I like the show a lot, but I do agree with some of your complaints--even now, I have a hard time buying Weevil as some kind of tough guy. Back in season 1, there's that scene where his gang beats up Logan (or someone--I don't remember), and the beatdown looked so pathetic, with fake-looking kicks & punches galore. I also couldn't quite buy Veronica as an outcast, and I found the rest of the main cast (save her father) incredibly annoying. I've only recently (as in the past 2 or 3 episodes) begun to like Wallace, and that's only because he's stopped whining about Veronica taking him for granted.

Yet, it works pretty well for me. The dialogue is really punchy and funny, and the plots are engrossing enough that I'm still hooked. A very large part of what makes the show great is Kristen Bell--she's a great lead and has shown a nice range in this role. I don't think it's the BEST SHOW EVER, the way a lot of its fans make it out to be, and I can easily go a couple of months without watching a new episode (I tend to download them, then watch them when I don't have anything better to do). My biggest complaint is that Veronica is not a very realistic teenager, with all her super-witty comebacks and massive skill sets, but I've learned to see past that.

The first few episodes might be underwhelming relative to the hype the show has received, but back in Fall 2004, when they first aired, most of us thought, "wow, this show is actually pretty good!"

Well, I've almost completely caught up to the present with this show (just have one episode left to go) and am ready to watch it live. I do enjoy the show, but it's nowhere near as good as Buffy was in its prime; perhaps an unfortunate (if inevitable) comparison to draw. I don't buy the Wallace/Veronica friendship, and Still, it's a great show, highly enjoyable.

By far the best thing on the show is Kristen Bell as Veronica Mars. She's great and, without her in the role, the show probably wouldn't have been as good. Also great is Enrico Colantoni as Keith Mars - he's good as the ex-cop P.I. and his father/daughter relationship with Veronica works really well.

So far (I'm about 16 episodes in) the best thing about the storylines is the overall arc stuff (Lilly Kane's murder, Logan's family stuff, etc.) that are revealed piece by piece from episode-to-episode. The single-episode investigations, though, have varied a lot in quality - sometimes very good (like the one with the Agatha Christie-like poker game robbery), to pretty weak (like the one with the missing hip-hop producer's daughter). But the better ones tend to make up for the weaker ones. (The fact that I'm a fan of "Who-Done-It?" type stuff helps.)

I would've thought it was more like "Wow, this UPN show is actually pretty good! And it's on UPN! Wow!"

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I just watched Season 1, and now need to catch up to Season 2. How far along are they?

birrman54

They have shown 13 episodes of season 2 so far. They stopped showing new episodes the last 3 weeks. The UPN website says a new episode will air on 3/15. I hope so.

I completed Season 1, and it ended very strongly with two of the show's best episodes. Of the two main mysteries, I figured out the "who" in one mystery (what happened at the infamous party) much earlier in the season, but the Lilly murderer was still a mystery to me until that knockout finale. When the show is as good as it was in those two episodes, it gets a big from me.

yep, next week the show starts up again, and there won't be any more ineruptions. And with Top Model, as its lead in, it shoud do half way decent numbers(well for upn's standards, maybe about 3 or 3.5 mil viewers per episode),