Spotlights on Fandom: Gilmore Girls

[auroryborealis.livejournal.com]

So, what's this show about?

Well, once upon a time, Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel Palladino (who you might know as a writer on Family Guy) decided to join forces to create a family-oriented show about a mother and daughter who live in small New England town, drink lots of coffee, and talk really fast. Okay, that might not have been their initial intent, but what they ended up with was Gilmore Girls, which aired for seven wonderful seasons (okay, six great seasons and one that we kind of don't like to talk about) on the WB and the CW.

The plot of the show is fairly simple. At the prime age of sixteen, Lorelai Gilmore got pregnant and gave birth to her daughter, Rory, much to the horror and disappointment of her wealthy socialite parents. After some handwavey months of living at home, Lorelai ran away to the shiny small town of Stars Hollow, CT, about thirty minutes outside Hartford, where her parents live. (No, she didn't go very far. Running away with a baby is hard!) She got a job as a maid at the Independence Inn, and began raising Rory with the help of the folks in town.

The show begins when Lorelai is 32 and Rory is 16. (Coincidence? Not really!) Lorelai is now the manager of the Independence Inn, and Rory, with her super-smarts, has just gotten accepted to the prestigious Chilton Academy, a prep school that will help her to achieve her goal of getting into Harvard. Unfortuntately, managing an inn doesn't exactly leave one with a ton of expendable income, and with no way to pay the Chilton tuition, Lorelai has no choice but to turn to her estranged (and still wealthy) parents for financial help.

The elder Gilmores agree to help for Rory's sake, but in exchange, Lorelai and Rory have to come for dinner at their house every Friday night. This tradition stayed on through every season (even when the writers didn't *cough*), and set up the basic framework for the show.

So, it's a chick show?

Not entirely! It's a show about women, but there are guys too! Plenty of guys, many of whom even have their own plots! There are a ton of subplots in Gilmore Girls, some of which don't even have to do with Lorelai and Rory, because overall, it was a character-driven show more than anything else. So character-driven, in fact, that we have to have a list!

Lorelai Victoria Gilmore (Lauren Graham)	Lorelai is a single mom whose daughter is her best friend, who has a coffee addiction that includes a caffeine intake that would kill an elephant, a sense of whimsy that rivals Glinda the Good Witch's, and who can roll pop culture references off the tongue faster than you can say 'Molly Ringwald.' Lorelai's extremely smart, and a huge smartass. She has her flaws, too - she's notorious for her avoidance techniques, whether the subject is her mom or her impending marriage, and she'll often sabotage her own happiness out of frustration.
Lorelai Leigh "Rory" Gilmore (Alexis Bledel)	So on that fateful night in October of '84, Lorelai was on some freakin' AMAZING drugs, and so decided to name her daughter after herself. It helps that "Lorelai" is a family name, too. How they got "Rory" out of it, I don't really know, nor will we ever. Rory's like a slightly subdued version of her mother. She's much less raunchy, slightly more stable, and about eighteen times more shy. Her defining characteristic is her intelligence, which drives everything she does. Throughout the first few seasons, there were barely any episodes that did not feature Rory reading or discussing a book. As she got to college, Rory opened up more and became slightly more social and even rebellious. A lot of this can be blamed on Logan Huntzberger and my girl discovering that Hormones Are Neat, but I won't spoil. Suffice it to say that there's a reason why Season 5 will send any good Gilmore fan straight into a frothy rage of WTF. And we like to pretend Season 6 didn't exist, mostly.
Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop)	The reigning matriarch of the Gilmore family, Emily is the reason that Lorelai dislikes those Friday night dinners. Emily's a good old-fashioned blue-blooded WASP, and wanted every possibility of that world to be available for her daughter. Unfortunately, that didn't work out so much, what with the whole pregnant thing. Emily is usually at least somewhat supportive - she still wants the best for Lorelai, however skewed her perception might be - in her own way, but Lorelai's refusal to fit into her cookie cutter world combined with a pair of very snarky and scary tempers makes for an extremely volatile and tenuous relationship.
Richard Gilmore (Edward Herrmann)	Lorelai's father and Emily's husband, Richard is a bit softer around the edges than his wife. He' every bit the staunch, quiet man with the stiff upper lip, but he's got a wicked sense of humor when he wants to show it. He's very close with Rory and for the most part, Lorelai gets along much better with him than her mother.
Luke Danes (Scott Patterson)	Luke Danes owns the diner in Stars Hollow (creatively named "Luke's"), where Rory and Lorelai have frequented since well before the start of the show. He's a curmudgeon before his time, and never without his backwards baseball cap and flannel shirt. In the pilot, he's introduced as one of Lorelai's best friends, and as the series progresses, he proves to be a sort of surrogate father to Rory as well. And yes, Luke/Lorelai OTP omg.
Paris Geller (Liza Weil)	Paris meets Rory at Chilton, and they're instant rivals due to Paris having an insecure streak the size of Wisconsin, and Rory not being half bad at this whole academia thing. They form an uneasy friendship by season 2, and end up as roommates in college. Paris is snarky, harsh, and largely unforgiving, but she's got a very soft side that she rarely lets anyone see. She's almost entirely autonomous - her parents are a power couple and she was raised by her Portuguese nanny - and I suppose the best way to describe her is to imagine a very focused, very driven, very intelligent chihuahua on speed who will bite you if you cross her but will need a cuddle if she stubs her wee paw.
Lane Kim (Keiko Agena)	Lane is Rory's BFF, omg. She comes from a very, very conservative background (her mother is Seventh Day Adventist and forbade things like french fries and television and boys who are not Korean) but has always had a passion for music. Lane plays the drums, and when she graduated high school, she moved out of her mother's house-slash-antique store and moved in with, yep, you guessed it - her band. And then LET US NOT TALK ABOUT THE LATER SEASONS.
Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy)	Lorelai's BFF, omg. She's the chef at the inn where Lorelai works, and she is cheery and the eternal optimist and she does adorable things like worry about Lorelai getting into scrapes. (And by "getting into scrapes" I mean things like "canceling her wedding at the last second for no good reason.") She has a bit of a temper, though, and she's sort of like that girl who hangs out with the rebel and thinks that everything that might get them in trouble is SO COOL and SO SNEAKY and OMG THEY MIGHT GET CAUGHT OMG.
Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry)	So, Logan was Rory's last boyfriend before the show ended. They were together from Season 5 (REMEMBER WHAT I SAID ABOUT S5?) until he proposed and she said no in season 7. Logan is charming, he's suave, he's a tamed ladies' man. He's reckless and quite immature, and oh, by the way, his parents are cah-raaaaazy rich. His daddy's a newspaper magnate who scored Rory a killer internship and then blah blah IhateS5andwon'tspoilyoucakes. Logan does admittedly grow up over time, but for the most part he spent the series as the oft-intoxicated spoiled rich kid -- though, for what it's worth, he does hate his family. Just evidently not their funds.
Jess Mariano (Milo Ventimiglia)	Jess is Luke's nephew, sent to Stars Hollow to Grow Up and Fly Right or something under his uncle's watch. He...didn't, for the most part, though he did make a few cameos later on as a more adult Jess (who I LOVE.) Mostly he kind of just screwed around with Rory's head, through the combined faults of being a seventeen year-old kid who doesn't like authority but likes Rory a lot, and Rory being kind of a moron about boys. He had a thing for her while she was dating someone else, they broke up, he pressured her for things she wasn't ready for and then ran off to California - you know how it goes. Despite the large split among fans about whether Jess is awesome or crappy, he's definitely one of the most dynamic and interesting characters on the show.
Dean Forrester (Jared Padalecki)	Dean was Rory's first boyfriend, and was basically That Guy Who's Too Nice. He's sweet and thoughtful and an all-around nice boy, which is why things didn't work out with them. Rory/Dean was sweet while it lasted, though. He did come back in late Season 4 and through Season 5, though. But then you already know that it probably wasn't a good return. I mean, Season 5. Sigh.
Christopher Hayden (David Sutcliffe)	It's Rory's daddy! Yay! Lookit him go before he disappears! Christopher was all for buying into what their parents wanted and marrying Lorelai at sixteen. She, obviously, rebelled. He's spottily appeared in Rory's life ever since, though he does play a very, very significant role in the later seasons. (Much to the chagrin of many fans.) He's unreliable and whiny, though sweet and well-meaning, and has a tendency to never follow through on anything.

