit him into the ensemble via a job in the Hearst maintenance department feel contrived.

Now come the final five episodes. VM has abandoned the arc school of storytelling. The last five hours will solve stand-alone mysteries rather than being devoted to any sort of overarching case. Season three has already tinkered with the arc methodology. Instead of one long arc like the first two seasons, this season has already used two mini-arcs. The first dealt with Veronica solving a series of campus rapes. In the second she found the killer of the college dean. Neither of these arcs had the resonance of the first two seasons, but they were useful in knitting the episodes together and providing the show with forward momentum.

If the first two of the new stand-alone stories are indicative of the future, it might be time to let Veronica go. "Un-American Graffiti" was the first outright stinker in the show's history, a shallow, heavy-handed screed against racism and xenophobia. The B-plot wasn't too hot either. "Debasement Tapes" did feature a wry guest-starring turn by Paul Rudd, but the mystery itself was weak. The real flaw is not in the mysteries, however.

VM burst onto the scene as a tart teen noir. The Logan/Veronica coupling that began mid-season one added spice, but it appears that in the brave new world, relationships will be the linchpin of Veronica. That's bad news. It's the death knell for what made the show special. Rumor has it that a fourth season might just jump over college and introduce us to a Veronica already in the FBI. If the last two episodes are indicators rather than outliers, that might be a good idea.