Gilmore Girls (7 seasons, 153 episodes, 2000-2007)

I watched Gilmore Girls on TV starting with episode 1 and never stopped.  I tuned in at first strictly for Lauren Graham.  I had seen her in guest roles on Seinfeld, Caroline in the City and Newsradio.  There was something fetching about her but it was a limited run comedy called MYOB from the Summer of 2000 that really got me interested.  Graham played an uptight high school teacher that takes in her teenage niece.  Katherine Towne played Riley, a misfit and rebel without a cause.  The antagonistic banter between the two was a preview of what Graham would later do in Gilmore Girls, although in a more polite way.

Katherine Towne was a perfect Riley, all attitude and unforgiving.  MYOB was the last lead role she's had but is still working in supporting roles.  She has a lasting place in TV history, though, appearing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode 4-1, and getting dusted so stylishly that they used a clip of it in the opening credits for a couple of years.

So what did I learn from watching Gilmore Girls start to finish?  It holds up rather well.  The quirky, pop culture-driven dialogue is still pretty funny and the relationships of the daughter, mother and grandmother are fairly timeless.  All-in-all, a good use of my recreational time.

Not all was perfect, though.  The seventh season just seemed wrong.  They moved Luke's Diner to a new location.  Do buildings just move?  And they broke up Luke and Lorelai... just because, it seems.  It would have been better to end the show after six seasons or have given it one more season in order to have a more reasoned conclusion.

I had opposite feelings for Rory's main boyfriends, Dean and Logan.  During the network run, I thought Dean was a cool guy next door and that Logan was a spoiled rich brat.  During the DVD marathon, though, I started disliking Dean from the get-go, probably because I knew how his arc would end (jerk).  Logan, whom I hated on the network, I liked this time from his very first scene.  He was a smart, fun, nice guy after all.

Gilmore Girls was a big time investment but overall, a good experience.