Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest (Smart Pop Series) (23 page)
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Authors: Jennifer Crusie,Leah Wilson
Tags: #Humor & Entertainment, #Television, #History & Criticism
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H
AVING A BABY CHANGES
EVERYTHING.
At least it does according to Johnson & Johnson, whose advertisements—fuzzy, thirty-second Valentines to parenthood—punctuated the commercial breaks throughout
Gilmore Girls
’s seven seasons. According to the company’s Web site, the concept behind these public service announcements (and really, what else would you call them? No specific product was ever mentioned) is simple: “You were once the center of your universe and now your baby is. Johnson & Johnson understands.” An interesting campaign choice for a television show marketed to teenagers.
AVING A BABY CHANGES
EVERYTHING.
At least it does according to Johnson & Johnson, whose advertisements—fuzzy, thirty-second Valentines to parenthood—punctuated the commercial breaks throughout
Gilmore Girls
’s seven seasons. According to the company’s Web site, the concept behind these public service announcements (and really, what else would you call them? No specific product was ever mentioned) is simple: “You were once the center of your universe and now your baby is. Johnson & Johnson understands.” An interesting campaign choice for a television show marketed to teenagers.
Which is not to say that
Girls
is just, well, for girls. As I enter the third decade of my life I have to admit, Tony the Tiger witness-protection-program style, that I rarely miss an episode of the show. But while I may not be an anomaly, flashy Web sites, contrived marketing tie-ins, and (lately) that infuriating teenage gab fest during commercial breaks confirm that I and my rapidly maturing ovaries are no longer members of the CW’s target audience. Which calls the intentions of the network’s pro-parenting propaganda into question, especially when you consider that
Gilmore Girls
was originally developed through the advertiser-funded Family Friendly Programming Forum’s (FFPF) Script Development Initiative, a group that encourages the television community to produce more primetime shows that families can enjoy watching together. Synergistic shocker: Johnson & Johnson, the company synonymous with responsible parenting, is a member of the coalition.
Girls
is just, well, for girls. As I enter the third decade of my life I have to admit, Tony the Tiger witness-protection-program style, that I rarely miss an episode of the show. But while I may not be an anomaly, flashy Web sites, contrived marketing tie-ins, and (lately) that infuriating teenage gab fest during commercial breaks confirm that I and my rapidly maturing ovaries are no longer members of the CW’s target audience. Which calls the intentions of the network’s pro-parenting propaganda into question, especially when you consider that
Gilmore Girls
was originally developed through the advertiser-funded Family Friendly Programming Forum’s (FFPF) Script Development Initiative, a group that encourages the television community to produce more primetime shows that families can enjoy watching together. Synergistic shocker: Johnson & Johnson, the company synonymous with responsible parenting, is a member of the coalition.
All of which makes for a tricky, if largely innocuous, mixed message towards sex and childrearing. The “Changes Everything” ad campaign is at once minimalist and perplexing; in fact, the video is little more than black-and-white home movies of chubby, laughing babies with a voiceover that poses inane rhetorical questions like, “Remember the days when you spent hours trying to look glamorous? So who’d have ever thought someday you’d rather spend hours trying to look silly?” and, “There was a time when poker night was what you looked forward to all week. So who’d have ever thought boys night out wouldn’t hold a candle to boys night in?” Call them what you want—adorable, trite, and propagandist are all adjectives that may come to mind—but these advertisements are undeniably effective. And ostensibly directed towards older adults.
So why would these images pepper
Gilmore Girls
, the CW’s love song to unconventional parenting? From the outset, Lorelai Gilmore flouts all stereotypes of the teenage mother. Having a baby no doubt “changed everything” for her, but Rory’s birth is positioned within the show’s narrative as the catalyst for positive change. As an adult, Lorelai’s relationship with Richard and Emily is tenuous at best; flashbacks to her childhood depict a deeply dysfunctional family with radically different values. The pregnancy not only saved Lorelai from the stifling life of a well-to-do New Englander (stomachs bloated with child do not go well with cotillion dresses), but it also gave her a chance to escape from what she perceived to be a never-ending cycle of snobbery and privilege.
Gilmore Girls
, the CW’s love song to unconventional parenting? From the outset, Lorelai Gilmore flouts all stereotypes of the teenage mother. Having a baby no doubt “changed everything” for her, but Rory’s birth is positioned within the show’s narrative as the catalyst for positive change. As an adult, Lorelai’s relationship with Richard and Emily is tenuous at best; flashbacks to her childhood depict a deeply dysfunctional family with radically different values. The pregnancy not only saved Lorelai from the stifling life of a well-to-do New Englander (stomachs bloated with child do not go well with cotillion dresses), but it also gave her a chance to escape from what she perceived to be a never-ending cycle of snobbery and privilege.
