Annoy, tiny blonde one, annoy like the wind!

Readers of a nervous disposition may have been startled the other night by the faint, echoing cry of rage and frustration wafting across Cape Town's southern suburbs. My apologies. This was occasioned by an unhappy discovery: having cooked supper, served myself a plateful and a glass of wine, put the relevant DVD into the player, booted the cat off my tv-watching chair, settled down with a sigh of content and pressed PLAY, it was something of a kick in the teeth to immediately discover that the final DVD in Season 3 of Veronica Mars contained, not the climactic final episodes I was anticipating, which would sort out all the problems, discoveries and implications raised in Episode 20, but merely a fistful of somewhat lame special features. (Although I rather enjoy the extent to which Rob Thomas resembles Buffy's Riley: it's obscurely reassuring. I've always had a soft spot for poor Riley.)



Veronica Mars is another Firefly, an unhappily-truncated, prematurely-ended, excellent show whose cancellation is clearly the result of the unacceptable degree of intelligence in its writing. I've devoured three seasons over the last month, and despite the lack of ultimate narrative pay-off am unabashedly a fan: in my secret moments, I suspect it's actually better television than Buffy, which is truly odd given that I usually need a chunk of fantastic content in order to for a show to genuinely warm the cockles of my unrealistic little heart. (And Joss does a guest spot. He clearly likes it too).

I said in a tweet somewhere that VM is effectively "Buffy meets Brick", and that still holds: it's a high-school (and, in Season 3, college) series about a private eye who just happens to be a sassy blonde teenager, and its play with the thematic intersections is witty, perceptive and extremely effective. Despite its apparently fluffy school setting the series is dark; it doesn't flinch from dealing with death, murder, rape, abuse, violence, drugs, alcoholism, social divides, sexual orientation, gender politics and pretty much anything else that grabs its fancy in a given episode. In that it's very clever; the intensity and heartfelt trauma of the teen experience don't, after all, map so badly onto the threats and angsts of noir. The first two seasons present a beautiful balance between meta-plot, a detective puzzle which arcs across the whole season, and more minor investigations which are tied up neatly at the end of the episode. Season 3 isn't as neat; its meta-arc finishes too early, and the whole thing trails off a bit - I blame the cancellation, personally - but it's still satisfying television. And, while I called the bad guy early on in the first and third seasons, Season 2 blindsided me totally while being, in retrospect, totally inevitable. I love it when a detective story does that.

I think I'm enamoured of this series particularly because of Veronica herself, whose construction makes me realise that, Joss's feminism notwithstanding, there are points about Buffy that bother me. For a start, Veronica's "superpower" isn't physical (her idea of "backup" makes me laugh a lot), it's intellectual; Veronica's skills are equally about brain, application and hard-won experience, not mystical ability to kick butt. Secondly, the angsts it causes her are not the traditionally feminine insecurities: if she has flaws or problems they're more about arrogance, over-confidence, a certain predeliction to vengefulness. She has none of the traditionally "blonde" moments with which Buffy is occasionally plagued. Hers are flaws of strength, not weakness, and unlike Buffy, while she's also a social outsider, her response to that marginalisation is extremely together, defiant and often aggressive, the antithesis of the shrinking, hypersensitive outcast. Veronica's snarky one-liners cause me infinite delight; she insulates herself from the world and its all too frequent rejection with a screen of wit. Buffy is used to being the strongest and most cosmically important person in the room, but Veronica is used to being the most intelligent, and I find that I identify with that a lot more easily.

( I'm going to cut the next bit, as it'll be spoilery if you haven't seen the series, and I seriously recommend you see the series. )

One of the joys of Buffy is its currency, the extent to which its quotes and images and icons are rife among my friends. I want to watch Veronica Mars again, preferably several times, to imprint some of these quotes and people and catchphrases onto my wayward memory, but I also want everyone to go and watch it too so I can share some of that pleasure, and argue the 'ships, and have my references recognised. Please indulge me. I don't think it'll be a waste of your time.