Wherever will young white straight American girls turn for their honky heteronormative old-money East Coast social cues?
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Ah, delicious loathing of the Gilmore Girls. Being a person who references pop culture with some regularity, I have been told for the last six years how I just HAVE to watch this show ZOMG I would SO LOVE IT! It looks like a whiny soap opera that thinks it’s far more intelligent than it is. Bleargh. And yay for its demise.
I like Gilmore Girls. Its not realistic, and there is convenient old money, but I still like it.
It was so snappy and good, back before they got all boy-obsessed. Oh, wait.
Wow. How out of the loop am I. I thought this wreckage was cancelled years ago.
O happy day!
Actually, the show hasn’t been cancelled so much as reached it’s planned expiry date. Each season of the show covers one Rory Gilmore’s academic years; the show started with her as a high school sophomore and the producers never planned on extending it past her college graduation. True, no more episodes will be filmed and it will lose its prime time spot, but the young straight American girls will be able to get their fix from syndicated reruns for years to come.
aaaw, i really liked it, but the creator left and this season has just been even dumber than usual. last week while I was watching my obligatory 5 minutes of it, the daughter’s boyfriend asked her mom for her permission to propose. aaaaaargh.
Short answer: they will buy the boxed set of DVDs of ‘Judging Amy’.
Oh, was that hypothetical? Sorry, broken bones–>bad pain–>literal thinking. My doctor informs me that that ability to understand idiomatic expression and metaphor will return to me, but can’t estimate a timeline. For which IBTP. Meanwhile I sould refrain from commenting, I guess.
i don’t watch tv [and am widely known for being the worst mother on earth for not having cable TV], so my best guess would be “the simpsons.” i gather that “friends” and “cheers” are only in reruns. ditto “gilligan’s island” and “love boat,” the only ones i can remember that vaguely feature old money on occasion.
My friends and I actually use “Gilmore Girls” as a sort of shorthand for sappy “chick shows.” I will not touch such programs with a 10-foot pole for fear of inducing type 2 diabetes with the sugar overload. But then, I haven’t turned on the television at all in about a month (not because I’m a TV snob—it’s because I’m busy playing outside/working/being a social butterfly).
My question about where young straight honkys can go for their social cues was actually sort of a joke. The joke is that they can go anywhere, since young straight honkydom is the default position of TV. Sorry for the confusion.
Brady Bunch?
Family Affair?
Who’s the Boss?
Growing Pains?
No, no, I know! Sanford and Son! (Wait. Redd Foxx was old, kinda bent, and definitely not a honky. He was, however, a misogynist knob.)
My sister has every season available on DVD. Her two daughters and she are great fans. I still don’t know what I would get out of it, but I’m very aware that for my sister and my nieces, it’s about the mother-daughter dynamic. Even if they wouldn’t put it that way.
I loved Gilmore Girls. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but it definitely defied some convention.
We’re slow on the take today, Twisty. I didn’t get it because I don’t watch much tv. I have cable for cartoons, alleged news, colbert and educational programming. I’ve never seen the Gilmore Girls. Good to know that I’m not missing anything.
the couple of times i had to watch sex in the city, though [being trapped in a room], i almost gagged. i can deal with gilligan’s island, but not that stuff.
While I’m blaming, one more thing! IBTP for having to watch bad “boy” cartoons. In patricular, I hate Ed, Edd and Eddy. If you don’t know about this cartoon, consider yourself lucky!
When I was young, I watched so-called “boy” cartoons like Speed Racer and Clutch Cargo (remember those creepy lips?). I still love the Stooges.
I’m glad that I don’t have to watch Princess Barbie, though, because I would puke.
lawbitch, I loved Speed Racer! I was also into some of the other Québec-produced cartoons like Astro Boy and Belle and Sebastien. Nerdy kid that I was, I watched them all on the French-language CBC.
Giving it “the send-off it deserves”? They gonna drown it in the cow-pond?
I heart the Gilmore Girls! I will admit that its gotten a bit boy crazy the past couple seasons and the creator’s departure sucked, but the first few seasons are witty, well written, and go against the grain of the morality tale of the chick who gets pregnant too young. She doesn’t live a life of misery and she’s one of the best television mothers in terms of honesty and dialogue with her daughter I’ve ever seen. She also builds a business and there are at least pro-sex positions on women of size (at least two women on Gilmore Girls are significantly overweight, yet have sex lives, which you rarely if ever see on TV).
