Pam Poovey

Even Donna Reed studied and had a job - she was a trained nurse and sometimes worked even after being a mother and housewife; she didn't go straight from high school to pot roasts. The Donna Reed Show was actually more realistic than GG, despite being seen as a 1950s fantasy! That was the bizarre thing about the Lindsey situation: it didn't even fit with the 1950s. It really did feel that the writers manipulated the situation into something so contrived that we could see that the Dean-Lindsey marriage was doomed from the start, so Rory having an affair with Dean wasn't something that ended the marriage so much as hastened its demise (and left them conveniently child-free at the end). If Lindsey had been studying part-time or even hoping to become a mother as soon as possible it would have made Rory and Dean's actions far more damaging.

Just like the very first episode, when Lorelai didn't know her own daughter was still only 15 in September 2000! Some things never change, and an example of the trope Writers Can't Do Maths. It's one that always drives me bananas.

I just hated the whole "full circle", finding the idea that nobody ever does things differently from their parents to be not only lazy writing, but a poisonous idea. It suggests that there's no point trying in the GG universe as you are Calvinistically predestined to repeat your parents' actions. The idea is ludicrous anyway. In real life I hardly know anyone who has literally done exactly what their parents did, and when they did, it was a conscious choice taken because their parents' lifestyle appealed to them. If nobody ever did differently from their parents, humans would still be living in trees eating fruit and nuts.

The awful thing is that Rory herself thinks he's not good enough for her, and the reason for that is not obvious - Paul is a nice, smart, caring, tolerant, fairly attractive guy and apparently that makes him a hilarious target for abuse by the writers. It immediately gave the impression that Revival!Rory had become a massive bitch and turned me off the story within the first 15 minutes or so. Then they dragged this lame "joke" out for the rest of the season. At the beginning it seems that Rory is adored by her mother, her grandparents, her best friend, her boyfriend, and family friends, which seems normal enough for a nice, pretty, studious teen. But gradually it turned out she was practically worshipped by the entire town and was allowed to get away with some pretty awful behaviour (such as cheating on a married man). And it wasn't even possible for her to have a male friend as she was so desirable that any guy she got close to seemed to fall in love with her. That's when the show just went too far and turned viewers off Rory.

I remember learning somewhere that marrying a third cousin is no different genetically from marrying a stranger (which is a bit of a take that to genealogists). So Charles and Trix were a little closer than strangers but really nothing to get worked up about, Lorelai! And even if they'd been first cousins it wouldn't have been that odd - most marriages in history have been between cousins, and it's still common now. It doesn't really tally with Lorelai describing a distant relative Claudia (is she her third cousin?) as "nothing" to her, family-wise to then get freaked out about second cousins marrying.

And here I was thinking I was the only one who hated Kirk's guts. Also, this might be headcanon, but I'm pretty sure all those jobs that Kirk had for just one day or one week were ones that he didn't legitimately apply for and was hired. I think he just turned up and started working as if he was meant to be there and knows all about delivering flowers or swans or installing DSL, and brushed off any questions from co-workers. There's just enough known examples of that happening in the show to make it entirely plausible. Which makes him a town nuisance and a fraudster.

Yet characters drive to Manhattan for a night on the town as if it's about twice as long as the drive to Hartford - when Google Maps says it would take almost three hours without any traffic! That makes those New York trips seem like really long nights, not just to get there but to drive home again afterwards. At least Babette and Morey stayed overnight when he had to work at a jazz club in Greenwich Village. (I live about three hours drive from a major city, and would NEVER drive there for a concert/hen's night etc and then drive home the same night).

That's what I kept thinking the whole way through the revival. It should have been set in the past, and the actors would have had to play their characters as three or four years younger, and Richard would die earlier. There was always a conceit that GG was set in the current year, and it seems the creators could not see it happening any other way, that it would lose its "now-ness". It really felt that they had hung on to their main plot points too long and their ideas had gathered dust. Despite its contemporary setting, it felt dated and at times even creaky.

