Friday, May 04, 2007

Bye Gilmore Girls. I'll miss you.


You know when you host a party and everyone has a great time and then suddenly it’s four a.m. and you want to start cleaning up but this awesome friend of yours who you really do love just keeps talking and talking and not going home*? Yeah, that’s how I feel about Gilmore Girls right now. I’m sorry it’s been cancelled and I will miss them, but I’ll be glad when they go home and leave me to my dishes. Which got me thinking – what will I miss most about the show?

Pop culture references that always made me feel smart. Keeping up with a show that referenced everything from a Swedish Pippi Longstocking to Heathers to 1950s crooners was like the culture nerd’s equivalent of winning Jeopardy. If you could catch 90 percent of the references flying by, you felt pretty good about yourself. Of course, then you spent the rest of the night online trying to decipher the other 10 percent. Or at least some people did. I sure never did. Nope. Never.

The awesomeness of Lorelai’s clothes. For years, I have been torn between two secret fantasies: going on a What Not to Wear shopping spree with Stacy and Clinton and going on a Stars Hollow shopping spree with Lorelai Gilmore. Given that the What Not to Wear spree means getting humiliated in front of millions of TV viewers and the Stars Hollow spree means drinking coffee with Lorelai and being her best fictional friend forever, I would opt for the latter.

The townies. There is no troubadour in my town and Sally Struthers is not my neighbor and that makes me very sad. Since the day I started watching Gilmore Girls, I’ve been in love with Stars Hollow and its residents. I want a town square with a gazebo and I want to gossip with Miss Patty and help Michel groom the chows and buy antiques from Mama Kim and watch Luke fight with Taylor. Is that too much to ask? In suburban Michigan, sadly, the answer is yes. Damn you, Midwest!!

Kirk’s naked chest. I will not miss the possibility of ever seeing Kirk’s naked chest again. It is an image etched in terrible ferocity directly onto my brain stem and one from which I fear I will never, ever be free. The only upside is that if I ever meet Sean Gunn’s brother James (director of SLiTHER), we’ll have something to talk about.

Structure sentence backwards. Not since the last Joss Whedon show went off the air have so many sentences been contorted in so many entertaining ways. Yoda probably sits at home on Tuesday nights, scratching his head, going, “What fuck the?” I’ll miss any show that uses language as wonderfully as this one did.

* A note to all my friends: this is not you.

9 comments:

Steve B said...

Oh, so that is why the dishes aren't done.

Tis a shame. Good thing we have all those DVD's. By the way, since you made reference to one of my man crush's, James Gunn, it would be SLiTHER, not Slither. K? Good.

Anonymous said...

* A note to all my friends: this is not you.

Yeah, right!

Liz said...

Dear Anonymous -- you're forcing me to reveal that in those situations, I'm the friend who doesn't go home. Yes, I'm the "last to leave" and I never, ever help with the dishes. :-)

Liz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

It's Lorelai, actually

Liz said...

D'oh. Sorry about that. All these years, I've been thinking Pogues spelling and not Sherman-Palladino spelling. Thanks for letting me know.

Shan said...

I'm a little torn on this one. I think the first season of the show was about as perfect of a season as can be. And I can't believe I liked it, being that I'm a cult show junkie who really has no need for kids on my TV. But damn, if the razor sharp writing, pop culture bon mots and Lauren Graham's fantastic acting didn't suck me in. (Plus, who wouldn't want to live in Stars Hollow?) The quality had been sliding gingerly since s3, but took a huge nosedive when Lorelai slept with that asshat Christopher, and basically left poor David Rosenthal no way to write his way out of it. So while I'll miss the show, there's a part of me that's okay with it being put out to pasture before it got really bad.

And yes, that scene with Kirk was retina scarring. However, I'll forgive him a little since A. he was in Angel twice in bit parts, B. his brother, and C. his brother's wife.

Anonymous said...

So, your whole blog describes me. I am huge Gilmore fan also and feel the same way about the show ending. How I'll miss those references to a Journey song or a girl by a watering hole with Annie Sullivan. Plus, I thought this Lorelai was spelt Lorelei, but life goes on. I'm still naming my child Lorelei though!

Liz said...

Hi Anonymous -- welcome to the blog, and glad you like it! All these years I thought it was Lorelei, too, but the CW says its Lorelai. I like the "ei" version better though too and I'm sure your future child will as well. :-)