Looking pretty in Hollywood isn’t hard to do. Every celebrity does the same things: eat right, exercise often, get their hair done by professionals, use make-up that matches, highlights and improves their skin, kill babies and suck their blood. It’s standard stuff. But STAYING pretty in Hollywood? Not an easy task. Some celebrities will do almost anything to maintain their looks.

On The Late Show with David Letterman the other day, Demi Moore revealed that she uses leeches as a beauty regimen. She claims it’s the secret to looking glamorous at 61 45. I claim someone’s been watching Speed 2: Cruise Control a bit too much on TNT (Seriously Demi, Willem Dafoe is no one’s beauty maven). I guess she feels that in addition to rampant facial reconstruction, weekly botox injections, massive plastic surgery across her body and sucking the lifeblood out of a twenty year old himbo actor, she must let leeches suck her blood to stay beautiful.

And who I am to say she’s wrong?

In light of Demi’s recent health revelation, many stars have come out of the woodwork to reveal their personal beauty regimens. And for some, it’s not pretty. Take a look…

Renee Zellweger: Has a heavyweight boxer break up her face each and every day to ensure maximum scrunchiness.

Matthew McConaughey: Doesn’t need to do anything, cause he’s L-I-V-I-N! (Though the weed and the sports and the banging models helps, too.)

Lindsay Lohan: Each week, buys 100 packs of Crayola markers, then throws them all out but the orange ones. Using all 100 markers at once, she colors her tan in. You know, just to get a base.

President Clinton: Six words - “The royal penis is clean, sire.”

Ryan Seacrest: Before every Tuesday edition of American Idol, takes the Concorde to Tibet, scales the tallest mountain, sneaks into a hidden room of a monastery and gives a glory hole beej to the Dalai Lama. Claims it gives him that “just gayed by a spiritual deity” feeling that helps him devise the clever bon mots he uses against Simon Cowell.

Simon Cowell: Is secretly the guy glory holing Ryan Seacrest. Claims it gives him that “just secretly ram-gayed a network TV gameshow host” feeling he uses to look so smug in that judges chair.

Ryan Reynolds: Drinks a can of Powerthirst every morning to keep up his ridonkulous physique. His flavor of choice: RAWBERRY. It gives him gratuitous amounts of energy (ENERGY!). Don’t know what Powerthirst is? Peep the video:

• Side note: Ryan Reynolds actually has 400 babies. They’re currently undergoing marathon training in Kenya. In the year 2019, Ryan Reynolds’ children will take places 1-400 in every marathon on the planet. And they will all be snarky.

Reese Witherspoon: Does nothing. Being the spawn of Satan has its perks. Just what I heard…

Prince: Hustles unsuspecting D-list celebrities in pick-up basketball games. Afterwards, he cooks them pancakes. Game, blouses!

Hilary Swank: Men don’t need a beauty regimen, they’re fine just the way they are.

Jessica Biel: To maintain her perfectly over-sized posterior, she literally keeps junk in her trunk. Nothing big, just, you know, some crackers, a game of jacks, her 3rd place Archery ribbon from summer camp, Scattegories, lip balm, some old Nintendo cartridges (if you’re lucky, she’ll let you blow on them), stuff like that.

Kristen Bell: In order to remain extraordinarily cute, buys a new golden retriever puppy every 3 months just to rub it on her face before bed. The puppies are single use and she donates them to poor children once they’ve properly cutified her face. Sadly, the puppies are 72% less cute when she’s done with them, but don’t worry, they’re still good enough for poor kids.

Mario Lopez: You know those pills that Jesse was taking on the very special episode of Saved By The Bell? The ones that made her so excited, so excited, so… scared? Mario takes them to make his abs feel so excited, so excited, so… crunchy!

Megan Fox: Who knows, but whatever she’s doing, it’s working.

Ashton Kutcher: He’s Demi’s real leech! As Demi gets older, he gets younger. It’s the perfect crime! MUHUHAHAHAHAHAHA! /twirls lame hipster beard

Bangarang!

