When The Stars Ring Hollow

Yes, it's about Gilmore girls.

October is my favorite month. I think I spent so many years of my life entrenched in the education system as a student and an educator, that fall still feels like the beginning of something; like there’s still time to start new things and hope that the year won’t end terribly.

Does it feel less like that in this particular election year? … I plead the fifth. 

Even still, happy Gilmore girls season to all who celebrate. When people meet me they typically think I have Rory Gilmore (straight-A student, goody-two-shoes) energy. However, the longer you know me the clearer it becomes that I have Luke Danes energy—the dashing young curmudgeon with a heart of gold…for those he cares about anyway.

But I was a good student like Rory, that’s true. I studied English as an undergrad, meaning I majored in being the one who did the reading. I was in the gifted program in junior high and high school. That’s not me trying to flex, it’s just me sharing something that profoundly shaped my education experience and mostly amounted to a large dose of imposter syndrome and a praise kink. 

I will say, every year I watch Gilmore girls, it gets less enjoyable and more of habit, like a drug I can’t quite quit despite the bad side effects. For example, I get increasingly angry at how much time Rory spent with Dean. “Team Dean” needs to take several seats, because he actually had a lot of red flags that suggest he was highly co-dependent and had anger issues. 

Is Rory perfect? Absolutely not. 

To be fair, most of their relationship (except for the adultery) happens when they’re teenagers. But sometimes I think about how their relationship was kind of glorified as great and healthy for young teens. Dean was the “safe” option whereas Jess was positioned as the “bad boy” who wasn’t good for her, just exciting.

The elephant in the room of our increasing online society is that a lot of people hate Gilmore girls for being a very white and unrelatable TV show. (They usually conveniently forget Michel and Lane, both POC and series staples. But also, Lane’s mom is subject to some negative stereotypes.) 

Of course, it’s an early 2000s show about two extremely privileged white women living in small-town Connecticut. You do the math on what their lives would realistically look like and what they would spend their time talking/caring about.

Not that Gilmore girls is supposed to be realistic. I sometimes get frustrated with people who expect TV shows and movies to be more real. Even realism is still a style of fiction.

I talked about this a little in my essay about She-Hulk earlier this year, where I pondered if we’re expecting too much of our superhero shows, like expecting them to have a message or deal with real-world issues.

Is it fair to expect all of our art to have a message and a point? Of course, we naturally assume there should be some responsibility that comes with having that kind of platform.

The stories we tell and how we tell them are important, I wouldn’t be a writer if I thought that wasn’t true.

Ultimately though, I think enjoying something doesn’t mean you can’t be critical of it. More than that, expecting everyone around you to have the exact same values as you in the art they create is kind of antithetical to co-existing.  

At the end of the day, I tend to think of Gilmore girls as mostly just a 7 season romantic comedy. It’s like bubble gum for your brain, and at this point doesn’t need to be taken too seriously. The art we’re making today matters more.

Even still, is it fair to ask creators to always write based on what we want to see? There’s no easy answer in a newsletter that’s already over my promised 500-word count.

Why am I waxing philosophical about a decades-old show in a coffee shop on a Sunday morning? Is it because I procrastinated on writing this week’s Silly Thing? Maybe.

What’s Up Next:

I’ll be performing in the Poetic Underground Spooky Showcase at Blip Roasters on Wednesday October 16th.

I’ll be on the Freestyle Comedy Show at Lotawana Brewing in Lee’s Summit on Friday October 18th.