Vulnerable Veronica Mars Gets a Makeover
The things a girl has to do to stay on the air — especially an underdog like Veronica Mars (the insanely appealing
Kristen Bell), that smart-as-a-whip cult hero/college detective for whom solving cases and breaking hearts is all in a day's work. If only she could rustle up some ratings while she's at it.
Trying to avoid what seems an almost inevitable death notice, Veronica Mars has returned from hiatus with a new format of stand-alone episodes in place of longer, convoluted mystery arcs. The good news is that simplifying Veronica doesn't mean dumbing down.
The show's virtues are intact: irony-laced banter, film noir-ish voice-overs with a twist ("Where's the sugar rush of sweet justice I should be feeling right now?") and deliciously tortured triangles, currently involving Veronica, poor- little-rich-boy Logan (Jason Dohring) and hopelessly smitten Piz (Chris Lowell).
As Veronica puts it in a dishy scene involving cafeteria-food symbolism, is she more into the fettuccine (Logan) or the egg plant (Piz)? Veronica Mars is by far the tastiest item on the CW's menu. Still, Veronica isn't above playing the sweeps game, this week enlisting Paul Rudd as guest star. He's terrific, oozing grungy bitterness and wry humor in a colorful role as (in Veronica's words) "a spineless and semi-alcoholic has-been rock star" who needs her help finding missing tapes.
If you don't laugh when Rudd wonders, "Anyone ever tell you you look like a feisty young Barbara Eden?" maybe this isn't the show for you. Should Veronica beat the odds and earn a fourth season, the show could evolve yet again, one scenario propelling her several years into the future as an FBI agent. Veronica the new Clarice Starling? I would so be there.
The obstacle for now: how to get noticed against House and Dancing with the Stars. On second thought, forget the FBI. Has Veronica ever thought about becoming a miracle worker?
King of Karma
I must have been an awfully good boy to deserve a treat as delightful as the season finale of My Name Is Earl (Thursday, 5/10, 8/7c, NBC). It wraps its sophomore season staking a claim not merely as one of TV's funniest shows but also its sweetest. The occasion: the appropriately farcical trial of Joy, where Crabman's floppy hair acts like a mood ring, Joy's deaf lawyer's translator needs a translator, and Earl steps up as the adult he so desperately yearns to be. It's an episode as pivotal as it is hysterical.
Holy Terrors
As the overheated narration drones ominously about a "web of arrest, interrogation and torture," it sounds a bit like 24. In four hourlong chapters of religious persecution and execution, Secret Files of the Inquisition ( May 9 and 16, PBS, check listings) uses excerpts from long-sealed archives to inspire handsome looking but sketchy reenactments of the Catholic Church's 600-year spree of witch hunts against heretics in France, Spain and Italy. As a cautionary tale, it's oddly bloodless.