Let me attempt for one moment to try and conjure up the appropriate words for how utterly, disgustingly, punch a kitten in the face cute Kristen Bell and Rachel Bilson are standing next to each other at The Spike TV Video Game Awards.

Here is the breakdown, cute girl by cute girl:

Rachel Bilson is quite possibly the cutest tiny brunette working in Hollywood right now. No one holds a candle to how adorable she is seducing Chuck Bartowski with a sandwich, reigning in Seth Cohen’s acres of shit, or making Zach Braff seem palatable in the Garden State rip-off. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Rachel Leigh Cook have passed the torch. Ellen Page dropped a cabal of pithy Juno-esque toss-offs before high-tailing it out of the ring to ironically drink a Big Gulp, text Michael Cera and download Rise Against mp3’s, or whatever else stupendously hip thing hipster Canadian indie darlings like to do to show how stupendously hip they are. The inarguably awesome Leighton Meester, currently seen destroying Chuck Bass’ hopes and dreams and dropping her V-Card into Nate Archibald’s khaki pants, put up a Blair Waldorf-inspired fight, but in the end could not hide from the fact that she is in fact a strawberry blonde (and not nearly as awesome as Lily van der Woodsen). And as far as Natalie Portman goes, she’s definitely all-time, but I just can’t sit through her movies anymore, so she’s gonna sit on the sidelines until my insulin levels are regulated again from the trailer for Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.

Kristen Bell is apparently on a James Brown “hardest working cute blonde in show business” inspired jaunt through geekdom. Dropping the awesome in Heroes, narrating Gossip Girl, appearing in a Star Wars fanboy movie called Fanboys wherein she dons the infamous gold bikini and thus earns her everlasting cred in the social awkward circles of life, voiced a character for Assassin’s Creed, and wore a freakin awesome yellow Chewbacca shirt to Star Wars Celebration IV this summer that made me nearly go Buffalo Bill and drop her into my secret dungeon well (Veronica Mars puts the lotion in the basket…). That’s all AFTER pwning the TV set with Veronica Mars, and BEFORE her upcoming star turn in 2008’s big Judd Apatow-produced romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshall (where I’m sure she’ll show the good graces not to call the film sexist target=blank, like some other ungrateful / annoying blonde TV tarts who are currently ruining their hit network dramas with obnoxious “sex with George” storylines, and who will remain nameless. cough Heigl cough.)

On their own they could make entire terror cells perform the care bear stare with just a tilt of their head and one sheepish grin, but put together in one place and the two girls become positively radioactive with cuteness. If scientists could bottle their cuteosity in liquid form it would cure feline leukemia and bring fairies back to life faster than a Martin Scorsese Lifetime Achievement Award standing ovation. Put on the Periodic Table of Elements their abbreviation would be Qt.

They are so freakin cute they make baby polar bears look like festering gobs of diarrhea. Rainbows look like hurl next to them. A two year old wearing a tutu and big sunglasses dancing around a golden retriever puppy would be like looking at a particularly spicy genital wart next to a picture of Kristen Bell and Rachel Bilson.

This photo would make Quagmire’s head explode. This photo, when placed next to a DVD copy of Patch Adams, goes nuclear and turns the disc into dust like Peter Petrelli and the Shanti virus. I would c-punt a litter of bunnies if this picture asked me to.

This:

Might as well look like this:

When up against this:

Good god damn this is the cutest picture of two cute actresses taking a cute picture of two cute actresses being cute. That sentence was a palindrome of cute. The picture deserves it’s own Wikipedia page where under “Related” it gives you a link to entry page for the term “cute”. When confronted with these two girls standing next to each other, the Blake Smoke Monster from Lost would turn pink and cook them fat free brownies.

What I’m saying is that I tend to think Kristen Bell and Rachel Bilson are pretty cute.

Bangarang!

