Gilmore Girls - Season 1 Thoughts
I just finished watching the first season for the first time all the way through. I’d only ever seen pieces before. It was very good! The show itself is on average very good, and often mind-blowingly good. I just wanted to get some thoughts down before I move on to the next one.
It’s really good in that it has a great dramatic set-up as its status quo - the greater established relationship with the Gilmore grandparents. If the show were just Rory and Lorelai, there wouldn’t be that much conflict, but because they hang out with the grandparents once a week now starting from the first episode, and the parents oppose basically everything the Gilmore Girls stand for, there’s always a close source of conflict.
It really is a great “wish fulfillment show” for girls, if that makes sense. In the best way. The way a superhero movie is like a wish fulfillment thing for boys. It’s about two girls, and everyone in their town likes them, and they have the coolest friendship ever, and are always super-funny and witty, and guys are always attracted to them in a mostly respectful way, and they’re always nailing school and work and such, and all that jazz. Frankly, it’s also clearly wish fulfillment about having the Coolest Mom Ever, because Lorelai is a saint. Funny, friendly, experienced, understanding, and a blast at social events. She would read as an unreal character, but the writing is so good about squaring her up with her Achilles’ heel - her parents - so often that she comes across as real and human, which once again, is a testament to the great writing.
Spoiler territory.
It’s hard to write about this season specifically since I know so much about what happens in the later seasons (mostly seasons 4 to 6), but I do have some thoughts I could make even without foreknowledge. One, Dean is way too unrealistically cool of a person to last. Frankly, he’s too cool, period. Rory should be worshipping the ground he walks on. In this season alone, he refused to get at a fight at a party with a guy who was aiming at his girl (Tristin) even though he would’ve won, simply because he probably knew it would upset her if he did! That is king behavior. A LOT of guys like Dean would’ve gotten in the fight. But he didn’t. And sadly, as any Gilmore Girls fan could tell you, this does read to me like the beginning of Rory not being good at relationships. She has such an insanely high bar for boyfriends from the start in Dean that she doesn’t know how to reciprocate his affection. Regular boyfriends don’t do things like promise to refit a car for you or have insanely complicated conversations with your mom about how to appreciate you. And it starts a trend of Rory dating guys who frankly bend over backwards trying to get her attention and her just brushing it off.
But whatever. The problem about discussing Gilmore Girls - which I might write about later - is that it’s hard to distinguish which things in the show are characters doing something wrong and which things are just functions of the show being what it is in some way. Rory having unrealistically cool boyfriends is just kind of the fun of the show since it’s wish fulfillment, so it’s dumb to complain about it in one sense. But in another sense, especially later on, her boyfriends’ personalities and her behavior with them really get played for drama and we’re encouraged to look at them critically, so where are we supposed to draw the line?
But whatever, show is great. I'm gonna keep watching.
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