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crack_van2005-05-22 10:14 pm
fourteenlines.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2005-05-22 10:14 pm
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Small fandom overview: Gilmore Girls
First off, I have to apologize. I should have finished this, erm, almost a month ago. But I've been sick, and real life has otherwise interfered with my ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
crack_vanish ambitions. I plan to post some fantastic recs, but this recap was the best I could do without putting it off for yet another week and officially becoming the biggest small-fandom loser in Crack Van history.
I'm also going to point you to The WB's website for this show, because they've got a summary of current plot twists as well as pictures of many of the main characters. Under the circumstances, it's the best I could do.
The conceit behind Gilmore Girls was that snarky, rebellious Lorelai Gilmore got pregnant at age sixteen and dropped out of school, to the eternal chagrin of her parents Richard and Emily. The Gilmores are a fine, upstanding (read: filthy rich, socialite) New England family and the only way for her daughter to save face was to marry Christopher, the father of her baby. Unfortunately for Richard and Emily, Lorelai refused, and sometime in the year after her daughter Rory was born, she packed her bags and moved from her parents' house in Hartford, CT to the dinky, quirky town of Stars Hollow. She worked as a maid at the Independence Inn, where the owner allowed her and baby Rory to live in a tiny outbuilding on the grounds. Eventually, she worked her way up to managing the Inn and bought a house.
The series opens when Rory is sixteen, and gets accepted to Chilton, a prestigious prep school which will greatly help her chances of getting into Harvard, her dream university. In order to pay for the expensive private school, Lorelai turns to Emily and Richard, whom she sees only on holidays and special occasions. They agree to pay for Rory's education, for a price: Lorelai and Rory must have dinner with the Gilmores every Friday.
This description, while factually accurate, does nothing to capture the show's sideways sense of humor, or the fantastic depth and breadth and absurdity of the characters.
Lorelai Gilmore
Lorelai is not, by any measure, a typical mother. She thinks healthy cooking is putting a Pop Tart in the toaster, hates playing "the mom card," is prone to massive movie binges camped out on the couch, listens to the same music and wears the same clothes as her daughter, and could give John Crichton and Xander Harris a run for their money in a bid for "most pop culture references per hour." She loves Stars Hollow. She'd do anything for her daughter, including resume a relationship with her parents, whom she constantly complains never thought she was good enough. And she has a codependent relationship with hot coffee, as well as the man who acts as her primary supplier - Luke Danes, owner of the local diner. But we'll get to that later.
At the end of the third season, when Rory was graduating from high school, Lorelai and her friend Sookie - the chef at the Independence Inn - realized their dream of opening their own inn on the outskirts of Stars Hollow. The year-long renovation process was difficult, but since it's opened they've been having great success. And it's a good thing, because Lorelai needed something to take her mind off the fact that her daughter was college-bound.
Rory Gilmore
Rory's full name is actually Lorelai, which her mom realized was a bad idea once the Vicodin wore off, but the nickname "Rory" stuck well enough. She's bookish and brainy and so, so uptight. She gets along with Richard and Emily much better than Lorelai does - which doesn't sit very well with Lorelai. Most of Rory's goody-goody syndrome probably comes from being scared of messing up her life like her mom did; for all that neither of these two points is ever explicitly addressed on the show, they do a fine job of portraying these tensions running under the surface.
At the same time, Rory's inherited her mother's biting sense of humor and razor-sharp wit, as well as a love for anything campy, kitschy or bizarre. She'll read Trollope for fun and then watch a Marx brothers movie with her mom.
Luke Danes
Luke runs the local diner in Stars Hollow - creatively named "Luke's" - in the building that used to be his father's hardware store. His traumas seem to be his difficult relationship with his father, the death of his mother, and a relationship with a woman named Rachel who did nothing but leave him for points unknown. It's not hard to see why it's difficult for him to trust people, especially considering that for the first four years of the show, Luke and Lorelai positively dripped UST, but never quite seemed to be able to make it beyond that. Which changed after Luke began listening to self-help tapes (this sounds a lot cheesier than it was - mostly it was played as quirky and ironic, except that it actually worked) and decided that he really did want Lorelai, and began courting her.
Lane Kim
Lane is Rory's best friend from Stars Hollow. She has a very strict mother, who upholds the twin virtues of being Korean and being Christian, much to Lane's dismay. She's in love with music, and eventually got kicked out of the house after her mother found out she'd joined a band. Various efforts have been made by the show's writers to explore Lane's relationship with her mother, but they always seem to get distracted by the next shiny thing, and nothing has really come of it. Lane was recently distressed to discover that, of all the things her mother tried to instill in her as a child, the only thing that actually stuck was the idea that she couldn't have sex before she was married.
