I'm bound to call this post 'Happy Gilmore'

I'm afraid you're pretty much being ignored again this evening because a new love has entered my life.

I've discovered The Gilmore Girls.

I know. It's only taken about six years to try it, but after getting advice from people whose advice I tend to agree (thanks Keris) I waited patiently for the rental dvds to start flowing.

The premise about the relationship between this single mother and her daughter -- the daughter having reached the age the mother was when she gave birth. They live in a small town. The daughter goes through her angsty problems whilst her mom is the manager of a hotel and has her own problems dealing with her own mother. Sounds really sappy doesn't it. I thought so too which is why it's taken me this long to indulge.

I was hooked after the second minute of the first episode.

A woman, who we later discover has the brilliant name Lorelai Gilmore, walks across the street and on the soundtrack is There She Goes by The Las plays.

Ok I think. Already losing points for using a very overused (but great) pop song in a very, very cliched manner. This isn't a good start.

The woman walks into a coffee shop and approaches the counter. The barista won't serve her coffee. He's cutting her off. She pleads with him and eventually he relents. Somewhere in there I realise that it's being played as though she's a junkie and he's her dealer.

Then I remember that one of the few things that the really cloth headed producers (and Sixpence None The Richer when the covered the song) who use the song never understood is that There She Goes by The Las is reputed to be about heroin. 'The racing through my veins' lyric being a dead giveaway. This show is intertextual. It selects music and then plays a scene based on the audience being able to understand a really, really zetgeisty pop culture references.

Then the real dialogue begins between the woman and her daughter and it's funny. But not in a Friendsian punchliny kind of way (wait for the joke) but in quite a natural, yet smart way. I'll say it again. It's really, really funny. This is one of those occasions when the premise of a show and its potential plotlines are transcended by the script, the performances, the direction, the editing and the production. It doesn't treat the audience like idiots, yet manages to be accessible. Just look at this mile long memorable quotes page at the imdb.

It feels authentic. It has realism. People pay for taxis. They have snappy arguments that don't mean anything in the long term. People have to catch a bus to get places. But there's a wierd undercurrent of darkness too I feel. Something that isn't being said. It's Capraesque that way. Everything seems sweetness and light but ...

It's set in a Bedford Fallsian town and you really get the sense of a community. One of the (very) few problems I always had with Dawson's Creek was that you never got a sense that there was anyone living in the place outside the main cast. Stars Hollow is teeming with people, people saying hello to each other even if (and this is important) they're not a massively important element of the plot of the week).

I'm currently on episode seven of the first season which was made in 2000 -- there's something comforting in knowing that I have six seasons worth to catch up on. It's the kind of show you'd imagine would be cancelled for being too good. Does it continue to be fabulous? I hope so because both Rebecca Kirshner and Jane Espenson, both Buffy alumni are writing for the show in what will for me be a few years.

Dark clouds on the reviews I've skimmed suggest that it goes a bit wonkey when Rory goes to college -- which if they actually split up the central pairing with her mother to accomplish I can see -- it always kills every show stone dead when the central characters are split up -- and the original creators have gone for the sixth season, something that The West Wing never recovered from.

But for now I'll love. I mean any show with dialogue that likens the fact that the mother hasn't told the daughter that she might be dating her teacher to the Iran-Contra Affair has got to be worth staying with. Best get back to it.