"This is it! She can finally go to Harvard like she always wanted, and get the education that I never got, and get to do all the things that I never got to do, and I can resent her for it, and we can finally have a normal mother-daughter relationship!" - Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) exclaiming her excitement about her daughter 16 year old daughter Rory's (Alexis Bledel) acceptance to the very exclusive and very expensive Connecticut prep school, Chilton.
Gilmore girls: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Frances L. Egler
Gilmore girls (officially "girls" is not capitalized) first appeared on the fledgling WB Network in fall 2000, stuck in the deadly time slot of Thursday at 8pm, directly opposite the juggernaut of Friends and Survivor. The story of Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham, Bad Santa, The Pacifier) and the daughter whom she had at 16, Rory, née Lorelai (Alexis Bledel, Tuck Everlasting, Sin City) who are best friends as well as parent and child, Gilmore girls hung on to become one of the most popular shows on the WB, (RIP 2006; it's now the oddly monikered "CW").
In the fun and informative introductory documentary, "Welcome to Gilmore girls" that's included in the six disc set, top-hatted creator, producer and writer Amy Sherman-Palladino reveals that the concept of the show was a tossed off final idea in a pitch meeting between her and her collaborator, husband (and producer and writer) Daniel Palladino with WB execs. Her concept of a mother and daughter, close in age and more like best friends than parent and child had instant appeal with the network looking to define itself as the home for younger audiences. Sherman-Palladino apparently wasn't prepared for the executives to choose that concept, so, looking to flesh the story out, she and her husband used a visit to the Connecticut town of Washington Depot, where everyone knew everyone else and their business, as a jumping off point for the story of Lorelai and Rory.
It's a crucial time for Rory, who is smart, shy, a lover of books, movies and music, and oblivious to the fact that she shares her mother's striking good looks. She's 16, the age where Lorelai became pregnant with her. Rather than marry her boyfriend Christopher and suffocate in her parents' stuffy WASPy world in Hartford, Lorelai bolted and began her own life, alone, with Rory, in the town of Stars Hollow, 30 miles and a world away. Now manager of the Independence Inn, Lorelai has worked herself up from maid and is finishing her degree in business at a Hartford community college. With the inn's klutzy and vivacious chef, her best friend Sookie (Melissa McCarthy), she dreams of opening her own inn. More than anything, Lorelai is focused on Rory, and wants her daughter to achieve everything that she couldn't. There's no shame in Lorelai for choosing to have Rory and raise her away from her stifling parents, Emily and Richard, played with arch perfection by stage veterans Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann. Lorelai only wants for her daughter the chances that she never had herself.
Their world is upset when Rory is accepted to the prestigious and rigorous Chilton Academy, certainly a stepping stone to her dream college, Harvard. A good education is a marvelous thing, but it's also an expensive one. At a loss of how to pay the hefty tuition, Lorelai reluctantly appeals for help to her parents, who to this point she's only agreed to see on holidays each year. Her mother Emily agrees on one condition: that Rory and Lorelai attend weekly Friday night dinners at the Gilmore mansion outside Hartford. Opening up Rory, and especially herself, to her parents on a regular basis is a painful choice for Lorelai, but to get Rory the chance at Harvard, she'll do it.
What ensues is an entertaining exploration of family, high school, love, and all the things in between. Challenged by the competitive atmosphere of Chilton (not to mention a uniform requiring saddle shoes to be worn daily), Rory struggles to not make enemies on a regular basis, especially with the driven Paris (Liza Weil), and usually fails. She fights off the unwanted advances of the hunky obnoxious Tristan (Chad Michael Murray, soon to head to his own WB vehicle, One Tree Hill). Rory is more interested in her growing relationship with Stars Hollow's latest import from the midwest, Dean (another WB star, Jared Padalecki, now of Supernatural). Dean and Tristan mix it up at Rory's formal, but it's Rory who hits Dean the hardest when, like her mother, she can't respond to a statement of "I love you" with one of her own.
