Reminder: Alyson Hannigan will guest-star in tonights (Feb 22) episode of "Veronica Mars"! She will appear again in a second episode later this season, expected to air around April 19th.
Here are two articles:
New life on Mars
Buffy star goes from slaying vampires to being a bloodsucker in Hollywood
By KATE O'HARE
Zap2it.com
On Tuesday, Feb. 22, Alyson Hannigan, who spent the final two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's seven seasons on UPN, returns to the network in the first of two episodes of UPN's teen-mystery series Veronica Mars.
Although Hannigan began acting in commercials at age 4, she still had a bout of nerves when she arrived on the Mars sets in San Diego.
"I am a huge fan of the show," she says, "and when they asked me to do it, it was a little too hard to say no. But I got so nervous, I couldn't even speak. It was as if I'd never, ever done any work before. It was very strange to me. I had total stage fright.
"I messed up most of my first scene. I thought, 'I just bombed.' It was interesting, but odd."
Hannigan plays Trina Echolls, half-sister of Logan (Jason Dohring), a high-school nemesis of sleuth Veronica (Kristen Bell). Of late, Logan and Veronica have struck up a truce, as she helps him answer questions he has about the supposed suicide of his mother, Lynn Echolls (Lisa Rinna), wife of movie star Aaron Echolls (Harry Hamlin, Rinna's real-life spouse).
"She's a Hollywood brat," says Hannigan of Trina. "She's a poor little rich girl. She's got rich parents, so she's spoiled, but trying to be an actress in her own right, but that's not going well.
"She's a party girl, likes to spend money that isn't hers. It was fun, because it was a complete departure from the other parts I've been playing for the last seven years."
Some consider Veronica Mars, with its spunky female lead, to be a worthy successor to Buffy.
"(The show's creators) were talking about being compared to Buffy, which I'm sure is annoying for them, but it's actually a good thing," Hannigan says. "There's always going to be some sort of comparisons, and at least it's a show that was also critically acclaimed, instead of some sort of bad show. I would hope that Buffy fans would watch it."
Hannigan is in San Diego shooting her second episode, called Hot Dog, currently scheduled to air on April 19.
Hannigan has had a couple of comedy pilots, one for NBC and one for ABC, not survive to air, so right now, she's just happy to be on Mars.
"Hopefully they'll get picked up for a second season, and there'll be more of a big arc for my character. Call me optimistic, but if UPN wants to have good shows on the network, I would think they'd keep the ones they have.
"They need to keep Veronica Mars, because it's such a good show. I don't understand why people aren't watching it."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/ae/tv/3048994
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TV Preview: A smart 'Veronica Mars' searches for viewers
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
By Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Patrick Ecclesine, Warner Bros. Television
Funny, self-effacing actress Kristen Bell stars as Veronica Mars.
"Veronica Mars"
When: 9 tonight on UPN
HOLLYWOOD -- Finally, something fans of "Nancy Drew" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" can agree on: "Veronica Mars," a TV show with a heroine who bridges the gulf between brainy sleuth and smart-mouthed, demon-destroying slayer.
Midway through its first season on UPN (Pittsburgh's WNPA, Channel 19), "Veronica Mars" (9 tonight) is the best character-driven mystery you're not watching -- if the ratings are to be believed.
Last week, "Veronica Mars" landed in sixth place in its time period in national overnight household ratings with just 2.6 million people watching. The WB's competing teen soap "One Tree Hill" had almost double the number of viewers. Season-to-date, "Veronica Mars" ranks No. 152 out of 202 prime-time broadcast network series.
Fans of quality TV are missing out. "Veronica Mars" offers a mystery of the week plus a strong female lead reminiscent of "Buffy." But unlike the vampire slayer, high school student Veronica Mars doesn't fight demons, at least not of the scaly-skinned, green-blooded variety.
Veronica lives in the fictional upscale community of Neptune, Calif., with her private investigator father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni). She helps him with his work, but pursues her own investigations, too. Veronica also has an ongoing project: Investigating the murder of her best friend, Lilly Kane, whose demise set in motion a variety of changes in Veronica's life.
As is pretty much always the case with the best shows on TV, "Veronica Mars" qualifies by virtue of its writing.
"I think that's what people are responding to, a female heroine they can relate to in a different sort of way," said "Mars" creator Rob Thomas at a UPN party in January.
