reviewed by Charity Bishop
          

Most of my friends were crazy about this show when it first aired. Even though I tried to get hooked when it was still on television, it never took. I'm just sorry that the show had to be pulled off air before I fell in love with it! Veronica Mars is your typical teen drama, but with something much darker running beneath the surface. It may very well have been one of the best-written shows on primetime.

In the small town of Neptune, and in particular at the high school she attends, Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) is as good as the plague. She used to have more friends than she could count. She used to be dating the most popular guy in school. She used to have a live that involved more style and class than hard work and tears. That was before the murder of her best friend Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried) during her father's term as sheriff. Believing Mr. Kane was somehow involved in his daughter's death, Mars (Enrico Colantoni) went after him and was hounded out of office and public life by the media. Now working in Mars Investigations, a private detective agency in town, he contents himself with solving smaller cases for paying clients, but still keeps up on the case's progress in the papers.

Friendless until she cuts down the newest kid in school from where he has been strung up on the flagpole, Veronica too wants to find out what happened and clear her father's good name. In the meantime, she becomes fast pals with Wallace (Percy Daggs), continues to pine after her former boyfriend Duncan (Teddy Dunn), and is confronted with all manner of missing persons, credit card frauds, computer scams, and other nefarious actions to fill her daily hours. When she's not trying to avoid Logan (Jason Dohring) in the hall, or having her locker "randomly" searched by the school principle.

What results is a surprisingly well written show that threads a mystery throughout while engaging us in the lives of its primary characters. Keith Mars, the man who sacrificed his reputation (and his marriage) for something he believed in. Veronica, who was date-raped at a Rave and wants to find out who did it. Logan, who puts on a bad boy routine to conceal the fact that he feels insignificant next to his famous and often mean father. Duncan, who has a secret that led to him breaking up with Veronica weeks before Lilly was murdered. They are all interesting and surprisingly human characters with bad days, funny moments, and endless questions about the meaning of their lives. The show did not immediately hook me, but as time went on I became more invested and curious about the outcome of the mystery. True, some of the plots are a little "high school" but enjoyable nevertheless.

Unfortunately, the show is not as clean as I would like. In addition to the skimpy outfits Lilly wears in flashbacks, we find out she was a promiscuous party girl. Given a choice between kissing someone in a limo, she kisses Veronica. She moons a passing car (implied) through a limo window. We see a piece of a sex tape with her on it. Veronica has flashbacks of making out with Duncan in the back of a car. She and Logan kiss passionately on numerous occasions, once coming close to going too far. Veronica clues in the audience on the fact that she was raped one night at a party, and we see implications of what happened in flashbacks. One episode reveals a young woman was molested by her father. Another (entitled "Like a Virgin") has a nasty series of rumors floating around school about how badly some of the girls ranked on a purity test, nearly destroying at least one reputation. A young man tracks down his absentee father only to learn he has had a sex change and gotten remarried. A young woman accuses a professor of sexual misconduct, and Veronica tries to prove him innocent. Logan gets drunk and shows up at an 80's dance party without pants. A flashback shows a man cheating on his wife (a woman is straddling him at a party). We discover a much older man is sleeping with a teenage girl. A boy at school e-mails out a homemade sex tape to get revenge on his girlfriend. Veronica threatens to expose him as being gay (he's not, but they set him up to make it look like it). The opening shot of the series is a shadow through a seedy motel window of a shapely woman making time with a man. An adulterous affair is referenced, as well as a question of paternity. Two guys are tied naked to the school flagpoles on separate occasions.

There is some negative mention of drug use, as well as an episode that focuses on smuggling steroids into the country. Veronica learns that she was drugged at a party, which brought out some unfortunate aspects of her personality. Violence is not frequent but can be jarring when it transpires. Boys get into fist fights. Logan's father is irrationally violent when angry. He takes a belt to his son's back (implied) and beats his daughter's abusive boyfriend into a bloody pulp. In the season finale, lives are put at stake. One man is hospitalized, another is struck by a car. Veronica is nearly burned alive in a locked refrigerator. Flashbacks show Lilly being bashed in the head.

I have rarely gotten as emotionally invested in a series of characters as I did with Veronica Mars, and the two mysteries woven throughout were complicated enough that I never saw the solution coming. The thematic elements of Logan's troubled home life, Veronica's search for her missing mother, and her on-again-off-again love-hate relationship with the local police department make for some compelling and intriguing hours of television, but the emphasis on sexual aspects make it difficult to recommend to anyone under the age of sixteen.