| I'm still finding my feelings on the virtuoso close
a bit difficult to process. I know I'm quite impressed, and I know I found
it a potent, wisely concise distillation of not only a year's worth of generational
conflict, but -- with its blatant oscillation between fucking and fighting,
joking and attacking -- the essence of Gilmore girls itself. That
said, I'm still wondering how well ASP's formal experimentation fits in
with the show as a whole (even though it's always pleasing to see her push
TV's aesthetic boundaries further and further). Obviously Gilmore girls
-- with its reliance on long, unbroken masters -- is usually a series that
eschews short, choppy scenes at all costs, but one might argue the rapid-fire
pace of 6.13's ending fits in well with Gilmore girls' machine
gun patter and general mania (though I probably still could have done without
all the whip pans). Despite the Luke's Daughter storyline continuing to be hopeless, ASP is beginning to nail the sad subtleties of the burgeoning distance between Luke and Lorelai. Also: the Paris plotline -- though mostly filler -- was hysterical. Yet another tour de force from Weil. This episode might, as you suggested a few weeks ago, herald a promising new trajectory for s6. Sent: Feb 3, 2006 10:41 AM For me, the Friday Night Dinner is not so much a question of how effective [director Kenny] Ortega and ASP's techniques were in and of themselves -- I don't think there's any disputing that every frame of the dinner is piercing -- rather it's a larger, more theoretical question about whether a show must maintain a lucid, stylistic consistency. I'm still not sure. My impulse is to say: generally yes, but you can push it here and there, so long as you don't push too hard (hence my thought that the whip pans, while useful, stray too far). Ironically enough, prior to watching this episode, I was flipping through my Time Out Film Guide and stumbled upon the Newsies entry. I'd long known Ortega directed Newsies, but I learned he started out as a choreographer. I think his vibrant sense of spatial orchestration really shines at 6.13's end. |