There's something about life in Stars Hollow that reminds you of how it was for Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show. Everything is just too eerily perfect, including the neatly resolved moments of pain and suffering, let alone those lovely streets and kindly locals. Could it be these deluded souls are living inside a television show?

Well, we all know the answer to that. The real question is why do we want to join them? When I first saw Gilmore Girls it made me feel as if I was having an asthma attack. Everyone was frantically witty, gabbing away fast as rabbits, as if Woody Allen had taken amphetamines and got hip to youth culture and its baby-boomer equivalent through regular readings of Dolly and Rolling Stone.

Mind you, that makes it sound way too edgy. The subtext to this neurotically ecstatic dose of American niceness is that we're all hip in a square kinda way. Maybe advertising has bound us to that demographic and homogenised irony more than we'd like to think. Supposedly everything about Gilmore Girls was designed for a team of sponsors looking for the perfect program to wedge its way into our hearts. Carole King was roped in for the theme song. Somehow or other they got me addicted, too (snakes alive!).

In this new episode we see that Lorelai (Lauren Graham) is still groovy and concerned, while her daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) is having the same old boy troubles – right now she's with bad boy Jess (they tongue kiss), but good boy Dean isn't giving up without a fight (friendship matters, right). School politics are meanwhile getting gnarly as an evil new swot emerges. Extended family life is as aristocratically lopsided as ever. Minor characters flit in and out like aggressive seagulls grabbing their comic moment.

But I wondered if things weren't losing their focus completely? This episode feels like spaghetti in a pot. It's hard to get hold of a single strand, and not one of them is cooked anyway. How much faster can these actors cram their lines in? Making space for story development seems based on a button called conversational fast forward. It won't be long before they all sound like they're on helium. No doubt I'll be there with them, talking quickly and gasping for a last mouthful of air as I cry out to sceptical friends that they just need to give this show more time. Death by light entertainment – it can happen to anyone.
Credit: The Australian


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