S1. Episode 13: Concert Interruptus

Are you two still Joanie Loves Chachi?

I’ve been struggling with getting this newsletter out every week. Doing this on a consistent basis was always going to be a struggle considering my natural inclinations to procrastinate. Initially, I said I’d publish this every Tuesday. I started pushing it to Wednesday, then Thursday, and a couple times, I sent it out on a Friday. But now I have a full time job and I’m also taking care of my 10-month-old son, and suddenly, writing these pithy little contemplations on Lorelai’s messy life and Rory’s idiotic choices has gotten a lot less regular. I’m still going to do it because good lord it’s cathartic to rag on them, but also, this shift in life circumstances has made me think about Gilmore Girls more, not less, and I actually have so many more questions about Lorelai’s early move to Stars Hollow as a 16-year-old girl with absolutely zero practical life skills and a silver spoon in her mouth.

She leaves home and becomes a maid at the Indepedence Inn with a brand new baby? Who’s watching Rory? Spoiler alert for anyone watching for the first time, but apparently Lorelai lives in like, a garden shed behind the inn for a while. The more I think about it, the more unbelievable it is to me that Lorelai is a maid while raising her infant and is a first time mom. I know we’re supposed to fill in those gaps with the presumption that the town stepped in to help, that it takes a village, blah blah, but essentially this girl moves here, freshly postpartum, lives in a garden shed, works as a maid when she has never in her life maided, and raises her baby in the idyllic English garden of a boutique hotel. It has the undeniable ring of a fairytale. Lorelai flees her evil parents, the townspeople are like Cinderella’s helpers, and the proprietor of the inn (Mia, who we’ll meet later in S.2 Ep.8), is like a fairy godmother. Though I won’t read this episode in this way, I feel sure I will watch from here on out with this lens of the fairytale applied. Rather than looking at the town as a slightly whimsical but real place, I wonder how my interpretation will be warped by the view that this is all some fantasy projected through the mind of Lorelai.

But moving on, in this particular episode, the girls go to a Bangles concert. The very real, not at all fictional, flesh and blood Bangles. If anything dates the show, it’s the prolonged cameo appearance of a band performing that was so embedded in early-to-mid-2000s television. I wonder…why the Bangles—were they going on a reunion tour at the time? A new record? Whatever the case, I fully respect the commitment in structuring an entire episode around attending their concert. Lorelai convinces Rory to take Madeline, Louise, and Paris as an opportunity to bond with her school bullies, and of course Madeline and Louise act out. They leave the concert early with the boys sitting in the row behind them, and Lorelai freaks out, as the minors in her care are loose with sketchy men in New York City. She finds them, publicly scolds them, and turns from cool older sister to stern mama bear with the flip of switch. For context to my opening musings, it is this moment that made me really think about Lorelai’s experience (re: a fairytale) as a mother in the context of my own mothering situation. Where does Lorelai learn to do this? Rory has offered no opportunity for her to develop this skill, as she has thus far been a perfect little angel (this from multiple characters throughout the show stating Rory has never misbehaved). Unlike popular societal narratives would have us believe, I don’t think that being maternal is wholly innate. There is so much about motherhood that has to be learned—for instance, breastfeeding, the thing that sustains infant life, is something that both infant and mother have to make a concerted effort to learn. We aren’t just born knowing how to feed and be fed! How are human beings not extinct? Every day I wonder this. You know, some animals slide out the womb walking. If something as vital as literally eating has to be taught, then where has Lorelai learned to be a mother? Maybe her version of motherhood is just doing what she thinks is the opposite of what Emily would do. But then, I fully believe Emily would also scour New York until she found those girls and freeze those men with a medusa stare. I guess this is what the show is entirely about, right? The fact that Lorelai wants to be as different as possible from her mother but actually they’re exactly the same?

My good friend, Autumn, once brought this episode to my attention nearly a decade ago. I think this was brought up pretty much apropos of nothing and probably while out drinking at a bar in Oxford, Mississippi, simply because Autumn is someone who carries more Gilmore Girls facts with them at all times for any occasion. A bigger Gilmore Girlie the world has never seen. But I remember vividly they recalled with indignation that Lorelai took the 9th row aisle seat tickets that Sookie secured through her own personal connections, without consulting Sookie, and gave them to Rory and three girls who she does not even consider friends. And you know what? Extremely valid point. How Sookie is not upset, especially after having to buy nosebleed tickets day-of of the concert, is confounding. There was something heartwarming, though, about seeing the two of them up in the farthest possible seats, laughing in the way two close friends would. How many needlessly bad experiences did I have with friends where the only option was to just laugh? Illustrative of their bond, but still, if I were Sookie, I’d for sure be pissed about this.

Let us also direct our attention to the demographics of this Bangles concert. I’m not one to judge anyone for their music preferences—I’m no Lane Kim, okay? But observation is different from judgment and I want to seriously question whether or not the Bangles fan base is truly reflected in the casted audience for this episode. There are so many seemingly heterosexual men at this concert, most of them in their 20s and 30s? And, this is not a standing room only concert, one of those shows you just show up to because you like the venue and it’s Saturday night. This is assigned amphitheatre seating! There are men in the nosebleeds with Lorelai and Sookie, genuinely upset by the fact that they are ridiculing their seats! Any seats are good seats, for these men, as long as you’re at a Bangles concert. There are young New York City men who purposefully dished out mad cash for 10th row tickets because they care about the Bangles that much… and then left early to party with some teen girls.

And those teen girls are some of the best written teen girls in television, in my opinion. I love Madeline and Louise and don’t think we have enough versions of them on screen. They are classic teen girls, mean high schoolers, girls who do bad—but they’re also steadfast companions and extremely bright. You can see it in their eyes. (Also the reason I believe a character like Mean Girl’s Regina George is so compelling.) Even though Madeline acts like a ditz and Louise is boy crazy, they’re the kind of characters who assess situations but still take reckless action. Louise toes the line between great, loyal friend and flaky, ambivalent bitch so well. Madeline, kind but not boring, sweet but also adventuresome. I feel that every woman knows and loves a Louise and a Madeline. When Louise asks Rory about Dean, “So how’s that going? Are you two still Joanie Loves Chachi?” and then, despite Paris’s irate attempts to redirect the conversation towards their school project, “So, how good of a kisser is Paul Bunyan anyway?” and they all burst into giggles—I get such a nostalgia for those days when you’re a teen girl and embarking on a new friendship. That feeling of being brought into the fold, the excitement of sharing something intimate and maybe forbidden. Not everyone has the talent of Louise’s.

In addition to Rory’s Chilton schoolmates, we learn more Luke’s mysterious past, which includes a (gasp!) woman that is surely identical to Lorelai in demeanor and general character. An independent and stunningly pretty lady who does crazy stuff like shoot war photography in the middle east or run away from home and move to a town she’s never been to with her infant daughter. Honestly, I completely forget about Rachel until she is mentioned and then again almost immediately once she exits the show’s narrative. Respectfully, I disagree with Sookie’s assertion that Rachel is “Elle Macpherson pretty” and am floored they would even say that when she’s clearly a deadringer for Keri Russell kind of pretty. The most valuable part of this storyline is that we get to see Lorelai be jealous. Luke isn’t the only one participating in this weird almost-romance. He isn’t just waiting for Lorelai to date him—she, too, sees some claim on or potential in Luke as a partner, and that makes watching their relationship unfurl more interesting and all the more infuriating. Luke, you like Lorelai. And Lorelai, you like Luke. So why can’t you two just get your shit together and date? Another enduring theme of the show.