Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season DVD Credits:

Region: 1

Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season DVD Release Date: 21st August 2006

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Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season DVD Review:

The dark and moody film noir/detective film in a high school setting, Brick, is one of my favorite movies this year, and because of this I find myself drawn to Veronica Mars, but I usually end up liking it for completely different reasons. Veronica Mars has a lighter and much more far-fetched feeling about it. This girl, who seems caught up in a town with as much crime and drama as possible, is a high school student and a detective. What makes this a little hokey is the fact that she is known around town for being a detective and solving mysteries. It almost feels like watching The Hardy Boys, except for the fact that it is incredibly well written and the characters are fully developed. What really started to draw me in about the show is the fact that each episode ended with a cliffhanger which would be the mystery of the next episode, making this show nearly necessary for viewing on DVD. The complex and often difficult to follow plot is best watched together.

Season two starts off with an episode that far over-complicates things with flashbacks and relationship drama, but the show finds its stride after that giving Veronica (Kristen Bell) all sorts of mysteries to solve. After the cliffhanger of season one, audiences might be disappointed in the way the writing tries to make everyone happy with Veronica’s choice, and those who aren’t disappointed are likely to be confused. The rest of the season fills Veronica’s senior year with a number of events. Veronica loses her virginity early on in the year, and as if that is not a large enough event, she is also drugged and raped later on in the year. Season two also has Veronica solving the death of a number of her classmates in a tragic bus accident and she makes a few enemies in an Irish crime family as well.

The backbone of the show is Veronica’s relationship with her private investigator father (Enrico Colantoni), who decides to run for police chief. Bell and Colantoni make a great pair, and even if the rest of the dialogue seems a bit to forced, these two have magic when they are alone in a scene. This makes it even more frustrating when more characters are added to the already overcrowded cast. It seems as though creator Rob Thomas is trying to create a town filled with as much drama and turmoil as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, minus the vampires.

The DVD set has all of the complicated twenty-two episodes of season two on six discs. The packaging is fairly impressive, especially some of the artwork, but the booklet insert looks oddly familiar to a booklet included in another teen drama show (Gilmore Girls). The special features include a few extended or deleted scenes, which may be fun for fans despite the fact that they are of no use to understanding the show more. There is also a gag reel and two featurettes with some fun behind the scenes footage.

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Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season DVD review written by: Ryan Izay