To be fair,
Gilmore Girls
does not let Lorelai off the hook completely for breaking away from her family’s millions. There are those lean years that are alluded to every now and then—the ones she spent as a chambermaid at the Independence Inn, estranged from her parents and living with her young daughter in a tool-shed-turned-guesthouse in the back. But Lorelai Gilmore is nothing if not plucky and determined: she worked her way up to manager, raised a straight-A student, fell in and out of love, and earned her business degree at night. When the Independence Inn burned down in season three, she seized the opportunity to open the Dragonfly, a bed and breakfast she runs with her best friend. Again and again,
Gilmore Girls
assures us that Rory’s birth did not signal the end of her mother’s opportunities for success—which is likely one reason why the show consistently receives top billing from the National Organization for Women’s Feminist Primetime Report—but that conclusion is very much at odds with established cultural wisdom, which is likely to make the folks over at FFPF a little nervous.
Gilmore Girls
does not let Lorelai off the hook completely for breaking away from her family’s millions. There are those lean years that are alluded to every now and then—the ones she spent as a chambermaid at the Independence Inn, estranged from her parents and living with her young daughter in a tool-shed-turned-guesthouse in the back. But Lorelai Gilmore is nothing if not plucky and determined: she worked her way up to manager, raised a straight-A student, fell in and out of love, and earned her business degree at night. When the Independence Inn burned down in season three, she seized the opportunity to open the Dragonfly, a bed and breakfast she runs with her best friend. Again and again,
Gilmore Girls
assures us that Rory’s birth did not signal the end of her mother’s opportunities for success—which is likely one reason why the show consistently receives top billing from the National Organization for Women’s Feminist Primetime Report—but that conclusion is very much at odds with established cultural wisdom, which is likely to make the folks over at FFPF a little nervous.
Case in point: Johnson & Johnson’s ads insinuate that babies are the end of frivolity, of nights out with the boys. It stands to reason, therefore, that they are aimed at people who still hold these pastimes dear—namely teenagers and young twenty-somethings. In this way, the campaign functions as a sort of system of checks and balances—we are reminded, as we make our way to the refrigerator during commercial breaks, that perhaps there is more to life as a single mother than razor-sharp comebacks and coffee breaks. To be sure, the babies in the Johnson & Johnson ads appear innocuous, but the company’s equation of children with sacrifice—both personal and financial—is legitimate (and something that is routinely glossed over in
Girls
or rendered irrelevant by the untold personal fortunes of Rory’s grandparents and, in later seasons, her father).
Girls
or rendered irrelevant by the untold personal fortunes of Rory’s grandparents and, in later seasons, her father).
Unrealistic portrayals of sex and parenting are not uncommon in teenage soap operas like
The O.C.
or
Dawson’s Creek
, but they take us by surprise in
Gilmore Girls
—namely because the population of Stars Hollow seems to consist almost entirely of intelligent, interesting, and complicated female characters. While many of the show’s running gags are based firmly in hyperbole (been to a town meeting lately?), one would assume that
Gilmore Girls
’s feminist-friendly street cred would render it immune to many of the pitfalls of mainstream serial dramas. (Let’s just say I’m willing to make a fairly significant wager that if one of the main characters ever got pregnant, it’s doubtful that the situation would be “taken care of” by a fall down the stairs or an impeccably timed miscarriage.)
Girls
must be doing something right to earn the highly coveted NOW seal of approval.
The O.C.
or
Dawson’s Creek
, but they take us by surprise in
Gilmore Girls
—namely because the population of Stars Hollow seems to consist almost entirely of intelligent, interesting, and complicated female characters. While many of the show’s running gags are based firmly in hyperbole (been to a town meeting lately?), one would assume that
Gilmore Girls
’s feminist-friendly street cred would render it immune to many of the pitfalls of mainstream serial dramas. (Let’s just say I’m willing to make a fairly significant wager that if one of the main characters ever got pregnant, it’s doubtful that the situation would be “taken care of” by a fall down the stairs or an impeccably timed miscarriage.)
Girls
must be doing something right to earn the highly coveted NOW seal of approval.
