It hit me last night, as I sat in the New York State Theater, watching the curtain go up on Songs of the Auvergne that ballet was my first love, and like a human first love, I'm never going to completely forget it, no matter how my ambitions change. Even when the piece is as sugary sweet and shallow as Songs and the program finale, Western Symphony,(which I honestly think would have left the company's repetoire long ago if it wasn't by Balanchine and part of the whole mythic "Balanchine loved America so much he wanted to incorporate it into his ballets," which has been made out to be far more important to the overall repetoire than it needs to be) I could watch it for hours. And when a piece is as tension-filled and immutable as the new In Vento (the Times review seems to think the title is "Il Vento," but it's listed as "In" on my program and the NYCB website, it literally takes my breath away. As low as I have been feeling lately, mentally, physically,and creatively, a ballet performance can give me a high like nothing else.

Then, I come home and the Veronica Mars finale blows all of that yummy dance goodness out of the water.

I know, I rave and I rave about this show, but I have to admit something: last year's finale, while excellent, felt a little anticlimactic. After all the buildup, I was expecting a resolution that surprised me, that I couldn't have seen coming, even though it still made sense (which is what makes VM different from Alias, the sense-making part) -- and, well, I kind of had been looking at season one's murderer for a few episodes. (I'm going to try to not give away anything just for the few of you who might someday sit down with the DVD and discover I'm right about this show after all.)

This year, that's exactly what I got. How can you not love a show that reveals a beloved major character as evil (well, more like seriously seriously screwed up and thus does evil things) not by retconning, but because from the moment of the character's introduction the writers knew that character would be the culprit in the end? Or scares you into thinking another major character (so major that on most shows they'd fall into "they can't die because then it wouldn't be the same show" territory) is dead for fifteen agonizing minutes, so much so that you actually exhale when they reappear? While two other characters meet extremely satisfying, yet unexpected ends? And still having time for a dream sequence and a sweet graduation scene along the way? The mind, she boggles. Best hour of television ever and I do not throw that term around loosely.