Singapore Some Sugar on Me because I LOVE IT HEREby Randi / May 7, 2019It’s Theatre Thursday! A German Life is playing at London’s Bridge Theatre until May 11.
First of all, let me be clear that Maggie Smith is one of a handful of global treasures (pronounced tray-sure, like fellow old-lady-treasure Emily Gilmore). If she wanted to be an honorary Golden Girl I’d allow it. She’s the best. I love her. I wish her decades more of life and health and work.
A German Life is one of the most painful theatrical events I’ve ever had the non-playsure of experiencing. And not in a good ‘oh that was dramatic and heavy in a necessary way’ kind of painful. I mean it was torture. It was almost two hours straight of wondering in agony whether Maggie Smith was losing her short-term memory and forgetting lines (the thought of which was heartbreaking), or whether this was a purposeful choice for her character. Either way, it was painful to watch. It was hundo p when you visit an older person in a nursing home and you listen to their rambling stories and how it takes them a year to get out one sentence, and once they get the sentence out, they repeat it three times so they can figure out where they wanted to go from there and you’re just like OH MY GOD SPIT IT OUT but you can’t because that’s a horrible thing to think and say (when you aren’t talking to a Nazi).
And yes, all this means that Maggie was entirely successful in her portrayal (it had to be an acting decision, right, because Maggie Smith is still IN HER PRIME) of a 105-year-old woman. I mean, it’s incredible that a 105-year-old woman managed to communicate all that she did. But realism and accuracy in the portrayal doesn’t automatically make for good theatre.
What also doesn’t make for good theatre is that the show gets its message across in about 10 minutes, and the rest of the time is just playing that same one note for longer. And the message…isn’t enough. In A German Life, Maggie plays Brunhilde Pomsel, former secretary to Joseph Goebbels during WWII. The real Pomsel broke her silence at age 105 when she spoke to a group of filmmakers about her life. This play, by Christopher Hampton, is based on that. Maggie sits in a chair as Brunhilde and talks to us about her life like we are filming her for the documentary. The significance of her testimony is that she was a Nazi, who worked in Goebbels’ propaganda wing, who doesn’t think she did anything wrong. In her recounting of wartime, she spends more time explaining her favorite suit she got from Mrs. Goebbels than sharing anything she knew about what was happening in the war. It’s an effective portrait of willful ignorance, I’ll give it that. We spend this time with a self-involved person who hasn’t learned any lesson still, and so we are supposed to reflect on what makes someone ignore such atrocity, and what we would have done differently, if anything.
What bothers me about this show is how frustrated I am that the subtle messaging is not going to reach some people. Instead of thinking how horrifying it is that this woman still doesn’t get it, still thinks she was a victim for what she faced post-war, some people are going to go ‘hmm that really makes you think, there could be very fine people on both sides.’ I’m all for subtle theatre, but our audience needed to be told more clearly that Nazis were bad. I’m not joking. As usual, this show was a prime example of the disturbing humor of London audiences. Without fail, whenever there’s a soul-shocking line that would make normal humans breathe in sharply or widen their eyes or gasp, we’re with an audience that laughs. The most alarming example in my experience previously was when, in Caroline, or Change, Caroline told the young Jewish boy in her care that his people go to hell. It’s a big gasp moment. OUR AUDIENCE LAUGHED. And not in a nervous laughter way that some people on Broadway did; this was in a ‘oh that’s funny because making fun of Jews is funny’ way. Well, the Bridge audience at A German Life matched that distress by laughing every single time Maggie’s character made fun of Jews, especially their appearance, their penny-pinching ways, and especially when she motioned slightly at her nose to comment about Jews’ big noses. The audience roared. This is why anti-Semitism is back; it’s by popular demand.