This would probably be a lot more tragic(ally funny) if her boyfriend was still Dave Rogowski, who got kidnapped by The OC (Dave was played by Adam Brody, who later got cast as Seth Cohen in The OC) and written out of the show as going to college in California. Dave did crazy things to be with Lane, like pretend to be a choir guitarist for a church he didn't attend, or stay up all night reading the Bible so that Lane's mother would allow them to go to prom. Instead, Lane's boyfriend is Zach, her now-roommate and another member of the band, who just never quite measures up.
Richard and Emily Gilmore
Sometimes you love Richard and Emily and sometimes you love to hate them. They can't quite seem to let go of the idea that they have some say in Lorelai's life, which is the source of continued friction. Last season they went through some marital problems - Richard moved into the poolhouse and Emily bought a panic room - but eventually reconciled and renewed their vows. Emily used it as an opportunity to meddle in Lorelai's love life yet again, and Lorelai became convinced that she and her mother were done for good. Only time will tell.
Sookie St. James, Jackson Melville
Sookie, as mentioned earlier, co-owns the new Dragonfly Inn with Lorelai. She's married to Jackson, and they now have one kid and another on the way. I'm sorry, but I just have nothing interesting to say about them. They're quirky. Sookie hurts herself a lot when she's cooking, which is bad 'cause she's the chef.
Michel Gerard
Cranky. French (or French-Canadian, I can never remember). Hilarious.
Worked with Lorelai and Sookie at the Independence Inn, but after it burned down (um, long story) he went to work for them at the Dragonfly, only now he has hair. His disdain for humans is matched only by his love for his pet chows. Where there's wacky fun (read: inane plot devices) at the Dragonfly, Michel is probably partially responsible for it.
Taylor Doose
Town Selectman of Stars Hollow. Mentor to Kirk, nemesis to Luke, owns a market and an ice cream parlor, and rules the Town Meetings with an iron fist (or tries to, anyway). Also, they recently made him come off as an evangelical Christian, but I think that was just poor writing.
Kirk
Kirk is the strange guy that's always around, but you never really know where he came from (or what his last name is.) He's Taylor's protege, and Luke's friend, which makes for a weird dynamic, and if there's one thing you can count on in life, it's that every scene with Kirk will be bizarre. And sometimes brilliant. Like when Luke and Lorelai kiss for the first time, and are interrupted by Kirk, running past naked and screaming. It's a long story.
Miss Patty and Babette
Miss Patty is an aging stage actress and Liz Taylor wanna-be. She can always be counted on for a lascivious comment or five. Babette is Lorelai's next-door neighbor, who's prone to fantastical proclamations and high-strung hand-wringing over her cats. When Miss Patty and Babette are in collusion, hilarity often ensues.
Paris Gellar
Paris started out as Rory's rival at prep school, but somehow their combined uber-competitiveness turned into something resembling friendship, and then morphed over the years into real friendship, albeit a frustrating one on both sides. Paris is prone to saying the things nobody else is brave enough to say at the most inconvenient times. They've been roommates at Yale for the past two years, enduring life coaches, boyfriends and printing presses. Don't ask.
Dean
Dean was Rory's first boyfriend. And then they broke up. And then they got back together again. And then they broke up again. She dated Jess, he got married, then Jess left town and Dean tasted the cold, hard reality of getting married too young. Then Dean and Rory slept together. Then his wife left him. Yes, in that order.
Jess Mariano
Jess is Luke's troubled nephew. He bears the most resemblance to a cross between James Dean and Jack Kerouac, except that he listens to 70's punk. Jess and Rory bonded over shared love of 20th century literature, but alas, it was not to be.
Logan Huntzberger
Rory's current boyfriend. For the moment. He's kind of a jackass, but then Rory does seem to skew that way in the guys she's attracted to. He's a fellow Yale-ite, and just happens to come from a family that Rory's grandparents are friends with. Friction ensues.
Christopher
Rory's dad. The relationship that probably screwed up Lorelai for life. Also, despite the fact that only in recent years has he turned into something other than a giant loser who showed up only sporadically, Emily seems to think that Lorelai and Christopher are totally Made For Each Other. Whatever.
Christopher knocked up yet another girlfriend just as he and Lorelai were thinking of getting together for good. He and Sherri got married, had Gigi, and then Sherri dumped his ass, leaving him to raise his toddler daughter on his own.
Ah, irony.
