Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest (Smart Pop Series) (2 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Crusie,Leah Wilson

Tags: #Humor & Entertainment, #Television, #History & Criticism

BOOK: Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest (Smart Pop Series)
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Talk up to your viewer.
 
I don’t know when “dumbing down” began to seem like a good idea on TV, but it’s a mistake and the writers on
Gilmore Girls
know it. Their mantra is “Everybody’s smart and so are you.” So what if some of the allusions go over some viewers’ heads? The rest of them won’t. I know this because I’m a complete music illiterate, but I never feel lost when Rory and Lane talk about groups or CDs. That takes some very careful writing and I’m appreciative. It’s conversation where everybody knows the game, and you feel as though you could play, too, if only you were there. But what’s really impressive is the breadth: allusions to film, television, literature, music, society, and politics, spanning decades, are just dropped into the conversation and then trampled on as the characters rush on to the next crisis, never slowing to complain or explain:
LORELAI (to Rory): We’re not gonna have this fight in a flowery bedroom with dentists singing “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” in the background. It’s too David Lynch! (“The Road Trip to Harvard,” 2-4)
 
PARIS: Wow, you’re always so Desmond Tutu-y. This is refreshing. (“We’ve Got Magic To Do,” 6-5)
 
BABETTE: Now don’t you freak out. Morey hates being the first anywhere. He thinks it hurts his street credibility.
 
MOREY: Charlie Parker was late to everything.
 
BABETTE: Charlie Parker had more drugs in him than a Rite-Aid. Forget Charlie Parker. (“The Bracebridge Dinner,” 2-10)
 
LORELAI: You will say nothing, you will do nothing, you will sit in the corner and offer no opinions and pull a full-on Clarence Thomas. (“Secrets and Loans,” 2-11)
 
EMILY: What do you think of the Romanovs?
 
LUKE: They probably had it coming. (“Dead Uncles and Vegetables,” 2-17)
 
 
 
And my personal favorite:
LUKE: Very romantic.
 
LORELAI: Says the man who yelled “Finally!” at the end of
Love Story
. (“Let the Games Begin,” 3-8)
 
 
 
Dumb dialogue is boring dialogue; the writers on
Gilmore Girls
never make that mistake.
 
Remember that the best dialogue is the stuff you can’t hear.
 
I’m a dialogue junkie in my own work, so believe me when I tell you that the most important thing about dialogue is what isn’t said. On-the-nose talk is another form of dumbing down, leaving the viewer no chance to make the connections; worse than that, it’s not real. People in real life do not tell it like is, they tell it slant, and that’s why the good stuff isn’t in the words, it’s all around them.
 
It’s in the spaces between the beautifully parallel non-sequiturs, like this exchange of afflictions:
MADELINE: My brother has measles.
 
LOUISE: My mom’s having an affair. (“Concert Interruptus,” 1-13)
 
 
 
It’s in the rhythms of the you-know-damn-well-what-I-mean rapid fire exchanges that read like poetry:
LORELAI: She’s not going on your motorcycle.
 
DEAN: I don’t have a motorcycle.
 
LORELAI: She’s not going on your motorcycle.
 
DEAN: Fine, she won’t go on my motorcycle. (“Kiss and Tell,” 1-7)
 
 
 
It’s in the exasperated missed connections that make conversations look like performances by trapeze artists with sweaty hands:
EMILY: So what exactly is going on between the two of you?
 
LUKE: Nothing. Really. We’re friends, that’s it.
 
EMILY: You’re idiots, the both of you. (“Forgiveness and Stuff,” 1-10)
 
 
 
And it’s the dialogue that plays on the viewer’s knowledge of the world of the show, written with haiku-like economy:
LORELAI: The world changes when it snows. It’s quiet. Everything softens.
 
MICHEL: It’s your mother.
 
LORELAI: And then the rain comes. (“Love and War and Snow,” 1-8)
 
 
 
It takes a great deal of trust in and respect for your audience to leave the best part unsaid, and the writers of
Gilmore Girls
clearly have a lot of both; it’s not that surprising, then, that viewers have repaid them with the same.
 
Given that it’s such a showcase of dialogue, it’s not surprising that
Gilmore Girls
is one of the most quoted series in the history of TV or that, when I read the essays for this collection, so many of them cited such terrific exchanges from past seasons. They were having so much fun, I wanted to play, too, so I went back and found quotes that evoked the spirit of their essays, recalling how the people of Stars Hollow spoke about personal relationships (they’re terrible at them), parenting (still trying to get it right), the town (quirky doesn’t begin to describe it), the good things in life (food, books, and sex, not necessarily in that order), and reality (always optional). The opinions here are many and varied but the essayists all share a love of the show and the fast-talking people in and behind it, and they’re all here to, well, talk about it. Because in the world of
Gilmore Girls
, that’s what you do. . . .
RORY: Well, you know, I guess we don’t have to talk about . . . stuff. Yeah . . .
 
LORELAI: Who say we always have to be talking? We can not talk!
 
RORY: Of course we can.
 
(The two pause for a moment.)
 
LORELAI: Okay, we should probably talk about how we’re not gonna talk . . . (“The Long Morrow,” 7-1)
 
 
 
So welcome to the
Gilmore Girls
anthology. I hope you find something terrific on every page. And when you’re done, I’ll be at Luke’s if you want to, you know, discuss it.
 
Talk to you soon,
 
 
Jenny
 
It All Comes Out in Moron: Personal Relationships
 
Heather Swain
Whimsy Goes with Everything
 
KIRK: Well, first I read the sign and then I tried the door in case it was some sort of elaborate ruse.
 
LORELAI: Designed to keep only you out?
 
