Friday, May 18, 2007

Whither Now the Cast of Gilmore Girls?

Not surprisingly, not a lot. At least not according to IMDB.com.

Lauren Graham, of course, will have the most high-profile movies for a time (eg., Evan Almighty). But being the most recognizable face of Gilmore Girls is a mixed blessing (everyone I know still looks at me with contempt when I tell them I watched the show), and if she puts out too many non-hits too soon (eg., Because I Said So), the thin nimbus of critical goodwill she earned from the show may dissipate as quickly and completely as it did for Leelee Sobieski, leaving Lauren to resume her former title of “Queen of Canceled Series”.

Things are less hopeful for Alexis Bledel, I suspect, whose upcoming offering is a sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. God knows that if I were ever to have a daughter, I’d want her to be Rory, but if I ever needed hire an actress, I probably wouldn’t want her to be Alexis. (It may be unfair to compare her to the other actors on the show, since there were a lot of them, but she always struck me as the least convincing of them.)

And the rest of the cast? Criminally overlooked during the show’s run, most of them will slip back into obscurity. Scott Patterson (“Luke”) will appear in Her Best Move and possibly Saw IV, Keiko Agena (“Lane”) might have voice work if Kim Possible is still on the air, and Edward Herrman (“Richard Gilmore”) will resume his long career of small roles (he’ll be in The Skeptic and A Love of Time next), but Kelly Bishop (“Emily Gilmore”), Yanic Truesdale (“Michel”), and Sean Gunn (“Kirk”) appear to have nothing on the horizon at all. All of them were good in their roles. Some of them, particularly Kelly Bishop, were so good that it feels wrong to have to put their character’s name in parentheses after their own name to help people remember who they are.

 

 

 

Which saddens me, but not as much as the fate of Liza Weil, whose “Paris” would be one of the most memorable comic characters in television history if people actually watched the show. Liza appears to be returning to independent films (she’s slated to appear in Neal Cassady), much like Michelle Williams before her after Dawson’s Creek ended. Hopefully I won’t be the only one watching, because if Michelle was more talented than she got credit for — as I’d long said before the Academy concurred after Brokeback Mountain — so too is Liza. But more so.