Yet, we find again and again that these accolades do not automatically translate into “mother knows best”; throughout the series Rory is positioned as the more responsible, level-headed Gilmore. She’s the one who packs the map on road trips, who once self-identified as “not spring-breaky” (“Girls in Bikinis, Boys Doin’ the Twist,” 4-17) and who recently cautioned her mother as she embarked on a somewhat ill-advised rebound romance with her baby’s daddy: “I don’t want to see you get hurt again. I just want you to be careful” (to which Lorelai quips, “Is this the safe sex talk again?”) (“’S Wonderful, ’S Marvelous,” 7-4). In fact, Lorelai’s relatively care- and consequence-free attitudes towards sex have largely escaped the younger generation of women on the show, all of whom have had relatively traumatic first sexual experiences. If the CW was afraid that
Gilmore Girls
made young love look too much like fun and games, they needn’t have worried: watching just one of the defloration episodes is enough to make you want to cross your legs and wait out puberty—preferably in a nunnery.
Gilmore Girls
made young love look too much like fun and games, they needn’t have worried: watching just one of the defloration episodes is enough to make you want to cross your legs and wait out puberty—preferably in a nunnery.
Gilmore Girls
’s first foray into teenage sex occurred mid-way through season three, as Rory and Paris waited for college acceptance letters and competed for the honor of giving a speech at Chilton’s bicentennial, to be televised on C-SPAN. The episode—aptly titled “The Big One” (3-16)—was teased on every conceivable media outlet for a week: in a bedroom heart-to-heart Rory was shown confessing to her prep-school friend that “it’s just time,” leading viewers to believe that she had finally given it up to Jess, Stars Hollow’s answer to James Dean. But come Tuesday,
Girls
fans were shocked to discover that her actual line was “It’s just
not
the time,” confirming the teenager’s virginity to her friend, her loyal viewers, and, as it turns out, her eavesdropping mother. But the network’s build-up wasn’t all for naught: the episode did recount a first sexual experience—except we found out that it was Paris, not Rory, who did the deed.
’s first foray into teenage sex occurred mid-way through season three, as Rory and Paris waited for college acceptance letters and competed for the honor of giving a speech at Chilton’s bicentennial, to be televised on C-SPAN. The episode—aptly titled “The Big One” (3-16)—was teased on every conceivable media outlet for a week: in a bedroom heart-to-heart Rory was shown confessing to her prep-school friend that “it’s just time,” leading viewers to believe that she had finally given it up to Jess, Stars Hollow’s answer to James Dean. But come Tuesday,
Girls
fans were shocked to discover that her actual line was “It’s just
not
the time,” confirming the teenager’s virginity to her friend, her loyal viewers, and, as it turns out, her eavesdropping mother. But the network’s build-up wasn’t all for naught: the episode did recount a first sexual experience—except we found out that it was Paris, not Rory, who did the deed.
This kind of bait-and-switch tactic is not unusual in television promos (especially during sweeps week). Neither is the fact that the main character was spared the burden of sexuality. What’s shocking is that the implied consequence of this decision (and in teen drama, sex always has a consequence) is not pregnancy, an STD, or social alienation—it’s rejection from the Ivy League. In a subsequent scene we watched as Paris began to melt down at the podium in the middle of her bicentennial speech. She ranted, in part: “I’m being punished. I had sex, so now I don’t get to go to Harvard. [Rory’s] never had sex. She’ll probably go to Harvard; she’s a shoo-in” (”The Big One,” 3-16). To be fair, Paris has a tendency to display judgments that are a little, well, insane. (Not coincidentally, her background and attitudes mirror those of Richard and Emily—confirming yet again that Lorelai’s break from that lifestyle was a positive change.) Still, it was jarring dialogue from a television show that is almost universally lauded by feminists and respected women’s organizations—especially one that is addressing teenage sex directly for the first time.
Except: it’s possible to dismiss Paris’s tirade as the devastation-born ravings of a scorned overachiever. After all,
Girls
creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who wrote this episode, is known for her endearing propensity towards neurotic characterizations; perhaps we can chalk the whole episode up to satire (a theory that is supported by the repeated assurances from Rory—ever the voice of rationality—that this rejection was not a reflection of Paris’s morals). Yet the virginal Rory came home that night to find acceptance letters from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in her mailbox. And Lorelai still sang to herself, “I’ve got the good kid,” when she learned that it was Paris, not Rory, who had made the decision to become sexually active (“The Big One”).
