Our favorite modern-day Nancy Drew is back. (A cheesy description for a show that's gotten cheesier.) As I said before in my Studio 60 post, these TV commentaries are going to get a lot shorter for all of our sanities. (Except Lost's - because Lost remains awesome. Screw the haters.)

I know I've complained before - a lot - about how Seasons 1 and 2 were so much better to Veronica, so I won't get into that, but it was all I kept thinking about during it's 2007 return, a fairly self-contained show entitled "Show Me the Monkey." Well, I won't get into it much. Allow me the next paragraph:

Man, think of how great the overarching story was season 1. Not just the Lilly Kane mystery - there was all this surrounding intrigue with Weevil's gang, Logan being a jerk, everyone in general hating Veronica and her dad, the friendship between Veronica and Wallace actually being really cool, and so on. Sometimes each episode's self-contained mysteries were a little lame, sure, but what made them interesting was the environment in which they were being solved. Veronica doesn't have the baggage she had during that inaugaral year, and Hearst is a pathetically vapid setting compared to Neptune High. In this episode, as she sat in the cafeteria complaining via voice-over about Logan being there too, I thought -- really? This is what Veronica's famous (and usually deserved) angst amounts to this time? Whining about an ex-boyfriend? I've lit a candle for the good old days.

See? That was only one paragraph. Onto some notes about this episode, which despite my attitude wasn't that bad thanks to some supporting players:

-Notice how much cooler Mac was than Veronica? I did too. Her nerves with that guy from P.H.A.T. (cute name, writers) were cute and she was still able to retain her edge. I was charmed.

-Remember how at first I wrote Parker off, and then I decided to like her when I realized she was attractive? She's actually kind of cool, too. I have no idea why. She just seems like a nice girl. Maybe Veronica being so lame lately is making me look at all the other girls on the show in a new light.

-So yeah, at the end of the episode Veronica and Logan got together. Gag. Why do writers STILL fall into the trap of putting the central romance together too soon? I thought they had wisened up when Logan broke up with her last episode, but they're back together already? Terrible. Of course, in the meantime Logan hooked up with some surfer girl, so we can expect that revelation to screw things up down the road. Boring...boring...boring. Hint: keep them apart, stop Logan from sulking so much and give him back his edge, and turn Veronica into a victim somehow to make her likable again. That conversation with Piz at the end (you know, when she was leading him on like crazy) was just depressing.