Let me be the first to risk getting completely flamed by obsessive VERONICA MARS fans by saying I was under-whelmed by last night’s season finale. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but it just wasn’t great – and far from jaw-dropping first season finale. Here are few thoughts on why it didn’t live up to the buzz. (Partial blame falls on TVguide’s Ausiello and Eonline’s Kristin who in my opinion completely over-hyped the finale)
1] The mastermind behind the bus crash became to obvious. The great thing about season one is that I honestly had no idea who was responsible for Lilly’s murder. While I had my speculation, I completely didn’t think of Aaron Echolls. This season, while the writers tried to place the blame on numerous characters – it quickly became apparent who was responsible. Which leads me to Beaver…
2] All season long, Cassidy (Beav) was the student nobody would suspect. He was quiet, behind the scenes and pretty much had nothing to do with any of the major story-lines. While his brother Dick provided comic relief, essentially the only point of having Beaver as a ‘regular’ was to blame the crash on him and kill him off in the end. While his motives were entirely plausible, I just didn’t completely buy his psycho transformation that played out on the roof.
3] The final scene. What the FRACK was that? Now I’m going to have to wait four months to find out what is in a briefcase? While no doubt there will be an interesting explanation, I feel like Rob Thomas just threw that in to provide some sort of cliffhanger to the finale.
4] What was the purpose of the flashback at the beginning of the episode. To see what Veronica’s life would have been like if Lilly was never killed? Lilly’s random appearance, I didn’t get it? (also, shouldn’t she be in Utah!)
5] Beav actually did Rape Veronica? Huh! That sort of puts a whole depression cloud over season one, when we finally learned that Veronica had infact not been raped. I get having to show how screwed up Beav is, but that just seemed a little over-the-top.
Don’t get me wrong, VERONICA MARS is still one of the most enjoyable shows on TV, I just didn’t think this season was nearly as good as last season. As I was watching the episode, with all these random flashbacks, I was thinking to myself that there was no way a random viewer could just pick up the show and appreciated it (or understand it). You definitely needed to be a fan to get what was going on – and in the world of 500 channels, that just doesn’t work anymore. ALIAS had the same problem, Rambaldi, SD6 – while I loved every minute, the uninitiated is completely lost! (no pun intended!). I look forward to next season, as creator Rob Thomas has said that the season will be divided into three different story arch. No doubt making things far easier to follow (and hopefully expand the VERONICA MARS audience). 