Let’s right, peoples! Me, the eternal Fabio, is here to take your women, anger your movie stars, and BLOW YOUR MINDS. I am old, craggy, a has-beens has-been, and I was the original male celebritard, but STILL I score with your tiny blonde hotties! Looks at the smiles on their faces. They can’t believe they are in my thrall. They love the Fabio, and want to show me just how much. I will let Hayden run her hands through my luscious brown mane, while Veronica Mars starts an investigation on my taut Italian mid-section. And do you know what she’ll find? Romance. …cause that’s what I named my strapping penis.

The girls want me to be on their TV show, the Heroes, and I have agreed to do it. What’s my super power going to be? SUPER FUCKING AWESOMENESS! My exposed chest renders women powerless. My flowing locks are a truth serum. My teutonic biceps can crush metal. My razor wit literally cuts people to the bone. And my nipples shoot liquified nazi gold. I will be unstoppable, and utterly charismatic, for I am Fabio.

I defeated your ultimate man George Clooney last week; I fear nothing anymore. I break birds with my face! I ruin Reality shows by dating the contestants. I cause divorce just by unbuttoning my flowing, puffy shirt. I promote butter! It’s a Fabio world, and you’re just staring at my book cover.

Come tiny blonde hotties, it is time to fulfill your life-long dream. No, not being successful, respected actors, I mean being with me, Fabio.

Bangarang!

I’m not much of a thinker a-header (NOTE: totally grammatically correct). I like to, as Garth Algar advises, “live in the now, man”. I prefer to focus on what’s directly in front of me and mentally note things in the future that may rock. But as we sit today in the doldrums of Summer, I can’t help but gaze down the road at what’s to come.

We’ve been in a O’ Brother Where Art Thou-style pop culture geographical oddity as of late, two weeks from everywhere. The last best movies of the summer just came out (Superbad, Bourne Ultimatum). Men across the nation are still hitting refresh on ESPN.com every few minutes, desperate to make sure none of their prospective Fantasy players goes down in a Preseason two-a-day (and Week 1, though now less than two weeks away, feels like for fucking ever). Harry Potter fever has boiled over. High School Musical 2 came and went with me still not knowing the the eff tween actor Zac Efron is and why he is rubbing his nipples on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine (P.S. Way to be punk rock, RS!). And the Fall TV Season doesn’t get going until mid-September.

As Al Pacino in Heat once said, what do we got? WHAT DO WE GOT?

So I was pondering the bleak, barren landscape of non-awesomeness that lay before us, and silently meditating on the misery we are facing, until I opened up the Internets and was given the best news I’ve heard in the longest. Variety reports that Kristen Bell as signed on for a multi-episode arc on Heroes, starting in early October. This was my restrained reaction to that news: “Hurrrah! YEAAH!!!!1! Wha, shy, he, za, YEQAJKNBFSFUSA$###! Jackpot.” And to think, just last week I was musing on what great projects Kristen would move to after Veronica Mars, and how those projects are the reason I was OK with VM getting canceled. My prognostication is for reals. Believe that!

I now care only about the fall season. I’m gonna consider the next few weeks a complete wash. Hell, I’m gonna consider most anything a wash unless it concerns Veronica Mars sharing screen time with HRG and Peter Petrelli. The levels of casting kickassitude contained in this development rival just about anything short of full cast sequels to A Few Good Men, Airborne, Rad, The Monster Squad and True Romance or that long rumored Arnold, Bruce and Sly action movie. I love me some summer, but g-damn, bring me that fall! This pop culture geek just got himself a new countdown!

But lest you think I think the fall will rock only because we get to seeKristen Bell and Hayden Panetierre look at each other onscreen (and subsequently exploding the crotch-regions of adolescents everywhere), let me put you at ease. The final four months of 2007 are jam-packed with righteous happenings. The following list doesn’t include everything that rules, but is merely the days I’m looking forward to.

