1.1 - Pilot

... or, here we go again.

Beginnings. They're not quite as painful as endings, usually, but they can be as every bit as tricky. Take, for example, the infamous "first reel" rule for movies: in a given movie, you'd better have your audience engaged and your story set up by the 10 minute mark or your movie is dust.

I don't know about you, but is your attention span that short?

Television, thankfully, is a little more forgiving. Still, if anyone needs proof as to the importance of the first episode, just take a look at Joss Whedon's ill-fated show Firefly; those bastards at Fox didn't air the pilot, which established the universe, the characters, and the premise of the show, and subsequently, viewers were lost and weren't emotionally invested into the show.

Hmmm, universe, characters, and premise. Since not a lot happened in this episode, let's apply those to this show, shall we?

Universe: Okay, I'll admit that I was rolling my eyes at the "Neptune, California" gag at the beginning of the episode. Still, it was early enough that I was willing to forgive it.

Neptune, home of the 90909 zip code, which I can confirm, is not a valid zip code. Quite clever of them really. For a town that boasts of a blonde female with willpower, it lacks vampires, monsters, terrorists, and government agents. What Neptune does have are a pack of stuck up rich kids. Apparently, creator Rob Thomas must've bought the Value-Pak. This town also boasts of a motorcycle gang because everyone knows that a suburban town isn't complete with hoodlums trapising around town on loud bicycles.

Actually, except for the upper class part of town, Neptune could more or less fit into any of the thousand suburbs that exist around the country. It's got the business section and the residential section and supposed "seedy" part of town.

So... the universe is a little implausible (I mean, seriously, motorcycles? I guess lowriders and handguns weren't dramatic enough), but like a lot of things in this show (and this episode, in particular), if you're willing to suspend reality, it works well.

Characters: Okay, there's Tina Majorino, a major league hottie. Oh, and a bunch of other people. All righty, moving on...

... oh wait, jumping ahead of myself. Tina doesn't show up until episode 8. Darn.

The one thing that every TV show needs are characters with quirks. We have

• Veronica, sometimes snarky, sometimes gold-hearted teenager, alienated from the rich kids but still knowledgable about their way of life.
• Wallace, who... does nothing of note.
• Logan, whose job description seems to be delivering the best lines of the show.
• Duncan, whose role in this first episode seems to be to do his best David Boreanez impression.
• Weevil, evil motorcycle gang leader with a heart of.... bronze.
• Keith, the not-so-clueless father who tries to nurture and protect his daughter.

Premise: The premise of the show is quite simple: it's about a young female who is chosen to hunt down vampires for the CIA.

Seriously, folks, let's get off the Buffy and Alias comparisons. Yes, Veronica is a fast talking blonde but she doesn't walk around with a stake or $2 million worth of electronics (no doubt funded by taxpayer dollars) strapped onto her body. Let's let Veronica grow into her own character, shall we?

Besides, Veronica Mars is a mystery show, without the blood, candlesticks, and Professor Plum in the library. We live for the "ah-ha!" moment in every episode and take delight in that fact that Veronica uses her head more than her fists (although I won't complain if she does). It provides me with enough intrigue, both the individual episode arcs as well as the overall season arc, to make me come back week after week to watch the story unfold.

Except this first episode wasn't very mysterious. In fact, it was more about Veronica being a good person more than anything else, about helping someone just because she could. That's the entire appeal of Veronica Mars: it's about ordinary people. These people aren't doctors or lawyers or CIA or coupled with Jennifer Aniston.

And it's definitely a world that I'd like to revisit every week.

Other Notes:

- I'm going to write this off as a UPN thing, but the production and editing of this episode were extremely sloppy. There's a number of misframes and unexplained time lapses and it bugged me more than I thought.

- One of the things I REALLY have to thank the writers for is drastically cutting down on the number of voice overs in later episodes. I forgave it for this episode because it was the first and they needed to stick in a lot of exposition and thankfully, good taste ruled and it was never used to this extent again.

Final Rating: ****. It misses the full 5 because there's a number of glaring production/direction errors and when I start noticing things like that, it's time to be afraid.