Now Leaving Stars Hollow...

So, out of a sense of obligation to a set of fictional characters whose existence I had nearly forgotten, I watched the Gilmore Girls series finale on Tuesday. Obligation turned to nostalgia turned to shamelessly sentimental wallowing, and the next thing I knew, it was late Wednesday night and I had re-watched most of the Girls' first season, eaten a strange amount of chocolate, and painted my toenails red just like the bad private school girls do.

There are many tributes and critiques to GG bouncing around right about now, and they all have the same basic point: it was a great show that, sadly, became, especially in its final season, a much-less-great show that has inspired a lot of hand-wringing about how why it stopped being great. (Ginia Bellafante's, in the Times, is one of the weirdest.) And it's true: I regret the staying up late, and to a lesser extent the chocolate, but not the re-watching: many of the first season's episodes still seem to me to be practically perfect examples of their kind, in a way that the series finale could only gesture to but not itself capture. I don't mean this post to be explanatory in any way like that, though. It is what it is: it's nearly summer, a shitty semester is over, I'm about to head back east to a different tiny New England town filled with wackos, I mean, endearingly quirky people, and instead of packing or writing something intelligent or washing the dishes, I'm watching the scene at the end of "Love, Daisies, and Troubadours" where CuteDean kisses Rory in the front courtyard of Chilton over and over again.

I'm not proud, and I'm not ashamed (though I probably should be); I'm just saying that what I like best about the show isn't the way it captures the trend of mothers being their daughter's coolest best friends, or typifies Yankee elitism, or gives one Asian person a television career (actually, a little bit of that last part). It's simpler than that: I like to see bookish girls find love. If there's a little witty banter along the way, then so much the better.