Veronica Mars: It's Amazing how Fleeting Perfection can be

I've just finished watching Seasons 1, 2, and 3 of Veronica Mars, a television show which, in accord with Salon's I Like to Watch writer Heather Havrilesky, stands to fill the void we avid Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans have felt since the show going off the air back in the early 2000s.

Veronica Mars takes place in Neptune, California, somewhere near San Diego and the Mexico/US boarder, where wealth and power play carelessly with crime, murder, thievery, rape, suicide, kidnapping, and philandering. Veronica, her private investigator dad, her friends Wallace, Mac, Logan, Weevil and others, serve to balance the forces of privilege by solving the clandestine cases that present themselves, each episode or series of episodes, each season.

Great story writing aside, what makes Veronica Mars a fantastic show is Veronica herself. Since Buffy I have yet to get to know a television character with as much charisma, wit, intelligence, beauty, and compassion as Kristen Bell's portrayal of Veronica. She is my hero. I want to run away to Southern California, solve crime, surf, run with the misfits, wise-crack sarcastic retorts and not give a damn. Check these classic Veronica lines:

• You are the last good person here at Neptune High. I believe cartoon birds braided your hair this morning.

• Wow. A snack and an ego stroke. I wish I was a baller.

• 98 out of 100 people at that party would walk over my corpse for free gum.

• I look like Manilla Whore Barbie.

• J. Geils was right. Love stinks. You can dress it up in sequins and shoulder pads, but one way or another, you're just gonna end up alone at the spring dance strapped in uncomfortable underwear.

• It's amazing how fleeting perfection can be.

• So, my grandma Reynolds was always saying 'when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' I wish she was still alive, because I'd really like to ask her what she suggests for when life gives you Chlamydia.

• Nobody likes a blonde in a hamster ball.

• I guess 'dress to impress' meant to dress like your favorite Pussycat Doll.

If you are like me, you can sit for nights on end with a series pack of TV DVDs and not stop watching until the final episode's end. I've done this with such series as Freaks and Geeks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Wonder Years, Glee, Sex and the City, 30 Rock, True Blood, etc, and now Veronica Mars. Because so much time becomes invested in these DVD marathons, I find that by the show's end, I am left with a feeling of longing, a sadness for characters and story lines I once knew.

I want to know what Veronica will make of her summer internship with the FBI, if Wallace will become a mechanical engineer, if Logan will finally get the girl, if Mr. Mars will be appointed sheriff of Neptune, if Weevil will ever be able to get himself away from bigotry's path of destruction.

Unfortunately, the series was canceled some years past and, as it stands now, writer Rob Thomas' hopes of turning Veronica Mars into a film have gone a wash. All I have are the fleeting memories I've made, held in posterity on hulu.com.