Listen, Fellas, I Don’t Get It Either – Veronica Mars

In the mid-90s, wealthy film producers realized that creating a broadcast network whose sole purpose was to pander to the whims of teen girls would be a lucrative venture. These (most likely) men were both brilliant and careless, and so, The WB was created. The flaws in this plan began to present themselves roughly 3 years after its inception — the maximum lifespan of your average teen girl’s fandom in any one thing — and the network slowly and systematically moved away from this model before merging with UPN — the Lazarus to a few of The WB’s fallen programs — to create the unholy alliance that is The CW. Through this experiment, we as a culture have learned that teen girls as a demographic are somehow both a rabidly loyal and fiercely fickle bunch. In order to please them, the media as an entity apparently decide that new content must constantly be generated, regardless of its quality. Most of it is horrendous garbage. Every once in a while, though, when no one is looking, you get that monkey that types out Hamlet. The short-lived Veronica Mars is one of those plagiarist-monkey-moments.

Why Chicks Love It

It’s Nancy Drew for the 21st Century! She’s pretty, smart, and solves crimes on the side. Plus, it’s set in seaside California town, so it gives salivating young girls a glimpse into the polished lives of celebutante Californian teens and their petty troubles. There are love triangles involving equally pretty boys with equally large Scrooge McDuck piles of money. There are scandalous affairs and nefarious dealings aplenty. There’s even a new drama each week for Veronica to resolve, sometimes involving threats from a dangerous biker gang with tattoos! It follows who’s dating whom, who’s just sleeping with whom, and who’s wearing what to the prom. And Veronica, our plucky heroine, used to be part of the In Crowd, but now spends most of her time brutally defeating them in battles of wits. This show does truly tick all the same boxes as your generic Beverly Hills, 90210 wannabe teen soap. At least, that’s what I thought it was about based on the promos I saw when this show was originally airing. I avoided it like the plague during it’s 3 seasons on the air because I had discovered too young that teen soaps became outrageously boring very quickly when there’s no deeper or overarching subplot beyond, “Will Johnny Football Hero ask the slightly less popular brunette to the prom instead of Prom Queen Blonde?” It wasn’t until a few years after Veronica Mars wrapped that I found old quotes praising the brilliance of the show from two of the greatest media figures ever in my mind: my own personal Pop Culture Maharishi, Kevin Smith, and the man who made strong women cool, Joss Whedon. It wasn’t until my personal heroes of screens both large and small told me I should that I decided to give Veronica Mars a fair shake. That’s when I figured out …

 

Why It’s So Much More Than That

Veronica Mars is nothing like your average teen soap. In fact, it’s more like if Encyclopedia Brown and Cam Jansen grew up, got married, and raised their only daughter to be a jaded and snarky yet wildly resourceful teen detective capable of unraveling the plots of psychotic murderers with barely a broken nail. Instead of being another boring carbon copy of the teen soap that started them all, Veronica Mars is more like a page out of The Maltese Falcon with a twist. Instead of Sam Spade waxing poetic about the getaway sticks attached to his latest sexy widow client, we have a surprisingly determined and gritty high school junior wondering who really murdered her best friend in cold blood rather than wondering if she’ll be a part of the Homecoming court this year. We have a pretty, popular cheerleader whose rose-colored world crumbled around her from the weight of darkness and conspiracy and, instead of crumbling with it, she figured out how to thrive amid the rubble, even as the adults around her struggle to do the same. When this show was originally airing, the teen girl market was mainly pushing and either/or scenario. On one hand, you had strong female characters who were superheroes of one form or another and could face an apocalypse with aplomb. On the other hand, you had smart, “real” girls seeming powerless over everyday scenarios, wasting away as they pine for the ones they can’t have, then cutting off their trademark hair because their hairstyle is thing they can control in their own lives. Out of this dichotomy came a stylized and clever neo-noir show about a “real” girl taking charge of situations that would cause most adults to fall to pieces using nothing but some simple spy gear and an acerbic tongue.