Inexplicable Gilmore Girls Review: Final odds and ends

R.I.P. Lindsay Lister, Dean's ex.

Warning: Spoilers follow for pretty much all seasons of Gilmore Girls, but mostly the Revival series.

Now that I’ve reached the end of my Gilmore Girls watching, at least until the inevitable season nine, here are some random, stray thoughts I had while watching the Revival, or earlier seasons, that I couldn’t find room for to cram into another entry…

- Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel were allegedly paid $750,000 per episode, according to information obtained by Variety. That seems like an incredibly high price to pay for one of the actresses, and her name doesn’t rhyme with More In Sham. My assumption is that one actress did a solid for her fellow actress, and wouldn’t agree to the show unless their salaries matched. I’m saying this because one of them has worked regularly and solidly for the decade since the show has been off the air, while the other has mostly been relegated to straight-to-video or straight-to-streaming work.

- The most glaring omission to me from the Revival series? Madeline and Louise! They were both seemingly available, unlike some others on this helpful list from Insider. I thought for sure we would see them when Paris and Rory went back to Chilton, but instead, we got a weird cameo from (a new actor playing) Tristan. Madeline and Louise weren’t even mentioned!

The second (well, third) most glaring admission would be Liz, Luke’s sister. She would have brought some levity to the revival, plus, Luke didn’t really get much of the floor to himself in the revival. Just a really brief scene with Jess.

Quick hitters on missing cast members: It’s understandable that Lucy wasn’t there; Kristyn Ritter is a much bigger star now, and eh, she was only in half of the last season of the show, along with Olivia. (Also, Rory is awful and can’t keep friends.) The same thing goes for Dave Ryjaski, a.k.a. Adam Brody – He was awesome on the show, but he was barely on it in the grand scheme of 100+ episodes. While I stumped for him at times, Marty was 1) ultimately sleazy and 2) not that critical to anything plot-wise for the show, so who cares that he’s not in the revival? Max Medina is also absent, but again, he ultimately didn’t have much influence.

- The show made a big deal of finally “revealing” whether Mr. Kim was alive, and who he was. It’s unfortunate, because it disrupts a pet theory of mine; that Mr. Kim was there all the time, and you just never noticed him. In Luke’s Diner, there is Luke, and Caesar is the sous chef / back-up chef. Buttt, if you pay close attention to the show, there is a third guy, an Asian one, and he shows up quite often. I’m assuming it’s just a staffer that filled in as an extra when they needed someone; I don’t even think he gets a spoken line in the show. But he is clearly Lane Kim’s real father.

- So, I usually harp on minor character Lindsay Lister, a.k.a. Dean’s ex-wife, and her tragic murder / just not being on the show anymore. While I kind of do it to be funny, there is another reason I’m firmly in her corner: She’s one of the few characters on the show that exhibit positive change.

When she’s first introduced, she’s barely developed, and seems kind of whiny. And it doesn’t help that Dean is basically awful, and then cheats on her, and then gets weirdly aggressive and is a major prick in ensuing conversations. But she makes efforts to improve, and her second-to-last scene is her successfully cooking a steak dinner for Dean. (And hey, I do like me a steak dinner.)

In Gilmore Girls, my basic test for whether I like or dislike a character is whether they manage to change for the better. When it comes to this standard, Lane and Zach are the best examples, with Jess also being high on my list, although much of his “improvement” is seemingly off-screen. Emily, Luke and Lorelai have regression at times, but ultimately come out improved after 157 episodes. Firmly in the negative on this scale? Logan and Rory. That’s why they deserve each other.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! To read all of Steve’s past Inexplicable Movie Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable TV Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable Video Game Reviews, click here! And for Inexplicable Book Reviews, go here!

Inexplicable Gilmore Girls Revival Review: Fall (4 of 4)

Warning: Spoilers follow for the fourth episode of the Gilmore Girls revival. And the picture of Lorelai in a wedding dress comes from this cheeky article on the Martha Stewart Weddings website.

Despite some trepidation about the series as a whole, and lowered expectations because of how godawful the third episode was, the Gilmore Girls Revival finale, “Fall,” mainly manages to stick the landing.

Things rebound quickly for the low, low, lowwwww of episode three, which saw Lorelai leaving Stars Hollow behind to go WILD. That was laughable, and thankfully, it’s abandoned after about 10 minutes, as she realizes 1) she absolutely doesn’t have the skills to survive in the wild and 2) she’s not actually heartbroken, like the other women hitting the trail. (This portion of the show apparently has cameos from Lauren Graham’s other show, Parenthood, and her lover, but I never watched it and thus was in the dark about this aspect.)