PS. I'm Shaye, you may remember me fromcrack_van turns for Farscape, The West Wing, and SportsNight. At least I think those are the ones I've done.
crack_vanish ambitions. I plan to post some fantastic recs, but this recap was the best I could do without putting it off for yet another week and officially becoming the biggest small-fandom loser in Crack Van history.I'm also going to point you to The WB's website for this show, because they've got a summary of current plot twists as well as pictures of many of the main characters. Under the circumstances, it's the best I could do.
The conceit behind Gilmore Girls was that snarky, rebellious Lorelai Gilmore got pregnant at age sixteen and dropped out of school, to the eternal chagrin of her parents Richard and Emily. The Gilmores are a fine, upstanding (read: filthy rich, socialite) New England family and the only way for her daughter to save face was to marry Christopher, the father of her baby. Unfortunately for Richard and Emily, Lorelai refused, and sometime in the year after her daughter Rory was born, she packed her bags and moved from her parents' house in Hartford, CT to the dinky, quirky town of Stars Hollow. She worked as a maid at the Independence Inn, where the owner allowed her and baby Rory to live in a tiny outbuilding on the grounds. Eventually, she worked her way up to managing the Inn and bought a house.
The series opens when Rory is sixteen, and gets accepted to Chilton, a prestigious prep school which will greatly help her chances of getting into Harvard, her dream university. In order to pay for the expensive private school, Lorelai turns to Emily and Richard, whom she sees only on holidays and special occasions. They agree to pay for Rory's education, for a price: Lorelai and Rory must have dinner with the Gilmores every Friday.
This description, while factually accurate, does nothing to capture the show's sideways sense of humor, or the fantastic depth and breadth and absurdity of the characters.
Lorelai Gilmore
Lorelai is not, by any measure, a typical mother. She thinks healthy cooking is putting a Pop Tart in the toaster, hates playing "the mom card," is prone to massive movie binges camped out on the couch, listens to the same music and wears the same clothes as her daughter, and could give John Crichton and Xander Harris a run for their money in a bid for "most pop culture references per hour." She loves Stars Hollow. She'd do anything for her daughter, including resume a relationship with her parents, whom she constantly complains never thought she was good enough. And she has a codependent relationship with hot coffee, as well as the man who acts as her primary supplier - Luke Danes, owner of the local diner. But we'll get to that later.
At the end of the third season, when Rory was graduating from high school, Lorelai and her friend Sookie - the chef at the Independence Inn - realized their dream of opening their own inn on the outskirts of Stars Hollow. The year-long renovation process was difficult, but since it's opened they've been having great success. And it's a good thing, because Lorelai needed something to take her mind off the fact that her daughter was college-bound.
Rory Gilmore
Rory's full name is actually Lorelai, which her mom realized was a bad idea once the Vicodin wore off, but the nickname "Rory" stuck well enough. She's bookish and brainy and so, so uptight. She gets along with Richard and Emily much better than Lorelai does - which doesn't sit very well with Lorelai. Most of Rory's goody-goody syndrome probably comes from being scared of messing up her life like her mom did; for all that neither of these two points is ever explicitly addressed on the show, they do a fine job of portraying these tensions running under the surface.
At the same time, Rory's inherited her mother's biting sense of humor and razor-sharp wit, as well as a love for anything campy, kitschy or bizarre. She'll read Trollope for fun and then watch a Marx brothers movie with her mom.
Luke Danes
Luke runs the local diner in Stars Hollow - creatively named "Luke's" - in the building that used to be his father's hardware store. His traumas seem to be his difficult relationship with his father, the death of his mother, and a relationship with a woman named Rachel who did nothing but leave him for points unknown. It's not hard to see why it's difficult for him to trust people, especially considering that for the first four years of the show, Luke and Lorelai positively dripped UST, but never quite seemed to be able to make it beyond that. Which changed after Luke began listening to self-help tapes (this sounds a lot cheesier than it was - mostly it was played as quirky and ironic, except that it actually worked) and decided that he really did want Lorelai, and began courting her.
Lane Kim
Lane is Rory's best friend from Stars Hollow. She has a very strict mother, who upholds the twin virtues of being Korean and being Christian, much to Lane's dismay. She's in love with music, and eventually got kicked out of the house after her mother found out she'd joined a band. Various efforts have been made by the show's writers to explore Lane's relationship with her mother, but they always seem to get distracted by the next shiny thing, and nothing has really come of it. Lane was recently distressed to discover that, of all the things her mother tried to instill in her as a child, the only thing that actually stuck was the idea that she couldn't have sex before she was married.