Girls
creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who wrote this episode, is known for her endearing propensity towards neurotic characterizations; perhaps we can chalk the whole episode up to satire (a theory that is supported by the repeated assurances from Rory—ever the voice of rationality—that this rejection was not a reflection of Paris’s morals). Yet the virginal Rory came home that night to find acceptance letters from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in her mailbox. And Lorelai still sang to herself, “I’ve got the good kid,” when she learned that it was Paris, not Rory, who had made the decision to become sexually active (“The Big One”).
Talk about a mixed message.
Luckily for Paris, the loss of one’s virginity does not preclude a girl from admission to
every
Ivy League school on the East Coast, and by season four both she and Rory were firmly ensconced at Yale. Co-ed clichés abound, and before you can say “finals week” Paris was in a relationship with a
much
older professor and Rory was forced to acknowledge that she was in the middle of a serious dating slump—you know there’s a problem when you’re photographed with the lunch ladies for your roommate’s end-of-the-year collage. This realization hit hard, causing Rory to spend the first day of summer vacation waxing nostalgic to Lane about the one who got away. In this scenario “the one” was, of course, the newly married Dean—when faced with a serious emotional crisis what teenage girl doesn’t long for the security of her most dependable ex?
every
Ivy League school on the East Coast, and by season four both she and Rory were firmly ensconced at Yale. Co-ed clichés abound, and before you can say “finals week” Paris was in a relationship with a
much
older professor and Rory was forced to acknowledge that she was in the middle of a serious dating slump—you know there’s a problem when you’re photographed with the lunch ladies for your roommate’s end-of-the-year collage. This realization hit hard, causing Rory to spend the first day of summer vacation waxing nostalgic to Lane about the one who got away. In this scenario “the one” was, of course, the newly married Dean—when faced with a serious emotional crisis what teenage girl doesn’t long for the security of her most dependable ex?
All of which soon became window dressing for a climactic re-telling of the world’s oldest story. Life as a newlywed was apparently not working out well for Dean. His wife didn’t understand him. He couldn’t seem to make her happy. Every waking hour was miserable. With only the weakest of monosyllabic protests, Rory applied herself to the situation like a poultice and the high school sweethearts reconnected—in the most biblical sense—in the season finale, amid the mournful chords of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love.” (Say what you want about those Gilmore Girls—they always have the appropriate soundtrack for life’s biggest moments.)
And yet, Rory was surprisingly naïve for an adulterer. When the unannounced return of her mother put a hasty end to the lovers’ idyll—sweaters were rumpled and excuses were offered and for a minute the whole scene was reminiscent of a seedy romantic comedy—Rory had the temerity to believe that people would be happy for her, even embrace her decision. While she apologized first for not consulting her mother before making this giant leap into adulthood, Rory concluded her justification speech with the world’s best rhetorical question: “Aren’t you glad it happened with someone who’s good and who really loves me?” (“Raincoats and Recipes,” 4-22). The idea is so preposterous you could almost feel the audience stammer in unison in response with Lorelai: “Um, remember Lindsay? His
wife
?!?”
wife
?!?”
Still, apart from the whole Dean-being-married thing, Rory’s first sexual experience was in many ways worthy of emulation: she waited until she was in her late teens, her partner was a long-term boyfriend, the couple practiced safer sex, and she maintained open communication about her decision with an adult she trusts. Still, too, Lorelai’s explosive reaction to her daughter’s decision was understandable, although unprecedented in the context of their relationship: “I didn’t raise you to be like this,” she responded furiously. “I didn’t raise you to be the kind of girl who sleeps with someone else’s husband” (“Raincoats and Recipes”). For Rory, the disapproval of her mother is worse than rejection from the Ivy League, and the episode concluded with her crumpled on the front lawn, sobbing and alone, the morning-after glow a distant memory.
Significantly, Lorelai made no effort to comfort Rory in the minutes immediately following their confrontation; in fact, the image of her holding back from her increasingly hysterical daughter concluded season four. While this is not an uncommon parenting technique—after all, the kid has to have some time to reflect on what she’s done—the loss of Rory’s virginity punctured the veneer of the Gilmore Girls’ otherwise pristine relationship. Fighting and bickering became more common in the following years, epitomized by a temporary (although traumatizing) estrangement in season six. While it’s significant that these changes in their relationship coincided with the advent of a little nookie (Lorelai also wasn’t thrilled when Rory starting sleeping with Logan before he was officially boyfriended), they could also be credited to the normal mother/daughter shifts typical of adolescence—perhaps the Gilmores just hit their rough patch later than most.
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