Gilmoored
Television - I finally caught up with “The Gilmore Girls” in the middle of last season when the show’s creator Amy Sherman-Palladino was losing steam. Sherman-Palladino, with her husband Daniel Palladino, was the creative engine behind the giddily gassy “Girls” Both Palladinos departed after the sixth season in one of those studio dust-ups where no one knows the whole story but it probably has everything to do with money.
What snagged me into “Gilmore” was the unflagging spirit of show. Fatigued by police procedurals, staged reality, and anything reeking of “O.C.,” I admire the CW comedy/drama because it’s one of those old-fashioned television shows driven by scripts and characters. However, I can’t help but feel I’ve stumbled into to the party too late. Now, everybody seems to be losing juice.
The centerpiece of “Girls” has always been the relationship between a mother and daughter. Now, it’s harder than ever to tell who is who. Daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) is about to graduate from Yale while mother Lorelai (Lauren Graham) seems stuck in small-town America with an occasional guest-star husband whom the scriptwriters will have to get rid of because it would be too boring otherwise.
Questions about Lorelai involve her prickly relationship with her mother, her super stupid relationship with her best friend and her uncanny ability to be so self-consciously cute you want to pull the plug on her. She can really be annoying.
While Lorelai fiddles with fidelity, her used-to-be-true-love Luke (Scott Patterson) has not taken off the backward baseball cap he wore in the first season. Luke has his own little “Gilmore” girl living with him – his quicksilver smart daughter April (Vanessa Marano). The kid has a gift for rat-a-tat dialogue delivery and can talk circles around doltish Luke. And I must believe that actor Patterson is the luckiest man on earth to have gotten this gig for so many years and expended so little effort. He’s really a one-note.
Still, even in these times of lassitude, the show does not seem to be in a creativity crisis. With all its flaws, “The Gilmore Girls” remains a charming refuge for viewers who just want to relax cute.
monica@onlineoffbeat.com