Thomas has a history of working on critically-acclaimed, low-rated series, most notably ABC's 1998-1999 romantic drama, "Cupid," starring Jeremy Piven as a man who thinks he's actually the god of love.
Despite low ratings, UPN seems supportive of "Veronica Mars." Ratings are slowly growing and "Veronica" routinely improves upon the ratings of its lead-in, the incompatible sitcom "Eve."
"I'm confident UPN wants desperately to pick us up," Thomas said. "I think if they have any excuse to pick us up, if [our ratings] go up at all in these last 10 episodes, I think we'll be back next year."
In an effort to goose ratings further, Alyson Hannigan, a co-star on "Buffy," joins "Veronica Mars" tonight in a recurring role as the spoiled brat sister of Veronica's one-time nemesis, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring).
Growing interest in the show can't only be attributed to the smart plots or the ongoing mystery of Lilly Kane's murder. A lot of the show's success goes to its star, Kristen Bell, a smart, funny self-effacing actress with a theater background ("The Crucible" and "Tom Sawyer" on Broadway) who appeared in the first season of HBO's "Deadwood" as a young con artist who met an ugly fate.
"Halfway into shooting the pilot, we said, 'She's a star,' " Thomas recalled. "I knew I had the right girl for the part."
Bell plays Veronica as a young woman confident in her detective skills and her ability to adapt to the hand life's dealt her.
At a press conference last month, Bell said she had a good high school experience and never felt like an outcast, but she understands how Veronica appeals to teens who are made to feel unwelcome in their high school hallways.
"That's the cool thing about Veronica, she doesn't let it affect her, or she's made a decision in her life not to let it affect her," Bell said.
Despite her sad state in the premiere episode -- friendless, date raped, abandoned by mom, dumped by her boyfriend -- Veronica bounced back. Though generally lighter in tone since the pilot, viewers continue to see flashbacks to Veronica's old life that both advance the show's ongoing murder mystery and depict Veronica's growth from naive teen to savvy, sassy PI.
"The sad realization is there are a lot of kids that have that kind of hand dealt to them at a young age, and that's why you're sort of prematurely jaded and bitter," Bell said. "What I love about Veronica is that she makes the decision to turn her life in a different direction. She could be crying in her bedroom all day and she could be reclusive, but she's not."
Veronica's actually a clever character, who is quick with a quip. In tonight's episode, her father chides her about doing "some high school girl things now and then." Veronica replies, "Relax, I'm cutting pictures of Ashton [Kutcher] out of Teen People as we speak."
" 'Veronica Mars' is the most difficult show to break episodes for that I've ever worked on. Detective shows are difficult in the first place because you need the red herrings and all the information [on the mystery at hand]," Thomas said.
It's no wonder he began to recycle his own ideas. Thomas worked on David E. Kelley's short-lived 1999 female detectives show "Snoops," but left before the show aired over creative conflicts with Kelley. Thomas rewrote an unused "Snoops" script and it became last week's "Veronica Mars." The Feb. 8 "Mars" episode was based on an unsold pilot he developed for NBC.
Veronica and viewers will learn what really happened to Lilly Kane by May, Thomas promises, at which time he'll also lay the groundwork for a new mystery in the show's hoped-for second season. Bell said she thinks she knows whodunnit, but she's not telling. Thomas said he has a backup plan if the truth comes out on the Internet, but so far he hasn't been forced to make any changes.
Though not a broad hit, "Veronica Mars" has spawned the predictably loyal following online, especially among the snarky chroniclers of hip TV at
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com.
"It's like the guilty pleasure scene in 'Soapdish' where Sally Field goes to the ball and gets to be adored," Thomas said. "The day after a 'Veronica Mars' episode airs, if you swim around in the Television Without Pity Web site, it's what a producer on the show calls 'a tidal wave of love mixed with a thousand paper cuts.' "
Thomas said these articulate viewers sometimes even come up with theories about the show and its characters that never occurred to the show's creator.
"Somebody did a complete psychological breakdown of Logan and suggested that he resents Veronica for her loving relationship with her father, and because he has a cold relationship with his father, he can never appreciate Veronica," Thomas said. "That never occurred to me."
Who knows, maybe some smart viewer helped this smart writer solve one of the mysteries of the smart, entertaining "Veronica Mars."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05053/460847.stm