And that’s why this show didn’t work for me and mostly frustrates me. It’s extremely subtle in its message, because all we get is her story and her words. It only works for people who know that the Nazis were bad and that anti-Semitism was, is, wrong. So, today, when more and more people don’t realize that anti-Semitism is wrong, they laugh along with Brunhilde like it’s their granny and then come away thinking ‘maybe not all Nazis were bad! She seemed fine!’ It’s ridiculous that I have to say this, today, but apparently we as a society haven’t reached the point where subtlety in anti-Nazi messaging makes any headway. I know some of you are like ‘you’re assuming all of that just because people laughed at the wrong things?’ No, I’m assuming all of that because of the conversations I have had every single day since 2016 about what is or is not anti-Semitic, and how often I’ve been told that just because something is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean it’s bad. When we still have people who are like ‘eh but Jews’, a restrained portrait of a non-actively-evil Nazi isn’t going to get through to anyone who needs it.
INFORMATION
I’ve previously raved about the human-friendly, modern design of the Bridge, but that was when I sat in the stalls. Sitting in the weird nether-region of the Gallery 1, which is really just more stalls at the back walls of the theatre, separated from the regular stalls by a half-step and a banister. It felt much more cramped than the regular stalls and at a weird side angle. Definitely won’t be sitting there again.
Infuriatingly, the show started 10 minutes late, in order to seat all latecomers. This is because this show has a policy of no admission or readmission once the show begins – but they also publicized the policy of ‘no latecomers allowed in’. Get your story straight! Don’t hold the curtain for people who are 10 minutes late, man alive.
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“Oh, Hello”: Oh, Goodbye to the Funniest Show On Br’dway
Last night, a show that defied all odds closed on Broadway, or really we should pronounce it “Br’dway”, as I and others lucky enough to see this show will forever do. “Oh, Hello”, a ‘play’ that makes you laugh even if you just repeat the title like an old kvetcher and fry that last syllable, should never had gone to Br’dway, should never have been the recommended pick of the most esteemed critics, and should never have been one of the funniest things its audiences ever saw. But it was! I still don’t know how to explain this show to people who didn’t see it, because it’s impossible. So I guess it’s kind of stupid that that’s exactly what I’m going to do now. Mostly I just want to document the jokes I remember for posterity, while bidding farewell to some of the most glorious hours I’ve experienced in the theatre, and in 2016 in general. It was a bright spot on an otherwise dark and gloomy year. Or, as we say now, “brit spot”.
My uncontrollable laughter started from outside the theatre, because the jovial and game man checking tickets at the door greeted everyone by saying – you guessed it – “Oh, hello!” Adorable! The actual show begins (long interjection: it did close yesterday and so I should be talking about it in the past tense, but there is news that a recent performance was taped and will be br’dcast for a televisorial viewing!! Unlike with “Falsettos”, I’m beyond thrilled that I can see it again and don’t mind that I paid a godforsaken amount of money for our Christmas-week tickets when I can see it again for free) with Gil and George introducing themselves in front of the drawn red curtain, looking like a regular stand-up special except with two old geezers instead of the typically young white male comedians who dominate standup. (Of course, they are two youngish white male comedians underneath all that makeup and old-man hair and costumes of the insane, but they are so immersed in these beloved characters of theirs that I quickly forgot). Immediately we learn their schtick. Gil and George are goofy, they clip the first syllable of most of their words and stress the second one (“Br’dway”), which doesn’t seem like anything but it keeps getting funnier and funnier somehow, and they walk funny like old men. There’s not much more to it than that. Like Luke though, I was all in from the start. I’m obsessed with John Mulaney’s flawless standup (two on Netflix you must watch) and if Amy Poehler can love Nick Kroll, so can and do I, so I was primed to enjoy myself. But it was so much better than I thought it would be.
