I started watching 7th Heaven and Gilmore Girls at some point during college, and I hated them both so much that I actually loved watching every episode. For me, there is a fine line between a show that just plain sucks, and a show that is so awful, whose plot line, dialog and characters are just so ridiculously unbelievable, that it's awesome. I believe it has to do with the writers saying to themselves, "You know what? This is TV. It's not real. Everyone knows it's not real. So let's have some fun with it."
Like, for example, soap operas.
(Dear Lord, I am about to admit that I sometimes watch soap operas).
So I used to watch Days of Our Lives with my mom. My mother got hooked on the show when she was pregnant with me, and we used to watch it together whenever I had a day off from school over a lunch of tuna sandwiches. So I feel sort of a special connection with the town of Salem and all it's voluptuous, cunning inhabitants. That being said, I got to see an episode a few weeks ago when I had the day of of work and I was at the gym at 1pm. All I could think was, wait.... didn't they have this EXACT plot line two years ago? LAME. And then I changed the channel and watched My Super Sweet Sixteen instead.
As much love as I have in my heart for DOOL and that crazy Stephano, I just don't care anymore. It doesn't matter who's got amnesia, because Marlena will hypnotize them and help them get their memory back, and it doesn't matter who's dead, because for goodness sake, PATCH just waltzed back from the dead. The problem is, they try to make it seem real, and then they go bringing people back from the dead. Not gonna happen, people.
I might be the first person in the history of television to make this statement, but I think Passions got it right. If you've stumbled onto Passions during your channel surfing, you've probably wondered who slipped LSD into your Diet Coke, because holy crap, is that a monkey dressed as a baby? Is his name precious? And is that a MERMAID? Why, yes. Yes it is.
Passions embraces the fact that it's a soap opera, and goes above and beyond the usual recycling plot line. So Marlena was once possessed by the devil and had to be exorcised on Days? Passions will see your exorcism and raise you one Rosemary's baby. So you say Stephano faked his own death for the umpteenth time? Well, Timmy, Tabitha's talking, walking doll (rest his soul) used to take breaks to make mar-timmies for everyone. Everyone except for Teresa, of course because she was pregnant after she got knocked up by Ethan's father, and then she drugged and date-raped Ethan and pretended the baby was his, and then when she was found out, she locked Ethan in a garage and refused to let him out until he had sex with her. Top that.
A quote for the wonderful IMDB sums it up pretty well:
How is it that I hate this show so much, yet, at the same time, know all of the characters' names? Simply, once you're hooked, you're just like those dead fish that got dumped on Ethan. You can't stop watching this show. You keep watching because you can't understand how it can get worse and worse, every day.
Easily the most insulting, sexist, and horrible shows on TV today (and that, dear friends, is a big, bold statement.) It's all those things and, just incidentally, totally entertaining.
If you're going to make a soap opera, make it a soap opera. Don't insult us by pretending it's "real".
All that was a buildup to my recap of Gilmore Girls, if you can believe it.
I once heard someone say "I used to be friends with her, but I really don't like the person she's become", and I thought that was pretty much the meanest thing you could say about a person. It's worse than hating someone because they made out with your boyfriend or stole your favorite CD or crashed your car. Think about it: I don't like the person you've become. If someone said that to me, I would be crushed.
I don't like the person Rory Gilmore has become.
I used to hate her for being boring, and for being so freaking smart, and for having those impossibly witty and fast dialogs with her annoying mother. And then she went to high school, and had some real problems, and I started to like her. And then she met Dean. I loved Dean. I still love Dean, now that he's on Supernatural. I loved Jess, and I loved that Rory left Dean for Jess, because that's the kind of stuff that teenagers do. It was real. As real as TV can be.
And then she went to college. I thought that Rory getting sucked into Logan's circle, stealing the boat, dropping out of Yale, not speaking to her mom for months, living with her grandparents and working for the DAR was BRILLIANT. Brilliant. Because that's the kind of stuff that happens in real life. Mothers and daughters fight. The smartest, brightest private-schooled kids sometimes drop of college. Life gets crazy.
So, Gilmore Girls went from being one of my love-to-hate shows, along with Seventh Heaven and passions and Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and slowly it grew on me until it became a pure love-to-love show, on the level of Smallville and Supernatural, and God save me, Sex and the City. And now it seems that it has come full circle. I watch it because I want to see how much more it can suck. I want Lorelei to be married to Luke, not Christopher, or at the very least for the measly fight scene to have landed Christopher in the hospital or something. I want Rory to dump Logan and stop acting like a member of the Young Aristocrats Who Are Friends With Annoying Twiggy Girls Club. I want Jess and Dean back on the show, but only if it would not interfere with the brilliant new shows they're moved on to, because Gilmore Girls best not be messin' with my Heroes and Supernatural. Hell, no. GG, you can't even go there any more.
The only one I still like is Emily Gilmore, who has always been my favorite character on the show. If she starts going soft on me, it's all over. I'm going to have to break up with this show just like I did with Lost.
(Which means I'll still totally watch, but I won't be proud of myself).
remember that one time we might have ....kind of....based our entire presentaion in personality theory on PASSIONS! HAHAHAHA i love it! Happy Freakin Friday indeed!
Posted by: Lizzy | Friday, December 08, 2006 at 05:44 PM