Bad Boys

I just finished watching season one of Veronica Mars this morning. I'm a convert I admit, and even though it's my new favorite show I can't join season two already in progress for two reasons. First of all, I've been watching Lost in that time slot and I'm involved in it now and can't stop watching even though I now prefer Veronica Mars. The second reason is that I've missed almost half of the season of Veronica Mars. I am actually really upset that I wasn't on the Veronica Mars bandwagon from the beginning. It took recommendations from two of my favorite writers (Joss Wheadon and Kevin Smith), for me to finally rent the first season DVDs. Given what I'd read in Kristin Vietch's column at eonline.com I should have known that it would become one my top four favorite shows of all time. I can't resist a show with a really great bad boy love interest. My top four are Sports Night, Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now Veronica Mars.

Let me talk for a minute about the fascination women have with bad boys. It isn't bad boys in general that we women love it's the bad boy with a heart of gold. Luckily television writers are more than willing to indulge us in this fantasy. They give us characters like Logan Huntzberger (Gilmore Girls) and Logan Echolls (Veronica Mars) and the bad boy of all bad boys Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I have to admit, I love these bad boys as much as the next girl. I just think it's important to point out the fallacy. It's not true that the love of a good woman is all it takes to turn a bad boy into a big softie.

Logan Huntzgerger, skirt chasing playboy, gives up his wild lifestyle for the love of Rory Gilmore. Logan Echolls, sarcastic, hard partying, overall evil meanie, just wants to protect Veronica Mars and is truly hurt, devastated when she thinks he might be a date rapist and later a murderer. And Spike, the most evil vampire of them all, slayer of two slayers, lover all things evil, travels around the world and fights nearly to his own death with a daemon from hell to get his soul back so that he can be the kind of man that Buffy deserves...and he writes poetry.

These are my own top three fantasy men, but when I choose a real life guy I go for the nice ones because it's important to understand the bad boy with a heart of gold doesn't exist. In the real world you can't change the bad boy. How I would love it if I had my very own Logan Echolls, who isn't really such a bad guy, it turns out he's just misunderstood or my very own Spike who turns out to be the best boyfriend ever despite the fact that he's an evil blood sucker. Unfortunately, in real life bad boys are just bad, end of story. That wouldn't make for very good television though.

So, thank you Joss Wheadon, Amy Sherman-Pallidino and Rob Thomas for giving women some truly great bad boys to fuel their fantasies and to my fellow bad boy lovers let me say this: these guys are fictional, they don't exist.