After the wall that Lorelai had raised to protect her daughter is breached by her parents' return to her world, Lorelai finds herself reaching out to find some kind of deeper connection with someone. Unfortunately for Rory, Lorelai finds that connection with Rory's English teacher, Max Medina (Scott Cohen, Kissing Jessica Stein). There is also a déjà vu encounter for Lorelai with Rory's father, Christopher (David Sutcliffe), passing through town and revealing himself as immature a man as he was a teenager. And there is something about that diner owner who makes amazing coffee, Luke (Scott Patterson). When his old flame Rachel finally returns to town to commit to him, something is preventing him from loving her in return. Could that someone be Lorelai?
While pegged as a youth drama, at the show's core is the thirty-two year old Lorelai. It's hard to imagine anyone else who would have fit the role better than the lovely and amazing Lauren Graham. She has the machine gun delivery required by Sherman-Palladino's witty scripts, and Graham balances the comic and dramatic perfectly. Few people can make loving the Bangles so appealing. At the core of Lorelai's story is the constant struggle with her parents and her past. Rory is the best thing in Lorelai's life, but raising Rory cut Lorelai off from exploring a world that Rory now is able to, largely do to her parents' largesse. Almost every conversation between Lorelai and her mother Emily is a losing battle to keep the past from rearing its ugly head in the form of accusations of a life wasted, specifically Lorelai's. "Look around, Mom!" she barks at her mother during an argument in Lorelai's home, "This is a life!" But Richard and especially Emily are no villains. They simply want their daughter and granddaughter in their lives. They simply have no idea how to do it on Lorelai's terms.
This all could descend into a great deal of soapy predictability, but what elevates Gilmore girls above that is the fun and funky writing of Amy Sherman Palladino and her team of writers. As she points out in "Welcome to Gilmore girls", a usual hour long show's script is 40 - 50 pages; a typical Gilmore girls script is close to 80. These people talk. They talk quickly and smartly. It's hard to tell when they take a breath. As Rory muses about her coffee addicted mother, "She's 90% caffeine, 10% water," which she has to be to get that much dialogue out per show.
Another unique element in the mix is the myriad of cultural references that everyone uses, especially the girls: Ruth Gordon, Anna Nicole Smith, Sonic Youth, Proust, Claudine Longet, Donna Reed and Melville are all cited to prove points in this sometimes impossibly intelligent world. But you don't need to memorize Wikipedia and E! Online before watching - the references fly fast and furiously by. Miss one, and there will be another along in a minute or two. Even without knowing them all, the shows' remarkable wit keeps the audience occasionally baffled but always piqued.
Enhancing its distinctive tone, Gilmore girls' soundtrack combines an original score of wistful music by Sam Phillips and songs that are less today's top 10 and more obscure bands of the 80s and 90s (Yo La Tengo, XTC, PJ Harvey, to name a few). Never a network to miss a marketing opportunity, the WB/CW offers an excellent sampling of the Sherman-Palladino's music choices on the Gilmore girls companion CD, "Our Little Corner of the World: Music From Gilmore girls".
Beyond the series regulars, frequent guests include a wonderfully over the top Sally Struthers (All in the Family) as Lorelai's neighbor Babette and Marion Ross (Happy Days) as Richard's stolid, acid-tongued mother Lorelai, who gives Emily a bit of what Emily gives her own daughter. Producer Jenji Kohan went onto create a different kind of single parent drama-comedy on Showtime, Weeds. There are also blink-and-you'll-miss appearances by Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) and Jane Lynch (40 Year Old Virgin, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind).
The result of all of this is a rare balance of adolescent and adult drama and humor that was just looking for a better time slot so that its audience could find it. When it moved to Tuesday at 8:00 pm, people finally did discover the crazy and endearing world of Gilmore girls. Seven years later, they are still coming to Stars Hollow to see the girls each week.
