Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest (Smart Pop Series) (11 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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These quiet expressions of genuine love between this mother and daughter are few and far between in the series, which is why they resonate so achingly when they do occur. More often, to Emily, “love” is by obligation, not by choice—either a matter of family obligation or monetary debt, and ideally both. Even the Gilmores’ series-long “Friday Night Dinner” tradition is just coerced payback masquerading as family togetherness. It’s heartbreaking to hear Emily state so matter-of-factly (and at most points in the series, correctly) that the only way she and Richard can ever hope to be guaranteed to see their daughter and granddaughter is if there is a massive interest-free loan keeping them obligated to do so. Poor Emily is sure that people only love her for her checkbook. And it’s not entirely untrue! So the first time Richard’s mother visited, offering a quarter million dollar trust fund for Rory with immediate access, Emily planted seeds of doubt in Lorelai’s mind by (not inaccurately) pointing out that with all that money at her disposal, sixteen-year-old Rory wouldn’t need her mother anymore, and, “It’s terrible not to be needed” (“The Third Lorelai,” 1-18). For a supposed unfeeling, Machiavellian harpy, Emily is desperate for her daughter and granddaughter to need—if not want—her in their lives.
 
Verdict
 
The eldest Lorelai (affectionately called “Trix” by her son) also happened to be the mother-in-law from hell. Trix openly despised her daughter-in-law and got a sadistic kick out of making Emily scurry around in fruitless attempts to please her. She even wrote Richard a letter trying to talk him out of marrying Emily the night before their wedding! Perhaps Emily’s keen awareness of what it’s like to be considered not good enough goes a long way toward explaining her insistence on enforcing social rules on first Lorelai and later Rory: no one will ever think the same of her daughter and granddaughter, if Emily has anything to say about it.
 
Not un-ironically, early on Lorelai gave some useful advice to Emily about how to deal with Richard’s mother’s unending disapproval:
LORELAI: You need to develop a defense mechanism for dealing with Grandma. . . . Take me, for example. . . . I know there are many things in my life you don’t approve of . . . like this couch.
 
EMILY: Well, this couch is terrible.
 
LORELAI: Okay. Good. You think the couch is terrible. Now, at one point in my life, you saying a couch, that I carefully picked out and had to pay off over eight months, is terrible might have hurt my feelings. But not any more. . . . Because one day I decided instead of being hurt and upset by your disapproval, I’m going to be amused. I’m going to find it funny. I’m even going to take a little bit of pleasure in it.
 
EMILY: You take pleasure in my disapproval?
 
LORELAI: I encourage it sometimes just for a laugh. (“That’ll Do, Pig,” 3-10)
 
 
 
Clearly Lorelai often says and does things just to elicit a reaction—any reaction—out of her mother. Some people (even Lorelai herself!) would suggest that Lorelai’s primary motivation in every single decision in crafting her life, large or small, may very well childishly have been just to establish herself in direct opposition to her parents, and Emily in particular (“Lorelai’s First Cotillion,” 7-3). This relentless angling for Emily’s negative attention—likely thanks to rarely receiving any positive attention—has apparently stunted Lorelai’s growth as an adult. She may
seem
to have released herself at an early age from her mother’s influence, but as long as she allows Emily’s opinion of her to be the end-all, be-all of her decision-making process, Lorelai will always be an emotional child. Is it Emily’s fault that her nearly middle-aged daughter continues to place such a high value on her opinion, even while proclaiming not to care? No one’s arguing that Emily deserved a Mother of the Year award for Lorelai’s childhood. But that was a long, long time ago. Lorelai has made all her own decisions since she first cut Emily and Richard out of her life at seventeen. What could Emily possibly do now that would make her daughter stop revolving around her, whether she’s physically present or not?
 
I’ve long thought the most powerful way, dramatically speaking, for this series to end would be with Emily’s death. Only then would Lorelai be forced to truly grow up. She’d have no more excuses for not allowing herself to fully become her own person separate from her mother.
 