First, the two men introduce themselves to the audience in front of the closed curtain in a prologue of sorts. Nick Kroll plays Gil Faizon, “charmed I’m sure”, a down on his luck actor who didn’t book an important gig as the CBS mascot, and John Mulaney is George St. Geegland, a writer of tenuous ability who wrote the play within a play that the two will perform later in the show – about two old men who live together on the Upper West side, named George and Gil. The ‘real’ George and Gil are, of course, also Upper West Siders – “the coffee breath of neighborhoods.” George introduces himself by saying “for someone who is so frequently mistaken for a Jew and a woman, I am neither.” George and Gil traipse about the front of the stage just as you would imagine two elderly men with shoddy hips would. They proclaim their love for the theatre and their intentions to pay “homepage” to the great theatrical traditions. George mentions that it will be a treat “for anyone familiar with our oeuvre, which means ‘egg.’” They go on to boast about their Br’dway home, the Lyceum theatre, which has housed works by such greats as Tennessee Williams and his sister, Serena.
As they move about the stage, you notice more detail about their costumes. George goes for a musty professor look, with corduroys, a turtleneck, an old man sweater vest, and a heavy tweed jacket from which you can almost smell the mothballs and b.o. no doubt emanating. Gil is more casual in dark green pants of unknown origin, a brown leather jacket that looks older than he is, a pink shirt that screams Miami circa 1982 coming through the zipper of his pants, and sandals with white socks. I would have been hysterical even if they were silent. Every single movement Nick Kroll made was perfection. Just the way his resting face would subtly resemble a main drooler in a nursing home was fantastic. Mulaney was less developed in all the depth of detail that Kroll had, but still great. If this wasn’t a ridiculous comedy spoof Kroll’s character preparation would be award-worthy. So unnecessary.
Then the curtain rises to reveal an intricate set, with an exterior of an apartment building on one side of the stage and the detailed interior of an apartment on the other, plus a salon in the back. Gil notes to the audibly surprised audience, not expecting such a set for such a show, “This is the first time an audience’s expectations were exceeded by having a set.” They explain that they retrieved all the various set pieces from past shows that had been on Br’dway. Some came from an August Wilson play that they can’t remember the name of; that’s why the picture of ‘their family’ hanging on the wall is of a black family. The salon was courtesy of Steel Magnolias, of course, with its chairs with the hair dryer helmets attached and the wall of products. The trapdoor, from the Diary of Anne Frank. (There’s a lot of humor that is awful like that so you have to be along for the ride.) The geezers get the audience used to the serious theatre they’re about to throw at us (not) by going over some of their favorite theatrical traditions. George talks about how obvious it is when someone is going to die by the end of a play because they’ll cough in their handkerchief and then open it very conspicuously and it’ll have red blood on it. True! He of course demonstrates how this plays out, and as the dying cougher he holds up a blood-stained handkerchief for all to see. Gil demonstrates another way overused theatre trick, and one of my favorite parts of the show, the ‘one-sided phone call’, or as he says it, “the win-sided phin call.” Asking their (unseen/not real) Indian lighting intern Ravi, “one of those new kinds of Indians”, for melodramatic lighting, Gil performs this theatrical ploy of repeating information from an offstage source so the audience knows what you’re learning. First, you get a phone that no one would ever have; Gil produces an old-fashioned rotary phone. Then, you fiddle with it way too much ‘to show the audience that you’ve been working with it all week’. Then the conversation occurs as such:
*Ring ring*
Gil: Oh, hello.
*Pause*
Gil: Charmed I’m sure.
*Pause*
Gil: The police?
*Pause*
Gil: Oh, you’re the police.
I’m still laughing at that. It’s so stupid! Yet it was hilarious! That’s what most of the show is like, really. They share a lot of their backstory as friends and roommates and all their misfortunes and misadventures, and then they perform George’s play for us. It’s hard to tell where the play ends and the play-within-the-play begins, because nothing really changes. It’s still the two of them being preposterous. They talk about past successes and failures, and they give us a rundown of their goings-on from various decades, all of which seemed to involve Steely Dan music and, their favorite thing in the world, “c’caine.” They talk about c’caine a lot, and against all odds their repeated pronunciation of that word gets funnier and funnier.
