Veronica Mars (TV series)

Veronica Mars is a TV series (aired 2004-present), featuring a young woman who solves mysteries in a noir take on small-town sunny southern California. The show's fanbase is significantly Buffy-oriented and includes Joss Whedon, who had a guest-star role on one of the episodes.

The show is not SF and has no fantastic or science fictional elements. Although Veronica sometimes slips into dream states and has visions of friends and people, there is no suggestion that these visions might be ghosts or in any way communications with the dead.

Commentary (and spoilers)

While the show garnered critical and fan acclaim in its first season, its second season was less well-received.

While Veronica Mars was never an explicitly feminist show, its premise — a young woman protagonist, solving crimes and stepping outside the bounds of her society (high school) to do so — was inherently feminist, and a large number of women were able to respond to its vision of a self-empowered young woman. The show particularly featured a lot of class issues, a rarity on US TV. Some episodes and the larger story-arc specifically focused on issues of feminist concern. The first story arc of the third season featured an ongoing mystery of a series of campus rapes using a rohypnol, a rape drug. The story featured a campus feminist organization based largely on the stereotype of the angry feminist.

• Annalee Newitz liking Veronica Mars (2006/1/25)
• Annalee Newitz lamenting Veronica Mars (2007/2/2)