After Lorelai gets her groove back by going WILD with the secret power of the help, or something to that effect, she quickly mends things with Luke. And they finnaaaalllllly set a wedding date, and then, get married. Huzzah! Their eloping is sweet, although, somewhat annoying. There is a storyline justification for it, but it also felt like they couldn’t possibly get everyone together to film things, so this was a good way to sidestep that issue.

And oh yeah – Rory is still awful. The big shocker at the end of the revival is that she’s pregnant. The show ends at that point, so it’s unclear for the father is. The odds-on favorite would be Logan, with smaller odds on Jess or Paul, since we never actually see Rory coitus the latter two.

Karen smartly pointed out that the show subtly foreshadows her pregnancy announcement at the end. We think that we finally get a Christopher cameo because Rory is interviewing him for the book project, not because she’s gauging her ability to raise a baby on her own. (Although, to be fair, it’s hard to imagine that Emily and Lorelai wouldn’t have a substantial hand to play in this.)

Oh, and also, Sookie finally comes back! It’s clear they only got Melissa McCarthy for one scene, because she is a Bright Shining Star now. Still, it was good to see her. She’s gotten substantially better as an actress, too, if you compare her work in “Fall” to her other appearances in previous seasons.

Other thoughts on the “Fall” episode:

- Emily is straight up baller. Unlike Lorelai, who kind of gets her groove back in a lame way, Emily is a total boss. She kicks out the weird and mooching post-Richard boyfriend, she gives the DAR the high-hat, and she’s using her Smith-earned history degree to lecture about whales.

- I’m glad Dean is doing well, even if he hasn’t been brought to justice yet for the diabolical murder of Lindsay Lister. We do not see Dean’s sassy little sister, which is a little disappointing.

- I’m ultimately on Team Logan when it comes to who Rory should end up with. Not because I think he’s better than Jess, but because Rory is so awful, she doesn’t deserve Jess. Rory ultimately decides to cut Logan out of her child’s life completely, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, and I can’t blame her.

We get yet another Life and Death Brigade thing, and they’re still fucking awful. All of these people are now in their 30s, and they’re still acting like petulant children. Arrested development, the concept, as opposed to the wonderful show. Logan seems to be friends with all of these people still – and hey, also conceiving a baby in a cheating relationship – so, okay, cut him out.

- Gilmore Girls is the name of the show and the name of Rory’s manuscript! Ha ha ha! It was nice of Lorelai to sign off on Rory’s work, but meh, I’m still of the mindset that she didn’t have to at all.

- Lorelai’s money management skills remain awful. She just ditches all the camping equipment on the side of the road! She couldn’t return any of it?!? And she basically just dropped everything to go to the West Coast, booking a plane and renting a car while out there. The finances of the Revival and the show itself never really made sense though.

Future scheduling stuff: I’m still on a partial writing schedule, because I just moved into a new place with Karen, and I should really be unpacking things and listing old crap on eBay instead of writing about Gilmore Girls and other things. But, I’ll have one more entry on Gilmore Girls odds and ends, and hopefully a Steveats next week.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! To read all of Steve’s past Inexplicable Movie Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable TV Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable Video Game Reviews, click here! And for Inexplicable Book Reviews, go here!

Inexplicable Gilmore Girls Revival Review: Summer (3 of 4)

Warning: Spoilers follow for the third episode of the Gilmore Girls revival. The image comes from Nerdist’s write-up here.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boy.

The third episode is, by far, by leaps and bounds, by miles upon miles, the worst of the Revival series. It’s full of Rory and Lorelai acting awful, and when they aren’t acting horrible, we instead have outlandish scenes with the folks of Stars Hollow and the other side characters. “Summer” is basically a 90-minute fever dream of an episode, and like plenty of other folks on the Internet, I desperately wanted to fast forward through several parts of it.

Let’s start in reverse order: Lorelai leaving Luke for a few weeks to go “wild” seemed like the most absurd bullshit ever. I had a similar reaction to Luke’s – you mean that movie thing? I wasn’t aware it was a thing that people actually did. If anything, it seems like the show’s creators were overestimating how popular Wild is or was, because I’ve pretty much never heard of anyone deciding to “find themselves” in such a fashion.

And, by the way, if someone were to do that, Lorelai Gilmore would be really fucking low on the list. To spoil the fourth episode a bit, we find out that isn’t that sort of person, but I also think she would have come to that realization way, way, wayyyyy before she bought a shitload of stuff and booked the flight out to the Pacific Northwest, or wherever they shot that. The whole exercise felt like the producers learning Lauren Graham had a vacation planned, and they thought, “Hey, maybe we can use this for the show!”