The play versions of George and Gil resurrect a radio show they once had called “Too Much Tuna”, where they chat with celebrities at a dirty local diner where even the coffee is gray, and feed them freaking enormous tunafish sandwiches. At least I think that was in the play; like I said, it’s hard to discern what was written by George and what was the main show, especially because the gimmick of that radio show – on station WOLO (say it out loud) – is exactly what they performed for real every day. George and Gil sit down at their diner table and start their radio show, and glory over the greatness of tunafish. “It really is the queen of the sandwich meats,” they say. SANDWICH MEATS. Then they bring out their special guest for the show, to the audience’s delight. So every performance, a random person from the audience or, more commonly, the biggest celebrity in the audience would be brought up on stage to try to make sense of what was going on and what George and Gil are saying and try not to just sit there laughing hysterically while they ask if you do cuhcaine. At my show, our celebrity guest was Hank Azaria, which was a fantastic surprise. He talked about how he part-owns a horse, a ridiculous fact that George and Gil brought up later in the show. Hank also talked about how his brother was once asked to join the Ramones, when they were first starting. Gil responded, “I was asked to join Simon and Garfunkel, because I was equal parts Simon and Garfunkel.” The improv throughout the show but particularly at this segment is beyond impressive.
In the play-within-the play, or maybe in real life, Gil had a problem with raccoons. (Rickoons.) He somehow always found himself having relationships with them, and was currently embroiled in a tumultuous affair with a r’ccoon named Lisa (who runs the Twitter for the show’s surprise guests, for real). Somehow this led to them talking about Shakespeare in the Park – maybe that’s where they met, I can’t remember the logic of this show, I was crying the entire time. “Did you ever go to Sh’kspeare in the Park?”, they ask. They discuss “Sh’kspeare” and how overrated he is. “Sh’kspeare is such a hack. Romeo sees the girl and just does a quick take – ‘Oh, ya dead? I’m not gonna check if you’re just sleeping I’ll just kill myself.’ Hack.”
Who on earth knows or remembers how, but the performance of George’s play leads into another unexpected yet familiar theatre trope – the nightmare ballet. As crazy as it sounds, it looked even crazier. There was all kinds of crap happening with the lights and ghosts and set pieces and all of it was like an LSD-trip — which they touched on at one point, referring to an “LSD cult now known as SoulCycle”. They wake up from this insanity laying down on the floor, unable to move after what they’ve just been through given their advanced age. Prostrate (a word I imagine they would love saying and confusing with something close to it), they take turns yelling up to Ravi, the lighting intern, for help. It’s one of those jokes that is funny but somehow gets funnier the longer it goes on, once it reaches and then passes the point at which you go, annoyed, ‘oh it has to stop now, right?’ noooope. “RAVI! IT’S GEORGE. FROM THE FLOOR.” “RAVI! It’s Gil. Charmed I’m sure.”
I have a vague memory of “Too Much Tuna” getting picked up for more episodes and so they celebrate their success with new outfits. Mulaney comes out in a very slimly tailored beige belted expedition ensemble which he perfectly terms “Pussy Safari”. Gil shares that all he aspires to own one day is a ‘thundercoat.’ “A what?”, George asks. “A thundercoat,” Gil responds. “For a dog. When there’s a thunderstorm, and they get scared…it helps them not be scared….Well they still get scared.”
This show had no right being as hysterical as it was. I’ll remember things every so often, like how Gil found himself out in the audience at one point and saw a young boy sitting on the aisle, and asked him in his normal voice, “Are you enjoying ANY of this?” Or how Gil once worked as a stand-in for mashed potatoes ‘so they could get the lighting right for photo shoots’. How do they think of this stuff?! I can’t wait to see the taped performance (details for the airing have not yet been announced) and I hope all of you watch it too, but really there was nothing like seeing this absurdity live onstage. Whatever’s in the Lyceum next has, somehow, astonishingly, inexplicably, big shoes to fill.
Theatre:
The Lyceum Theatre gets my vote for Br’dway theatre most in need of a serious refurbishment. The only bathroom is down a staircase only reached from inside the orchestra, which is insane to begin with. But there are maybe 4 really old stalls in a bathroom lingering from the 1970s. Because of this, the theatre boasts the longest bathroom lines of any theatre. Be warned. You’d think the Shuberts could afford a little upgrade. Eye roll emoji.