Okay, the main characters are both really pretty and Lorlei’s family has money (but they sure didn’t give her any when she left home at 19 and worked as a maid).
Just as I say to X-ian fundies who object to Harry Potter as demonic, I’ll say to all of you: if you haven’t watched the program, how do you know that it really truly is the bastion of all that you object to?
Gilmore Girls cancelled? Ah well, I’m sure Estelle Getty will find work again soon.
hooray!
Ugh, lawbitch, I detest Ed, Edd & Eddy. If my kiddo was younger, I would outlaw it (he’s 11). As it is, I let him watch it, but constantly talk about why I don’t like it. Same with Kids Next Door on the same channel… the show where all adults are enemies of the children/main characters.
My brother had a mad, secret crush on Speed Racer. Finally decided to tell us about it in his thirties.
The dialogue was good. Not the content, just the style.
You were all thinking it.
Actually, no, it was that snappy tone of the repartee that got on my nerves.
I watched the first few seasons. Once Rory got into Yale, I couldn’t deal with it any more — it had always perched on the edge of nauseatingly uncritical old money Ivy League WASP private school debutante yacht club country club golf club worship, and it tipped the wrong way.
Jezebella, I hated it for just that reason.
ugh.
very annoying. I’m glad my daughter got over it relatively fast.
Yeah, it got bad once Rory went to Yale. But I think maybe it was bad all along, and I was just too young and dumb to realize it.
I always thought the Gilmore Girls was like watching a migraine and hope that it doesn’t become something worshipped like Buffy or Charmed, because if it does there will be three of them.
We will know that the Armegeddon is nigh.
And Ed, Edd and Eddy sucks so hard it hurts. I thought that with the big send off they gave it a few weeks ago they wouldn’t be forcing as much on the public, but it seems to have gotten worse. They have stopped showing Foster’s as much because of it and I think that show is one of the few reasons to watch TV.
Thealogian - please don’t use the silly euphemism “women of size.” What size - small, medium, or large? I’m fat and I prefer simply to be called fat. Unless, of course you were being ironic, in which case I shut up and go away.
LCforevah, I knew it! I knew Speed Racer was gay before I even knew what gay was.
I loved Gilmore Girls for about two years. It was the only place on TV besides BBC America where I could see people who talked like me and my friends (and not just the white or straight ones), who valued book-learnin’ and used big words as easily as small ones.
Then came Jess, and the show started eying the shark. Then Rory slept with Dean while he was married to someone else, and the show backed up to begin running toward the shark. Then there was the whole thing with Logan and dropping out of school because his daddy said Rory had no substantial talent or drive, and then — whee! — over the shark it went.
This last season has been a train wreck. What started out as a show about a woman who rejected where she came from and built her own life from scratch and the kindness of strangers became a fairy tale for baby mamas and upper-class wannabes. Lorelei was suddenly married to the guy who knocked her up at sixteen. Luke suddenly found out he had a genius bastard daughter, too, and fought to be in her life even though his baby mama had basically done a Lorelei and raised her on her own with invisible money and resources and didn’t want him interfering. Lane got pregnant having bad sex on her honeymoon and gave up her dreams of being a rock ‘n’ roll drummer to stay home and take care of the kids, just like her mom she’d spent half her life hiding from. Sooky (sp?) got pregnant with an unwanted third child because her husband had lied about getting a vasectomy, but she’s having it anyway (because apparently the actress who plays her is pregnant and they couldn’t think of anything else to do with that story line, rejecting the Will and Grace option of just having her show up obviously pregnant and pretending nothing is different, it’s just your TV). And now Rory can’t get a job and is about to graduate, so she’s going to have to move to the west coast with her boyfriend.
Train wreck! Train wreck! Gah!
SO WHY AM I STILL WATCHING?
WHOLE HOURS OF MY LIFE WASTED! GAH!
I can’t help but blame the patriarchy. And at least I got some crocheting done.
Oh, in case any other diehards out there read this, I should say I haven’t watched last night’s episode yet, so maybe Rory doesn’t move west with her boyfriend. But it sure was looking like that last week.
I blame the patriarchy for the fact that I taped last night’s episode just to find out.
Of course Speed Racer was gay! Would a straight man have worn that fetching scarf around his neck?
