A Series Changes Horses, and the Ride Gets Bumpy - 11.07.06

[Lovefiend]

A Series Changes Horses, and the Ride Gets Bumpy
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
November 7th, 2006

Something is wrong with “Gilmore Girls.” Early reports had this cherished tragicomedy series faring just fine on the new CW network without its despotic creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, and her husband and co-captain, Daniel Palladino. Those reports were false. The couple left their own show last spring after disputes with Warner Brothers over contracts, money, timing, something. And without them the show is not faring well. It’s faring weirdly.

Has “Gilmore Girls” lost heart? If only. This brainy, dexterous show is now all heart — with Lorelai (Lauren Graham) dating Rory’s father, Christopher (David Sutcliffe), and Rory (Alexis Bledel) pining for the London-based Logan (Matt Czuchry). In the new season those emotional cues that used to come from the Sam Phillips score with its airy la-la-la lyrics now emanate from by-the-numbers reaction shots, big doorstep love scenes, vast gaps in the scripts just for feelings, and sincerity galore. As a result, the show that made a virtue of brittleness has become almost moony.

There’s even “I love you” — a sentence that Ms. Sherman-Palladino, who learned timing from her father, a cruise-ship stand-up, and who came of age writing for “Roseanne,” could never abide.

Ms. Sherman-Palladino’s rat-a-tat series used to abhor reaction shots and television silence — those wordless measures, covered with pensive close-ups, that signify emotion on soaps and dramas. Instead, her “Gilmore Girls” had a nervous, competitive tempo: each conversation was a pickup game to be won, not a dance with someone designated to lead.

Casual viewers have typically complained about the show’s stylized dialogue, poseur diction and references seemingly inspired by Bartlett’s and Roget’s. Well, for them, it should all go down easier now. The new show is run by David Rosenthal, a television writer who was famous chiefly for a 2001 morbidly obsessive play about Heidi Klum that Bruce Weber in The New York Times called “not only offensive but also incompetent.” On his “Gilmore Girls,” people lead and follow: one person talks, and the other sighs, frowns or chuckles. The sound mix is especially thick with that chuckling that signals what’s funny. I keep thinking that if Rory and Lorelai, those unsentimental brainiacs, could see this show, they’d hate it.

Ah, but they can see it. They’re right there: or at least some Cylons who look like Rory and Lorelai are there, in Stars Hollow, going through their paces. Ms. Bledel still appears by turns beautiful and loping as Rory, and Ms. Graham is still the show’s power forward, playing as hard as she can, giving all she’s got to proving that a woman’s sensibility can comprise The New Yorker and Us Weekly. A modest goal — but not a toxic one.

And possibly, even, Ms. Graham is relieved that the show has slowed down. There are certainly fewer words to remember and execute. The diction is less eccentric. With the looser, more emotionally direct and less digressive scripts, Ms. Graham may even discover more room to act. On Ms. Sherman-Palladino’s show, the scripts were so packed with dialogue that the actors, even the enterprising Ms. Graham (whose missing Emmy is now just ludicrous), sometimes showed a Mamet-style anxiety, as if it were all they could do just to recite their lines. Ms. Bledel, as Gilmore the younger, almost always came across this way.

Indeed, that was the charm of the old show: women, fundamentally women without men, were compelled to talk as fast as they could to keep their loneliness at bay. The virtue of Ms. Sherman-Palladino’s shticky style was that it created characters who were new to television. In their purest incarnations, Lorelai and Rory shared the witty woman’s challenge: to architect a wall of words so high and so thick that no silence, no stares, no intimations of mortality or even love could penetrate it.

And the more they — and especially Lorelai — did that season after season, and the more she relented only when overcome by real despair (as when she and Rory fought), the more Ms. Sherman-Palladino and Mr. Palladino seemed to have found a way to bring the pain of cleverness to the screen.

Lorelai’s out-of-touchness with her own emotional life — her conviction that to swoon, even once, would be to forfeit her verbal power and thus her reason for being — has only grown more extreme as the show has aged. That process has had an incredible poignancy and even suspense, as when a single friend becomes funnier and more self-aware even as she stifles her need for romantic love.

Lorelai’s internal life — her desperate loneliness (come on, have any of these forgettable guys even come close to matching her?) coupled with her untenable reliance on her daughter as the one true thing in her existence — is clear to longtime viewers. But no one of her fans would really want her to face that suffering, and turn soft. To force some kind of psychological reckoning on her would be sadistic.

Her humor, her style, her neuroses, even her quicksilver physicality were all contrivances that served to shut out existential truths. If she were in therapy, or a character on a show with a dumber audience, maybe she would have to embrace her weakness. But like Elizabeth in Stephen Frears’s movie “The Queen,” Lorelai has a humanity that is perfectly apparent precisely in her unwillingness to betray her stoicism in favor of a therapeutic catharsis.

For all these years, Lorelai in “Gilmore Girls” has been painful and surprising and exciting to watch — a marvelous high-wire act. How cruel that the new writer of the show wants to rub her face in conventionality, strip her of the speed that was her reason for being and transform her into another banal television lead.

Credit: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/arts/television/07heff.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1162863996-0JbLivoy9j7V8vCsWKGJIg&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Hehe another one for everyone to disagree with

[MikeinLA]

I for one don't disagree with this. It is about as marvelous and insightful an examination of the show as I've ever seen.