Gilmore Girls ‘A Year in the Life’: ‘Summer’ Tiiime and the Palladinos Are Mishegas
Hoo boy, was ‘Summer’ a doozy. I experienced a roller coaster of emotions – I was angry, I was sad, I was even angrier, I was frustrated – and that’s all directed at the Palladinos. We learned something new and super annoying about the Palladinos, or as I’ll now call them, the Tweedledee and Tweedledinos, from this episode: They hate millennials. Yup, the people who created one of the most beloved and important shows of this much-maligned generation also believe all the very stupid and baseless bullshit spread about millennials – that they’re lazy good-for-nothings who all end up back living with their parents because of their own bad decisions. They are like those idiots who believe that the fact that millennials can’t buy a house at age 25 from a median-income 9-5 job like their grandparents could is their own fault, and not, as it is, the fault of those grandparents. Nothing is more ignorant and, really, basic than uninformed derision of millennials. Conclusion, the Palladinos are basic bitches.
But first, let’s start at the very beginning of the episode. Just seconds after we were notified that this episode was, like Spring, written and directed by Daniel “FFS” Palladino, we were reminded of yet another really terrible trait of the Tweedledinos: they love to fat shame. Like, love it. I really needed this episode to do a lot of heavy lifting to redeem the revival after Spring’s mess, so to be so quickly reminded of their ‘90s-era lame humor seemed to be accompanied by a cartoon ‘womp wahhhh.’ As we see time and time again, Amy and Dan love making fun of vegetarians and fat people – two of the lamest kinds of stale ‘jokes’. To have Summer start with more of their outdated, offensive, lazy, tired humor was such a disappointment. Is it irony that their humor is what they falsely think millennials are – lazy and tired? Or just annoying and embarrassing for them?
At first glance, the opening scene seems promising – everyone is splashing and rollicking at the Stars Hollow pool (which is a thing!) and it looks so fun and omg it’s so cold here I really miss summer and pools! Then we focus on Lorelai and Rory lounging by the pool with hats and sunglasses and attractive summery clothes (not bathing suits), talking fast about…how dumb people are for wanting to swim? Wait, I really don’t buy this. They go on and on about how to get to the pool, you have to walk there in the sun, which is hot, which makes no sense if the purpose of the pool is to avoid the heat, and if the other purpose is to cool off in water, they should stay home and take a bath. Oh my goodness. I think this is a new conversational low point. Remember when their first conversation of the revival was about Goop? I miss those days. I fully and completely object to the idea that they would be anti-pool to such an extent that they question why people enjoy pools. Wtf. I liked how they finished each other’s sentences but that’s about it. And just when you think this scene can only improve, they start saying ‘belly watch!’ when fat people walk by. Oh the fat shaming is both shameful and not quick. What lazy humor, Dan. Shame. SHAAAAME.
Okay, now the crappy stuff must be over, right? But alas. Andrew comes over to the girls and says how he’s glad Rory’s ‘back’, to which Rory argues ‘I’m not back’. Then Lane and Zack come over and Zack says the same thing. (Lane shows what a good friend she is by immediately saying ‘She’s not back’, knowing that’s what Rory would want.) Again Rory protests ‘I’m not back!’ Because being back living in her mother’s house – which she is doing – would be embarrassing? Would mean she’s a failure? No, it doesn’t at all, and it’s super common nowadays because our generation has been given a destroyed system that adds insult to injury by having older generations blame us for what they wreaked. But having Rory so vehemently oppose the idea of people thinking she’s back shows that that’s exactly what she thinks and what the show’s universe and creators think. Fie on them for perpetuating this ignorant belief that should be relegated to the province of old white congressmen only.
Zack looks like Santa Claus.
