So I’ve been having a Veronica Mars marathon that’s been going on since Feb. 4. Watching season 1 I remembered how much I loved this show; watching season 2, I remembered how far this show fell from an AMAZING first season, to a somewhat mediocre season (and very “choppy” with the main mystery; like introducing possible suspects and clues half-way through).
Now I’m in the middle of season 3 and it’s getting painful…
I remember how much I liked the first half of season 3, and thought the show had potential to return to everything I loved about the first season, but then after the mystery of the serial rapist was solved, it went into the mystery of who killed the dean, and not only is it not as compelling, but also the second half of season 3 becomes a “love triangle soap opera”, with all this focus on Logan/Veronica/Piz, and great/interesting characters like Wallace, Mac, and Weevil get brushed to the side. (And don’t get me started with how the show screwed over Jackie’s character from season 2)
And speaking of shipping…
Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if Rob Thomas just decided he didn’t like the ship of Logan/Veronica (which he wrote/created in season 1) or resented how popular that ship became, and decided to go out of his way to push first Duncan in season 2 and then Piz in season 3 on the audience, trying desperately to make people “hate” Logan, when I think he did more harm to Veronica’s character. And while yes, I admit I do ship LoVe (and am well aware of their issues–they really could use some counseling), Piz is the modern understanding of the “nice guy”, i.e., in the minds of men, he’s “perfect for the heroine, why can’t she see what a nice guy he is? Why won’t she dump her problematic boyfriend and go out with him? Why is she being such a bitch to such a nice guy?”…whereas in the minds of women, his “nice guy persona” isn’t as sweet and nice as he/Thomas might think, and can be seen as either creepy or unsettling (or both!)
And I need to take a moment to talk about Parker. I have nothing against her character, in fact I think Veronica needed a “girly friend” in her life, but whyyyyyy did all the romances of season 3 have to revolve around Logan and Veronica? It was obvious Piz was going to be pushed in to create “problems” for Logan/Veronica, but I must admit, I didn’t see Parker having anything to do with Logan until basically Thomas and his writers decided to thrust her into Logan’s life more or less as a way to “clear a path” for Veronica and Piz (which is COMPLETELY unfair to Parker, and is yet another version of “fridging” in my opinion). Seriously, why couldn’t Parker have a romance with Wallace? Or Weevil? Do those guys not get any love? Mac got another chance at romance, why not Wallace and Weevil?
Anyway, this is a random post, but I felt the need to grumble about my love/hate relationship with this show. I have seen the movie and look forward to rewatching it again, but wanted to watch the show prior to get the “full impact” if you will.
A Florida teenager who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, issued a rousing call to action at a rally against gun violence.
Emma Gonzalez declared that the shooting at her school should be “the last mass shooting.”
And she responded directly to Trump’s tweet, which blamed students at the school for not reporting on the shooter’s behavior before the event.
“We did,” Gonzalez said, “time and time again, since he was in middle school.”
“We need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just a mental health issue,” she continued. “He wouldn’t have harmed that many students with a knife.”
“How about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the shooter’s fault?” she demanded, and called out those who do deserve to shoulder that blame.
“[The people] who let him buy the guns in the first place. Those at the gun shows. The people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic. The people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew that he expressed homicidal tendencies. And I am not talking about the FBI. I am talking about the people that he lived with, I’m talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.”
And Gonzalez again did not let Trump’s responsibility go unremarked upon
“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy, and how it should never have happened, and maintain telling us that nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.”
Gonzalez then called attention to the $30 million spent by the NRA in support of Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and how that translates onto each life lost to gun violence.
“That comes out to being $5800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?” She asked.
“To every politician who has taken donations from the NRA: Shame on you!”
The crowd erupted into a loud chant, echoing her cry: “Shame on you!”
Emma Gonzalez and her Florida community are not allowing Trump, the Republican Party, or the NRA to intimidate them into silence. They are speaking up to defend their families, and shaming those who enable this epidemic of violence.
The video of the full speech by Emma Gonzalez, via CNN’s YouTube:
In which Cora is still pregnant at the garden party! Thomas defies O’Brien and starts making plans! Matthew confides in Mary about what really brought him to Downton and gives her something in gratitude! Tom finally tells Robert how he feels about Sybil! The United Kingdom declares war on Germany!
Some notes with spoilers for the chapter if you read more below, but first a plea: Please tell me if you are still reading this story. Whether that’s in a review, a personal message, by commenting on this post, reblogging and adding a comment–however you want to do it, I need to know there are people on the other end here. Writing this story takes a lot of time and energy for me. I got a whole lot of other things going on that I could be spending both on. This show went off the air years ago, but this story is still important to me, so I don’t want to abandon it. That said, it’s a lot harder when I put almost 13,000 out into the universe (like for this chapter) and have just one or two people respond. Stats tell me that more than a handful of people are reading this story—hundreds actually—but I have no sense of that based on reviews/comments. I assume that many of those who have favorited and followed this story in the past have moved on. That’s fine, but for those of you who are still with me, please let me know that you are. I’m not trying to fish for compliments, but if you want me to continue and finish this story eventually, I need to know. Eventually, if the numbers keep going down, I’ll have zero reviews to show for a chapter. At that point, I’d only be writing for myself, and I don’t need to post online to do that. Thank you! Thank you!
OK, then, here’s some “DVD commentary” on what went on …
Stills of Jessica Brown Findlay as Elizabeth McKenna in
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’s traile. I’m so happy she’s playing this character.(X)
After having
his heart badly broken, Tom Branson, a successful and well-known model had been
single for three years. Sybil Crawley, a theatre actress, had never been with
anyone. Not for any significant length of time. After a mutual friend of theirs, a photographer, who had known Sybil since childhood, and had photographed Tom recently, saw the potential between the two of them, he eventually convinced them both to agree to a meeting. Despite their initial reluctance, they couldn’t have been more perfect for each other. Sybil began to understand what love was really like – the love that she had tried to portray as an actress for so long. Tom’s heart began to heal, stitched together a little more with each of Sybil’s smiles, each of her laughs, each of her sideways glances. After being together for some time, they began to dabble in each other’s disciplines. Sybil became more confident in front of the camera and Tom became more at home in front of an audience of thousands. Through their long relationship, through dating, marriage and having children, the one thing that had always kept them bonded was theatre. They both loved acting, but they equally both loved watching theatre, and it formed a significant part of their anniversary and birthday and special occasion celebrations each year. And their mutual friend who had convinced them to go on that first date never did let them forget that he was the catalyst to their love.
Musings of a Yankee Countess 