Lorelai is clearly stagnating with Luke. The best place for her to work these issues out would probably be therapy, except that the show has already portrayed her therapist as a doddering idiot now performing in a Stars Hollow musical. This is also when the show’s lack of access to side characters shines through. The original run, the only consistent friend of Lorelai is Sookie, who’s now unavailable because Melissa McCarthy is a big god damn star. Without Sookie, Lorelai has no friends. (And honestly, being friends with Lorelai seems like it would be exhausting.)

Meanwhile, Rory continues to flounder and suck. She graduated from Yale a decade ago, roughly, but seemingly never has any decent ideas of her own, despite being a writer with a journalism degree. So, she’s now (poorly) running the Stars Hollow Gazette, and trying to pitch her mother on the idea of a book about them, except that that’s not really her idea either – it’s Jess’ idea.

Quick aside – Jess! Man, he’s only more of a beautiful bastard as he ages. And now, with the hindsight of time, I will confess two things: 1) He’s by far the best of Rory’s boyfriend options and 2) He is way too good for her. Along with Lane and Zach, and a few other characters, Jess is the only one who grows and seems to learn from past mistakes. He’s shown longing for Rory a little bit, but I think his mindset would change pretty quickly if he learned that she had been cheating for years on her forgettable boyfriend with Logan, who in turn has been cheating on his heiress.

Anyway, Rory can’t get Lorelai to sign off on the book idea in this episode. I’m Team Lorelai on this one – It should be her right to protect her own privacy on this, especially since the first few years of raising Rory sounded pretty hectic and lean, from past episodes. As an outsider, just knowing what we know from previous episodes, Lorelai’s decision to raise Rory completely absent Richard and Emily, and Christopher, seemed unnecessarily harsh to me at times.

Rory’s going to plow ahead with the book anyway though, because that’s easier than going back to grad school, or just working at a shitty journalism or normal job for a while. That’s because whenever presented with a hard choice, Rory’s default is usually to take the easiest option, whether it’s continuing her comfortable affair, or half-assing it with her forgettable boyfriend instead of breaking up, or not preparing for an interview.

If it’s tough, simple work – like delivering the paper – then she’s fine, but anything with nuance seems beyond her, and she’s usually not willing to hurt. The counterpoints would be Lane, who willingly moves out of her mom’s house and slings coffee at Luke’s, or Paris, who tirelessly and exhaustively ponders alternative options. Paris is obviously too extreme at times, but shit, at least she has a plan or plans at all times. Instead, Rory is like a shittier version of Hamlet.

Anyway, I seem to be swearing a lot this entry. Episode three did that to me. Here’s some other shit that happens:

- THE STARS HOLLOW PLAY! Good god. Karen told me this was her least favorite part of the entire Revival series. I mostly rolled my eyes through it. It’s outlandish, stupid and unbelievable, but I didn’t find it to be any more stupid than the usual Stars Hollow bullshit, like Taylor opening / seizing an ice cream shop next to Luke’s by eminent domain. The play is also so stupid that I couldn’t help but laugh at a few portions, which is what they were probably going for with most of the Stars Hollow BS, but it usually comes off as annoying to me.

- April makes a two-scene appearance, as a sort-of rebel MIT grad, and then in the privacy of Rory’s room, more of a Grade-A Nerd you’d expect her to be. I seem to be one of the few April fans on the Internet, but there really isn’t much to go on her from her brief appearance in the Revival.

By the way though, if there is one thing the Revival wants to stress to you, it’s that younger people are the fucking worst. Between the somewhat flippant portrayal of April, and the “ohmygod what is this a CBS sitcom?” running gag about the 30-something gang, there are plenty of potshots at young people. It’s kind of distressing to see Gilmore Girls turn into a “Not in my yard!” kind of show, since the early seasons showed young people (Rory, Paris, April, Lane) mostly as intelligent, somewhat rational people.

- Jess mentions that TJ and Liz have joined a vegetable cult, which seems like an unnecessarily cruel way to yada yada yada them off the show. I never really cared for TJ, but Liz the Space Cadet was a nice sort of balancing act to Luke’s gruffness. In a four-episode series that already has a decent amount of fluff, one heart-to-heart between Liz and Luke wouldn’t have hurt.

- I’ve never watched Bunheads, but apparently, everyone from that show was in this episode. The blonde girl in the 30-something gang, etc. I totally recognized Sutton Foster though, because she’s basically Lauren Graham 2.0. Much like the original, but with improved dancing and singing abilities! Also, both are dynamite late night guests, especially with Craig Ferguson.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! To read all of Steve’s past Inexplicable Movie Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable TV Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable Video Game Reviews, click here! And for Inexplicable Book Reviews, go here!