Gilmore Girls (2000)

Written by Peter McGinn on May 23, 2021

This is a good show. My wife watched the entire set of series without me as it seemed we already had a lot to watch together. She enjoyed it and at some point I decided to watch it and she elected to watch it again with me.

It is very witty and intelligent and, if you don’t mind every episode using the same wit and rapid fire word association and social references on and on, it is great fun. Once in a while they take it a bit too far and a character who has not shown great wit and humor comes out with a jewel. I can understand the writers wouldn’t want to waste the line.

They have two Sam and Diane characters (Lorelai and Luke) as a “will they or won’t they” romance — you know, from the tv show Cheers where they bend every script to bring them close to a romance, but oh, not quite. A lot of shows have done it since then (and probably before also. I mean they kept Mary Tyler Moore single as Mary Richards because she had dome the housewife thing in the Dick Van Dyke Show).

The show does really well at staying consistent, especially considering how many episodes there were each season. So even when it wears a bit thin for me, (for example, the Kurt character really gets old for me as they seem to have him do absolutely everything a minor guess character could do better. Did they not want to pay character actors?) it is still better than most shows out there.

I feel I should add that I usually wait until I have watched the entire run of a show before reviewing it, because sometimes even good programs deteriorate or jump the shark. You know, when show does something totally out of character or unbelievable to boost ratings or juice it up. Apparently the term came from the long-running Happy Days when the Fonz was water skiing and literally jumped over a shark. He almost took on super powers, it seemed.

I don’t think Gilmore Girls will end up there, but even then I could always edit this review!