In the pilot, Veronica introduces her high school as a battle between the haves and the have-nots, claiming Neptune is a town without a middle class. “If you go here, your parents are either millionaires, or your parents work for millionaires,” she says. But during its run, Neptunes proved to be far less divided, which not only made Neptune seem less like a distant fantasy town, but also allowed for more interesting subplots and nuanced character development.

Veronica and her best friend Wallace, for example, are clearly (and later call themselves) middle-class: Veronica assists with her dad’s caseload as an after-school job, but not because she’s ordered to support the family—the job gives her access to Lilly’s murder files and helps her save up for Stanford (an ambition that’s sometimes threatened by her quest for justice). Wallace’s mom works for Kane Software, but she also relies on the income from her no-good tenant while Wallace counts on a basketball scholarship to be able to afford and attend his college of choice. Computer-whiz Mac is the Q to Veronica’s 007, but while Mac buys a fancy car and keeps up with the latest gadgets and souped-up laptops, it’s because she finds clever ways to use her tech know-how to earn cash, not because her parents dote on her with a checkbook. The show’s careful attention to the material details of class also help contextualize Veronica herself: An ex-cheerleader, she distances herself from her old pals with a new haircut and new clothes, but preppy pink items from her past still show up in the first season, so viewers can tell she’s not the girl who would (or could) prioritize buying an entirely new wardrobe.

Race and class are often intertwined in Neptune, but Veronica Mars often served as a good reminder that they’re not to be conflated. One of the series’ recurring conflicts is between the PCH Bike Club, a largely Latino motorcycle gang, and the obnoxious 09ers, rich kids from Neptune’s über-wealthy 90909 zip code, but the show never suggests only white kids can be rich kids and only minorities can be poor. Jackie Cook, a second-season addition played by Tessa Thompson, was both black and one of the richest girls in school. In one episode, while investigating a series of muggings, a classmate tips Veronica off that the culprit might be targeting the “coconuts”—Latino and Latina students criticized for being “brown on the outside, white on the side.” The PCH gang does engage in criminal activity, but their crimes are repeatedly contrasted against the transgressions of the rich, which are often worse. And in Season Two, it’s a rival gang made up of mostly working-class Irish-Catholics that’s dealing the hard drugs (to the parents of 09ers) and making people “disappear.” Veronica Mars didn’t entirely subvert stereotypes, but it usually tried to at least complicate and challenge them.