Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest (Smart Pop Series) (16 page)

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

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Like her mom, Rory has also sought romantic fulfillment in opposition to Stars Hollow. She broke up with Stars Hollow High basketball player Dean Forester in favor of (shorter, jerkier) “bad boy” Jess Marino, who made no secret of his loathing for Stars Hollow or his eagerness to leave. He was irresistible to Rory really because he articulated her own restlessness, which had only just begun.

When Jess left, Rory eventually backslid to Old Faithful—but ended up breaking Dean’s heart again with her growing infatuation with (the perennially smug) Logan Huntzberger, a fellow Yale student whose extravagantly wealthy family had long been friends with Emily and Richard. There is a familiar pattern here—which is another way of saying, “like mother, like daughter.”

But even if Rory’s romantic interests could be satisfied in Stars Hollow, her goals and interests can not. Since high school she has aspired to be an investigative journalist. Before she’d turned twenty-one, she’d already been to Europe twice. In the latter seasons of the show, she’d even contemplated first a trip to Asia, then an extended jaunt to London.

Clearly Rory has striven beyond Stars Hollow in bigger, more dramatic ways than her mother, but . . . is the principal the same? Is there something missing in Stars Hollow? The same something that has kept Lorelai from committing fully to her life there—kept her just a little bit outside, looking in?

Which begs our original question: Why has happiness eluded her?

The Floating Jar

It would be easy to call Stars Hollow a “storybook world”—but it gets tricky when we begin to consider what story that book is telling. Apart from the Gilmores, Stars Hollow is its own narrative. Is it the story of small town New England? Or a deliberately implausible fiction? Is it constructed of events—or images? And where does individual “happiness” fit in?

When you consider Stars Hollow for what it is—pretty and selfcontained—and when you consider that, aside from the Gilmores, the townspeople never seem to change much, Stars Hollow becomes like a scene inside a snow globe. Sure, there is activity among the locals. There are antics. People such as Kirk, Taylor, Babette, and Miss Patty swirl around, sometimes leisurely, sometimes frenetically—like little flakes in the globe, like objects in a floating jar—but they never really go anywhere. They don’t change; they don’t
grow
. And yet, they seem far happier than those who have tried to change their lives in a significant way while staying within the bubble of Stars Hollow, like Lane and Dean.

In fact, when the series began, Dean had just moved to Stars Hollow from Chicago. He was tall, cute, sweet, the ideal “catch” for any teenage girl. Yet, as the series progressed and Dean opted not to go to Southern Connecticut College but instead to get married and remain in Stars Hollow, he began rapidly losing his appeal.

It wasn’t long before he was a bona fide town fixture, working at the same local grocery store that he had since high school and all but wearing his malaise like a drab parka. He might have ascribed feeling trapped to his annoying wife, Lindsay—and his affair with Rory to a natural result of that—but in reality, Dean’s marriage was just a tangible thing to blame. He wasn’t the cliché of “trapped in a bad marriage”; he was just trapped, period, again forcing us to confront the disturbing truth: Stars Hollow does not seem to be a place where one can evolve.

Happiness in Stars Hollow has always been a kind of stasis. A lack of drive to move forward and a contentment, instead, to float. To stay somewhat suspended—to stay the same. Like a snow globe, it’s a beautiful scene and ideal only if a person does not strive beyond the glass.

Fittingly, most of the townspeople we have come to know don’t really have any discernible goals. Even Sookie is among the contented snowflakes. True, she got married and had children over the course of the show, but the changes in her life were natural, comfortable extensions of her day-to-day routine. The man she married was her long-time friend. And her personal goals simply have not taken her beyond the glass.

Though she eventually partnered with Lorelai in buying the Dragonfly Inn, when the two had an opportunity to do some exciting traveling, Sookie enthusiastically encouraged Lorelai, telling her it would be a great thing for
her
to do. It was automatic; Sookie didn’t even consider it as a possibility for herself. She simply had no drive for it, not even a remote interest in that level of change. But that absence of yearning is precisely what has made her happier than Lorelai throughout the series.

In my estimation, the happiest person in Stars Hollow has been the character who has most mirrored the town in terms of narrative expectation: Miss Patty, the overweight, unmarried dance teacher (who would’ve thought?). What have always defined Miss Patty are all the stories that came before. Like Stars Hollow, she came to us preset. Just as Stars Hollow is idealized, Patty’s stories are romanticized. As a former dancer, singer, and stage actress, she has always existed for us as a compilation of memories—of a rich past that allows her contentment in the present. (In fact,
Gilmore Girls
even gave a nod to this in the episode featuring Patty’s one-woman show, “Buckle Up, I’m Patty!”)

But Lorelai has always been an innately restless work-in-progress. As such, she has kept herself at a slight distance from the town, avoiding a serious relationship within Stars Hollow—until Luke, which turned out to be just as suffocating a prospect as perhaps Lorelai always feared.

To followers of the show, Luke and Lorelai’s long friendship-turned-courtship probably seemed fated. From the very beginning, there was an undercurrent of attraction between them. A near-flirtation in their daily banter. A special and resilient friendship. But when they finally got together as a couple . . . it fizzled. Their friendship suffered. Their communication failed at every turn. Even their chemistry was off. Resentment and awkwardness replaced their previously effortless rapport.

Granted, it didn’t happen instantly, but over the course of two seasons. Their first big obstacle to overcome was Rory’s dad, Christopher, whom Lorelai continued to spend time with while keeping it from Luke. As old habits die hard, so, apparently, did Lorelai’s stirring to have a life all to herself out of Stars Hollow. The next set of problems began when Lorelai became engaged to Luke, thereby fully committing to him. Committing to a whole world inside a snow globe.

