Once More On A Year In the Life – Gilmore Girls & The Great Stars Hollowing Out

Plenty of other people have said it.

A Year in the Life was unnecessary. I already wrote about it myself but I still enjoyed big swaths of what I say, including Emily’s story, Kirk (oh my god, so much amazing Kirk), Paris (can she be my OTP?) and even the [no spoilers yet] ending.

Still, the more I’ve read from other fans (and viewers, where those categories don’t intersect) and about what Amy Sherman-Palladino has to say, the less enthralled I am even from my temporary miniature joy boost. Enough that I’m now persuaded to start a series rewatch (again) but this time listing off every single horrible thing that Rory & Lorelai do, along with clear failings in thought and foresight or taste.

So here’s the only spoilers…

As I complained about before, having the last 4 words be what they were, and allegedly intending them from the get-go just speaks to one of two things. Either ASP was a sadistic writer, nihilistically intending to show that nothing in life matters or she’s a bad George Lucas type. (Note: I think it’s the latter, but my hatred of the Star Wars prequels could also be fueling this particular belief in part.)

But I’m also just so sick of television shows about women, for women, by women, whatever women women women must be so heavily about fashion, babies, marriage or girl fights. It’s part of the problem of how Orange is the New Black has suffered since its initial season where it was about people who happen to be women to let’s make it all about what women be like. It becomes pandering and annoying. (Spoken as a woman.) It’s one of the reasons Lifetime Original Movies never appealed to me, either. And throughout Gilmore Girls, which is supposed to be a progressive show for women, women are reduced to fashion, babies, marriage and girl fights an awful lot. To have this revival end with the baby! storyline just cements this further. It’s 2016. Number one, really reliable birth control exists. Number two, excluding debates about abortion, adoption exists. Number three, not everybody is fulfilled and made whole by having a baby and certainly not every woman, so I can’t tell if ASP’s story is supposed to be that this is how Rory also gets to be a cool person or if it’s a tale of failure. I have no clue what she intended or means, especially if this is supposedly the original series ending as well. And that’s a huge problem.

So I guess I’ll get on that rewatch.

 

Can You Find Fantastic Beasts in Manhattan?

Does anyone else know that Manhattan was actually a really weirdly compelling show on WGN from 2014-2015? I started watching it last year when the first season showed upon Hulu and I’d been waiting forever for season 2. It’s been up on Hulu a little while and I finally started to dig into it today. It does seem to suffer just a little from some historical fallacy. It’s not, as so many anti-LGBTQ critics have said, because there was a lesbian affair (sigh) but because the tone uses modern day critiques at points. The viewpoints espoused are in the “nothing new under the sun” vein but they are stated using the look back to the 1940s from the 2010s. Still, it’s a period piece and those are usually compelling for me if they have any substance. This one does.

I was going to write about Fantastic Beasts but it was apparently the “antidote” to “toxic masculinity.” Sigh. I don’t know if I can go down that path. It was a pretty good movie, but knowing that there are now to be 4 sequels just exhausts me. It’s too soon to make that determination unless there’s a full story in mind.

Once Upon a Time in Stars Hollow

Because you see, there are two things we have to cover here so that my friends and Facebook followers aren’t inundated with yet another round of pop culture madness.

First off, we have the midseason finale of Once Upon a Time. I didn’t start watching until the 4th season was airing, at which point I began from the start and found seasons 1 & 2 to be a pretty good run of ideas, visuals, and fun. Seasons 3 & 4 were alright. I enjoyed them and they had entertaining moments but the depth and breadth of the first two was lacking. And then season 5 came along. What a mess. Season 6, so far, has been an exercise in me laughing every few minutes and trying to contain said laughter in the form of logically reasoning out why anybody would make the show decisions that have been presented. The show suffers the Supernatural problem. At a certain point, you know that certain characters will never truly die and so you can’t care about their mortal peril.

