lisa levy gets intimate with the gilmore girls
April 2003

I suppose it's time to write about those gilmore girls (gilmore is still on tuesday at 8, not just on sunday anymore). I don't mean to sound unenthusiastic. I like the show a lot. but the dramedy—and never has a show deserved the label more—is so steeped in the tenets of brunette girl power and brainy indie-rock fandom, and hopelessly devoted to the love of all that's kitsch and japanese (if that's not redundant), recycled and hip. there is just something about gilmore meets chickfactor that feels overdetermined.

now in its third season and just renewed for a fourth, the gilmore girls features lorelai gilmore, who got pregnant at 16 and left her wealthy, disapproving parents to make a new life with her baby. she settles in one of those impossibly amusing small towns that dot the television roadmap, stars hollow, connecticut, not too far from her hometown of hartford. the baby grows into a near-perfect teenage daughter, rory, short for lorelai, which raises the flag of parental narcissism to be discussed post-haste. lorelai, who worked her way up from maid to manager at the stars hollow inn, and rory live more or less happily ever after until rory decides she wants to go to chilton, a fancy private school in hartford, and lorelai asks her still-estranged parents for financial help. they grant it, on the faustian condition that the family all eats dinner together every friday. this way rory can get to know her grandparents, and sacrifice precious teenage socialization time in gratitude for their largesse.

the show's creator and primary writer, amy sherman-palladino, has a reputation for being a bit of a control freak, a label which should be approached with skepticism. like bitch or hysteric, it's often misogyny gone undetected. no one bats an eye because aaron sorkin or david e. kelley, for example, have trouble giving up the creative reins to their shows. moreover, I respect what sherman-palladino has done with gilmore in creating women who are just fine without men and nevertheless remain vulnerable and appealing. this is not an easy thing to accomplish on television, as anyone who has ever seen an episode of kelley's ally mcbeal can certainly attest.

gilmore is lucky in leads. as lorelai and rory, lauren graham and alexis bledel are pretty ladies with an enviable mother-daughter-as-best-friends rapport. graham is engaging, loopy and fast-talking, though she literally and figuratively lacks the heft of a rosalind russell or a classic screwball actress.* the luminous bledel is one of those rare tv teenage girls who seems pre-sexual. she's an anti-nymphet—the opposite of slinky michelle williams on dawson's or even alyssa milano circa who's the boss? they could do 10 minutes of bledel slowly licking a lollipop, and it would just make you want candy.

there is a fairy tale aspect of gilmore that's slightly creepy, as most fairy tales are when boiled down to their essential ingredients: sleeping beauties, poisoned apples, talking mirrors, princes turned into beasts, etc. watching it I sometimes think about the jungian principle of dream-work that postulates you are everything in your dream, so all of the people, couches, plants, monsters, and airplanes are aspects of your consciousness. as the product of a single writer, gilmore is sherman-palladino splitting herself primarily in two—as lorelai/rory—but also cracking up into a number of supporting characters, all of whom talk in the same voice. not that I don't like the voice: it's witty, extremely pop culture savvy, occasionally intellectual, and insightful about the world of the show and the people in it. the gilmore girls read heady books—gasp!—as well as watching billy jack and episodes of donna reed while eating dinner. I do love people on tv who watch tv; it makes the characters that much easier to identify with. but this lack of vocal differentiation, especially in the lorelai-rory dialogue, means gilmore can be monotonous and feel unreal at times. the show's teenagers in particular cite things and a have sensibility that is frankly unbelievable: would a 16-year-old really have seen midnight express, let alone use it to make a crack about smuggling iggy and elvis costello bootlegs out of asia?

