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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Teens > Mystery > Veronica Mars – The Complete Third Season (Warner DVD)

Veronica Mars – The Complete Third Season (Warner DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Episodes: C

 

 

In what has to be the poorest and most commercially successful rip-off of Nancy Drew to date, Kristen Bell is the obnoxious, know-it-all title character in Veronica Mars – The Complete Third Season, a Nancy Drew variant with little mystery (except as to why it is a hit) and little to offer beyond its teeny bopper audience.  Going on this long, it actually has outdone the run of the Pamela Sue Martin show, though she left in the middle of her second season for script reasons, so that analogy has limits.  Still, not as many as this show.

 

Like Drew, her father is a detective (no lawsuit?) and she goes to college (after leaving high school the previous season) with a case of serial rape among other goofy happenings.  It is one thing for her to seem like a semi-airhead who is observant, but throw in this poorly handed rape storyline, and it is a wreck.  It actually trivializes the subject, a very bad thing for its demographic.  However, without that, this show is awful and is a mess from beginning to end.  Joel Silver co-produces, bringing his R-rated rawness to a show that should not need it.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image of all 20 hour-long shows is poor and problematic throughout, looking like either bad film transfers or very bad HD shooting.  If it were any worse, this would be among the worst new shows on DVD for picture.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes have limited surrounds and are not the best mixed episodes we have encountered.  The combination can be trying.  Extras include webisodes, additional scenes, gag reel and two behind the scenes features that do not add up to much.  Get the Pamela Sue Martin/Nancy Drew shows (reviewed elsewhere on this site) on DVD instead.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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