The
season one finale of Gilmore Girls opens with the pound of a hammer and Lorelai
jumping out of bed.
“Good
God Almighty and Mr. Mirckle.”
Cut
to Lorelai bursting into Rory’s bedroom.
“Hey.”
“What?”
Rory asks sleepily.
The
pounding continues.
“You
are not sleeping through this.”
“Through
what?”
“The
frickin’ Blue Man Group is outside our house!”
“I
was sleeping through it.”
“It
had to have woken you up.”
“No,
my insane mother, Margot Kidder Gilmore, woke me up!”
Rory
rolls back in bed.
The
pounding continues. It’s six-thirty in the morning and the Gilmore girls still
have their wit and badinage loaded up. Good thing the pounding noise is only
coming from their pal and coffee supplier, Luke, just fixing up their porch
rail. Because this is Stars Hollow where everyone knows everything about
everyone and trespassing someone’s home to touch-up the place with a fresh coat
of paint or to fix a railing? That’s just a good neighbor!
But
Luke’s gone and the scene is over and we move on to the next speedy exchange.
The next exchange, includes the meaning of ennui,
coffee’s remedy, hypochondria, the confirmation that women do not have prostates, and a phone call
filled with sexual innuendos of the previous night’s events—all wrapped up in
about a minutes worth of shot sequence. And that is usually how a scene of Gilmore Girls plays out.
Gilmore Girls premiered
in 2000 and ended in 2007. The show revolves around the cool thirty year-old
mom, Lorelai and her kind and ambitious sixteen year-old daughter, Rory. But
don’t think you’re too late to miss the quirky, sharp, and culturally literate
mother-daughter duo. In October 2014, Netflix added the entire series with
every heartbreak, Kafka esque convos, and cup (upon cups) of coffee.
Although,
some have a hard time getting into the show. The trouble is, you have to have a
good ear to pick up each speedily acted line and must be culturally knowledgeable
to understand where the humor in the line derives from. In some ways, Amy
Sherman-Palladin (the show’s creator and writer) expects a lot from her viewers.
In
some aspects, the characters and the town of Stars Hollow seem like a utopia.
Everyone looks out for each other and has their own little quirks. And
sometimes, while binge watching episodes, you find yourself thinking, who even talks like this? Because the
reason the show dips into an odd utopia of sorts is because the characters (especially
the women) HAVE something to say.
Isn’t
nice to have something to say at every and any second of the day? Yet, like
what this episode addresses, there is one thing the Gilmore girls have trouble
saying, to the men in their lives, “I love you.” This issue is at the heart of
the show. Many TV shows depict women that coat on mascara to bat an eyelash for
a man. How many show women that are so independent and ambitious and
cooperative with other women that the thought to “love” a man can come as a
threat to all of these things? But when the Gilmore girls do finally say it,
they say it fast.
Style emulated: Virginia Heffernan
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