The sexual assault was never a key plot point in "Veronica Mars" -- it was more of a heavy specter hanging over the show from week to week, rarely mentioned but always present. And while Veronica was humiliated and hurt by the experience, she never allowed it to define her or to drag her down. But naturally, she did want to know what happened to her. She asks questions of her classmates and friends, and entertains numerous what-ifs before finding the answer: It turns out that her then-boyfriend, Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn), Lilly's brother, who had also been drugged at the party, had discovered her zonked-out in a guest bedroom and, in his own impaired state, decided it would be romantic to make love to her. The revelation is significant because it deals, in a shatteringly adult way, with the gray areas of human sexuality.

Did Veronica have sexual intercourse without her knowledge, and thus against her will? Yes. But was it her boyfriend's intent to rape her? No. It's made clear that, in Veronica's out-of-it state, she was happy to see Duncan, and she sent out signals that he understandably misread. The revelation doesn't allow Veronica the comfort zone of claiming easy victimhood, of railing against an unknown aggressor who intended to do her harm, because in some ways, Duncan was a victim too. The incident was tragic for both of them, an unpleasant (and potentially controversial) reality that the show wasn't afraid to crack wide open.

At the beginning of the season, in particular, "Veronica Mars" seemed like just the salve for all those still-in-mourning "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fans out there (myself included). The two shows are similar in some ways. They both feature teenage girls -- blond California girls, to be exact -- with heavy-duty responsibilities: One has to solve a crime that has affected her deeply; the other merely has to save the world. But perhaps because of those broad similarities, it's become fashionable in some circles to trash "Buffy" in order to praise "Veronica Mars," as if all shows with teenage girls as heroines were required to be judged along some mysterious sliding scale of how "realistic" or "unrealistic" they are.

"Buffy" was a very different show from "Veronica Mars," with a markedly more fatalistic tone and an almost operatic sense of tragedy. But it did lay some crucial groundwork for "Veronica Mars": While both shows pretend to be geared toward a teen audience, it's really adults, well past the trauma of teenagerhood but still all too aware of how much it can sting, that gravitate toward them. The character Veronica is very much grounded in the real world: Formerly a member of the rich, cool crowd, she's now a pariah at her school; she has good reason to believe she's the victim of a rape, but she can't remember it; and, worst of all, her best friend has been murdered. To people with only a passing knowledge of "Buffy," the vampire slayer was a perky-but-serious teenager who spent nights trolling her town for the undead instead of studying for exams. But "Buffy" ultimately wasn't so much about the supernatural as it was about all-too-earthly confusion, suffering and fears. Recall how Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) woke up on the morning after her 17th birthday, after having slept with her boyfriend, the "good" vampire Angel (David Boreanaz), for the first time, only to discover that he's not the man she thought he was -- in fact, he's no longer the man he thought he was. He has turned against her; he's unspeakably cruel to her. (It's not completely his fault -- he's been cursed.) But that turn of events was one of the most wrenching I'd ever seen on television, a supernatural version of a very realistic teenage fear: If I have sex with my boyfriend, will he, as the Shirelles once asked, still love me tomorrow? In Buffy's case, the answer was a horrifying no.

The heartbreak Buffy endured in Angel's bed is neither more nor less realistic than anything we've seen on "Veronica Mars." I think the fairest and most accurate way to compare the two is to accept that "Veronica Mars" is a continuation of a broad theme that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" set in motion -- the idea that teenagers, as both Shakespeare and the Shangri-Las realized, are near-adults whose seemingly innocent disappointments and fears aren't really innocent at all: They're just nascent versions of our ongoing grown-up ones. I'm glad Veronica Mars solved the mystery of Lilly Kane's murder in this season closer, but what meant more to me was the way Veronica crumpled into her father's arms when he told her that he now knew for sure that he was really her father. (Some previous infidelities on the part of Mrs. Mars had made his paternity questionable.) The moment, played by two superb actors with ardent emotion and, amazingly, zero sentimentality, is a small instance of television perfection. Veronica and her dad are in charge of saving no world but their own, and that's enough.

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