Okay, NOW the crappy stuff must be over right? Right? HOLY SHIT ALL THE PREVIOUS AWFULNESS HATH BEQUEATHED THE WORST AWFULNESS OF ALL, APRIL! NOOOOOOO! Okay, breathe. We knew she was coming, we knew. It’s just that after a fully loaded 2 minutes of this episode, chock full of as many trite jokes and insulting platitudes that can be crammed into 2 minutes, to have April show up before we even reach the 3 minute mark is like a stress test gone berserk.
April and Rory talk about how great M.I.T. is and how much they love beakers and Bunsen burners and clamps (?), and I realize two things that kind of suck: a) how it would have been nice back in season 6 if instead of using April as a plot device to drive Luke and Lorelai apart, they had L&L bond further over having such similar daughters, and b) April sucks.
She goes on about how she only watches German silent films (I don’t know anyone who ever went through that phase) and yells at Luke that the Constitution says she can pierce her nose (same Constitution those republicans seems to be looking at) and then, worst of all, doesn’t get Lorelai’s jokes. Now the Woody Allen quote I’ll give her a pass on, because Woody Allen is a disgusting paedophile, so disgusting that I’m giving him the British spelling and saying it in my head like Ted Mosby. But to not laugh at the greatest Lorelai line in so long is unforgivable: When April claims she spoke to BLE Noam Chomsky (best linguist ever), Lorelai says, “Ah. To Noam is to love him” and I CACKLED. April just looked confused. I mean, that was the best line!
I noticed at this point that Luke is, and has been, acting like Upside Down Luke. It’s him, but like…not. He refuses to have conversations. He refuses to talk with Lorelai about finances and about how much he’s paying for April to do whatever she wants. You have to have those conversations, Luke! He just shuts Lorelai down crankily and that’s that. I want to Cher-in-Moonstruck him and shake him out of whatever grumpy funk he’s in. But he doesn’t seem like the adorably grumpy guy he used to be; he just seems like an unpleasant ass. And that’s not Luke. I don’t really understand why they have him acting completely devoid of emotion, of love, of kindness in this episode and in Spring, unless it’s to lead up to something that is going to be very disagreeable. I guess we know that’s coming, but to have Luke’s lovable character completely altered in this negative way does not feel true to the show, or to him.
I do love that he forgets so much about the TV show they’re watching (“The Returned”) that he says “Oh yeah these people live in this small town, right?” and Lorelai prompts “…and some of them are dead…” and he has completely forgotten that part. That’s the one very Luke thing in hours of revival so far.
No time to dwell on how the dream is dead because April decides to continue the conversation about how Rory is back home and how she too could fail like Rory and be spit out by the world and then she has an anxiety attack to mirror the one she gave me. April’s also wearing a rasta knit hat. I’m gonna need M.I.T. grad Bean to report to us on whether M.I.T. students wore those hats.
As almost a reflex when she’s dealing with the sads, Rory calls Logan for comfort, but learns that her affianced adulterer of a beau is now – what a gd surprise – living with the fiancée heiress. Instead of both of these morons realizing that maybe they should end their affair, they talk about what hotels Rory can stay in when she visits. Rory at least seems upset about having to stay in a hotel, but it’s probably not for a good reason like she’s coming to terms with her immorality but more likely because she doesn’t like the room service at the Savoy or she knows that Amber Riley’s unstoppable belting will travel up to her floor and keep her up at night.
Nope, they decide they’ll still see each other. Cool guys.
Yay a town meeting! With Carole King back as music shoppe owner Sophie! I love her even though it’s weird that she’s no longer singing the theme song because, sadly, the revival just starts, with no musical opening, which I strongly disagree with. Oh no. Oh no. The entire start of the meeting is about how Rory is back and how she should join up with ‘the 30-something gang’ of all the Hollow offspring who had to move back in with their parents and they go bowling and stuff. I’m offended in so many ways by this continued mockery, Daniel, and the suggestion that people in my age group enjoy bowling so much is not the least of it.
