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Gilmore Girls: Merry Fisticuffs
(S07E10) For the last few weeks, I've been wondering if David Rosenthal and company have been turning Lorelai Gilmore into a more childish, petulant character than she had been in recent years, or if she's always been this childish and petulant, but her act has started to wear thin. After this episode, I've determined it's a little bit of each, leaning towards the "written that way" side. There really seems to be no reason that Lor should be so mean-spirited nowadays, especially towards her parents. She's pushing 40. She owns a successful business. And she's finally married to her high school sweetheart, who just happens to be loaded. So why does she still act like a baby?In short: it's an easy way to for the writers to make Christopher look like a putz.
This was one of the first times in the history of the show that I was on Emily's side. I mean, yes, the wedding party planning was over the top and reflected more of her high-society tastes than Lor's "Pizza for dinner and the Pixies on the CD player" tastes. And having Gil Chesterton (Edward Hibbert's character on Frasier) there to flouncily plan it would annoy the most patient daughters. But, for crissakes, Emily was just trying to do something nice to celebrate her daughter's marriage! Why was Lor fighting things every step of the way, dismissing everything with a wise-ass remark? I thought she had reached a level of maturity with her parents where she held her snarkiness in check at least some of the time.
The only reason I can think of for having her act this way is this is how Rosenthal wants to show Lor's complete discomfort over this marriage. But she's really not letting Chris in, is she? She wants to stay in Stars Hollow, even though Chris isn't accepted there. She doesn't quite want a baby, even though Chris tries to push the idea on her after she sees him coo at Luke's neice Doula. She doesn't want to do wedding vows, even though Chris just wants something resembling a decent wedding. So Chris starts looking like a pushy jerk -- "you were planning that big wedding with that diner guy" -- but all he's trying to do is make it a life of "we" instead of "you and me." Thankfully, Emily had the good sense to give Lor that verbal warning at the end of the episode, telling her that marriage is about as serious a thing as a person can do in life, and that she needs to compromise, even if that doesn't make her happy. Someone had to.
Of course, it did seem that in that brief scene where Luke and Lor were together that they had tons more chemistry than Lor and Chris have had all season. Again, that might be a sign of heavy-handed writing; Lor and Chris used to have chemistry coming out the wazoo. Anyway, the fight between Chris and Luke was fun but anticlimatic; they beat each other senseless, throwing each other into the town's holiday display, then they walked away. Okayyyy... will anything come of this at all? Because, for now, this seems like it was a scene out of a bad Burt Reynolds movie and not something you'd see on Gilmore Girls.
This entire episode, written by Rosenthal himself, had a sleepy pace to it, especially compared to last week's episode. Lots of silent space and people waiting for other people to speak. It was way too slow for an episode that packed in so much. For example, Luke's dispute with Anna over custody of April needed more details. Why waste time on Kirk's bigfooting the middle school's giftwrap sales if it's going to take away from such a meaty story? Kirk seems to be the go-to guy for "quirky town charm" in a lot of episodes this year, but in those caes, you almost never see any other townies, and that's just lazy writing. Last week's episode was so good because the whole town was involved. Kirk's not the whole town. Pretty simple.
Chris and Luke were not the only jealous ones this week. Logan's still got a little bit of the spiteful guy in him, sandbagging the whole "Rory knows Marty" thing. Of course, if he didn't tell Lucy, Lord knows if Rory or Marty would have ever said anything. That story that Lucy told about Marty stalking her performances made ol Mar sound downright creepy, didn't it? Rory may have made the right decision to give him the boot after all. But why the disrespect from Logan? I thought he was past all that crap. Also, I can't believe how angry Lucy -- and Olivia, too, the sheep -- was at Rory. So they lied a little. It's not like they were dating back in freshman year. It seemed like an outsized response, given the revelation. Eh, no matter... Lucy was pretty damned annoying, anyway.
One more thing: two phone calls? That's all we get with Lor and Rory? It's almost like the two of them have been apart more this year than they were last year, and they weren't talking to each other for the first half of last year. That's not helping matters any.
The inconsistency of this season has been frustrating. There was a reason why Team Palladino rewrote all the episodes, a la Aaron Sorkin, no matter who was the credited writer: they wanted the "voice" of the show to remain consistent. As we can tell, without Amy and Daniel there, that consistency has disappeared. I get the feeling this is what we're going to see for the rest of the season.
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