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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Stop rewinding your "Buffy" tapes. "Veronica Mars" gives us an unflappable girl heroine, complex characters and a darkly realistic vision of high school -- and no wooden stakes.
Mar 29, 2005 | I don't remotely fit the "Veronica Mars" demographic. I was a latecomer to the whole "Buffy" thing -- something about vampires and superpowers always made me run, screaming, in the opposite direction. I never made it through an entire Nancy Drew mystery, and I only read "Harriet the Spy" once. On top of that, I've never cared too much about girls with a knack for solving crimes, and teen dramas don't interest me unless hot teenagers are attending fabulous parties, muttering witty rejoinders and pushing each other into swimming pools constantly, a cross between Dorothy Parker and "Dynasty."
But I love Veronica Mars. I love the way her crappy attitude doesn't match her sweet doll face and her bouncy blond hair. I love her outfits, with those tall boots and short skirts and argyle socks and little cardigans, unnerving ensembles that mix one part tough tomboy with two parts trashy Catholic schoolgirl. I love that she's capable and decisive and smart and doesn't waste her time whining about her insecurities and crushes like the rest of us did as teenagers. I love the way she always thinks of the perfect, snappy retort, the likes of which would only occur to us in the middle of a sleepless night. I love that she recognizes the power of chirping like a ditzy bimbo to get access to the information she needs. I love how she makes friends with the outcasts and losers at school and refuses to socialize with the popular kids, even as she's forced to empathize with them. I love that she's been through hell -- her friend's death, her mother's disappearance, her mysterious rape -- and she's pissed off about it, but she doesn't have time to wallow. She's too busy doing professional detective work -- dangerous, high-pressure jobs! -- in order to help her daddy pay the rent. Veronica is busy and efficient but never flustered, snide but never unjust, full of feminine wiles but never slutty and pathetic. She's a role model not just for high school girls, but for grown women.
In other words, "Veronica Mars" (which returns with new episodes Tuesday at 9 p.m.; UPN) is idealized. But that's fine, because very few realistic depictions of a high school and its captives could be interesting enough to hold our attention. ("Life as We Know It" anyone?) Mumbling, zitty, painfully horny little miniature humans, putting themselves and each other down constantly, falling asleep during class, and having contests to see who can stick to their diets the longest, then breaking down and inhaling a dozen glazed doughnuts at lunchtime? Might be nice as a farce, but a one-hour drama? Besides, "Freaks & Geeks" already perfected the realistic high school drama, and it still got canceled.
High school can be overidealized, of course, as well; "The O.C.," with its steady flow of fabulous parties, witty rejoinders, and swimming pool mishaps, really has nowhere new to go, and we're only halfway through the second season. The cute kids fall in love, then break up, then fall in love again in a weightless, endlessly repeating loop.
Any really good snapshot of the high school experience, from "My So-Called Life" to a bevy of John Hughes films, reflects an uneasy mix of self-obsession, insecurity and myopic scorn. Whether it's Claire Danes or Matthew Broderick or Sarah Michelle Gellar rolling their eyes as the deluded herd ambles by, we savor their angst and bitterness as a salve for our own haunted, humbling memories of those times.
Like any high school heroine worth her weight in greasy cafeteria tater tots, Veronica Mars' mix of alienation, sarcasm and angst is palpable from across a packed gymnasium. But there's something else that sets her apart, an angry, stubborn self-confidence in the face of a very dark past, one that includes a dead best friend, a mom who skipped town, and a night when she was slipped a roofie and raped. Even with Buffy setting the precedent, this is not the sort of darkness you'd expect to find on a teen show. But as screwed up as her life has become, each week Veronica learns that the other kids at school could be facing bigger demons than she is.