KIRK: There’s precedent. (“Help Wanted,” 2-20)
 
 
 
There are those who feel that the population of Stars Hollow is a little eccentric, but Heather Swain understands them all, every one of them, including Kirk.
Especially
Kirk
.
 
I
’VE DECIDED TO MOVE to Stars Hollow. I’ve had enough of New York City with all its hubbub and rigmarole. Who needs fifty-nine dollar, truffle-topped, wagyu beef burgers? Who wants to wait six months for a table at one of Mario Battali’s forty-seven new Italian restaurants? I certainly never need to see Hugh Jackman run around Broadway in a white leisure suit again. Or stand beside the next Bernard Goetz on my morning subway commute. It’s enough to drive a sane person completely
Taxi Driver
. I don’t want to wake up one day, shave my head into a Mohawk, and start yelling “You talking to me?” in the mirror. What I need is a nice, quiet little town, full of fine folks, where I can be me. Besides, there’s someone in Stars Hollow I find quite enchanting.
 
Anyway, what’s New York got that Stars Hollow can’t offer? Restaurants? What about Luke’s? Now that’s a damn fine diner with good coffee, and I hear the meatloaf is excellent. Bakeries? Weston’s has twenty-seven kinds of pie and thirty-four flavors of ice cream. Mince-meat with praline pecan? Shoofly with butter brickle? You could probably get it there. And the gourmet market, Doose’s, sells everything from Easy Mac to aged Camembert. (Although, personally I prefer a nice soy cheese, what with my lactose intolerance and all.) Plus entertainment! You wouldn’t believe the festivals, parades, celebrations, and cultural events such a little burg puts on. I’ll take the Stars Hollow Firelight Festival over Shakespeare in Central Park any day, because what’s more romantic, celebrating two star-crossed lovers drawn together by random astrological events or watching Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken belt out show tunes in the musical adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s
Mother Courage and Her Children
? I think we all know the answer.
 
Won’t I miss all the characters—the loudmouths, eccentrics, artists, and nut jobs—in New York City, you might want to ask. The Julian Schnabels, the Bella Abzugs, the Koches, the Clintons, the Hiltons, the Trumps. The buskers, the beggars, and those guys in wheelchairs who sell funny little knit finger puppets outside subway stations. That’s what gives the city its edge. Its panache. Its vroom, vroom, hum-min-na, hum-min-na! Well, let me tell you, if there is one thing Stars Hollow has, it’s character, baby, pure character. Character is what makes that town work, and there’s one character in particular who keeps me coming back for more.
 
Sure, sure, things happen in Stars Hollow. People date. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Plan weddings, get married, or skip out on weddings. Go to college, drop out of college, go back to college. Get sick, get well, get over it, get arrested. Have fights, make up. Start businesses, start families, start fires. The usual things that make up life happen there, but those kinds of things happen wherever you go—Beverly Hills, Capeside Mass., the
O
.C. It’s the people those things happen to that make it all the more interesting in Stars Hollow. That’s why I’m moving there. I think I could fit in. Make friends. Become a part of the community. Maybe even fall in love with someone special. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Because, admit it. You feel it, too. I’m blushing. Seriously. It’s Kirk.
 
Kirk Gleason: entrepreneur, artiste, town docent. I love him. But not in the way that you might think. I’m not talking in the pedestrian, over-used trite way that the word
love
is tossed about in reference to haircuts, new shoe fashions, and extremely rich desserts. When I say I love Kirk, I mean that I’m
in love
with Kirk and Lulu better watch her back. He’s the reason I keep showing up in Stars Hollow for my weekly fix of quirk and whimsy, and he’s the reason I’m chucking the Big Apple to move to the Nutmeg State.
 
The other people in Stars Hollow are fine enough, albeit a little dull next to the man of my dreams. Take Lorelai Gilmore, for instance. She’s cool in a funky T-shirt-wearing, junk-food-eating, witty-joke-cracking sort of way. We could be buddies. Not best friends or anything. But the kind of acquaintances who show up at the same parties, air kiss, and promise that we’ll get together for lunch soon then never do. I admire the raw pig-headed tenacity it must take to remain the rebel in her family for as long as she has. Then again, how hard could it be to stay at odds with the likes of straight-laced Emily and Richard? Lorelai’s family is nothing compared to Kirk’s. Growing up the youngest of twelve brothers and sisters in a bedroom with no windows—now that’ll make a person a true individual.
 
Then there’s Lorelai’s daughter Rory, an absolute doll. She’s the kind of gal you want to know. Someone you can sit down to discuss Gore Vidal’s latest tome or Vidal Sassoon’s latest mousse. So she felt like an outsider at Chilton, always straddling the line between the bitchy rich cliques and her working-class lifestyle back in Stars Hollow. She claims she’s not a joiner, and Lorelai says she hates how such snotty private schools try to stamp out every vestige of individuality in the students. Yet compared to Kirk’s secondary experience, Rory might as well have attended Smurfy Smurf’s High School of Happiness. As he told her once, “I carried a duffle bag and ate lunch by myself everyday and I turned out just fine” (“Like Mother, Like Daughter,” 2-7). I rest my case. Everyone finds his or her niche in life, and Rory’s doing just dandy as an Ivy Leaguer these days.
 
There are other people in town I’d like to get to know. I could handle a passing, nod-and-smile, how-you-doing, nice-weather-we’rehaving kind of rapport with Luke Danes. Although he is an emotional wreck. Anyone who pines away for six years over someone else, like he did for Lorelai, then blows the whole thing right before they’re supposed to get married . . . can we say baggage? You’d need a sky cap just to hang out with him. Jackson and Sookie would be on my list of People to Befriend. Who better to mooch from during festive eating holidays than a klutzy chef and her eggplant-serenading husband?

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