Begin Thus Spoilers

Not to mention, the ongoing “Rumpbelle” shippers are irritating AF. Why? Because if this relationship were presented in any other television show or film, it would be written about ad nauseum by the feminist media as being an abusive situation that Belle cannot escape. But here it’s supposed to carry a deep and epic romantic tale and one which gives undue focus to Mr. Gold/The Dark One/Rumpelstiltskin/The Beast/Whoever Robert Carlyle Needs To Be On A Given Day as a damaged creature. Obviously, he’s damaged. They’re all magnificently damaged. Why is his damage so much “worse” than everyone else’s, especially as he continues to make all the decisions that create these horrible situations? Oh, he loves his son but he can’t choose his son. He’s a coward but he can’t do anything to change that besides become mostly uncontrollable and evil. His new wife doesn’t do every single thing he expect hers to do. He wants to kill someone. Oh, poor, poor poor Rumple.

Don’t misunderstand because Robert Carlyle acts this character wonderfully. My question is why do we never call attention to the fact that his horrific behavior, even in a fairy tale setting, is undoubtedly the horrific behavior I’ve just labeled it? He tells Belle in this latest episode “I told you when we met that I was a difficult man to love” and parlays this line into an excuse to try to threaten her for the location of their son, whom she entrusted to Blue in order to get him away from Rumple. I mean, seriously. I’ve worked in shelters for abused individuals; this story comes right down in the middle of my past work.

Beyond that, I was tired of the Evil Queen story and thought that’s why they tore her out of Regina to begin with. But nope, it’s to bring it all back to light and let the other shippers, the Rumple/Regina ones have some accommodation before just making a mess of everything once again. On too many occasions Snow and Charming are insufferable. Henry’s turned into the most reasonable character around half the time. And as much as I love Captain Swann, Hook himself has become little more than a buzzing bee around Emma’s head with little to do except say “mate” and “love” just to remind us he’s English. On the other hand, at least I can laugh every single time the show has to resort to bringing in a piece of 18th century British literature. Though I’m still desperately upset that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (which is actually French, I’m aware) included a Captain Nemo who didn’t turn into a clownfish. Way to miss a mash-up opportunity, Disney.  Hook didn’t even say anything about having to find Nemo. Sigh. Ruined.

Now To Visit Stars Hollow, Obviously With Spoilers

Because I blew through all 4 A Year In The Life episodes in one Black Friday, and then had time to watch them all again passively, I feel eminently qualified to speak on the subject.

Emily Gilmore is the best thing about this revival. Kelly Bishop is amazing, seemingly remembering every part of her character down to the finger motions. But Emily also got the best story. I grant that the sadness pulled in by the real-life death of Edward Herrman does help it but the show  didn’t have to include Richard’s death. He traveled so much without Emily in the original 7 seasons that a few lines about his being away on business could have covered it. I think the authentic angle was a better choice, especially as it propelled Emily to have to rebuild herself and figure out who she was without him. I found it oddly believable that she ditched the DAR and its bullshit, “why do you love that word so much?” Even her move away from the Hartford house and into the Clam Shell of Nantucket is a believable, real and emotionally challenging effort.

Meanwhile, Lorelai shows more personal growth than I would have expected, though I do find her story with Luke a little off, since they’ve allegedly been together for the last 9 years and have failed to find time to discuss the most basic of life decisions and thoughts, such as “Do you want any more kids?” In many ways this lack of unity suggests that Amy Sherman-Palladino just used her original thoughts for the show, absenting the nearly 10 years since the series ended (and after the disastrous final season she had nothing to do with), particularly when Rory’s absolutely intolerable spoiled brat loser tale makes her seem like she just graduated from Stars Hollow Mail Order Community College a week ago instead of Harvard University a decade ago. But we’ll stomp on that in a moment. Lorelai taking off to do “Wild” was a bit ridiculous, not because she wouldn’t be that flighty, but because it wasn’t the sort of flight she’d take, in character. Unlike many viewers, I didn’t find it ridiculous that she’d be able to take a 3 week hiatus from life. She owns this supposedly completely popular inn with a large backing, and has staff to run it. She’s not technically the manager so her ability to go is not that insane. Still, had she decided to flee to a more reasonable location, this might have been a more authentic story for her. I guess that was perhaps the point, that Lorelai was feeling totally outside herself. At least we finally got the Luke wedding over just so we don’t have to worry about it any more.

