by Erin Salvi

There is no rest for the weary. With the mystery of her best friend’s murder finally resolved at the end of Season One, Veronica Mars should be able to move on with her life and live like a normal teenager again, right? In another city, at another school, in another life, perhaps.

But this is Neptune, California, where nothing stays calm for too long.

Plus, it’s pretty difficult to stay away from the action when you’re the daughter of a private investigator who lets you solve mysteries with him.

Season Two of “Veronica Mars,” which was just released in August, is filled with anything but calm.

Solving crimes does seem to be Veronica’s destiny, for in the very first episode of Season Two a doozy of a mystery comes her way.
A bus full of students from Neptune High goes careening off the edge of a cliff, killing almost every single passenger.

It is a bus that Veronica herself should have been on. A number of Neptune’s wealthiest students also should have been on the bus; only the students who couldn’t afford another ride were the ones sent to their deaths, which makes Veronica think that this “bus accident” was no mistake. After all, nothing happens by pure chance in Neptune.

The class struggle is actually one of the biggest issues that “Veronica Mars” explores, making it much more than just a show about a teenage detective.

Of course, no one in the show is really poor, as the writers make Veronica out to be; it’s just that not everyone is a billionaire.

Veronica actually lives a pretty comfortable life, with a nice apartment and plenty of clothes, but in comparison to most of the kids at her school, who live in mansions and drive Porsches, I guess her life might seem a little lacking.

No one actually wants to watch a television show where people really and truly have to struggle to make ends meet, so instead of clashing the rich and the poor, the show pits the middle-class against the upper-class.

There is actually very little about this show that is realistic. High school was certainly not like this for me.

A new mystery didn’t pop up every week for someone to solve, and I’m pretty sure that not one   single person I knew was wrapped up in some nefarious scheme or other.

Yet it is this very lack of anything close to the life you know that makes this show great. Screw reality television and its “authenticity.” I want real drama, and “Veronica Mars” delivers.

The writers do a fantastic job of giving away just enough information so you can understand what is going on, but the plot is never so obvious that you will figure it out on your own.

No, that’s what Veronica is there for, and you will want to stick with her all the way. Kristen Bell is just as feisty, witty, charming and intelligent as she was in Season One, and she carries the show quite well.

So go out and rent it, buy it, borrow it from your friend (the one who somehow owns every single episode of every single show ever filmed) and watch it.

Just be prepared to get less schoolwork done, because the greatest and worst thing about mystery shows are that they always leave you with a cliffhanger, forever wanting more.