Why we need you Veronica Mars

Veronica Mars has got to be one of my favourite shows of all time. No seriously, it's funny, witty, smart, progressive. Women are technologically savvy, the privilege of white rich kids are exposed (well sort of...), and it generally has progressive commentary. Watch this video for the things I loved about the show and also the more problematic elements... and keep watching because I included some hilarious and entertaining clips from the show.

A long time ago, we used to be friends but I-

I love Veronica Mars! I think it's an absolutely brilliant show. It only had a short run of

three seasons and only two of which were actually watchable.

The third season has sort of been written off as a fluke, there was a lot of problems

with it but I'll save that for another video.

That said, you should go out immediately and BitTorrent, pirate, rent, buy whatever you

have to do to watch Veronica Mars because it will totally be worth it.

It's a show about a teenage detective. She actually learned the tricks of the trade from

her father whose a private detective and she often solves mysteries at school.

She even solves crimes that the local sheriff's department is unable to solve.

The show is actually really funny, it's got great wit, great humour and I would actually

compare it to Joss Whedon's writing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and maybe even say

it's a little bit better? Joss Whedon did a cameo during season two because

he thought the show was so good.

And so did Courtney from the Dandy Warhols and Kevin Smith.

One of the things that immediately drew me into the show is how technologically savvy

Veronica Mars is. It's a pretty rare representation to have young women shown

as super knowledgeable about all sorts of different technologies.

So you see her often using computers and having a really good understanding of how

they work. She is also an excellent photographer, printers, scanners all that sort

of stuff. She also has a lot of different spy gadgets, so she can take apart an ipod

and put in a hidden camera that will take a photo every five seconds for example.

Or track people through GPS or put recording devices in cars.

There's also another teenage woman at Veronica's school named Mac whose

also super tech savvy. Veronica met up with her because she needed some help with

the computer systems at school and Mac knew everything about them.

So throughout the television series she is constantly going to Mac asking her for help

in how to break into wifi networks and how to create websites and how to hack into

different things and they work together as a pair on various projects.

Very little violence is used on the show to solve problems but it's not a world

without violence. So it kind of comes in two forms on the show.

The first is really awkward and clumsy. So you'll have two teenage boys beating each

other up and throwing punches and kind of missing but it's not like they are trained

in martial arts, it's just really awkward.

The second way shows how horrific and egregious violence actually is.

It makes your stomach kind of turn as you're watching the show.

I think that these characteristics and representations of violence on Veronica Mars

really helps to show us how violence is used on other shows to solve problems how easy it is to write

violence as a solution as opposed to coming up with really creative ways to deal with

different problems.

"Well she's giving a statement at the Sheriff's department tomorrow. I'll drop by see

if she's up for a chat." "Well I'll go with you."

"Actually, despite popular opinion, you really can't beat the truth out someone."

Instead of using violence Veronica gets really creative and clever with the way that she

solves her cases. At the resolution of each show the viewer is left with this sense of

poetic justice. An example of this poetic justice is, when Veronica gets back at her

boyfriend, Troy who she finds out later on was sort of scamming her the whole time.

"Troy what's with this girl calling me? You gave her my number?"

"Whoa, whoa what girl?" "Some girl named Veronica" "You didn't tell her you'd be seeing

me did you?" "She caught me off guard, what was I supposed--"

"Sorry we didn't get a chance to say good bye, just wanted to wish you good luck

at your new school and leave you something to remember me by.

It took me awhile to figure out where you stashed the steroids but there was only one

place you were alone right? In case you were wondering the former contents of the

package are somewhere between my toilet and the pacific ocean.

Say hi to Shauna for me, she sounds like a keeper." "Dammit"

The show is of course not without it's faults. It has some problematic portrayals of

racism and classism but it does actually acknowledge those things and talks

about them throughout the show. This is in comparison to most mainstream television

shows that don't really acknowledge that racism or classism exists.

I think that even though it talks about it in a sort of problematic way,

just having that on our television screens I think is a step towards making our TV

programs more anti-racism, more anti-classist.

When I first started watching the show we were introduced to the local Latino

biker gang and I was really fearful that the writers were going to feed into the very

racist stereotypes, which they kind of did, but the writers also took the main leader of

the gang and sort of humanized him. Really showed a bit of his backstory, and made the

audience sympathetic and created a very complex character.

There are also other moments in the show where the writers gave us very subtle and

interesting and also humourous ways of exposing racism that you don't

often think about. And you almost never see that on TV.

"We're going to have to start searching the lockers. Immediately."

"You wanna save yourself some time start with hers. We all saw her lurking around."

"Lurking? Uh, you mean standing while black?"

Sexual violence is a reoccuring theme throughout all three season of the show.

I think that for the most part the writers did a really, really terrible job of dealing with

rape and abuse and because of that I'm going to dedicate a whole other videoblog to

it because I think that really needs to be exposed just how important it is to deal with

sexual violence in a healthy manner on television.

Overall I really, really like the show I would highly recommend season one and two.

I think that there's a lot of really great things about it as far as the complexity

of characters, it's entertaining and witty, it's really fun to watch.

Veronica's relationship with her father is totally worth watching because they are

really funny but it's also this mutual love and respect they have for one another

and there's a lot of really progressive values that the show offers and I think that

that's fairly rare to see on TV.

That said I'm going to leave you with this clip that I think is wonderfully subtle.

"Wow, that's some cake."

"Isn't it though?"

"I love it. Ever notice how everything you make just tends to lean a little to the left?"

"I do that on purpose."