This would probably be a lot more tragic(ally funny) if her boyfriend was still Dave Rogowski, who got kidnapped by The OC (Dave was played by Adam Brody, who later got cast as Seth Cohen in The OC) and written out of the show as going to college in California. Dave did crazy things to be with Lane, like pretend to be a choir guitarist for a church he didn't attend, or stay up all night reading the Bible so that Lane's mother would allow them to go to prom. Instead, Lane's boyfriend is Zach, her now-roommate and another member of the band, who just never quite measures up.
Richard and Emily Gilmore
Sometimes you love Richard and Emily and sometimes you love to hate them. They can't quite seem to let go of the idea that they have some say in Lorelai's life, which is the source of continued friction. Last season they went through some marital problems - Richard moved into the poolhouse and Emily bought a panic room - but eventually reconciled and renewed their vows. Emily used it as an opportunity to meddle in Lorelai's love life yet again, and Lorelai became convinced that she and her mother were done for good. Only time will tell.
Sookie St. James, Jackson Melville
Sookie, as mentioned earlier, co-owns the new Dragonfly Inn with Lorelai. She's married to Jackson, and they now have one kid and another on the way. I'm sorry, but I just have nothing interesting to say about them. They're quirky. Sookie hurts herself a lot when she's cooking, which is bad 'cause she's the chef.
Michel Gerard
Cranky. French (or French-Canadian, I can never remember). Hilarious.
Worked with Lorelai and Sookie at the Independence Inn, but after it burned down (um, long story) he went to work for them at the Dragonfly, only now he has hair. His disdain for humans is matched only by his love for his pet chows. Where there's wacky fun (read: inane plot devices) at the Dragonfly, Michel is probably partially responsible for it.
Taylor Doose
Town Selectman of Stars Hollow. Mentor to Kirk, nemesis to Luke, owns a market and an ice cream parlor, and rules the Town Meetings with an iron fist (or tries to, anyway). Also, they recently made him come off as an evangelical Christian, but I think that was just poor writing.
Kirk
Kirk is the strange guy that's always around, but you never really know where he came from (or what his last name is.) He's Taylor's protege, and Luke's friend, which makes for a weird dynamic, and if there's one thing you can count on in life, it's that every scene with Kirk will be bizarre. And sometimes brilliant. Like when Luke and Lorelai kiss for the first time, and are interrupted by Kirk, running past naked and screaming. It's a long story.
Miss Patty and Babette
Miss Patty is an aging stage actress and Liz Taylor wanna-be. She can always be counted on for a lascivious comment or five. Babette is Lorelai's next-door neighbor, who's prone to fantastical proclamations and high-strung hand-wringing over her cats. When Miss Patty and Babette are in collusion, hilarity often ensues.
Paris Gellar
Paris started out as Rory's rival at prep school, but somehow their combined uber-competitiveness turned into something resembling friendship, and then morphed over the years into real friendship, albeit a frustrating one on both sides. Paris is prone to saying the things nobody else is brave enough to say at the most inconvenient times. They've been roommates at Yale for the past two years, enduring life coaches, boyfriends and printing presses. Don't ask.
Dean
Dean was Rory's first boyfriend. And then they broke up. And then they got back together again. And then they broke up again. She dated Jess, he got married, then Jess left town and Dean tasted the cold, hard reality of getting married too young. Then Dean and Rory slept together. Then his wife left him. Yes, in that order.
Jess Mariano
Jess is Luke's troubled nephew. He bears the most resemblance to a cross between James Dean and Jack Kerouac, except that he listens to 70's punk. Jess and Rory bonded over shared love of 20th century literature, but alas, it was not to be.
Logan Huntzberger
Rory's current boyfriend. For the moment. He's kind of a jackass, but then Rory does seem to skew that way in the guys she's attracted to. He's a fellow Yale-ite, and just happens to come from a family that Rory's grandparents are friends with. Friction ensues.
Christopher
Rory's dad. The relationship that probably screwed up Lorelai for life. Also, despite the fact that only in recent years has he turned into something other than a giant loser who showed up only sporadically, Emily seems to think that Lorelai and Christopher are totally Made For Each Other. Whatever.
Christopher knocked up yet another girlfriend just as he and Lorelai were thinking of getting together for good. He and Sherri got married, had Gigi, and then Sherri dumped his ass, leaving him to raise his toddler daughter on his own.
Ah, irony.
PS. I'm Shaye, you may remember me from
crack_van turns for Farscape, The West Wing, and SportsNight. At least I think those are the ones I've done.
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but really, the gilmore girls are complicated people! :)
very much looking forward to seeing what you rec! do you have a ship in particular? or are you going to jump around?
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Also, if you have pics you want included in the overview I can put them up on my webspace.
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Fun overview, by the way. You're making me sad the show's never on here.
What no Trory?
And I second your mourning for Dave.
Re: What no Trory?