THIS! Yes, the main thing lacking was some kind of reason for Lorelai's malaise and Rory's failure. After watching the revival, I still have no idea what was wrong with either of them: Lorelai looks spoiled and selfish, and Rory looks spoiled and lazy. And I'm left wondering if their issues were really "fixed" with marriage/new Dragonfly (more of what she already had) and writing a book/getting pregnant (a real come down from all the things she tried for, and hoped to achieve). It would have been great if everything had been tied in with Richard's death, giving all three characters not only a clear arc of healing and recovery, but also some much-needed sympathy. It would have also honoured Richard as the patriarch of the family that all three "Gilmore girls" had come to depend on in some way, so that removing him from the picture brought on a crisis. Maybe this was too much in opposition to some vague feminist sympathies that the show may have had once - but it could have been a good story if handled sensitively. And yes - surely replacing the car would have been a major symbol of Lorelai moving on? And it was really old, so how long could she feasibly keep it for anyway? But perhaps it was yet another symbol of Lorelai's need to stay in the one place and have more of the same.

I think perhaps you are looking for the General Hospital forum?

I was watching Red Light on the Wedding Night, and the show does give a birth date for Rory. Dean says their "old" anniversary was the 24th of the month, the day after Rory's birthday, so she was born on the 23rd of October. Of course this does not fit, because in 2000 the 23rd of October was a Monday, not a Friday (it was the 27th which was a Friday that week). So you can put this down as both canon, and a nitpick.

I'm rewriting the entire show in diary form, but changing all the silly parts that didn't make sense, were later contradicted, or didn't go anywhere. And it's set in the present (because the show was always in the current year), so everything has to be updated, including people's names and the pop culture references. And I'm writing it in real time, so it will take me seven years (I started last September). I don't think this actually proves I'm a devotee so much as a nutcase.

Brilliant! And not unbelievable, because pretty well anyone can get their own cooking show these days. Although last night I was amusing myself by imagining that Rory announces she's going to write a book, and it turns out almost everyone in SH is a published author or is in the process of writing a book. Sookie has a best-selling cook book, Taylor has written a volume on the history of Stars Hollow, Miss Patty has a fascinating memoir based on her one-woman stage show, and Lane writes a series of books on music criticism called Why Rolling Stone Got it Wrong. Lorelai is writing an anti-Wild book based on her aborted yet cathartic trip to the Pacific Coast Trail, and even Kirk is hard at work on A Book by Kirk. Gypsy is the author of the popular handbook, The Everywoman's Guide to Home Mechanics, of which she tells everyone, "That book just got me a new kitchen!". Everyone in the Thirty-Something Gang is already published (their parents paid for the vanity publishing), and all are working on new material. Gradually it dawns on Rory that any idiot can write a book and even get it published, and she's just joined all the other SH eccentrics in their favourite pastime. Babette, author of a series of books on dealing with pet grief, tells her she finally managed to catch up to them all.

I guess you can only have one author per TV show. And Rory's "success" at writing three chapters would look pretty paltry next to Sookie being on a busy book tour/chat show circuit. If not a book tour (so as not to make Rory look even more useless in comparison), why not her own line of gourmet cookies or something? She was a gifted cook, loved baking, and I could see something like that starting small as a specialty of the Dragonfly Inn, then taking off as word gets out from travel and food writers. Before you know it, she's spending weeks at a time overseeing production and having to create secret recipes in seclusion - or whatever you do when you have your own line of baked goods and are a complete control freak over the entire process.

Both screechingly funny lines (when did Chris ever see Rory being forceful? Forcefully having her arm broken and being put to bed by mommy? Forcefully reading the dictionary he bought her?). I was drinking a cup of tea during Charleston's friendly chat, and nearly spit it out laughing. Maybe Chris and the headmaster should have watched a few episodes of Gilmore Girls to remind them what actually happened before they spoke ...