TRULY IMPORTANT POP CULTURE DATES OF THE FALL

Sunday, Sept. 9th – Opening Day of the 2007-2008 NFL Season. A day for much rejoicing, beer drinking, Fantasy Football pool killing, debt collecting, buffalo wing consuming, testosterone flaring, wives and girlfriends despairing, Sportscenter watching, YouTube clip embedding, sports blogging, TiVo commercial double-blooping, porn ignoring, fav team cheering, buddy high-fiving and general wonderment. I can’t wait to eat myself retarded while cheering on my Miami Dolphins as they bring the teal all over the Washington Redskins. Ronnie Brown is gonna be a golden god this year. Trust The Jay.

Thursday, Sept. 13th – TheJay.com Turns 2! There will me much more on this in the week leading up to our birthday, including announcements on my T-Shirt Company, some podcast news and the introduction of an important new running column. Stay tuned…

Sunday, Sept. 16th – Ryan Seacrest flat-irons, I mean “hosts”, the 59th Annual Emmy Awards, the first not really important awards show of the fall. I can’t wait to see The Sopranos and Everybody Loves Raymond win again (what, Raymond isn’t on anymore? Whatever, they’ll find a way to give that shit Best Comedy Series, anyway). Wake me when they start giving awards to deserving TV work, like 30 Rock, Damages, BSG, How I Met Your Mother and Weeds.

Tuesday, Sept. 18th – KT Tunstall releases her second studio album “Drastic Fantastic”. She’s my favorite singer in the world right now, rocks live, has kick style, speaks in an adorable accent, has actual real musical talent, is sweetly down-to-earth and she pretty much destroyed any chance of Jewel ever having relevance again. For all those reasons and more, I love this woman. Also, the new single is steak sauce! I push my tread up a full mph every time my Nano rings the “Hold On” number.

Saturday, Sept. 22nd – Yom Kippur. Day of forgiveness, baby, show some respect!

Wednesday, Sept. 26th – The premieres of Bionic Woman and Private Practice; adding two more shows to my most crowded night of TV watching. The TiVmote is gonna have to work overtime blooping through Bionic Woman, Private Practice, Pushing Daises, Kid Nation, Back To You, Life, Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money and come February, Lost.

Tuesday, Oct. 2nd – The Jungle Book, my favorite animated movie of all-time and easily the best Disney movie of all-time comes out on in a scrumtrillescent new 2-disc Platinum Edition DVD. Words cannot describe how uberhellastoked I am to finally own this movie on DVD (in its been on moratorium for the longest). I have so much Jungle Book paraphernalia that I could practically open my own merch store. Look for me at the El Capitan on Sunday, September 9th for the big screen stage show, I’ll be the shameless geek bear hugging the Baloo mascot (pun intended) and singing along off-key to all the words to Bare Necessities. Hey Mowgli, how about you knock that busy little bee-ya off my nose…

Monday, Oct. 8th – The most likely date for the first appearance of Kristen Bell on Heroes.

Tuesday, Oct. 9th – Eleventy Billion NSFW Kristen Bell / Hayden Panetierre fan-fiction stories are released on the net.

Friday, Oct. 19th – Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, arrives in theaters. My favorite ‘Fleck gets to prove once and for all that he’s a big talent. And I think he’s gonna prove it in spades. His cast is flawless (Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, hottie Michelle Monaghan, Casey Affleck, Amy Madigan), his source material is first rate (author Dennis Lehane also wrote Mystic River, which gives me the chance to scream out “IS DAT MY DADER IN DERE!” every time someone mentions that fact) and the trailer is cool, confident and stylish. Matt Damon (Matt Damon!) may be the bigger star and the better actor, but I’m still not convinced that when everything is said and done, Ben Affleck won’t have the better career. And if you don’t believe me than be sure to catch my must-read post “Ben Affleck Does NOT Suck, And I Can Prove It”, coming in early October.

Tuesday, Nov. 6th – Quentin Tarantino FINALLY realizes the long awaited Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, where we get to watch the entire saga cut together as one movie. I got to watch the flicks back-to-back at the Arclight on Volume 2’s opening night in 2005 and it was a very rewarding experience. I bet taking out the intermission and resorting the order of scenes is gonna completely change how we look at the story of The Bride. My guess is that change will be for the better.

