{"id":396,"date":"2004-11-10T09:41:36","date_gmt":"2004-11-10T09:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/wp\/?p=396"},"modified":"2004-11-10T09:41:36","modified_gmt":"2004-11-10T09:41:36","slug":"earth-to-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2004\/11\/earth-to-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth to Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"***Dave :: Veronica marred\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/mtarchive\/007722.html\">***Dave and Margie<\/a>, unfortunately, decided to watch Veronica Mars for the first time last night.<br \/>\nDamn shame that that was the first impression they got of the show.  I said in his comments that it was a pretty bleh episode and likened it to Teacher&#8217;s Pet from first-season Buffy, but after thinking about it, I realized that it wasn&#8217;t as much a lame throwaway episode as it is a &#8220;drop mega-hints for the uber-plot&#8221; episode&#8230; which is almost worse.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nSee, the problem with trying to dismiss this VM episode as vaguely hackish crap is that it drops a lot of foreshadowing and hints for uber-plot stuff that, while important to someone following the whole thing, are meaningless to the first-time viewer:<br \/>\n&#8211; Her mom and her ex-boyfriend&#8217;s dad used to date.  A lot.  Why is that a big deal?  Well, there&#8217;s a chance the two also had an affair at a later date (something we see hinted in earlier eps), so&#8230; what if Veronica is her ex-boyfriend&#8217;s half-sister, and that&#8217;s why he dumped her last year. (Cf. all the flashbacks for this ep.)  This all ties back into VM spacing out when Dad says something about &#8220;Have to respect a guy who would raise a kid who isn&#8217;t his own.&#8221;  This element is kind of huge, but only if you think about it for about an hour and try to figure out WTF the point of the whole yearbook C-plot was about.<br \/>\nNot that&#8230; I&#8230; did that&#8230;.<br \/>\n&#8211; Stuff about dead-Lilly&#8217;s relationship with the biker guy, who figures prominently in the show in a kind of &#8220;I haven&#8217;t had my Screen Presence 3 episode yet&#8221; way.<br \/>\nLots of important plotty stuff, but yeah, not a great starter episode at all.<br \/>\nVM&#8217;s a good show, though.  I wouldn&#8217;t call it a great show, because sometimes the timing and scenes are a bit off &#8212; it&#8217;s still getting it&#8217;s sea legs and figuring out if it&#8217;s 90210 or Elmore Leonard, but it has a lot of potential.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m pleased (and vaguely relieved, in a Red-Sox-Curse-Lifted kind of way) to learn that UPN picked it up for the full season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>***Dave and Margie, unfortunately, decided to watch Veronica Mars for the first time last night. Damn shame that that was the first impression they got of the show. I said in his comments that it was a pretty bleh episode and likened it to Teacher&#8217;s Pet from first-season Buffy, but after thinking about it, I &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2004\/11\/earth-to-mars\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Earth to Mars&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geeky-fanboy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}