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It's no secret that there is a category of TV series that are shockingly overrated. The critics tongue-bathe them. Showbiz awards are lavished upon them. When their producers exercise their option to end the series -- which, if the networks had their way, would go on forever! -- their finales are accompanied by fawning clip shows, teary interviews with the cast, and a Very Special Episode that's a minimum of twice the length of a normal episode. Meanwhile, you haven't watched it in like nine years and you're all, "The hell? People still care about Everybody Loves Raymond? Really?" And the shows that you think are really clever and entertaining get no love from the press and only so-so ratings, and the people on them never get nominated for jack. That's how it is with The King Of Queens and the brilliant (though Scientologistic) Leah Remini; so it is with Scrubs (until this year, at least) and the bracing John C. McGinley; so it is with Gilmore Girls and the delightful Lauren Graham.
We know -- Gilmore Girls isn't the show it used to be. Rory (Alexis Bledel) is no longer the bookish little nerd with whom we used to identify so closely, and her moving away from the mother she was so close to has kind of destroyed a lot of what the show used to be about. Most glaringly, the show's having finally hooked up Graham's Lorelai with Scott Patterson's Luke -- while initially quite satisfying -- lost the show a lot of its fizz; rumour has it that the two actors kind of hate each other in real life, and it shows in their utter lack of onscreen chemistry -- particularly in last week's season premiere, when it took them about twenty-five minutes after their engagement even to kiss. Amy Sherman-Palladino, you are a talented writer, but girl, please.
But despite the show's recent missteps (see also: a reduced role for Sookie, an even more reduced role for Michel, and giving Kirk a girlfriend), it's still worth watching. And any entertainment value to be derived from the show's titular pair comes entirely from the sparkling performance of Ms. Lauren Graham. God knows Bledel's not pulling her weight, with her mumbly line delivery, slouchy posture, and generally wan demeanour. By contrast, Graham is a geyser of charisma: she talks fast, she smiles big, and she always stands up nice and straight. And she's equally magnetic when she's not smiling, as last season and what we've seen of the new one have given her plenty of opportunities to get angry at her rich, heedless parents (Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann) for interfering in her relationship with Rory; truly, everyone involved in Rory's decision to drop out of Yale deserves a swift kick in the ass, and watching Lorelai deliver such kicks is always a treat. Plus, while she's always lovely to behold, she's especially pretty when she's mad.
And, just one more point about Lorelai Gilmore: she makes a hell of a role for a good actor. Her backstory gives the performer plenty to work with, in that she was a daughter of privilege who scandalized her parents by getting pregnant in her mid-teens, refusing to give up the baby or marry its father, skipping post-secondary education until later in her life, and virtually cutting her parents out of her and her daughter's lives in order to prove she could make it without their help. Having truced with them in order to finance Rory's education, their relationship is still rather shaky, and plagued by setbacks on both sides. And while Lorelai is smart, self-sufficient, funny, and a good and fun mom (though still strict, in her way), she isn't perfect -- which is so often the problem with "strong" female characters, particularly on TV. Instead of being a figure of impossible rectitude in the Christine Lahti mold, Lorelai also has a lot of flaws; she's impetuous, flighty, selfish to the point of childishness, and self-centred in the extreme. All of which make the character recognizably human and realistic and hence often irritating, in the way real humans are.
It's a rich part, and one that must be very rewarding to play, and one that would be a starmaker if Gilmore Girls didn't air on The WB. If a generally smart, well-written, character-driven dramedy aired on NBC, they'd be blanketing the press with Lauren Graham coverage -- rueful, good-natured stories reminding us of her bad luck killing shows like Good Company and Conrad Bloom, and of her scene-stealing work on Caroline In The City and that Law & Order three-parter that was half in L.A. with her future Gilmore Girls swain Scott Cohen and her hilarious recurring role as the relentlessly cheery and slightly insane efficiency expert Andrea on NewsRadio (for which she, frankly, earned a lifetime of comedy credit from us; we still remember her adorably petulant pout when Lisa didn't just laugh off Andrea's admission of burning down her ex-boyfriend's apartment building). Recently quoted for an Entertainment Weekly story about the dogged stars of failed TV series, Graham said that, pre-Gilmore, she didn't know she was doing anything wrong by appearing in a lot of pilots; she thought she was building up a solid list of credits and working steadily until a more permanent gig came along. And we agree that she was doing fine, just as Jason Bateman was doing fine when he was killing shows that weren't as good as Arrested Development. (But then, we always extend that benefit of the doubt to the actors we like, who we regard as merely unlucky, as opposed to people like Breckin Meyer or Chyler Leigh, who are cursed.)
Lorelai Gilmore is a good enough part, and Graham so great playing it, that it should have led to Graham's being rocketed to movie stardom, as George Clooney was based on his role on ER, or even as Eva Longoria is about to be based on her poorly written, indifferently performed role on Desperate Housewives. Someone important should have noticed Graham and cast her in a romantic comedy like Mr. And Mrs. Smith or...well, sort of like Must Love Dogs, but not crappy. If she had to be in Sweet November, she should have been the lead, except for the part where she had to fade away from some attractive wasting disease. If she had to be in Bad Santa, it might have been nice if so much of the plot didn't revolve around her love interest's interest in anal sex. If she had to be in The Pacifier, she...should have sold her blood for the money if she needed it that bad.
Lauren Graham combines an appealingly goofy wit and crack comic timing in an extremely gorgeous physical form. And if she didn't share a network with so many annoying teenagers, she would have been able to parlay all that into a successful film career. We don't know exactly whom we should blame for Graham's not having become an internationally famous superstar by now, but we suspect that it's all Rory's fault. Stupid Rory.
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