A Beaver Ate My Thumb

No, my thumb is alright. Sorry to disappoint you. Yes, it's a stupid title.

Watched five straight episodes of Gilmore Girls.

Fans of the show will be familiar with silly titles. Mine's still tamer than Nag Hammadi Is Where They Found The Gnostic Gospels.

Yes, I follow a chick show. It just concluded its 6th season, and word is that the 7th will be the last. Started watching the show during my dark years. Humor was a rare commodity then. Between this and Ally McBeal, I barely scraped the RDA to live through with my sanity intact.

But I have a suspicion that there may still have been some irreparable damage from the 5/7ths of the time I went below the RDA.

This used to be a really good series. Very good writing with a lot of amusing dialogue. Just like how Calvin & Hobbes is funny, with a 6yr old spouting deep philosophy and using bombastic vocabulary. The Gilmore girls blather all manner of 'pop' culture references from the 40s to the present. Like, who the hell (in this time and age) has ever heard of Frances Farmer?

But they talk fast, and a large number of my peers are unable to follow the dialogue, so there are very few chuckle partners. The dialogue IS the show. The sarcasm. The wit. The bizzarre references. The plot is mundane. It's all character driven. And there are more characters in the show than a 12oz bag of pistachios.

As Luke describes Star's Hollow: "Everyone in this town should be medicated and put in a rec room with a ping pong table and hand puppets."

There's a short mad cat lady with a tall jazz-playing husband. A prickly handyman + diner owner. A rotund ballet instructor who's married as many times as Elizabeth Taylor. A village idiot with night terrors. A controlling mayor + gouging grocer. An overbearing Korean antiquer. A gay-ish inn receptionist. Snobby parents. A boy named Dean. A rogue named Jess.


But lately, I feel the show is going downhill. Rory just isn't innocent adorable anymore since she lost her virginity at the end of season 4. And after she starts getting it on a regular basis with a co-habitating boyfriend, a certain charm is just lost. The show never really made the right transition into the next level.

The endearing quirky characters are becoming more forced. In the last two seasons, they've tripped over quirky, and stumbling into becoming mental patients. Kirk the idiot isn't funny-stupid, but more loser-stupid now. Gay receptionist is getting too much screen time, and they just can't think of any more ways to make his gay-ness funny, so they're just making him neurotic.

Lorelai at least had stayed true to her character. The character was well developed from the very start, there was no reason to change it later. It's easier to cycle her men around. Waited 6 years for her and Luke to finally get together, and then she sleeps with Christopher in the season finale?!

What the hell?!