And where can I find it?

Well, Gilmore Girls ended after seven seasons, unfortunately, but it's all available on DVD!

And let us not forget about the magic of YouTube.

...so, now that this is two days late, um....any questions? :D

(Cowritten with the fab noboynextdoor)

Comments

[neurotic-witch.livejournal.com]

Can you really make S6 and the majority of S7 disappear?

*gives you hopeful puppy dog eyes*

[auroryborealis.livejournal.com]

I know not these seasons 6 and 7 of which you speak omg. *covers ears*

[flashesforinfo.livejournal.com]

I... liked BITS of S5. Wee isolated bits.

Mostly because the flag waving Luke/Lorelai 'shipper in me was mighty gleeful. The rest of it, and the following two seasons? DID NOT HAPPEN in my head, lalala.

[weefeetbigboots.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, do not get me started on the random Lorelai ultimatum at the end of S6 and the Lorelai/Christopher and gjkdbgkjdbgkjfngkfgf.

And all the stuff that happened to Rory, too, omg.

[flashesforinfo.livejournal.com]

I never thought it would come to it because God I loved that show, but there were bits later on that I just Could Not Watch because they made me want to headdesk repeatedly. Or cringe. Or both.

*clings determinedly to S1-4*

[sith_happened]

*cheerfully sets Logan on fire*

[joan-notjane.livejournal.com]

I still haven't watched anything past like, episode three, of Season 7 OMG.

[weetuskenraider]

I've only watched the first two seasons, I think. Obviously I need to catch up to a certain point, and then STOP LIKE WHOA.

[grasshopper-mol.livejournal.com]

Think of S5 of Gilmore Girls like S6 of Buffy, if you need another point of reference for when to stop watching. Although there was no musical episode, which sucks now that I think about it.

[laidanegg.livejournal.com]

FOR THE RECORD:

Season 5 is hate.

Season 6 got me back into the show despite it not being all that good.

Season 7 is completely worth it for the finale. (Also, I generally like the non-Lorelai parts of the season well enough.) TAKE THAT, LOGAN! BAM!

ALSO: Jess = crappy.

[noboynextdoor.livejournal.com]

HE GETS BETTER OMG.

[laidanegg.livejournal.com]

Only while he was on screen during his last couple appearances. I bet there were deleted scenes where he kicked puppies and made other sweet girls cry.