Until then, Emily Gilmore remains a powerful force in her daughter’s life and in this series. She is one of the unspoken
Gilmore Girls
of the title: a fascinatingly complex, layered fictional human being with her own reality, reasoning, character flaws, motivations, and emotional truths. Grandma Gilmore
could
have charged out of the gate a one-note, Wicked Witch of the West caricature and stayed that way. But thanks to the fortuitous combination of layered writing and actress Kelly Bishop’s subtle portrayals, instead a formidable, flawed, and ultimately believable character has come to life.
 
The defense rests.
2
 
Charlotte Fullerton
grew up in New England with the same school uniform, hairstyle, and academic attitude as Rory, but left her own version of Stars Hollow behind for Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. Currently, Charlotte is a busy freelance writer of children’s books, pop culture magazines, and some of your kids’ favorite animated TV shows. Still, she is perhaps best known as one of the creators of the fan-favorite
Star Wars
short film,
Troops
. Whenever Charlotte gets homesick, she has lunch on the Warner Brothers’ lot and walks around the
Gilmore Girls’
exteriors decorated for fall or winter—which she doesn’t have to rake or shovel.
 
 
Miellyn Fitzwater
My Three Dads
 
RICHARD: I haven’t been in the mood to talk.
 
LORELAI: Well, we need to.
 
RICHARD: I felt like reading.
 
LORELAI: Why are you doing this, Dad?
 
RICHARD: Well, reading is good for you. You learn things. (“Afterboom,” 4-19)
 
 
 
While much has been written about the women of
Gilmore Girls
, the men have gotten short shrift, particular the fathers. Miellyn Fitzwater talks about why, analyzing Rory’s three father figures. Put them all together, she concludes, and they spell “Father,” but Lorelai spells “Mom” just fine all by herself.
 
W
HO’S YOUR DADDY? The guy who cheers you on at your soccer games? The man who helps you with your homework? Your mother’s boyfriend? The sperm donor? TV doesn’t have just one answer anymore.
 
No way does Rory Gilmore need a dad to make her single parent home any sweeter. She’s got a kick-ass mom who can be her best friend one minute, watching classic movies and eating junk food, and seamlessly switching to the super cool, understanding, and supportive parent the next. At first glance this family unit of two is a perfect little insulated world. But upon closer inspection, Rory actually has three major and influential father figures in her life, each one appealing to a different aspect of her character. In fact, they take up so much room in her life that her existence is not that different than it would have been if she had grown up with a father in the home.
 
I have thought long and hard, done many Internet searches, and endlessly harassed my boyfriend and co-workers to help me think of appropriate pop culture analogies for each of these men and their unique roles. I am now convinced they do not exist. These three fathers do not fill any typical television or movie father roles. They do not provide comic relief. They do not own cars that the child covets. They do not keep beer in the fridge that the child and her friends steal and get drunk on. In fact, most television and movie archetypes have more to do with fathers and sons than fathers and daughters. This is part of why
Gilmore Girls
is such a popular series. It appeals to a segment of the population that is not often represented on television. In filling that role, the writers take care to have characters that are realistic—in that special, hyper-realized kind of way that television demands. And it works because it has a ring of truth to it.
 
Rory has three main men in her life. The first is her mother’s friend, owner of the local diner, Luke Danes. He is the gruff, somewhat distant yet caring male figure, the only one who saw her every day as she grew up and the one who has been quietly in love with her mom for years. The second is her grandfather, Richard Gilmore. He is the intellectual role model who expects only the best out of Rory and usually gets it, the man who has laid all of the hopes he had for his own daughter onto his granddaughter, the next generation of Gilmores. Finally, she has her natural father, Christopher Hayden. He is the fantasy, the absentee father who is always just out of grasp—idealized, yet majorly flawed, appearing only sporadically to spend time with her.
 
