A New Maturity Comes to Gilmore Girls as Lorelai Sends Christopher Packing
Gilmore Girls may not be the frothy fantasy it once was, but it's not as childish in its outlook on life as in seasons past, either.
Critics have been crabbing up a storm this season about Gilmore Girls, complaining that the show isn't as sweet and dizzying and wonderful as it once was, and all but calling for The CW to put it
out of its misery. Much of their venom has been directed toward the storytelling of new showrunner David Rosenthal, a long time Gilmore scribe who took the reigns of the show this season after series creator and executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino chose not to continue with it.
Gilmore may never again shine as bright as it did during its first few seasons, when its characters were younger and fresher and the show was as sparkly as the twinkling white lights that adorn the exterior of virtually every storefront in the small Connecticut town of Stars Hollow. But
from where I sit, Rosenthal is being unfairly criticized. I think his first season at the helm of Gilmore is far superior to the last season of the Palladino period, when the show deteriorated into a pointless drama in which our still spunky heroine, Lorelai Gilmore, could not get along with anyone, including daughter and best pal Rory and lunky love interest Luke.
Palladino at the end was writing stories in which her characters actually showed signs of growing up and messing up, dealing with the inevitable problems that come with adulthood, but she couldn't handle the
intrusion of reality into her meticulously crafted fantasy world of perpetual youthfulness and happy immaturity. Rosenthal, on the other hand, has managed to work through the mess Palladino left behind by daring to show a newer -- that is to say, older -- Lorelai gamely trying to act her age. She hasn't proven all that successful at it, which is what the story of her brief marriage to Christopher, the father of her child, has been all about.
Lauren Graham
After decades of living life on her own independent terms and deflecting the burden of maturity with an impenetrable shield
of hyper-talk and non-stop activity, the now fortyish Lorelai is suddenly aware that time is passing. She has bravely tried to make changes she doesn't really know how to make and she has messed up, as people in the world beyond Stars Hollow are known to do.
In the process, Lorelai has suddenly grown up, right before our eyes. Indeed, at no time in the series' seven-year history has she ever come across more mature, self-aware and grounded than at the end of last
week's episode, when she finally let down her defenses and admitted that her impulse marriage to Christopher in Paris was a mistake.
"You've always been this wonderful possibility for me, but it's just not right," Lorelai told Christopher in an emotional but
composed manner. Admitting that she "jumped" into marriage after her breakup with Luke, the suddenly mature Lorelai added, "You're the man I want to want."
Alas, it looks like poor Christopher is now out of the picture, and that's a shame, because he seems to be a decent guy -- except when the writers want him to be a putz. Why have past and present Gilmore scribes
had it in for this guy? When Christopher becomes a creep it's because he's a rat bastard. When Luke becomes a creep it's because he's a flawed, sensitive male.
As if Lorelai's sudden burst of maturity and wisdom wasn't enough to signal that a new era of enlightenment was about to dawn in Stars Hollow, earlier in the episode Rory and her boyfriend Logan had one of the
most civilized exchanges about mutual trust ever between young twenty-somethings in a television series. Rory admitted that she is attracted to the grad student who has taken over grandfather Richard's economics class at Yale following Richard's recent heart attack. Logan appreciated Rory's honesty, understood that she hadn't acted on her feelings and then admitted that he
has been attracted to other women during his relationship with Rory but hasn't done anything because he loves her. There were no histrionics from either side. These two should get married. Tomorrow.
The newly mature Gilmore Girls may not be the frothy fantasy it once was, but it's not as childish in its outlook on life as in seasons past, either. This shift can set the stage for interesting stories to come,
even if it returns next season without its youngest Gilmore, a rumor that seemed to be white hot in January. Why can't a show that has been all about a single mother who selflessly raised a wonderful daughter explore what happens to that mother when her daughter begins a life of her own?