In spite of Luke’s curmudgeonly disposition, he has always been more like Babette, Kirk, and Miss Patty than like Lorelai herself. Sure, he is amusing and sharp and not exactly a joiner—but he is also, unequivocally, a townie. He has never desired more than his day-to-day routine. He even had to be pressured and cajoled into putting a fresh coat of paint on his diner. No matter how grouchy he has been at the town meetings, townspeople have still remarked more than once that Luke would never leave Stars Hollow.

So where would that leave Lorelai—a woman who has kept just enough distance from the town’s grasp to retain her autonomy? Once she committed to a life with Luke, how her world would shrink.

Season six of
Gilmore Girls
took hits from critics for its sluggish pace and for straying from its most basic tenets—namely, that Lorelai and Rory are more than mother and daughter, they are also best friends, and that while both are flippant, Lorelai is bold and Rory is reserved. But in season six, that changed. Normally studious Rory decided to steal a yacht, then leave Yale and bum around her grandparents’ mansion. A totally uncharacteristic feud between her and Lorelai stretched on for episodes. Lorelai didn’t fight to break the silence between them, but rather waited around, depressed, for it to end.

Meanwhile, Luke started pulling back. He’d learned that he had a daughter with an ex-girlfriend and then kept it from Lorelai. When he finally did tell her, he refused to let her meet the girl. The Lorelai whom viewers had come to know would never have accepted that. But this was a distinctly less spunky Lorelai, one with dwindling confidence and a whiny kind of insecurity. At first glance, it seemed she was acting out of character. But then—she’d never been in a situation like this. She’d never been in a state of relying
solely
on her life in Stars Hollow for her fulfillment. This was merely the result.

Interestingly, Lorelai wasn’t the only character who changed with the circumstances. Rory seemed to compensate for her mother’s reticence with an over-the-top flamboyance that ran counter to the
Gilmore
formula. Luke struggled with what amounted to the
inverse
of Lorelai’s problem: Stars Hollow was swallowing her up, as the outside world was intruding in on him—on his comfortably closed-off world.

Or, to continue with the floating jar analogy, while one was stifled inside the glass, the other was panicking because the lid had been twisted off. Of course Luke felt affection for April, the daughter he never knew he had, but her existence still disrupted his life in a very unsettling way.

Unsurprisingly, by the end of the season, Luke and Lorelai had broken up. And even more unsurprisingly, Lorelai ran straight back to Christopher. Yet after spending the night with him, she lay awake with a pained look on her face. Again we had to wonder: What on earth does Lorelai want? What would make her truly happy? The answer has to lie somewhere between Emily and Rory, the two women closest to Lorelai—so close that they can’t help but reveal her true nature.

Okay. So Lorelai shares her mother’s frankness and her penchant for self-importance. At the same time, she feels a personal restlessness that Emily does not. Emily is urbane and well-traveled,
but
she has kept her personal world very small; she needs it to be small so that she can control it. Her friendships have more to do with social convenience than emotion. She keeps her husband, as well as her string of maids, on a rigid schedule of her own design. But for the fact that Lorelai can’t stand her, Emily would be quite content.

Lorelai, on the other hand, craves something bigger. Like her daughter, Rory, she strives for something more than her immediate surroundings. Yet
un
like Rory, she hasn’t put a name to it. Her goals don’t, by their nature, necessitate a life beyond Stars Hollow (as Rory’s journalism career does).

Lorelai’s “dreams” aren’t grand or even clearly defined, but one thing seems certain: she is not prepared to swap goals for glass, no matter how pretty the snow globe. Looking at Stars Hollow as a narrative allows us to recognize its finite structure and that, as in any story, the textual landscape is what defines a “happy ending.”

If happiness in Stars Hollow is a stasis, a kind of fluttering in suspension, and an absence, really, of longing and hoping far beyond the immediate, then Lorelai’s best bet for happiness is not in the text itself, but perhaps in the white spaces. She is not trapped. Rather, in her defiance of Stars Hollow’s constraints—and yet her refusal to relinquish her own important place in the town—she has, in effect, created her own niche. A place that exists not quite in Stars Hollow, but close enough. Close enough for Lorelai to enjoy a central role in the Stars Hollow “story.” Undefined enough to give her freedom, power, possibility. And this seems to be the best position for a strong-willed, dynamic character like her. Because while the idyllic, almost surreal world of Stars Hollow may be the stuff of sleepy contentment—it’s an implausible place for dreams.

A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Boston College with a degree in history,
Jill Winters
has taught Women’s Studies as well as numerous workshops for aspiring writers. She is the author of five novels, including Lime Ricky, Just Peachy, Raspberry Crush, and Blushing Pink. Her books have topped the Barnes & Noble Best-seller Lists and Book Sense’s Top Ten, and her debut novel, Plum Girl, was a finalist for the Dorothy Parker Award of Excellence. Jill has also contributed essays to the anthologies
Flirting with Pride and Prejudice
and
Welcome to Wisteria Lane
. You can visit her online at:
www.jillwinters.com
.

Stephanie Rowe

It’s Not Luke’s Stubble

PARIS: We’re going to reveal the seedy underbelly of small towns—starting with yours.

RORY: Stars Hollow does not have a “seedy underbelly.” We don’t even have a meter maid. (“Richard in Stars Hollow,” 2-12)

Stephanie Rowe grew up in New England and now lives on the West Coast where she watches
Gilmore Girls
, not for Luke, she says, but because it’s just like going home, right down to the ice on the puddles and the ivy on the colleges.