Goodbye, ‘Girls’

By JOHN HANSEN

May 10, 2007

Yes, I’m a guy, and yes, I love “Gilmore Girls.” I’ve never understood why that’s a rarity – after all, the mother-and-daughter title characters are both gorgeous women and the main dude on the show, Luke (Scott Patterson), is a backward-baseball-cap-wearing, restaurant-running man’s man.

“Gilmore Girls” may have drawn more female viewers, but it was a show aimed at everyone, and I’ll be among the millions who will miss it when it ends on Tuesday.

It’s ending at the right time, though. After seven seasons, Rory (Alexis Bledel) is graduating from Yale – and perhaps marrying Logan – and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Luke are back on good terms. The stories have been told and all is right in Stars Hollow, if not the world.

“Gilmore Girls” wasn’t the laugh-out-loud funniest show on TV – but still, you had to giggle at throwaway lines like Sebastian Bach’s Gil washing his hair with bar soap for a week. It wasn’t the most Kleenex-at-the-ready dramatic show on TV – but still, you had to gape at that first-season moment when Lorelai finally tells off her mom and the mid-season scene where she does the same to Rory (who had marked her seven-years-late teenage rebellion by stealing a yacht and running off to Europe).

Created by Amy-Sherman Palladino and handed off to David S. Rosenthal for this underrated final season, “Gilmore Girls” took place in a heightened reality where dialogue was exchanged at the speed of caffeinated thought. But it had a significant aroma of realism, too, because Rory and Lorelai struggled, achieved and grew so much.

A journalist, I especially enjoyed Rory’s journey from discovering her writing passion as a high school sophomore to being offered a job at the Providence Journal as a college graduate. The show often nailed the absurdities of the job – the episode where the kind-hearted Rory gains enemies after reviewing an awful ballet production in the Yale Daily News is a hilarious classic.

Sherman-Palladino didn’t originate the idea of a quaint small town populated with quirky locals, but with fictional New England burg Stars Hollow, she came close to perfecting it. Seven years in, I still tolerate the overbearing Taylor and the omnipresent Kirk; on lesser shows, they’d have grown old after one season. Lorelai and Rory – who attend town meetings for entertainment as much as enlightenment – have shown me it’s better to be amused than annoyed.

Sifting through the massive ensemble, though, Rory’s best bud Lane (Keiko Agena) was my favorite. The budding drummer had great taste in music (the 2002 “Gilmore Girls” soundtrack, ranging from Big Star to Grant-Lee Phillips, is essentially a Lane mix tape). And because she had to hide her CDs under her bedroom floorboards to keep them safe from her strict mother, you knew Lane wasn’t idly trying to be cool – she truly loved this stuff.

I love “Gilmore Girls” not because it was cool, but because it was lovable (although, as the training ground for “The O.C.’s” Adam Brody and “Heroes’ ” Milo Ventimiglia, the show had a respectable cool quotient within the TV industry).

Even after Tuesday, I’ll still be rooting for Rory to land her dream job at the New York Times and hoping that Luke and Lorelai finally find a use for that chuppah.

I guess I’m just a guy who cares about great characters on a great show.

If you watch

What: “Gilmore Girls” series finale

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Network: The CW