Awesome Rumor Alert: Kristen Bell back with Rob Thomas?

Kristen Bell has been a busy little beaver lately. Between her only-good-thing-about-that-season guest spot on "Heroes" last year, her voice-over work on The CW's "Gossip Girl," and playing the titular blotted-out ex in Judd Apatow's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," you gotta wonder how the petite former "Veronica Mars" star handles it all.

Well, obviously she's superhuman. Because now comes this news from E!'s Kristen Dos Santos that Bell is "in talks" to rejoin "Mars" creator Rob Thomas for a new TV pilot.

Excuse me while I do some back flips.

For fans of "Veronica Mars" — the inexplicably under-watched teen-detective dramedy that ran for an abbreviated three seasons on The WB/CW — this is great news. Thomas has an ear for snappy, witty dialogue, and in Bell he found an actress perfectly suited for delivering such snarky lines as "It's all fun and games till one of you gets my foot up your ass." Together they made the character of Veronica utterly believable as a high school girl who tracks down criminals and intimidates the rich and powerful in the name of justice.

In this proposed new show, according to Dos Santos' sources, Bell will get a chance to try out the other side of the law. It's a remake of a New Zealand (they have TV shows?) hour-long called "Outrageous Fortune," about a family of bad-doers whose matriarch (Rene Russo is, quote, "very close" to signing on) wants to reform. Bell would play one of Russo's daughters.

Dos Santos wonders, as should all we mere mortals, whether Bell could juggle yet another acting project in addition to her other commitments. But when you consider that "Outrageous Fortune" is only one of three pilots that Thomas is working on — the others include a "sequel" to "Beverly Hills 90210" and an update of his failed 1998 comedy "Cupid" — and that it sounds like Bell wouldn't even be the main character, it might not be too much to ask.

Again, it's all rumor and speculation at this point. But for a guy who once waited in line for hours at a "Veronica Mars" cast signing at the Mall of America — true story — it's enough to make me very, very giddy.

— Adam Reinhard, lifeisfunnybutnothahafunny@gmail.com