From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Veronica Mars attacks!

This teen sleuth is taking over living rooms across the country with her sharp-edged dialogue.

by T.M. Shine

January 12 2005

For some reason, it seems as if the UPN detective drama Veronica Mars is becoming extremely funny. In a recent episode, Veronica's father bursts into a room, visibly hyped up about something. "What's up with you?" his teen-sleuth daughter asks. "You're jacked up like some hillbilly kid who stumbled into daddy's meth lab."

The scene, from an episode that aired just before the holidays, was filmed in late fall, but Kristen Bell, the actress who plays Veronica, can still recite it verbatim. That's how memorable her character's dialogue has become. Take Veronica's comeback to the man whose cult she joined undercover when he notices that she doesn't quite fit in. "What, fake fur was a poor choice to infiltrate utopia?" she asks. Or consider the time she asked a follicle-challenged acquaintance, "Did you have cartoon birds braid your hair?"

"I know what you mean," the 24-year-old Bell says with a laugh when discussing the show's increasing sense of humor. "We're getting these scripts, and personally, I can tell it's getting funnier. I think it has to do with how people deliver their lines and the writers getting to know the actors' personalities. They know I love these types of offhanded remarks and can deliver them with some sort of ease."

Ease is an understatement. What really happened is the show's writers have realized Bell is a star. She can pull off anything. Unlike actors on, say, the Gilmore Girls or The West Wing, Bell doesn't deliver her lines awkwardly and forced or at warp speed. She just lines up the words and knocks them down in real time.

The show is "sort of a cross between Twin Peaks and The OC," Bell explains. "It's got that OC feel with the West Coast high-school scene but also a very dark murder mystery running through it."

The seaside town of Neptune, Calif., is the perfect backdrop for the show's "prematurely jaded youth," as Bell puts it. It's a place where they're not afraid to address subjects such as "teen crap poetry" and Veronica lives by rules such as, "Don't roll eyes while undercover."

The show's producers recently said that viewers keep coming back because they're so intrigued by the murder mystery. But that's total bull. We keep coming back because of Kristen Bell.

A Broadway-trained actress, Bell is ironically best known for her role as the daughter of a record executive played by Andy Richter in the feature film Pootie Tang. She has appeared with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney onstage in The Crucible and opposite Val Kilmer on film in David Mamet's Spartan. "But all people yell out when they see me is, 'Pootie Tang!' " Bell says. That is a shame, but even if you've seen Pootie Tang six times, rent it again to check out Bell in the outtakes. It's worth it.

More fortunate on the tube, Bell has no crappy history of working on kiddie shows such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch or showing up as the neighbor's daughter on According to Jim. Her TV résumé reads as if she has the same agent as Claire Danes. Her television appearances include an episode of The Shield and a recurring role on HBO's Deadwood as part of a memorable brother-sister con team, as well as spots on American Dreams and Everwood.

"People come up to me and praise me on what great choices I've made. But it's all luck. It just happened that way," she admits. "I was out there trying for everything." Hence, Pootie Tang.

But deep down, what kind of girl is she, Everwood or Deadwood?

"Deadwood," she confirms. "I really prefer the grimier stuff."

On Veronica Mars, the teenage girl's father calls her his "badass, action-figure daughter," and the media have tried to name Veronica the heir to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's cult following. But Veronica rarely gets physical. She's much more likely to, well, tilt her head.

When confronted by another character on the show for using her pretty-little-blond-girl act to persuade him, she simply says, "You're lucky I don't flip my hair, or I'd own you."

"She's a babe," Bell agrees.

Veronica is the once-popular girl in school who, because of the usual unbelievable circumstances, is now an outcast. To sum up the show: Veronica has been vanquished from the cool crowd after someone killed her best friend, Lilly, and Veronica's sheriff dad implicated Lilly's father, the town's monstrously powerful millionaire. After being ousted from law enforcement, Veronica's dad becomes a private detective, and his daughter becomes his right-hand girl and the most ostracized kid at school.

A photographer for the school newspaper, Veronica will shoot despised classmates and give the pictures titles such as "Nonchalant Idiot" and "Future Rehab Boy." At one point, all her clothes are stolen from the gym locker room (another good move by the writers), leaving her the choice of going naked or putting on a borrowed cheerleader's outfit. "Putting on that cheerleader outfit is probably the most uncomfortable thing Veronica has had to do," Bell says.

True, she doesn't hesitate to dress up like a Japanese schoolgirl, go undercover as a gamer or summon a motorcycle gang to back her up in times of trouble. "Man, how great would that be in real life," Bell says. "And it's not even like she's best friends with the motorcycle guys. You just have this mutual respect with this gang and that's why. … She's cool, any way you look at it. I'm lucky I get to be her for part of my life."

If a recent appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman is any indication, Bell seems to carry that coolness with her off the set. "Dave was great, except when he tried to goof on the UPN. I'm not going to make fun of my network," Bell says proudly.

While the show's ratings have been lackluster, it has been picked up for a full season thanks to critical praise (Entertainment Weekly named it one of the Top 10 TV shows of the year) and Bell's being nominated by TV Guide as Best Newcomer of 2004. Not since Caroline Dhavernas of the short-lived Fox series Wonderfalls has an actress created such an infectious TV character. Bell has a knack for capturing perfect moments, as in the recent episode in which Veronica is forced to question her paternity. Thinking Lily's tycoon dad may be her real father, Veronica has a complete breakdown -- for about a minute. Then, she starts thinking about how she could be an heiress, reap millions of dollars and bring the creep down and …

And no one portrays a racing mind better than Bell. Especially when she tilts her head.

Veronica Mars airs 9 p.m. Tuesdays on UPN. Visit www.upn.com for more information.