Veronica Mars 1.10 'An Echolls Family Christmas'

‘An Echolls Family Christmas’ is an example of a simpler episode of ‘Mars with Veronica tackling a straight forward case of thievery. It cleverly meshes the two on-going cases of the week in the final moments and presents a few hidden clues about a character that will become far more important as the season goes on.

Veronica helps Weevil recover stolen money when he takes part in a poker game in ‘An Echolls Family Christmas’. Keith is asked my Lynn Echolls, Logan’s mother, to help identify who has been threatening her husband.

I’m not usually a fan of Christmas episodes. They tend to ruin the flow of a season, put in for the network to benefit from a dwindling interest due to the approaching holidays, but ‘An Echolls Family Christmas’ is one that I like. I really loved Veronica examining this case person by person. Not only does it give us a chance to see each of them up close and personal (even though we never see one again) it also is another wonderful way of exploring each of their different attitudes toward the major social division in Neptune.

It’s bundles of fun to see her rip Connor off his high horse when she cracks the case. There was a certain element of cheesiness to the final exposition scene, which was a little bit more ‘Nancy Drew’ than I would have liked, but it suits the whole idea of a ‘Who-dunnit’ mystery, and is still largely enjoyable. Who doesn’t love it when Veronica takes those boys for all their worth in poker?!

[Highlight for spoilers through 1.22] Its rather strange watching this back and seeing the writers subtly set Aaron up for the major role he plays later on with regards to his infidelity. Like ‘Return of the Kane’ did in setting up his dark violent nature, this one sets out his lack of loyalty to his wife, who might I say was a refreshing character; it was nice to see someone on the other side still treat the Mars family with respect, almost in polar opposition to Celeste. The final scene when Aaron’s attacked is one which stood out as a prime example of the level of intelligence the production team of this series had; hearing the choir sing while Aaron bleeds to death is such a chilling moment, and featured some wonderful direction by Nick Marck.

Another minor gripe I have with this episode is Veronica’s confrontation of Jake Kane. While the scene itself is an important one in the progression of one of the season’s biggest stories, I feel like it was just dumped here for the hell of it, since it doesn’t fit in anywhere else. Still, along with the smaller flaws in this episodes mystery, it's easily over looked, since this episode is still a great one and changed my views on Christmas specials completely.

8.5/10