Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Best Episode Ever ... But Who’s Watching?

Still, if a tree falls in a forest...

Which brings us to the problem that’s plagued the show since it first aired: Gilmore Girls, while still gaining acceptance, is still not yet widely viewed.

It occured to me recently that the trouble the WB has selling it to audiences is the same trouble I have justifying myself to friends and family who think me profoundly gay for watching it: Most right-thinking people feel a natural revulsion to any show that seems to target Lifetime channel-watching, family values-preaching, feelings-wallowing soccer moms. Which is exactly how Gilmore Girls comes off in TV ads. And in parts of the show itself, to be sure. And no matter how whimsically amusing the ads might try to make the show out to be, no one buys that a show as touchy-feely as Gilmore Girls seems can be all that damn funny.

What the WB should do, then, is what I’ve had to do to avoid getting outed every time I’m caught watching the show: Yes, the show is very funny, I tell people, but not because of any of the main characters — the cute but overly chatty mom, the made-for-Disney daughter who looks the part but who seems to be struggling with the acting aspect of it, or any of the men they happen to be dating that season. There is another side of the show, I say, a darkly neurotic, tortured, and vicious side that never gets advertised but is the real reason to watch. The “nemesis” characters — the hyper-sensitive/hyper-critical grandmother, the snide concierge with the inconsistent accent, the sinister, Machiavellian leader of the cabalistic “Puffs”, and, most of all, Liza’s maniacally driven and vindictive “Paris” — these are the true selling points of Gilmore Girls, free as they are of the chick-flick fetters that constrain the rest of the show. Emphasize the characters with broader appeal in the TV ads, and the show might start to shed some of the taboo that has kept it down in the ratings.