Gilmore Girls Update

So, after last week, I'd resolved to give up on Gilmore Girls.

Katie asked why. "Because Lorelai is an awful person and I don't want to be around her anymore." (I believe in speaking clearly with my kids).

Then about forty minutes into the show, while toiling away at my desk a couple of rooms away, I heard Rory chewing Lorelai out for being self-indulgent and a big chicken. I walked in during the commercial, and asked, "Did I just hear Rory telling Lorelai the kinds of things I was shouting at the TV all last year?" "Yes", Katie replied, and then she asked, "Now will you stay?" So I did.

In the final few minutes I find out more about Lane's honeymoon than I wanted to know and also find out that she's pregnant. Lane as a mother and her mother as a grandmother and Zach as a Dad and the guys in the band as uncles could be a really great development, but since the series works more or less in real time, the baby won't come until at least the end of this season, so I'll have to temper my hopes.

Meanwhile, the episode ends with Luke and Lorelai having a chance meeting at the grocery store. Lorelai accuses Luke of having avoided the store, and Luke responds kindly and even graciously. Lorelai clearly wants out of there because, you know, having to talk to the man she nearly married and with whom she has a long history is a difficult thing and rule one of Living in Lorelai Land is never, never, never having to really face difficult things, at least head on, and at the very least, by herself. Lorelai always runs from trouble the first time and only comes back to it when trouble persists and even then only when she has assembled some sort of emotional posse shield her from the worst bits. The writers of the show may find this charming, but I find Lorelai's behavior and patterns morally suspect. It made sense for Lorelai to use the people of Stars Hollow when she first arrived as a teen with a baby, but at some point she needed to stop and grow up. Instead, like all true narcissists, she sees the people in her life as merely extensions of herself.

And so Luke awkwardly tries to suggest that it's OK that they broke up, somewhat to get through the moment but also, I think, trying to graciously make sense of the way that Lorelai showed him the door. All this gives Lorelai the pouts, and she responds by gesturing with her ice cream and telling Luke, "Well, my hand is cold" and then turning to leave.

I think we were supposed to feel for Lorelai at this moment, because it was pretty hard and our darling girl - and that's what she still is, a girl, not a woman - just. feels. so. deeply. But not me. I sat through all of last season because I thought the writers were playing a deeper game and were finally showing the dysfunctional side of Gilmore-ism. I thought we were seeing that for moment last night when they followed up the grocery store scene with a long shot of Lorelai, alone, staring into space. I was thinking, "That's right, Lorelai. Keep using people the way you do and you're going to end up just like this - alone, staring into space". But then Rory came home, forgot or ignored what she had said earlier, and cuddled and consoled her Mom, and all was well once again in Lorelai land.

But not with me.

With Project Runway's season coming to an end soon, we're going to have to find another gather-all-four-of-us family show, and I'm not sure what that will be.


Update: For those of you using RSS readers, sorry for the triplicate posts - Blogger was publishing when it was telling me that it wasn't .