I never saw the show. I’m only commenting because someone mentioned Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends which is, in my opinion, the best cartoon around. It’s the only show I actually watch with my daughter that I can stand. The newest episode with Cheese and the aliens was brillant (though I think the whole Cheese storyline was easily eclipsed by Eduardo being high from the dentist “You crazy!”).
Best line from Blue, “I’m opposed to tyranny! I’m for…non-tyranny!”
We have a huge debate over best episode. My daughter claims it’s the one where they steal the bus. My vote is for the sleepover episode (I dare you to go ask Mac’s mom if she wants a smoothie!)
I think I need a life.
Yeah, Antoinette, it was the really long eyelashes!
I would also like to point out, among the many, many sins of Gilmore Girls, that Melissa McCarthy’s character is named “Sookie.” She is a fat woman and I cannot understand the reasoning behind giving that character such a bovine name. Was the patriarchy concerned that her presence would make us forget how much we wanted to be/fuck Sookie’s BFF Lorelai? Did they have to go all nominally bestial on the viewers so we wouldn’t think they were implying that this woman was somehow attractive?
Yes, yes! The ascot! and the pointy-toed boots.
Ascot. Eyelashes. Pointy-toed boots.
How did anyone miss it?
Hey.
I love the Gilmore Girls.
They don’t exactly broadcast any of the series past series 5 over here in Blighty, and I haven’t seen series 7 yet, so thanks a lot for the showspoilers. (Hint: I was being sarcastic about the gratitude.)
And yeah, there were some flaws to it, like Rory sleeping with Dean despite being married, and dropping out of Yale (Although, since I, too, desperately want to be a journalist, and have done for a few years now, I can empathise with the crushed feeling she felt when Mitchum told her she didn’t have it).
And Lorelai, by the way, tends to criticise those with money and entitlement, even if Rory seems to be more apologetic about them.
Oh lovely, now they can all start watching Ugly Betty instead. If Betty stood up for herself a little more, she’d be a total Blamer.
Hey, whadd’ya mean Harry Potter’s not demonic? Damn.
Waste of a good altar. Guess I’ll have to go back to the rats-n-snakes and costume fangy teeth option for visiting Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Although actually, the biggest fear-response I’ve ever gotten from godbags-at-my-door was when I had a bunch of women playing D&D all over the living room floor. I think they (the Mormons, in that case) couldn’t have been any more disturbed if we had actually been sacrificing a goat and chanting creepily.
Alas, I did not have any Judas Priest on the stereo at the time–largely due to the fact that I do not own any–and therefore was not able to inflict them with some kind of malevolent and satanic embolism. I did make devil-fingers though. The least I could do.
But Rori and Logan broke up! HUZZAH!
I like it probably because it’s one of the few shows without dead or mutilated women.
I prefer Veronica Mars anyway.
Please do not get me started on Ugly Betty. The whole premise is that she is hired not on talent but cause she is ugly, and by doing so passing over the pretty women who were qualified but committed the sin of sleeping with the boss. She is brought in to be the assistant to a man who got the job because he was the boss’s son and by so doing passing over the women who had worked her whole life to get the job. No sympathy for the poor woman though- no she’s just a whinging bitch.
Then both Betty and man boss spend each episode fixing the mistakes that they had made earlier in the episode due to their said inexperience, thankfully ’saving the day’ (which would not have needed saving had they not been inept). Plus Betty’s looks/ dress-sense subtly improve each episode- she can’t even be ugly properly.
Even if we want to look at the positives, it promotes the good woman by every man dynamic which is hugely problematic. IBTP.
Give me some decent TV.
I admit it - I love this show. It’s the only one I can’t miss. I wonder how much of that is tied up in Lorelei’s fabulous collection of coats, though. And scarves.
Music’s good too.
Oh, Amy, I am terribly sorry to have posted spoilers without a spoiler warning. That was thoughtless of me.
If you want to get even, send post-Billie Piper (and gosh I hope that isn’t a spoiler for someone) Doctor Who spoilers to sara at saraarts dot com. That way you can slap me for my big mouth without also punishing innocent, non-spoiling, American blamers who might also be Doctor Who fans.
My apologies for being a jerk. Too bad I can’t blame the patriarchy for that.
Hmmm, I must admit, I heart GG because of the way it doesn’t let some of those honky, heteronormative, East Cost old-money issues slide by without comment. It’s subtle, granted. But, if our straight white daughters do have a million places to turn for indoctrination, then I, for one, am sad they’re losing a program that challenges them, albeit subtly, to criticize that (fantasy of their) privileged perspective.