TV Watch: A love letter to "Gilmore Girls" creator Amy Sherman-Palladino

Given the size difference -- Dean (Jared Padalecki) being at least a full head (his head) taller than Rory (Alexis Bledel) -- kissing always involves a logistical challenge, but they hardly seem to notice, and they're so beautiful together, whether they're kissing or not, that they almost make it seem as if there might be some justification for the human race.

by Ken



It was that noted New York City philosopher George Costanza who described so graphically the perils to life itself when a person's must-be-kept-separate worlds collide. What else could I think of on a day when, sitting innocently on my living-room couch, I rewatched, in close succession, the Gilmore Girls episodes where Rory and Dean first kiss and then the Mad Men Season 5 episode where Rory kisses Pete Campbell, and kissing turns out to be the least of it!

Of course in Mad Men Alexis Bledel isn't Rory anymore. And while it didn't matter when I saw the Mad Men episodes with Pete's eerie fling, because I had no idea who either Alexis or Rory was. But that's all changed now, since I got the complete Gilmore Girls DVDs and devoured them -- seven seaons (2000-06, 154 episodes) -- in maybe two weeks.

The time frame alas can't be verified, since during that period I was kind of lost in time. Now it may be that I'm the last person in the world to discover Gilmore Girls

She's the wife of that dope insurance salesman Howard, the guy Pete runs into often on the train now that he's commuting into Manhattan from the Connecticut suburbs.

Our scene: It's the night of their three-month anniversary, and RORY and DEAN are in a salvage yard sitting on the newly installed front seat of the shell of a car he has begun building for her.

RORY: I'm having one of those moments right now.
DEAN: What moments?
RORY: One of those moments when everything is so perfect and so wonderful that you almost feel sad because nothing can ever be this good again.
DEAN: So basically I'm depressing you?
RORY: Yup.
DEAN: You're very weird.
RORY: And you're wonderful.

-- from Gilmore Girls, Season 1, Episode 16,
"Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers"

The show, by the way, is also incredibly funny (the "ear" of the writing, obviously starting with series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino herself, is unbelievably precise as it whizzes past -- the show is famous for its lickety-split dialogue pace, which is how she wanted it), and the better you know the characters, the funnier it gets -- because it's all about people and relationships. Not Leo's department, I'd venture to say.

That said, I will venture this much of a spoiler: After Rory and Dean's deliciously as well as torturously excruciating courtship, they are so beautiful together that they almost make it seem to me as if there might be some justification for the human race.