48: Gilmore Girls

Honestly, I've never seen more than maybe 15 minutes of a Gilmore Girls episode, and that's being generous - it's probably more like 10. Here's what I know about it, more or less, and forgive me if I'm wrong. The two main characters are a mother and daughter, both named Laureli, but one goes by Rory (the younger I think). The mother, Lauren Graham, had the daughter, Alexis Bleidel when she was young, maybe 17 or so, so she's still relatively young and single herself, and her men are part of the story, one of whom is maybe Luke, owner of a diner, or something. The daughter maybe goes to Yale. I remember once I was at a big box electronics store looking on the DVD racks and I noticed the Gilmore Girls DVDs on the shelf in order, and feeling really weirded out about looking at how Alexis Bleidel has gone from something like 12 to 20, right in a row - like a strange flipbook of her growing up.

So that's the basics. The show was never incredibly broadly popular. But the show is here because of the niche cultural touchstone it has become - even though I've never seen it, I've considered watching it because somehow some things about the show have become pervastive in discussion - its characters fast talking, it's offhand pop-culture references. You can reference that something sounds or is like Gilmore Girls, and it means something - not just specific in that it fits in exact facts, but broader - there is enough that there is a Gilmore Girls way of sounding, or doing something.

Earlier in this list, contrary to the thought process of a couple of my friends, I have not committed to watching at least a little of every show on the list before writing about it - and I still stand by that - it's not essential to what the list is all about - which is the impact on culture rather than simply my favorite shows - and any shows I haven't seen are obviously here because of the impact, not my love of them. That said, for this show and the next (and maybe more, but who can say?) I have actually at points in my life been mildly curious about them, and thus decided to at least watch a few minutes of episodes. My choice of which episode to watch was determined by what was available on the WB website and it was a second season episode in which Lorelai is scheduled to get married to some Max, which obviously doesn't take.

It's still weird for me to see Alexis Bleidel so young, I suppose since most of the roles I've seen her in, she's far older, and she still seems to talk and act as if she is older is this. They really do keep talking (I don't mean that in a bad way - there's nothing wrong with talking) - perhaps the writers get paid by the word Charles Dickens-style. And my first seriously important revelation is that recurring character Kirk, portrayed by Sean Gunn is the guy from the endlessly-running KGB commercials. I'm pleased to say that otherwise though, the show is pretty much, exactly what I expected it to be. That is to say, I show I would have considered watching if I had gotten on the bandwagon at the time, but it's total episode count of 153 makes it extremely prohibitive unless I completely run out of other shows. But, more power to it.