1: Of 'Gilmore Girls' and Boring Boys

'Gilmore Girls' jumped me. It was sometime between the return of Premiership Football and the death of summer, and it was via e4. I wasn’t impressed: a preternaturally happy woman and her Sin City hooker daughter getting into faux-crises in their idyllic New England town? Where’s the drama, I thought? Who’s watching this show?

Robert McKee had me seeing red. This show typified what aspiring screenwriters are told not to do. The stakes - if they can be called that - were so small that, at best, they would be ineligible for all but the tamest of roller-coasters and, at worst, were subterranean. Example: someone has to get home immediately… to feed her dog! (Yeah, I know.) Scenes drifted off aimlessly on a myriad of tangents, until a belated joke reminded someone what the point was and the ship righted itself. Everyone knows small-town life runs at its own pace, but these girls were extracting the Michael.

Seeing the titular girls till all-too-familiar relationship ground was tantamount to eavesdropping on the “quiet girls” in school, but with added shame. It’s disappointing: the participants talk endlessly and say nothing. But worse, they say nothing about you. You don’t exist. In fact, nothing exists for these girls beyond their own myopic reflections (of which there are many) and complaints about their latest lover/ex lover. It was almost enough to make a guy brave “event TV.”

After watching the depiction of men in 'Gilmore Girls', I finally understood women’s frustration at their portrayal on screen. Male characters on the show only came off well when serving as harmless supporting Eunuchs (Kirk, Taylor…) Otherwise, they consistently disrupted female happiness by way of their masculinity’s incompatibility with female logic. If a male lover disagreed with his spouse on something, he was talked down to or vilified for immaturity (witness Rory slamming Logan’s Life and Death Brigade antics) or just getting in the way (Luke delaying he and Lorelai’s wedding, T.J. being T.J.)

There’s more to this than just fighting one’s corner. I wouldn’t want to defend most of the men I’ve encountered, and certainly not just because I am one. To me, the predictable men of 'Gilmore Girls' highlighted a massive double-standard. If, indeed, women deplore men routinely desiring mundanely gorgeous partners, then men can only follow suit. Any man on this show outside the ‘tall, dark, handsome’ or ‘boyishly dashing’ moulds was, simply, screwed. Ironically, only his friends who fitted either of these bills would ever screw by design. Luke, Logan, Chris, et al all substantiated this. Interestingly, women outside the traditional range of heterosexual male desire (anyone not in the top 30 places of this year’s FHM 100 sexiest list) still got someone to come home to. Sookie and Jackson anyone? Or (the attractive but “unglamorous”) Lane and Zack? Or (the attractive but highly strung) Paris and Doyle?

Weeks passed.

Maybe it was the lack of competition, but eventually my defences began to lower. I kept watching. Cracks began to appear in my hastily formed objection faster than a Manchester City title challenge. Sure, these chicks were a bit yappy, but their moxie became more and more endearing. Suddenly, I adjusted to the warp-factor chatting, finding it a welcome break from the drudgery found elsewhere in televised suburbia. I became involved with these people’s relationships, to the extent where shake-ups and break-downs solicited discussions with the TV (though Logan remains painfully smug.) The inimitable use of music (Half Alien rock) added another notch to the list of the show’s unique facets. Soon, the prospect of a programme low on “action” became a borderline necessity.

Where once there was McKee (or, rather, the image of Brian Cox’s McKee from Adaptation), there was only me, the same wide-eyed chancer who used to write about friends without the constraints of monotonous plot-acceleration and perfunctory turning points. My Dave Eggers side body-slammed my White Van Man side. So what if these ladies didn’t always get up to much? Save the pantomime protagonists from 'Heroes' and its ilk, who does? These girls entertain me more having dinner with their family than Jack Bauer would tackling a dozen Villains of the Week. Theirs was a series that brought something new to the table. Sure, we’ve all watched shows that tackle everyday minutiae (I believe, they’re called ‘soaps’), but ‘Gilmore Girls’ reclaimed this terrain, proving that a drama can do kitchen sink without descending into an East-End screaming match. How? By understanding the glaringly simple truth that there aren’t really any new stories, only new perspectives. Now more than ever, what better reason could there be to (re)visit Star’s Hollow?

Those fabulous Gilmore Girls were talking to me all along. I just wasn’t listening.

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Ian Pratt may slate ‘Heroes’, but he’ll always love Milo Ventimiglia for his work on that show about those two girls who like to talk fast ‘cos life’s short.