Tuesday, June 7, 2011

High School Noire

I just finished Veronica Mars at lunch.  A really good TV show.   (Seasons 1 and 2 better than 3, though it perked up.)  Imagine Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe reincarnated as a petite blonde walking the mean hallways of Neptune High, a town with no middle class, just millionaires and the little people who work for millionaires... maid, gardener... Veronica gets to be a barrista.  And a precocious private eye.  There's a Buffy flavor to the teen setting and snappy dialogue and it's funny, but this cup of Joe is strictly non-fat-non-vamp, an expresso-dark detective show, with an extra shot of class consciousness and nihilism.

Veronica is tough enough to handle it.  But, as her BFF Wallace points out:


"You really think I'm gonna let you get away with that?  That might play with the masses, but underneath that angry young woman shell, there's a slightly less angry young woman who's just dying to bake me something.  You're a marshmallow, Veronica Mars.  A Twinkie."


  

No comments:

Post a Comment