Veronica Mars
Complete Season Two DVD
CW Network

When the characters of high school dramas leave their lockers behind and begin attending college, quality often graduates as well. But when Veronica Mars, titular character of Veronica Mars, begins her freshman year at Hearst College tonight — as the show's third season premieres on the CW network — the writers (Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero and John Enbom) may be able to avoid such a fate. Already, Season Two, which was recently released on DVD, showed signs of a more healthy maturity for the show.

Season One of Veronica Mars had a strong, central focus: Veronica, former member of the high school in-crowd, spent the season trying to track down the murderer of her best friend Lily Kane. Even the season's side stories — why did her mother leave? who is her real father? — all had ties to that central, gripping mystery.

So when Season Two began with a bus crash that killed six students, a high school teacher and the bus driver, the season's focus seemed clear — to solve the mystery of that crash. But rather than focusing exclusively on Veronica's detective work, Season Two began a broader exploration of Neptune, California, the imaginary city where the show takes place. The writers gave special attention to the racial and class divisions that define the town.

As the season progressed, the bus crash became a metaphor for Neptune's social inequities. Due to a wealthy father's generous loan of a limousine, a group of rich kids were able to bail on the bus trip. The accident, which should have affected a cross-section of Neptune's youth, only affected those from the wrong side of the tracks. The accident, which should have affected a cross-section of Neptune's youth, only affected kids from the wrong side of the tracks.

Almost everything else about Season Two focuses on this polarization as well: when the senior prom is cancelled, the wealthy kids throw their own; when poor biker Felix is murdered, wealthy Logan is accused of killing him; the mayor even unveils a plan to incorporate Neptune in a way that would legally divide the city based on economic class.

With so much going on, it may seem that the series' creators wanted to outdo The O.C. in terms of melodrama. But where The O.C. can produce some gripping episodes — and some that even deal with "real" issues — the second season of Veronica Mars is extremely consistent in its focus and quality in a way that The O.C. never seems to manage. Veronica Mars Season Two manages to confront broad racial and class issues without losing its intelligence and honest ear for dialogue.

In addition, much has been written about how Veronica (Kristen Bell) and her father, Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni), have the best father-daughter relationship on television, but the show's the supporting players are equally authentic and get more-so throughout the second season. Veronica Mars manages to give its characters even more depth than Lost — and without the benefit of extensive use of flashbacks.

Take Sheriff Lamb for example. In the seventh episode of Season Two, Veronica investigates a case of suspected child abuse (not sexual or physical, but mental). When Veronica and Duncan are caught breaking into the parents' house, Lamb ignores their explanation, handcuffs the two and puts them in his squad car.

But Lamb, under the pretext of taking a statement, then re-enters the house to investigate. As the abusive father protests, Lamb simply utters one sentence: "Funny, I heard my father give that exact speech once." And that one sentence, coupled with the sheriff's silent release of Veronica and Duncan a few blocks away, transforms Lamb from a mere caricature into a deeper, even sympathetic, character.

The most significant misstep of Season Two is the over-ambition of have such a wide-ranging and ambitious palette of issues, characters and diverging plots. But such a gesture toward serious television just might be what saves the program when Veronica starts college tonight. That, or the show — which raced so quickly to a conclusion in the last five minutes of Season Two with a rapid-fire sequence designed to tie up all the remaining loose ends — will continue evolving into a roller-coaster soap opera. After all, it may be only a short drive on the freeway from 90210 to The OC to Neptune, California.

— Anthony Letizia (anthonyletizia at hotmail dot com)