Read all the lines and then go back and read between them. This is a paean of love to a show and two actresses and a writer/producer who crafted and gave us 52 minutes of magnificent TV on tuesday night and which we now fear is losing its edge and its heart.

Lorelai’s out-of-touchness with her own emotional life — her conviction that to swoon, even once, would be to forfeit her verbal power and thus her reason for being — has only grown more extreme as the show has aged. That process has had an incredible poignancy and even suspense, as when a single friend becomes funnier and more self-aware even as she stifles her need for romantic love.

Lorelai’s internal life — her desperate loneliness (come on, have any of these forgettable guys even come close to matching her?) coupled with her untenable reliance on her daughter as the one true thing in her existence — is clear to longtime viewers.

Somebody find Virginia Heffernan and see if SHE will take over the show![/color]

 

[Lauren is my idol]

I agree...but not 100%. I sort of like how it's a little slower...not because I didn't understand it before (because I did, 100%), but because it seems easier for the actors too. It must have been hard to talk that fast! But, I do agree that the show is slowing down a bit, and that if DR wants us to keep watching it, then he's going to have to whip it back into shape. I'm thinking...it's a new show for him, and it may take a while for him to get used to it. I hope there is at least one more season...maybe it will end up to be better, and finish off all of this confusion.

[Rhiannon]

This is the first insightful editorial I have read regarding this season. I agree with much of it, how refreshing to hear a new analysis that seems to come from an actual fan.Thank the Gods for anyone who doesn't dumb it down.

[willowsprite]

I loved this analysis of the situation.  I've been trying to figure out what was wrong with the show--its not horrible, but less enjoyable, and although there are good moments, also times when its flat and boring.  The show is slower, and more conventional than under ASP.  So thats what I miss, the old rhythm and pep.  Unfortunately,the tv exes, and many tv viewers may like the new GG better than the old.   

[Carmicone]

I agree that the show has lost part of its magic, I really don't like it this slow in the dialogues, and I really hate the L/C situation and seeing Lorelai acting so out of character.
I hope tha ASP could give a little advice to DR as to how to make the show better.

[nicccarl]

I almost had a heart attack when I opened my "NYTimes" to my favorite section and BAM there were my Girls!!!  Anyway, I thought she was slightly harsh, but I agree.  The thing is, I don't think that any writter can "get the hang" of the story.  ASP had a vision, and she didn't see it through.  Obviously I don't know the intricate details about what went on behind the scenes, but I'm a little angry about that.  DR is different, and now the show is different.  I miss the suprises that inevitably happened in each episode with ASP.  But I'm learning to deal.

[Lovefiend]

I just miss the random parts, that had nothing to do with plotlines, they were just funny, or sweet.
I know that it's good filmic technique, that a scene is useless, unless we discover something about the character, or it moves the plot along, but I don't think it's the same with Gilmore Girls.  That's what was so great about it. There was lots of awesome, quotable dialogue, so there didn't need to be too much plot.

[willowsprite]

I think the random little things, the extra dialogue, etc were why I could watch episodes again and again.  There were so many things in there to laugh at, wonder over, or feel like you related to what they were doing.  Now I don't feel that way, and although I watch new episodes, when its a rerun, I don't have any desire to see it again.

[gilmoreguru123]

Yeah, thats what i miss also. The witty little bits that had really nothing to do with the plot, but just developed the characters into who they were and it kept us very entertained. Now, DR just uses plot twist after plot twist and yes there is suspense but what happened to that great witty dialogue? i also definitely agree this is the first article that i can really agree with. but, i also am giving a little sypathy to DR because ASP left him in a very tough spot. luke has a daughter that he didnt tell lorelai about, luke says no to lorelais elope proposal, and then lorelai sleeps with christopher. then DR has to pick up those pieces. yes, DR isnt doing the best job, but ASP left him in a pretty tough spot if you ask me. plus ASP was one of the greatest writers on tv. yes, GG is now less enjoyable, but lets see what happens. maybe with all these negative reviews, DR will try something new. 

[gilmoreguy78]

100% on the mark.

The one thing about the responses that drive me nuts is people lumping the story arcs and the writing of each episode into the same thing. They are two very different things. DR is responsible for the stroy arc of the season as the Show Runner (or "head writer") but he doesn't write each episode. In fact, I think he's only written the first episode of the season. Instead, it's his job to make sure that the written episode feels 100% Gilmore Girls. ASP would have her writers (in the few episodes per season she didn't write) rewrite and rewrite to get the right tone down. This is something that DR doesn't seem to be interested in doing.

I think he is doing a great job with the thing most people hate: the story arc of the season. I think this is a very interesting direction for the season. The problem I have with DR is that he's not working hard enough at making sure the each epiode is packed full of Gilmore Girl goodness, and by that I mean the witty references and clever comments. Sure, each episode has a few of them. But in the ASP days, each episode had so many that you were laughing about one and two more had passed by before you noticed them.

The "problem" is that DR is just not ASP. He's DR. He's probably not even interested in the same things that ASP was (indie rock and obscure films and literature) . . . and so he cannot write about them. That's not his fault. But he CAN find a writer on staff who knows about that sort of thing and employ them to pepper the scrips with that kind of stuff since ASP is gone. Maybe he just hasn't thought of it yet.