Different for Girls

Gilmore girls' brand of family values is nothing for men to fear

By Jared Sapolin

Were a straight guy to inform his peers that he considers Gilmore girls the best show on television,
he'd likely be met with a skeptical glance followed by the question, "Which one would you rather
sleep with?" Even after giving the series a chance, some testosterone-fueled types remain doubtful
that a show this fine could spring from a female mind: During the show's first year, a sexist rumor
circulated that creator Amy Sherman-Palladino's scripts were ghostwritten by The West Wing's
Aaron Sorkin (who was quick to pillory the gossips online). But the estrogen levels are just a
cheap excuse to dismiss the show—it's Gilmore girls' challenging narratives and tragic tenderness
that scare the hell out of he-men.

Sherman-Palladino's show—ostensibly about the knotty friendship between never-married mom
Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her teenage daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel)—is a grandly
scaled series of incongruities. An hour-long drama funnier than any sitcom, the series (the second
season of which arrives on DVD this week) ambitiously melds novelistic texture with lowbrow
buddy comedy, screwball verbosity with class criticism and rustic nostalgia with pop-culture satire.
Overblown melodrama is dispensed with in favor of poignant gestures: Episodes often climax with
a wistful glance in an Edward Hopper-esque coffeeshop, rather than the vacuous bedhopping
typical of prime-time soaps.

If you don't follow Graham and Bledel's work on the show, you're missing two of the most
remarkably intricate performances on TV. A case can be made for the pixieish Graham being her
generation's Katharine Hepburn (but funnier, more searing and with no superiority complex),
while Bledel, a wounded china doll, embraces Rory's awkwardness and artfully blends humor
with melancholy. Both Lorelai and Rory wield their razor-sharp wit to hide deep insecurities;
they're allowed to be both maidens and vixens, often simultaneously.

The series takes place in a gently stylized world where personal victories are often made less
sweet by an accompanying sense of alienation. The superb season-one episode "Rory's Birthday
Parties" undercuts jubilation with a wrenching depiction of the sorrow that lurks beneath parents'
joy in watching their children age, as Lorelai and her mother (Kelly Bishop) have a spat after
planning separate birthday celebrations for Rory. Gilmore girls is not the only show to redefine
family, but it is one of very few to examine generational rifts in such painfully fragile detail.
Juxtaposing Lorelai's mangled relationships with her upper-class parents (Edward Herrmann and
Bishop, skillfully embodying fallen WASP royalty)—whom she forsook at 16 when she became
pregnant—and her sturdier, but still precarious, bonds with Rory, Sherman-Palladino suggests
that every parent, no matter how hip or progressive, eventually descends into obsolescence.

A recent episode cemented years of subtext by ending with a quietly devastating image of Lorelai
watching Rory stagger home with a group of her Yale classmates, alarmingly implying that Rory
might be headed toward the wealthy insulation that Lorelai spent half her life fleeing. The shot
spoke more profoundly than entire coming-of-age novels on the distance that can accrue between
like-minded mothers and daughters, even while suggesting (as did last season's achingly romantic
finale) that Rory may be doomed to repeat some of Lorelai's mistakes.

Since Gilmore girls is renowned for its dense, musical dialogue, shots like these often go
unheralded. But Sherman-Palladino doesn't just rejoice in the possibilities of language—she seems
intoxicated by the vast potential of her medium. In addition to writing the lion's share of the show's
97-and-counting episodes, she has also directed many of the best. Season two's exquisite opener,
"Sadie, Sadie...", begins with a serpentine tracking shot (a show staple) that wouldn't be out of
place in a Stanley Kubrick film; later, elaborate deep-focus photography is used as Rory weaves in
and out of the frame while Lorelai carries on a conversation with her. Sherman-Palladino has little
use for standard TV rhythms—she doles out close-ups sparingly and is willing to hold unbroken
master shots to striking effect, letting scenes start as burlesque and escalate until they collapse in an
explosion worthy of great theater. Gilmore girls is the rare show capable of shifting from
exhilarating hilarity to tainted euphoria before you even realize it. This isn't manic depression—it's a
wildly generous worldview that can move one to tears.

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