Rory’s interaction with these men, in contrast to their interaction with Lorelai, brings an interesting dimension to the series. Rory and Lorelai can be seen as the same person separated by time/age and set on two different paths, with the fork in their road going Ivy League versus having a teen pregnancy. Lorelai made sure that she raised Rory to be the “new and improved” version of herself, teaching Rory everything she had to learn the hard way. And these differences between them are more sharply drawn because of the way these three men react to and interact with them.
 
Interestingly enough, though the series is very pro-female, none of the men challenge that. In my opinion, this makes the show every bit as pro-male. Each of Rory’s enlightened father figures believes in her intelligence and in her ability to handle any situation, academic or otherwise. Her gender never comes under discussion. They actually have relatively progressive expectations for her, preferring that she continue her education and then pursue a career. They each want the best for her and for their relationship with her. Any mistakes they make appear to be made with the best of intentions.
 
So, on to the first father. The one who has been in Rory’s life the longest and the most dependably . . . Luke Danes.
 
 
Luke is the one who has seen Rory daily for almost half her life. Rory gets some of her sense of stability from Luke. He is always there for her and for Lorelai. Though he is a constant source of support, he is somewhat remote at the same time. He is the father who loves you but maybe doesn’t say it with words—it’s the kind of love that becomes evident when something bad happens. These are the times when Luke is instantly protective, always coming down on Rory’s side. His affection for her is always clear, but it became particularly obvious when Rory got back together with Dean. He never liked Dean, and after Rory slept with “married Dean” and then tried to have a relationship with him, Luke couldn’t deal with it. Luke viewed Dean as a threat to Rory’s purity, to her girlhood. Luke continually clings to the image of Rory as a little girl—in his mind she will always be twelve years old. He is often surprised when she acts like an adult, particularly when she curses or interacts with a male suitor in front of him.
 
Luke even feels like he has more of a right to be Rory’s protector than her natural father, Christopher, does. These feelings came out during the reception for the renewal of Richard and Emily’s wedding vows. When Lorelai, closely followed by Christopher and Luke, discovered Rory and Logan making out in a back room, Christopher and Luke both reacted as though they were the one man who had the right to tell Logan to back off. They went on to argue about it, during which Luke accused Christopher of not having been around when Rory needed a father growing up; that, coupled with the fact that Luke and Lorelai were together, made Luke feel like he had more of a right to claim Rory than Christopher did.
 
Perhaps the biggest gesture that demonstrated Luke’s feelings about Rory was when he gave her the pearl necklace that belonged to his mother. He did so casually, claiming that he brought a gift in case Lorelai had forgotten (which obviously would never be the case—feud or no feud, Lorelai would bring her daughter a present for her birthday). This is an heirloom of Luke’s. The viewer knows how important family possessions are to him, since he made such a fuss over his father’s boat and where it should be stored; he also showed the same attachment toward and care for his grandmother’s bedroom set. The bedroom set is clearly something he specially values, and he bestowed it on Lorelai after remodeling her house. This necklace, having belonged to his mother, must be of at least similar sentimental value, and he wanted Rory to have it. He thinks of Rory as family.
 
Not as important as the interaction between the father and daughter, but entirely significant, is the interaction between the father and mother. Luke has provided the only constant comfort for Rory’s mother. Through all Lorelai’s relationships, the run-ins with Christopher, the altercations with her parents, Luke has been there at the diner, ready to comfort Lorelai. He has always been prepared to drop everything to come to her aid. When Richard was hospitalized for his heart attack, Luke closed down the diner and took Lorelai to the hospital. In fact, he often closes the diner (something he very clearly would not do for anyone other than family) to do things for Lorelai. He helps her in situations he would never involve himself in otherwise, including helping move Rory to Yale. His support of Lorelai grew after they became engaged. Lorelai even said later that she was sure she wanted to marry Luke the moment she truly realized how much he cared about Rory. Lorelai and Rory’s feud was still going on when Luke and Lorelai got engaged, and Luke was the one who told Rory the news about the engagement. He talked to her several times before she ever called Lorelai directly. When Lorelai lit into Luke for telling Rory any information about her life, Luke responded that he felt caught between the two of them. His loyalties, clearly, are almost equally divided.

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