Lane Kim (played by Keiko Agena): “You got Dean a book?”
Rory Gilmore (played by Alexis Bledel): “Yeah, Metamorphosis.”
Lane: “Metamorphosis!?”
Rory: “It's Kafka.”
Lane: “Very romantic.”
Rory: “I think it is very romantic.”
Lane: “I know
I’ve always dreamed some guy would get me a really confusing Czechoslovakian novel.”—
The Gilmore Girls, “
Forgiveness and Stuff,” written by John Stephens, directed by Bethany Rooney, original airdate December 21, 2009
Nine years since this show originally aired—where has the time gone? A couple of years had already elapsed when the image accompanying this post was taken. Rory and BFF Lane look closer to graduating than starting high school, as they are in the quote. Unfortunately, this was the only shot I could find of the two of them reasonably close to this timeframe.
You’re unlikely to come away singing “O Holy Night” after watching
The Gilmore Girls during the holidays. In its first season, Rory’s rebellious young mom, Lorelai, sasses
her stuffy, upper-crust father by intentionally conflating his mother, calling from London, with God, then finishes up by saying: “I still can't get over that I'm related to God. It's gonna make getting Madonna tickets so much easier.” The episode from which the above quote is taken begins with a minor emergency involving the “Before Mary” in the local Christmas pageant, who, inconveniently, ends up in the family way.
No matter. Over the past several years, when I began watching the now sadly departed WB-CW dramedy, I’ve come to think of the setting for the series—the fictional Stars Hollow, Conn.—as a kind of Bedford Falls for the group that
New York Times columnist David Brooks calls “the Bobos” (i.e., bourgeois bohemians).
It’s a small town (
based on the real-life Washington Depot in the Nutmeg State) containing local merchants, a town square, a gazebo, and quirky characters—not really the simple, struggling blue-collar types sustained by the Bailey Savings & Loan in
It’s a Wonderful Life.
But like that classic bit of Capracorn, Stars Hollow has tons of
snow—like my 1960s childhood (the decade which, I discovered from
a Bergen Record article today, set a record—at least in this particular county--for the most white Christmases in the last century). It’s as if Al Gore and his warnings about global warming never existed.
In case you ever get too cold from all that vicarious snow, you can walk down to Luke’s Diner, where the proprietor dispenses hot coffee, along with an ingeniously concocted—if edibly questionable—“Santaberger” when Lorelai has trouble communicating with her daughter. (Luke’s gruff, laconic exterior conceals a good heart, much like his backwardly worn baseball cap hides a very full head of hair.)
And, even more plentiful than snow, the series had all that clever, whip-smart dialogue. If you exclude the first, best season of Cybill Shepherd in
Moonlighting, this is probably the closest that a primetime series comedienne has come to the type of lines that came regularly from the mouths of Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Rosalind Russell, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur, and other leading ladies of 1930s screwball comedies.
In its infinite wisdom, voters for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
never got around to awarding (or even nominating!) Lauren Graham the Emmy she deserved for her sassy portrayal of Lorelai. (In fact, the show was only nominated once—for Outstanding Makeup for a Series.) It makes you wonder whether democracy—at least as it’s practiced by the grand poobahs of American culture—is all that it’s cracked up to be.
But just about every cast member had a chance to shine, as in today’s quote. Each line was creator
Amy Sherman-Palladino’s gift to her talented actors. Through the magic of DVD and syndication, all this dialogue represents a huge collective gift to an audience yearning for wit and warmth not just during the holidays, but all the year round.
P.S. As for anyone contemplating purchasing Metamorphosis for the CEO of this site (highly unlikely, given that the tale’s target reader is intellectual), my attitude is epitomized by Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’ The Producers, as he reads the first sentence to see how it meets his requirements for his new show: “ ‘Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to discover that he had been transformed into a giant cockroach.’ Nah, it's too good."
Lorelai
Gilmore (played by
Lauren Graham): “Hey, I have a new year's resolution for you: Become more
cynical and self-absorbed.”
