Sayonara, Sydney. Hellooooooooo, Veronica!

So Jennifer Garner's show Alias is no more. Normally I would try not to talk smack about the recently cancelled, but I figure J.Ga can take it, what with the new baby, the future Senator husband, and the escalating movie career.

So, lemme tell you: it's about time, because Alias long ago got on the one-way Greyhound to Sucksville. It didn't have to be like this, because the show started off awesome. In season 1, Sydney appeared to be a normal grad student with a nice roommate and a cute fiance, BUT she was really a superspy in a supersecret spy group called SD-6 which she originally thought was a branch of the CIA, but when its creepy director had her fiance killed, Sydney discovered it was really evil, so she became a double agent for the CIA and got a hot hot hot handler who was forbidden to her because, you know, double agent, so they could only meet in dark alleys and not look straight at each other, which was even hotter, oh and also Sydney's only other ally in the whole double agent thing was her cold, estranged father. Omigod, just writing that started me on an Alias Season 1 nostalgia spiral. A moment of silence, please.


Thanks. Anyway, in the intervening years, there have been numerous signs saying Next Stop: Sucksville. Here are just a few [SPOILER ALERT, I mean not technically because these happened years ago, but if you intend to watch the DVDs and want to be surprised, these would be spoilers]: Sydney's roommate was killed by her own evil clone, and then the evil clone was killed, but then wait! she was alive again and then got killed again, like, 3 times. It turned out Sydney's long-dead mother wasn't really dead, and she was evil, but then maybe she wasn't, but then Sydney's father killed her, but then we found out that wait! she was actually alive (the person who was shot? Another clone, duh.) Sydney disappeared for 2 years and everyone thought she was dead, but then she came back (brainwashed into being an assassin and then brainwashed herself to forget, natch). A 15th century Michelangelo type made a prophesy that Sydney was going to bring about the end of the world, or something, but then . . . actually, not sure what happened with that. Also his followers harvested Sydney's eggs. And built a huge red ball, which exploded. And some clocks. Now Sydney's second fiance seems to be dead, but who the hell knows, and essentially the whole thing is about as internally consistent as Vice President Cheney's explanations for the Iraq war.

But am I one to dwell on the negative? Well, apparently, yes. But in this case, only for two excessively long paragraphs, because I have found something to fill the empty hole that Alias left in my soul. (Actually, Alias didn't originally create the hole, Buffy did . . . but that's a whole nother issue for another day.) And that is . . . drumroll . . . Veronica Mars!

Never heard of it? Get thee to Netflix, dudes, and thank me later. Veronica is a high-school student in an economically stratified California town who moonlights as a sleuth, solving little mysteries like "who is Meg's secret admirer" and big ones like "who murdered my best friend." Veronica is involved in one of the best love triangles in recent TV memory; she's dating the distant but dependable (or is he?) Duncan, the brother of said murdered best friend, even though she belongs with the more volatile, passionate Logan, Duncan's best friend, who Veronica thinks is an ass. Ahhh, young love! The show also has great writing, great acting, and great casting (meaning they hire lots of people who used to be on Buffy).

So, out with the sucky, in with the awesome. All in all, I am not displeased. However, if any evil clones start showing up on Veronica, I am going to need a beer and that Buffy box set.