The third season has really missed Weevil. For understandable reasons, Francis Capra was missing for most of the season due to his health, but for its penultimate episode (at the time), the series puts its focus on the character for another entertaining tale.
There is a lot going on here as Veronica Mars heads towards an unescapable date with the series finale, and while the third season has been without a doubt its weakest, its dip into the well of stand-alone tales has brought with it some very entertaining episodes.
One of its most packed episodes in a while, ‘Weevils Wobble…’ doesn’t have the sense of heading towards a series finale in any way, but there is the feeling that the series is fully addressing the threads it has left hanging.
Veronica’s upcoming internship with the FBI is talked about a lot; there is major drama involving Veronica, Piz and Logan (it’s clear we’re in a bit of love triangle territory here), while its mystery of the week shows how much and how far Weevil has come with his relationships with both Veronica and Keith.
Francis Capra’s performance as Weevil has always been one of the best-kept secrets on US television and is one of many indications of how complex a piece of work Veronica Mars has been when it comes to its characters.
An opposing, bullying figure when it began (let’s not forget his treatment of Wallace in the ‘Pilot‘) has developed into a more complex character, and one with his own set of morals and emotional concerns. This not only made the series feel like it was truly one with its noir inflections, but also one of the best written shows of the time. Because even though it initially only lasted for three seasons, we got to see Weevil, as well as the majority of its cast of characters, change and develop wonderfully thanks to great writing from Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero-Wright and Phil Klemmer.
While its penultimate episode isn’t one of the series’ all-time classics, it is a wickedly entertaining hour of television that does entertaining things with its characters as well as finding a way to give Weevil a story of his own before the show finishes for good.
If anything, it’s the fact that the series was finishing for good at this stage that stops it from being an all-time classic. Clearly, Rob Thomas and his writers were hoping for renewal, and the use of Veronica applying for an FBI internship was a set up for the direction that Thomas was thinking of going in season four, but sadly it feels as if the series is going on as normal here with no sense that the end is around the corner, although as always with these things, that fault lies with the network as opposed to the writing, which is really good here for what it is.
It really is hard to shake the feeling that the end is coming, though. There’s nothing on screen to hint at it, the way that most television shows have that feeling that the end is coming as it approaches the series finale. It should be reassuring: life will go on, but as is always the case with great television that gets badly treated by its own network, one cannot help but feel bitter and angry that something as brilliant and unique as this series, is about to hit the brick wall of cancellation.