well said on both what is working and what is not working well for the show. on a superficial level (which is the level that counts the most when you’re watching tv), there was just too much bad writing in this season for me to get invested. you absolutely hit the nail on the head with goggins character - “i traveled all the way here to kill the man who killed my dad…who i never met, but my life would have been better if i did.” uh, okay? if we’re cribbing b-movie “excuse for nudity and gore” plot lines, i’d rather have him be there to rob somebody.
on a less superficial, more thematic level (which does not matter to me but sure does seem to matter to people who love the white lotus), the show fails to achieve its purported goals. no matter how ugly and depraved the rich people on the show may be, their lives are still presented as preferable to “the help.” which of course on a material level is true, but i never find this tension to be resolved or developed in a meaningful way. there’s no grand bargin for setting the show about immoral people in a world of luxury. it’s just a show about immoral people in a world of luxury. this leaves me with the hallmark dissatisfaction upon middle-brow consumption: i should have read a book instead.
compare this to succession, which while not perfect, uses its setting as an actual stage with themes of power and movement and….succession.
Just finished watching Common Side Effects — I really enjoyed it. The pacing felt a little fast at times, to the point of feeling a bit like choking down Breaking Bad at x1.5 speed — but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a product of its budget and the reality of shows struggling to get a second season (though I’m excited to hear it did!) It was kind of refreshing to get story beats straight out instead of the usual drip feed of a lot of prestige TV, though.
The story was excellent and they did a great job of making some really likeable characters too. Happy to see Alan Resnick in the mix of VA’s. I really enjoyed the art direction — I definitely think animation served this show better than live-action would have.
As a Gilmore Girls lover I cannot for the life of me find a connective tissue to connect the Simpsons to GG in a way that would keep her interest if she’s that opposed to animation; they’re such powerfully different genres. At least King of the Hill skews closer to soap opera like GG
broadly speaking i do tend to fade away on rewatches in the last two seasons but
Luke and Christopher fistfighting in the town square and Logan reading Rory the riot act about her populism while also being rich are worth the price of admission alone imo ahhaha
Plus, having been exactly like April when I was her age I am the rare April Liker i’ll be honest
It was shockingly, bafflingly bad!! All of the worst aspects of ASP’s output and wanting to re-litigate the seasons of GG she wasn’t involved with.
The key to me was realizing that if you put A Year in the Life in place of season 6 and 7 it would work perfectly for that vision of what ASP had in her head.
As a followup to the actual series, it was a dumbfounding backslide in characterization for everyone
Yeah I think execution is the key thing that makes those last 2 seasons so painful IMO. Just some really weird writing decisions. I don’t dislike April herself, just the story they decided to write around her, Luke, and Lorelai.
A Year In The Life is absolutely insane. Strange and terrible in almost every way. Emily being one of the only highlights.
i was surprised to hear that people hated april when i was just dipping in and out while the show was being watched in the house. like she’s actually pretty good on that show, she’s funny.
but then after watching the whole show a few times it’s like, oh, she’s the freak of the week keeping luke and lorelai apart, very late in the show when they’re soooo close
I did a Gilmore Girls binge back in 2016, right before the revival series (four 90-min movie-episodes) released on Netflix in fall of 2016. My thoughts are kinda all over the place on it:
I enjoyed watching it
If a Gilmore Girls clip pops up on youtube or instagram I’ll watch it
If anyone I know tells me they’re watching I get super excited to discuss various episodes/characters with them
The witty, fast, pop culture-heavy dialogue is great and exposed me to a lot of new things
The witty, fast, pop culture-heavy dialogue is very tiresome after a while
It’s a little twee for me
Connecticut is small and evil
I cannot ever do a full rewatch of it - it’s incredibly frustrating on a rewatch
It’s hard to say exactly why without spoiling the show but for those in the know: Rory Gilmore is the antichrist and the show is her slow descent while her mother and grandparents (but basically everyone else on the show) are totally complicit in enabling her to be the worst person imaginable. She’s thoroughly unlikeable by Season 5 and an absolute terror by the time the revival comes around. What’s odd is that this is tonally not really that type of show? Like, it’s not Succession/White Lotus where they’re satirizing terrible people. So I remember a lot of people hating the revival because they were like “wait I remember Rory being a sweet girl who read a lot (first ~3 seasons) - what happened to her?” Basically the vibes of the show leaving a more lasting impression than the actual plot of it
I fully agree on A Year in the Life and crystallizing the ending. Emily’s arc was excellent as well. Rory, and Lorelai to some extent, are both insane, but that’s kinda exactly where I left them in S7.
I think ASP didn’t actually leave until the 7th season, she’s still around for the 6th. That means she’s responsible for breaking up Luke + Lorelai and having Lorelai sleep with Christopher, essentially nuking the show on her way out
But that also means she’s responsible for one of if not the best scene in the series:
i very much married in to this family and the shit with the sorbet in the middle is 100% how it goes down. wild finding out that there are people who are this at each others throats in real life and that they take ice cream breaks.