Then we have Baby Lorelai Leigh, aka Rory. Emphasis on that Baby. First off, Alexis Bledel’s voice for Rory definitely changed during the show. She went from having a normal conversational voice to speaking like a baby. It’s much discussed, but unlike what most people think (that she grew up from like age 14 to 21 on the show) she doesn’t seem to have changed her voice due to puberty but rather because…. actually, I have no idea, but she was 19 when she started filming the show, 20 by the time it first aired, and 27 when it ended. She wasn’t a little kid whose voice naturally changed. Something else was going on. When she acts in nearly anything else, her voice is a weird affected sounding accent. See her character in Sin City or her character in Mad Men. She began this revival with that voice. Why? No idea. Then it went away. It didn’t return fully to the baby status but it got close on several occasions and most of the time she was just so horribly awful of a person, journalist, and train wreck monster that it didn’t even matter. Oh poor Rory. She’s rich and has no good ideas to write about so she can’t get a job that’s supposedly beneath her. She’s sleeping with an ex-boyfriend who’s got a girlfriend he’s about to marry. (Logan’s an asshole too, though. This onus cannot be on Rory. At least, we have to assume this much, as it’s possible though unlikely that Logan’s ladyfriend is cool with the extrarelationship affair; her viewpoint is never considered) But Rory is doing this while seeing a guy she can’t even remember to break up with. WTF. That was just a stupid non-joke that failed to be funny. Plus her constant whining about how everything was less than her while being a terrible journalist, terrible friend, and terrible daughter was just horrible.

And the final words. Fuck off. This is as bad as George Lucas’s attempts to make things match the Star Wars movies in the prequels, which one can barely consider Star Wars movies. “It’s like poetry, it rhymes.” No. Not everything repeats. And I’m so, so, so sick of this idea that every life needs to go on with babies. Baby, baby, baby, whatever. A story isn’t more golden because a new baby comes into it. ASP was upset that people asked which of Rory’s boyfriends she ends up with (my hope was that she and Paris somehow made it work or nobody at all, honestly) and not what her career was like. Well, if this was the thing that was supposed to make us care about her career, I’d rather go back to speculating which boyfriend was the best. And hope that none of them was the father of her child. Especially Jess, at this point, who is, as an adult, clearly not a shitty person and who might actually be too good for Rory’s 30something nonsense. Logan may not be too good for her but frankly, that’s just a stupid situation. And then Dean…Wow, now I get to mention Supernatural again in another context. Did they get Jared Padelecki to walk in straight from the set of season 12? Because he looks nothing like Dean Forrester and everything like Sam Winchester. Even his ridiculous “I’m in town visiting my parents” bit comes out sounding like the Sam Winchester character. But at least he’s apparently far away and off the table. Good.

Lane didn’t get nearly enough screen time. Kirk was super on point. Sean Gunn is incredible. And Paris is, as always, fantastic. She’s often my favorite focal character in any GG experience. It’s hard to think of her as being a mother, though, and one wonders if she used her own surrogates to create the children she and Doyle have. But she’s amazing in every respect where she appears. The Mae Whitman and Peter Krause cameos were nice, just to shoehorn in the Parenthood cast for Lauren Graham’s benefit, I suppose. I love Sutton Foster but the musical went on too long. Taylor’s not gay. Michele married a man, but hey, let’s not assume that makes him “gay” either. He seemed weirdly more human in this story than at most points in the past, so I dug that as well. That he wasn’t just a wacky sidekick for Lorelai. Melissa McCarthy doesn’t sound like Sookie at all. And Luke knows Keifer Sutherland because of a baseball camp. But sure, let’s focus on the four little words. I always assumed it would be in reference to the first line of the show, “Please Luke, please.” But instead, nope, it’s about babies. Because fucking A, it’s always about babies. (Sigh.)