since rory is too knowing, and lorelai too immature, the mother-daughter dyad at the crux of the show is a narcissistic relationship. gilmore is playing on the universal fantasy of seeing yourself reflected, if slightly distorted, in a parent or a child. "to figure out what happened, you'd have to dig up freud himself and have him work on me full time," lorelai boasts after she breaks an engagement. despite her bravado, it's not all that complicated. gilmore is alice miller's the drama of the gifted child resized for the small screen. if your psych 101 class skipped miller, her very popular theory says that most children end up performing for parental expectations rather than acting on their own "gifts." children hide their needs in order to meet those of the parent, or they rebel by over- or underachieving because the pressure to be good is too much to bear. (this is, as he oddly announced throughout his presidential campaign, one of al gore's favorite books.) so gilmore translates miller into the realm of tv fairy tales. what teenager hasn't wished for a supportive, permissive, and really fun mom: like herself, but an adult? and what parent hasn't wished for a daughter like rory: beautiful, a straight-a student, and an all-around nice person? rory and lorelai are essentially the same person, only rory has the good fortune to have lorelai as a mother. and she hasn't fucked up her life—yet.

what saves gilmore from being too much psychodrama are the supporting characters. rory's best friend lane, a drummer who starts her own band and stashes her belle and sebastian cds under the floorboards of her bedroom, and her super-strict korean immigrant mother provide a tart contrast to the lorelai-rory lovefest. rory's two boyfriends, sweet dumb jock dean (jared padalecki, rumored to be starring in a new version of macgyver) and bad boy jess (milo ventigmilia, rumored to be getting his own spinoff next season), have presented plausible points of a teen love triangle. even if bledel's ethereal quality chills their makeout scenes a bit ventigmilia is just hot enough to keep it interesting, if not smoldering. he's this generation's jordan catalano, sans floppy hair. scott cohen, always a mensch, was a great foil for graham during a brief, intense romance that highlighted lorelai's extremely laissez-faire parenting style. lorelai's will they or won't they?, luke, the owner of the diner where the very skinny lorelai and rory eat pancakes and cheeseburgers (yeah, right), is a comic crank; her other will they or won't they?, rory's father, christopher, is the archetypal one-that-got-away and keeps coming back for more. the episode where they were forced to go to chris's girlfriend's baby shower (featuring madchen amick of twin peaks) was a classic, like no exit with a breast pump, tiny dresses and deviled eggs.

the rest of the stars hollow denizens, including sally struthers and grant lee buffalo (as the town busker), are funny and well used, and lorelai's coworkers at the stars hollow inn, daffy chef sookie and snobbish michel, are a trip. yet the consistent gilmore scene stealers are the perfectly passive-aggressive kelly bishop (from dirty dancing!) and stodgy edward herrmann (who should be really busy now that richard crenna is dead and richard masur is out of the game) as emily and richard, lorelai's parents. watching lorelai negotiate her own parental drama while trying to protect rory from her parents's incursions flavors the show with a richness rare on network, let alone netlet, television. it disrupts the rhythm of home and workplace that most shows (and lives) revolve around, and gives the gilmore's quips and jabs an additional dimension. it's a testament to gilmore that I cannot think of another current show with such a vested interest in exploring intergenerational dynamics, especially among women, save the sopranos with its glorious livia-carmela-meadow triptych.

I had an argument the other day about the most annoying, overused words in journalism, and the one that immediately sprang to mind was "quirky." I've successfully avoided describing gilmore that way thus far, and have also eschewed the word most disliked by my editor, "unique," which could have been easily inserted into this column. considering these words and what I do and don't like about gilmore, this means though gilmore has all of the qualities of something irritating, it manages to transcend and become, at moments, really great. which is also, in a sense, the drama of the gifted child: to negotiate the world on her own terms, without losing a sense of, well, being quirky and unique. I told you this was overdetermined.

• I will never, ever compare anyone to lucille ball in this space, for two reasons. first, I find the label meaningless, as it's applied to every damned tv actress from tei leoni to debra messing to, ugh, jenna elfman. second, because I cannot abide I love lucy. it does not make me laugh. it makes me anxious.