Higher Education

*Spoilers for episodes 1-3 of Veronica Mars Season 3 below*

It's a problem faced on all high-school dramas eventually. Your students near the end of senior year and suddenly you wonder, what's going to happen? Do you create a college in town that they all can attend? Do you send them all off to the same college? Or do you find a way for them all to still interact despite being at different schools.

Of the possible situations, the one I like the least is when they all go to the same college outside of their hometown. That seems to stretch believability. I'm looking at Saved By the Bell, the College years here. How they all managed to get into the same school baffles me.

Also pretty hokey is the sudden creation of a university or college in their town. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer more than is probably healthy, but when UC Sunnydale first got brought up, even I couldn't contain my groan. Although I do thank them for keeping Xander out and not having Giles get a job on campus. That would have been too easy. Much like the route that Veronica Mars has taken. Almost everyone got into Hearst College. Wallace is in on a scholarship, as is presumably, Veronica and Mac as neither one of them are wealthy. Logan somehow managed to scrape his way in, but they don't go into too much detail, and Dick's mother bought her son's entrance. And because they didn't want to leave him behind, Weevil got a job there. It seems a little silly to me. It would have been easy to keep Dick into the college mix simply by making him Logan's roommate. I mean, if memory serves he didn't even graduate high school. And Weevil could have continued to work for Keith. It was nice to see both of them interact with someone other than Veronica, anyway.

The other option, and I think this was done best on Dawson's Creek (and how often can you say that?), is that people go to different schools, but in the same center. In the case of Dawson's everyone went to Boston, but while Joey went to the Harvard substitute (I can't recall the name), Jen and Jack went to the state college, later to be joined by Dawson when he left USC to go to some no-name Film program (stupidest decision ever). And Pacey got a job at a restaurant in Boston. The key was, they all met new people and spent time on their own, but also would interact with each other, too. And this seems more realistic as Boston was the closest big center to Capeside and it just wouldn't make sense for them all to end up at Capeside Community College.

They could have easily done that on Veronica Mars. Have them move to San Diego and go to different schools within the city. Have Weevil get a job there. Maybe Keith needs to solve a mystery in San Diego, and uh... well, we'd find something for Lamb to do. But you get my drift.

Though, to be perfectly fair to the characters, if the leader of my college tour was George Michael Bluth, I'd probably end up going to that college, too.