Friday, Nov. 9th – By my count, the most interesting movie going weekend of the fall season. Releasing on this date is the Robert Redford directed, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep starring political thriller Lions For Lambs, where we get to finally see the full extent of the damage The Cruiser has inflicted upon his career (not to mention the fate of the United Artist movie studio hangs in the balance). Also on this date is Fred Claus, the big budget holiday film that will be the marker for whether or not Vince Vaughn can be a charmingly obnoxious asshole for two hours without Owen Wilson or Jennifer Aniston and still be successful (and look at the rest of the cast: Paul Giamatti, Kevin Spacey, Kathy Bates, Miranda Richardson, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Banks and Frank Stallone. That’s a lot of talent. Except for the last one). And on the limited release side we have a new Coen Brothers movie and Southland Tales, the extremely long awaited sophomore flick from Richard Kelly, director of Donnie Darko. That film intrigues the hell out of me, not least because it stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star, The Rock as her love interest, it’s set in the Valley, centers around an apocalypse on the fourth of July, co-stars Mandy Moore, Seann William Scott, Kevin Smith, Janeane Garofalo and Justin Timberlake, was lambasted at Cannes, shelved for a year because no one wanted to distribute it, is reported to be a complete narrative mess, and oh yeah, it’s a musical.

Tuesday, Dec. 25th – Charlie Wilson’s War, my most anticipated film of the fall, is released in theaters. Written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and hotties Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Rachel Nichols. You couldn’t put together a more attractive package to me. If I was told I’d get Herpes if I watched this movie, I’d call my HMO and pre-book some Valtrex. I think this is also Jesus’s birthday or something. That might be good for some cool goings-on, I don’t know. No lines at the bagel shop, maybe? I’ll keep an eye on this day for more cool happenings.

Sunday, Dec. 30th – Lakers vs. Celtics at the Staples Center. I am dying to see the new big three in green take on Kobe and whatever bunch of idiots they picked up off the street to pass the ball to Kobe. Jesus Shuttlesworth, insane-person Kevn Garnett, Monica Seles-wannabe Paul Pierce and old man Reggie Miller duking it out with acquitted Hershey Highway driver and ballhog extraordinaire Kobe Bryant, all while Jack Nicholson looks on form the front row and leers at the Laker Girls? It’s gonna be the biggest LA sports event of the fall, and I’ll be in the cheap seats taking it all in.

What cool pop culture days of the fall are you looking forward to?

Bangarang!

William Goldman’s classic adage about the intelligence of Hollywood, “Nobody Knows Anything” needs to be changed. In light of recent events, the quote should now read “Nobody Knows Anything. Especially Network TV Executives”. How else can you explain the rash of inexplicable scheduling changes this season?

From ABC moving Lost (a perfect 9pm show) to the dreadful 10 spot (where viewers have already sat through two hours of programming, not to mention a full day of work, and are in no condition to sit through the mindfuck that is The Further Adventures of Oceanic Flight 815.). Or Fox’s decision to promote Drive ad nausea for two months only to announce days before the premiere that the show would only air five times instead of 13? Why would we choose to invest in a show that will only be around for a month? And let’s not even get started on NBC’s decision to take Heroes and The Office off the air for six weeks this Spring, and delay Scrubs till January only to pull them for nearly a month in February to launch Andy Barker P.I. which was then pulled after two (!) airings even while it was getting the best reviews of any new show of the mid-season.

But by far the most agonizingly dense decision by any network has been the continued abuse of their critical jem, Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars has clawed, scratched and fought its way on the air for two seasons. Critics drool over the show, there is a small but rabid fanbase, the DVD’s sell well and Kristen Bell is a bonafide star-in-the-making. It has all the pieces in place to be a fixture on TV for at least five seasons, except the one thing that truly matters: network support. The CW, in their infinite collective wisdom of being on the air all of six months, decided to pull the show off the air for six weeks in the middle of the season and run a Pussycat Dolls reality show in its place.

