Even though the show has declined in recent months, I was nonetheless saddened to hear that the Gilmore Girls was coming to an end. In just one week, the delightful characters of Stars Hollow will go to the happily ever after of all fake TV people. Stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel will stretch their careers and broaden their horizons. And we viewers will be left with a warm fuzzy in our hearts, remembering the good old days.
Curiously enough, what started out as a show about woman and girl power quickly devolved into a show about girl gets boy. Yet again. Why does it almost always boil down to that? Or has since the good old days of Murphy Brown, at which point a woman was allowed to be about more than just “what guy will she choose?”
Ratings surge when love comes to town. We know that shows without a tangled web of love don’t survive very long, especially since there doesn’t seem like there’s anything else for women to do on TV but find their soul mate. For instance, what was once a commentary on the state of television and America boiled itself down to a will he, won’t he, will she, won’t she, on Studio 60.
In the beginning of the Gilmore Girls the show was about a single mother and her daughter trying to make life work. The mother wasn’t really dating because she was all about the kid. The kid wasn’t really dating because she was all about her education. But then, alas, love came to town. After that, the show became Lorelai and Luke, Rory and a string of young lads, before finally settling on Logan. Rory’s best friend Lane also started out as the spunky girl rocker. Then she got married right out of high school and is now raising twins.
Even Sookie got herself a man and a gaggle of kids. Even the difficult, ambitious Paris ended up having her story be more about the boy than her own life. It didn’t really matter, though, because the show was so entertaining it didn’t matter what the gals were doing as long as they were doing something.
All of that shifted greatly when the show’s beating heart, writers Amy Sherman Palladino and husband Dan Palladino, left the show because of contract disputes, or so the official story went. The new writers never quite brought the show back to its former, gloriously frenetic state. The clock ticked down from there, and its ultimate demise was only a matter of time.
Lorelai and Luke will end up happily ever after, probably married, with the prospect of more kids on the way. Rory may end up with Logan. But it’s equally possible she will fly solo by the end. Who are we kidding? They’ll be married, which gives old-time viewers like me who were there from the beginning a sense of contentment that at least Rory won’t be in the poor house. Does Logan really have “faithful husband” written all over him? I don’t think so. Something tells me Rory would be better off waiting a few years for marriage. Not only that, Rory herself would make a great spin-off series. A “girl in the big city” kind of thing.
Meanwhile, Lane will probably have another set of twins and live out her days in Stars Hollow. But what of Kirk? They’ll have to find him his happily ever after. With very little in the way of loose ends to tie up, the Gilmore Girls can finally be put to bed.
As for the Palladinos, they’ve got a new show set to hit TV screens. The Return of Jezebel James, starring Parker Posey, is in pre-production.
