My Girls

These are my girls, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore.

Okay, I know that they are fictional characters from a television show, but they are so well-written and well-acted that they feel like real people to me. Every time I pop in a DVD or flip past them on TV it feels like they've come over to my place to hang out for an hour. And they are excellent company - smart, quick-witted, unpredictable, and always so funny. They're also quite easy on the eyes.

I first discovered my girls during my second summer with the Ohio Light Opera. As soon as all of our shows had opened and we no longer had any rehearsals to attend, my mornings were suddenly very open. One morning I was looking at the channel with all the TV listings and I noticed that Gilmore Girls was currently on. My sister Emily had been telling me for years that I needed to watch it, but I had resisted because it just seemed too girly, too soapy, and too WB-y, if you know what I mean. I should have been more open-minded - I previously had to overcome all of these same objections in order to discover Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which immediately became my favorite show of all time. So that fateful morning in Ohio I decided to give Gilmore Girls a shot. I kinda liked it. The next day I went back for seconds. I liked it even more. By the third day I was completely hooked, and I watched it every morning for the rest of the summer (and eventually my friend/housemate Tyler was watching religiously with me as well), and when I got back home again I bought the DVDs of the first five seasons.

I love everything about this show. It is so funny and goofy, wistful and melancholy, far-fetched and realistic, often all at the same time. The family relationships on the show are as real and moving as any in the history of television, and it is humanistic in the way that even hard and potentially unlikeable characters like Emily Gilmore or Mrs. Kim can be loving and vulnerable sometimes.

I love the fictional Stars Hollow, Connecticut - it's a magical little town where everyone sticks their nose in everyone else's business and they're always having goofy traditions and public ceremonies, like the following:



Last summer I visited Connecticut for the first time as I drove from Boston to New York, and I pulled off at some random exit and drove around some tiny little towns hoping to find a Stars Hollow-like town, but there was no trace of Miss Patty's Dance Studio, Luke's Diner, Gypsy's Auto Repair, or Kim's Antiques. I did see this cool old barn though.

Although I love the show fanatically, I had never gotten around to watching the final season. The creator of the show left along with many of the longtime writers and a lot of fans had complained about a drop-off in quality, and I used that as an excuse not finish watching the whole series. But last week I decided to just plow through the last season because I love my girls so much that I don't really expect perfection from them, I just love their company. The first half of the season wasn't wonderful, but to my surprise the writing really picked up for the final few episodes, some of which rival episodes from the brilliant first few seasons.

As the number of episodes left to watch dwindled, I started to get pretty emotional because it finally dawned on me that there is a finite amount of Gilmore Girls in the world. By not watching the last season I was maintaining the illusion that the show just went on forever. But everything comes to an end eventually, and during the last episode I had a full breakdown. Just ask my roommates, Seth and Micah, who watched it along with me. I was a wreck - I was crying and sniffing and 'awwwing' all over the place. The last episode featured a "It's a Wonderful Life"-type assemblage at the end, and if you're going to go there I'm gonna have to cry like crazy; I'm like Pavlov's dogs.

It's been a few days since my meltdown and I've come to terms with the ending of the show. Ultimately, the message of the show is that you can never plan exactly how your life will turn out, so open yourself up, take risks, dare to dream, and let yourself fall in love. And if everything fails, pop in a DVD and Lorelai and Rory will be there with Chinese takeout and Casablanca (or Pippi Longstocking) to make everything better.