This would be OK for any non-serial, as most shows of that nature can go away and come back and no one would be the wiser (hell, the Law & Order franchise practically has a patent on this move), but Veronica Mars is a series that benefits from continuity and stability. It’s a show that actually strives for complexity, a true rarity in an era of dumbed down television; fans are rewarded for their loyalty by getting complex storylines that pay off so far down the road it would make the Lost Writers Room bow their heads in shame. Much like the aforementioned Lost, Veronica Mars needs to be on television as much as possible to help guide the viewers through the season. It’s nearly impossible these days to follow a series from premiere to finale without missing an episode, and Mars might be at the top of the list of hard to follow shows.

However, and it’s a significant however, the journey is worth it. And I just don’t understand why The CW doesn’t recognize that.

They chose to keep VM in the WB/UPN merger, so they must have seen the potential of the show at some point. They must have received the thousands of fan letters begging them not to cancel the show. They must have noticed that the show has been nominated for a WGA award, and that Kristen Bell has been nominated for a string of awards, as well. But most of all, at some point, they had to know it was the best show they had.

Gilmore Girls is a dying ship. 7th Heaven is on its last rites. Smallville is bloated and tired. Supernatural is just as poorly attended. One Tree Hill is a second-rate Dawson’s Creek with the most unbelievable “young” high school students this side of Ian Ziering. America’s Next Top Model and WWE Smackdown are reality shows and fake spectacle, respectively, and shouldn’t be compared to the drama slate. And NONE of the sitcoms have shown any traction in the nation consciousness (I challenge you to name be even ONE cast member from All Of Us). Veronica Mars, on the other hand, is well-written, superbly acted, young, hip, and given the chance, eminently marketable.

How difficult would it be to put Kristen Bell in the same marketing league as Felicity’s Keri Russell? She’s going to start developing an even wider fanbase once Fanboys and Forgetting Sarah Marshall come out, and greater critical acclaim once Roman and Flatland are released. She’s pretty, smart, a great interview and fiercely loyal to her show. She’s not gonna give you salary headaches like a certain beeyotchy Gilmore Girl, or try to distance herself from her show like a certain eight-headed, former resident-Capeside douchebag. I’d be willing to bet Kristen Bell would do Veronica Mars for a decade, if given the chance. She’s a star on a network that is sorely lacking in them. It’s beyond me why The CW is choosing to ignore this fact.

The ratings of the show seem to be the only real mark against renewal. I can understand the notion that a network should never settle for mediocre numbers, but when the entire network slate is one giant mediocre Nielson rating, landing in the 110th as opposed to 117th spot on the chart is splitting hairs. Veronica Mars airs Tuesdays at 9pm, opposite the Dancing With The Stars results show (already a built-in audience), House (with American Idol’s ginormous lead-in), The Unit (taking away the entire male 31-49 demo), and the bastard Law & Order spinoff, Criminal Intent. That’s four huge shows with marketing support dwarfing that of The CW, on networks that are more widely watched and even more widely available than The CW. At what point were the expectations of this show so high that they were expected to topple anything the Big 4 put out?

The average rating for a CW show is 2.1 million people. Top Model and Smallville regularly hit twice that number, while the sitcoms role at or below the average. For the 2006-2007 television season Veronica Mars has averaged about 2.5 million viewers, well above the network average. It hits very near the same numbers as 7th Heaven, a show that’s MUCH more expensive to produce. With this in mind, I can’t really understand the argument that the ratings aren’t good enough to warrant a fourth season.

Last year Veronica Mars was on opposite Lost at a time when the ABC drama was a real ratings behemoth, and yet, VM’s ratings went up. The main reason for this? It had Top Model as it’s lead-in. The key thing to remember here is that viewers were willing to choose the show over Lost, assuming they had a reason to be on the network before Lost began. This year, with a sub-par Gilmore Girls as it’s lead-in, VM is stagnant in the ratings. The key here is that the fanbase will always be there for the show, but if The CW wants more viewers they have to support the show with a better lead-in. And that point is the same for any television show, not just VM. Look at what CSI did for Without A Trace, or Friends did for Will & Grace or going back to The CW, what Smallville has been doing for Supernatural (namely saving it’s life). Very few primetime network shows can survive on their own without help; even fewer can do it on a network that’s watched by less than half its competitors. Throughout it’s run Veronica Mars has shown that given the opportunity, it can do just as well as anything else the network puts out, and in some cases, even better.

