Gilmore Girls
It took a really long time for people to convince me to watch this show. I mean, look at everything it has going against it for a moment: on the outside, it appears to be a melodramatic chick show, packed with shmaltz. (And indeed, none of the show’s many cheerleaders could dispute this point.) It’s an hour-long, apparently family-friendly drama running on one of those channels that isn’t a proper network, nor is it a proper cable channel. (WB? UPN? LMNOP? Who even knows anymore?) Also, there’s not a single vampire or starship to be seen. And you seriously think this is a show I will like?
People — many people, from different corners of my circle of friends — insisted that I would. One person in particular, whose recommendation record with me is pretty much spotless, actually promised that I would enjoy it. And this is why I finally checked it out, because nobody enjoys a good “I told you so” gloat more than I do. Except that he was absolutely right. Again.
Let’s be clear: Gilmore Girls is everything it appears to be from the outside. It is, essentially, a prime time soap opera about a mother and daughter. It explores their relationship with one another, their various wins and losses in the romantic world and it’s all accompanied by mopey girls playing guitars (with the occasional mopey guy playing a guitar thrown in for good measure).
But it’s also incredibly witty. The dialogue has a very stylized, almost Joss Whedonish quality about it (which is why it’s no real surprise that Jane Espenson, one of the best writers on Buffy, is now working on it). And the show’s antecedents may include Dawson’s Creek and 90210 (or perhaps better examples that escape me at the moment), but they also include a bit of Northern Exposure and Andy Griffith. See, the thing a lot of people don’t tell you when they’re trying to sell you on this show is that it’s one of those ensemble pieces about a small town full of quirky, interesting folk. And with good writing behind it, that’s a concept that has always worked for me.
I wolfed down the first two seasons of the show pretty obsessively on DVD this past summer, and I had the following several seasons poised strategically in my Netflix queue. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the writers, my interest dropped sharply as season two’s various conflicts played out.
Here’s the problem: all the great dialogue and well-conceived characters in the world cannot save a show that refuses to move the plot forward in any meaningful fashion. I mean, yes, young Rory moves through high school and presumably goes off to college. Hot mom Lorelai probably moves her career forward, as the early clues indicate she might do. But romantically, the woman runs in place for two years, and from what I’ve heard, she’s stuck in exactly the same holding pattern as of season seven.
The “will they or won’t they?” problem is a dicey one that has been handled with varying degrees of success over the years. Cheers did it pretty well when Sam and Diane hooked up, I thought. Moonlighting, as I understand it, took a nosedive when they tried to resolve their tension. Gilmore Girls will probably never have this problem, since it clearly has no intention of hooking up the two moony-eyed characters who are obviously in love with one another despite the various goings-on in their lives. And I can only watch that sort of thing for so long without wanting to throw something at the TV.
Okay, kudos to the show for making me care enough to want to throw something at the TV. And kudos for creating a realistic protagonist who just plain doesn’t know what she wants. But damn it, I need forward motion in my drama. If I wanted to watch a whiny, indecisive person who can’t seem to get their life together, I’d look in the mirror. This is the reason I don’t watch reality television either: I want escapism from my entertainment, not a reminder that human beings can be insensitive cockteases.
Still, if you look at each individual episode, Girlmore Girls is a surprisingly sweet and funny show. It only really falters when it comes to the bigger picture.