Gilmore Girls

Lord knows I may tread on more toes than all my religious posts put together with this one. Just so you know, my opinions are mine. They apply to me. They do not necessarily apply to you. My perceptions come from a background of ignorance.

I was encouraged to watch "Gilmore Girls" tonight. Apparently, this dearth marks a great gaping hole in my existence, which must be remedied tout de suite. This evening the WB was showing back to back episodes. I settled in. Here are my impressions and observations.

First of all, the series is available in HD. That helps to put it on the right foot right off. Since our human perception of the world is in a rectangular shape, I think it only makes sense to have our TV that way, too. It also makes a nice philosophical debate about the horizontal rectangle of the screen versus the vertical rectangles of the people. Deep stuff.

Second: Phillip Glass. Gotta love him. Anywhere his music makes an appearance, especially for comedy's sake, I approve. He's a good friend of one of the composition faculty at DePaul, and I met him briefly.

Third: No doubt I was missing the point, but there was a trombone in the scene at the U.S.O-themed dinner. I think it was a King 2b. I think there was some dialogue at the same time.

Fourth: I couldn't tell if the matre'd was a good actor doing a bad French accent on purpose, or if he was just supposed to be a French emigre that ended up the middle of Connecticut, or wherever in New England this is set. If you study at the "Inspector Clousou" school, stuff like this happens.

Clousou: Duz your dog bite?
Man: Non.
Dog: Le GRRRRRR!
Clousou: I thought you said your dog duz not bite!
Man: Zat iz not my dog.

Fifth: I realize the women are the point of the show. That much is obvious from the characterizations, the plot development, and the general direction. But there's something odd about the show or me when the only character I can identify with is the grandfather. I kept hoping the grandfather would show up in scenes so I could identify with how my surrogate acted. It doesn't hurt that I enjoy Edward Hermann as an intelligent actor. His character does give off a strong "Mr. Bennett" vibe.

Sixth: A Birkin Bag. I've only heard of these things in two places: both were TV shows where it acts like catnip to women. I bet this falls in the same category of stuff with Jimmy Choo shoes. Stuff that people like and is very expensive, and even more expensive because people like it. I'm sure to a person like me, it would just be a purse. Just as likely to hold dirty, wadded up kleenex and a dozen pens as something useful. If someone talks to me about Choo shoos, I just want to warn you: you're going to get an Abbot and Costello routine.

Seventh: The commercials are a good gauge of who the advertisers think is watching a particular show. Since I don't have TIVO, I watched them all. And almost without exception, I have no idea what brands they are for. I'm obviously not in the target group, though.

-Cream for Opening Pores. Sold with cream for closing them back up afterwards.
-Lots of different kinds of shampoos, infused with fruit. Raspberries were falling into the bottle! But apparently fruit sells, because....
-Flavored water. I can't tell if this is also carbonated, but it's made by the people who make 7-UP, so I wouldn't be surprised. Everyone look at your water bottles. If your water has ingredients, you're probably wasting your money.
-Lots of teenagers on cell phones, with fancy plans for talking a long time. Gets the obvious mom/daughter connection.
-Toilet Paper. So this is where they advertise! Huh.
Again, I guess this audience is likely to be the ones buying.
-A McDonald's commercial with some very strange small print. When a kid was drinking healthy milk (found in a Happy Meal), the text said "Milk different in Alaska." This sounds interesting! How is milk different? Is it so cold that it just comes out as ice cream? Inquiring minds wish to know!
-Midol. I think this is a given. I can't hear about this without thinking of Bill Cosby's take on Midol. Again, I'm not the target audience.
-A car commercial. Not that unusual, but this one had a woman in it. Atypical. It also wasn't for a mini-van. It did involve the way a new technology allows women to put on lipstick without smearing from inertia (when the man who's driving accelerates), so I guess it still has the sexist angle covered.

Going into this, I'd never seen a complete episode, just a few snippets when channel surfing. I had heard about this show, though. The fact that the characters talk fast, the script has twice as many pages as a typical television hour, etc. It's true, they do talk a lot. Is now a good time to mention that because of smaller vocal chords, woman can talk more than men with less effort for longer? Probably not...

Anyway, my biggest impression of the show? It's like third-species counterpoint. I know what you're thinking: "Andy is a bigger music nerd than we thought!" For those of you not in the "biz," counterpoint is like the Swiss-watch intricacy of J.S. Bach's pieces. They're not composed as much as they are architechturalized (what?). Designed to a very exacting set of standards. First species entails every time you move a note, the other voice moves in lock-step, a one-to-one ratio. Chopsticks is a good "in a pinch" example, for the most part. Second species involves two-to-one. For every time the top note changes, the other will change twice. There are very specific rules for all this.

That's great, you say, but what does this have to do with Star's Hollow? Well, third species is where you have four (or three) notes against one. And it turns out that while every note change is significant in first species (because there are so few) by the time it gets to third species, some of the notes are just filler. They often "tread water" until the next big change in the other part, because that's what truly controls the action.

"Gilmore Girls" is like that. Everyone talks fast and furious, but the actual advancement is measured. They're able to come up with fantastically witty rejoinders without even taking breathing space. L'esprit d'escalier is unknown, unless it's called for by the writers. But while everyone's talking fast, the plot seems to move slowly. The scene mechanics (how the scenes lie in the overall script) develops very deliberately. Everybody gets a chance to figure some things out well in advance of the characters. Was anyone surprised that Loreli, who was so eager to change street names, would end up with one that was awful and detrimental to business? Was anyone surprised that her boyfriend (who runs the diner) seems to express zero frustration at the beginning of the episode, but then eventually gets "really mad" at the end? Of course not. It's played for laughs.

I was more interested in the undercurrent that all of the women on the show are fantastically manipulative, in one way or another. Not only that, but few of them seem to actually be getting along at this point. I'm sure several seasons in, lots of things have happened to turn things upside down, but WOW. Instead, they all have a guy to talk at about all the things they should be working out with other people.

Which brings me to the guys. I feel like their big thing is to be caught up in the whirlwind that surrounds their women, and then tell the women to shut up and do things when the time requires them to. Plus, there's some truly strange behavior going on. When Rory's boyfriend buys her the most desired bag on the planet, she doesn't know what it is. He also doesn't bother to explain it to her. Why not? If you don't want her to be weirded out by a bag that cost more than all her years at Yale, why buy her one? If you do want her to acknowledge that it's a serious gift (more serious than she thinks it is), then why not give her some background? If you're afraid of her "putting on heirs" because of the fancy gift, then why not buy something nice from Target? She'd probably have reacted the same.

The whole situation seems to me that he's thinking the same way as her mother. The bag is something that you need to "be seen" wearing. So, why does he give it to her? So that his date can look nice? So that they can have a fight later on when she lets her dog accidentally chew on it? I dunno. Something about him feels a little disconcerting. I have no idea if this is intended, or just my own personal bias.

Man, this is long. Time to sum up. Interesting show. Characters and pacing not quite like anyone else on TV. As an added benefit, I know understand a little bit more of many of my acquaintances like this show.

It's all about the dog.