Most cult / small shows need a few seasons to get going. Take Cheers, Seinfeld or Buffy as examples. All were ratings-poor in the first few seasons, but took off by their 3rd and 4th seasons. Shows that are more difficult to watch or are non-traditional need support and longevity to sell their premise. A teen private eye is not an easy sell in a time when the other personification of teen life on television is My Super Sweet Sixteen. Moreover, noir is not a particularly popular genre. Lost is just as labyrinthine, but it’s base genre is epic sci-fi, which has traditionally sold very well on TV (think The X-Files, which I’d like to point out, also took four seasons before it became a phenomenon).

I just can’t understand the logic behind dumping a brand you put three years into building solely for an intangible potential a new brand might show. What is harder, building an audience for Veronica Mars, a show that has already established a presence in the national consciousness and only needs a good marketing push and a prime time slot to shine, or a COMPLETELY new presence that may or may not find an audience? Let’s go further… if you were a betting man, which show would you say has a better chance for longevity, Veronica Mars or the soon to be aired Hidden Palms? On the one hand you have a critically acclaimed drama starring a gorgeous and talented star on the rise and on the other you have a trashy teen soap that was pulled from the Fall line-up because it didn’t test well enough and stars the most hated actor in the history of television (that would be Taylor Handey, who played the loathsome Oliver on The O.C.)? I don’t know about you, but I’m going with the cute, sassy blonde girl that takes down former Clash of the Titans actors.

Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas has been wonderfully vocal about the state of the show. At times he has said there’s a 60/40 chance for renewal, other times he has said that the future of the show rests on the ratings of that execrable Pussycat Dolls show (and thank god that show dropped off the face of the Earth. Go grease a pole at the Forty Deuce, whores!). And to their small credit, The CW has given the show ample opportunity to potentially continue. They asked Thomas to make the final five episodes stand alones, which may attract viewers that were too afraid to jump into the series because they hadn’t been there from the beginning. And they asked Thomas to pitch multiple potential story arcs for Season Four, should the network think the show could do better with a slightly modified premise (for the record, I would rather they continue the college years than jump forward to Veronica as an FBI agent. Trying to explain away half a decade of Veronica’s life would be far more difficult than just making the college years more interesting. Hell, I could do that one right now. Kill off Logan, make Wallace and Mac into Veronica’s personal Scooby gang, and introduce a Big Bad that she needs the whole season to take down (a la Buffy). There. Done. I just bought the show another half million viewers.). There have been both good and bad signs on the road to renewal, but the next five weeks are the most crucial.

If the show can show some improvement it would do wonders for its chances of survival. It just needs a little help. It’s an underseen diamond in the rough; a television show that works hard to be great and asks a lot of its viewers. It never panders and it never dumbs itself down. It doesn’t introduce cute babies or have gimmicky weddings. It’s not stale and crusty like half the CBS dramatic line-up and it’s not trashy like the majority of the FOX line-up. Veronica Mars is a quality show in an era of lesser standards. And if The CW can’t understand that, then I’ll live with it. But I won’t have any reason to watch their network, either (I’ve gotten over my Kristin Kreuk crush, too).

I’ve gone over time on my frustration of this topic. Of my continued annoyance on the part of network executives fucking with my favorite TV shows. And I could go on even more about what needs to be done to fix the situation. But really, I just want to convey one thing. One crucial thing… Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, just give Veronica Mars a chance. I need Kristen Bell on TV every week for my own well-being. So help The Jay stay sane and give me this one thing. Give me a Veronica Mars Season Four.

Bangarang!

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