Gilmore Girls: Complete Series

As someone who has literally grown up watching television I occasionally wonder just what attracted me to a series. In many cases the answer is easy; I enjoy the genre. Then there are the outliers that baffle me to some degree. One such series was ‘The Gilmore Girls’. On the surface this series appears to be the television equivalent of a chick flick as it follows the exploits of a 32 year old single mother living in a small town with her extremely bright 16 year old daughter. It didn’t take long before I found myself completely involved in the series. What did it for me was the impeccable level of the writing combined with one of the best ensemble cast ever assembled for a TV series. I began watching based on the recommendation of one of my closest friends. She happens to be an aspiring screen writer so I place a lot of credence when she talks so highly about a script. As it turns out each hour episode of the series requires about twice the number of script pages as a typical series. The reason for this is the almost extreme pacing of the dialogue and the now famous continual pop culture references that provide spice for the show. While it was the snappy dialogue that initially drew me to the series the ultimate charm and humanity of the stories is what really made me a fan. The series lasted seven seasons remaining one of the ‘WB’s’ strongest rated offerings. Many fans lament that series fell off during the seventh season most due to the show’s creator Amy Sherman-Palladino leaving. This is the kind of series that I got into while it was in syndication and soon realized that I have eventually gotten through every episode. My to my enjoyment I was afforded the opportunity to review the complete series DVD set.

Prior to the ‘Gilmore Girls’ the main item on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s resume was with the production of another highly popular TV series ‘Roseanne’. One of the most attractive aspects of this series is the quirky inhabitants of the fictional small town of Star’s Hollow, Connecticut’. After only a few episodes you begin to feel at home in this strange yet all so familiar place. There is an inherent commentary on the class differences. Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) was the only child of the very wealthy and socially well connected Richard (Edward Herrmann) and Emily (Kelly Bishop0 Gilmore. At fifteen she became pregnant by her boyfriend Christopher Hayden, played as an adult by David Sutcliffe. For a year after Rory (played by Alexis Bledel as a teen) they lived at home. Then Lorelai took the baby and left home. She wound up working at the Independence Inn as a maid. By the time the series starts fourteen years later Lorelai is now the general manager running the entire place. Her best friend is the master class chef at the inn, Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy). She is just one of the many zany characters that makes this show great, Sookie is a certifiable five star chef but she is a tad scatter brain and an accident prone klutz. In every location utilized in the series every character is completely formed and very human. There is an amazing consistency to how the characters are depicted with the actors given a lot of chances to build their personalities.

One of the most important characters is Luke Danes (Scott Patterson) owner/operator of the town’s diner. Lorelai and Rory practically live there since neither of them had even a meager display of culinary skills. In their home the oven is just another place to store shoes. Luke is the ultimate good guy in town. He has been in love with Lorelai since the first met but a romance didn’t blossom until season five. Lorelai is extremely unlucky in love falling in love then ruining it by running back to the perennial bad boy, Rory’s father Christopher. Rory unfortunately follows in her mother’s footsteps falling for local boy Dean (Jared Padalecki), ditching him for her first bad boy, Luke’s nephew Jessie (Milo Ventimiglia) and finally losing her virginity to Dean after he got married. Rory did a bit better with her close female friends. Her best friend since first grade was Lane Kim (Keiko Agena) whose love for all things rock and roll is in direct opposition with her mother’s (Emily Kuroda) strict Christian beliefs. Initially the prime plot device is Rory’s acceptance to a very exclusive private school. Lorelai is unable to afford it so she strikes a deal with her parents; a loan for tuition in exchange for a Friday night dinner with Rory and her grandparents.

One major manifestation of the well known rapid fire dialogue is the rants that most characters fly into at a moment notice. Lorelai is prone to fits of rage at her parents of the overly uptight town selectman Taylor Doosey (Michael Winters). Luke also greatly enjoys flinging verbal barbs at Taylor, in fact it is somewhat of a town past time. Emily also has her rant that typically ends in the latest maid getting fired. As Lorelai notes drummers for Spinal Tap have greater joy security than one of her mother’s maids. The overall story arc concerns three Gilmore Girls. Emily has to be included since over the course of the seven seasons the relationship between Emily and Lorelai drive many of the emotional moments. Rory is extremely bright and the series chronicles her academic career from the sophomore year at high school to her graduation with honors from Yale. The series just has a way of grabbing you and keeping you interested. The full series set has one of the best packaging gimmicks I have ever seen. The 42 discs are packaged in seven replicas of school notebooks. In turn all of those are placed in a plastic container with a handle that looks like a carting case for Barbie. In all this remains one of the best shows that was on television and still provides a lot of entertainment.

Posted 03/03/2010