From Sherlock Holmes to Charlie Cale, detectives has always captured our imaginations. The feeling of being presented with a case and solving it within 45 minutes is enthralling, and it’s single-handedly fueled the raise of the crime procedural, a stalwart TV format including everything from Midsomer Murders to Columbo to Law and Order: SVU.
But it can be difficult to see those shows as “cool.” They usually focus on cops, who approach the cases as what they are: part of the job. But occasionally, there comes a show that actually has fun with the mystery. Twenty years ago, one show managed to do that by bringing the crime procedural to an entirely new and incredibly passionate group: teenagers.
Veronica Mars did to the mystery-of-the-week show what Buffy the Vampire Slayer did to the monster-of-the-week show. The series follows Veronica (Kristen Bell), a 17-year-old in the economically divisive town of Neptune, California, as she balances helping her father’s private investigation business, attending high school, and dealing with the mysterious murder of her best friend — as well as her own lingering trauma from one terrible incident at a party the summer before.
Veronica Mars isn’t a cop, but she isn’t your average “hobbyist detective” à la Jessica Fletcher either. Under the careful supervision of Rob Thomas (no relation to the Matchbox Twenty guy), Veronica Mars painted a portrait of its title character that wasn’t cloying or condescending, but genuinely felt like a real 17-year-old. She’s not a spunky girl detective like Nancy Drew, she’s a flawed and fallible gumshoe who can solve her classmate’s problems, but can’t figure out her own love life.
Part of the show’s success is due to its unflinching attitude to the darker parts of being a teenage girl. “You wanna know how I lost my virginity? So do I,” she quips in the pilot episode. Her sexual assault and its fallout are not treated like a “very special episode” PSA message, nor is it completely trivialized. It’s addressed throughout the first season as a long arc, always looming over everything else. In a show full of balancing acts between neo-noir and teen drama, and between serious murder and witty banter.
Calling Veronica Mars “beloved” would be an understatement. In 2013, six years after the series was canceled after three seasons, Kristen Bell and Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign for a follow-up movie. It met its goal in 10 hours and managed to raise over $5 million. Seeing the demand, Hulu premiered a revival series, bringing back much of the original cast.
But even though it survived until the 2010s, the heart and soul of this series will always be in the 2000s when quips and girl power were novel enough to take center stage. Veronica Mars was the coolest detective show of the era, and 20 years on, nobody has claimed her throne. You can more or less draw a straight line between this show and more recent mystery series like Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale, but between Betty and this Veronica, there’s a clear winner.
Whether you tuned in to UPN and the CW originally or still don’t know who murdered Lily Kane, Veronica Mars more than holds up. It may be a product of its time, but there’s nothing more timeless than navigating all the ups and downs of teenhood — and maybe solving a few mysteries along the way.