Why is there so much gd Bootsie in this episode yet we haven’t seen Patty in forever?! Bootsie sucks. I’m not okay with this lack of Patty at the town meetings – which are held in her own dance studio. There’s been a lot of Babette, and I adore Babette, but it’s almost too much of her, like they gave her all the time allotted for both Babette and Patty. Why isn’t Liz Torres doing more? Is she sick? Don’t be sick!
The next order of business at the town meeting is one I am fully behind – Taylor wants to put on a town musical! This is such an obvious plot device to cover up the Tweedledinos lack of good story ideas otherwise, but I don’t care because a musical! A musical! I am psyched. It’s going to be terrible, isn’t it? Yessss.
Nice to see that Stars Hollow now has roughly 6 people of color finally.
The last order of business is a new plot line for Rory that doesn’t involve adultery! How novel! The Stars Hollow Gazette is shutting down, not due to lack of funding or anything reasonable, but just because the editor is retiring. And because Taylor likes to do dumb things, the newspaper is shutting down instead of finding a new editor. Obviously, Rory cannot abide ending such a bastion of journalistic integrity/good coupons, and we can see the passionate fire of an extremely weak child trying to rub together two rocks growing inside her.
Before we see Rory save journalism as this series always told us she was born to do, we go back to the pool. Oh joy. Did I mention how they hired two little boys to hold parasols over them? I feel so bad for these little boys. It’s so hot out and they just want to play! It’s summer! But instead they have to listen to Lorelai and Rory do, what, plantation humor? as they talk in ‘humorous’ southern accents about how good their little servants are. Oof. And then more body shaming. Cool guys!
As the little boys trail behind the Girls, lugging all their crap, they see other kids playing and say, ‘That looks like fun.’ It’s not particularly funny, just sad, but I don’t see the point of including this at all unless it’s to show us that the Girls are horrible people. And while we know that they can be indeed horrible, I don’t believe that Daniel would want us to think that! Does he hate them? Is he throwing the game? It’s just so unnecessary unless he wants to spread hate. Which, to be fair, is so like him.
Yasss musical auditions!! The happiest time of year! Here’s Patty finally, handling the sign-up sheet with Babette. Her trademark lasciviousness seems almost forced, as her lewd comments to all the hot men are no longer funny but awkward. Her spark is lessened. Did all her amazing energy come from her old body? I did enjoy Babette’s “It says your name is Kevin but I’m going to call you…tomorrow.” Classic old lady line!
I cannot abide all the talk about how Sutton Foster played a character named Kinky Boots. As Lorelai points out, there is no character named Kinky Boots. As sadly NO ONE points out, there is no main role for women in the entire show. In fact, Sutton wouldn’t be right for any female role in the show, so this bothered me a whole lot. At least Kerry Butler/therapist Claudia is finally going to do something on this show she’s good at – sing! And while she talks to Lorelai about needing a good word put in for her (um you don’t you’re amazing), Sutton Foster is singing my favorite song to sing from ‘South Pacific’!!! What a great 40 seconds this was! Kerry sings too and was in such good voice. Slay queens.
Rory finally asks Taylor to let her save the Gazette, which, okay, this is a decent plot line for her. At least she’s writing. But apparently it is an unpaid position? Or when they said the salary was nothing did they mean in figurative terms? Because that’s b.s. otherwise. She does take a lot of scotch from the editor’s desk though. Maybe she likes getting paid in scotch. Insert happy shouting here for casting the great hilarious Jackie Hoffman as one of the Gazette staffers!
Okay now we have to talk about the most disturbing part of the revival, maybe the most disturbing thing ever on television. Guys. What the hell is going on with this little girl? She is either Alien Learning to Assimilate to Humans By Only Watching Old Cartoons Where Facial Expressions Didn’t Change, or Worst Child Actor in History. I realize I am bashing a child but I can live with it. I cannot tolerate this performance. Seriously, what is happening here? This Boy Statue is holding I’m guessing a phone, completely stationary, and Alien/Worst is just grinning like a fool LIKE A FOOL for wayyy too long than is necessary to make whatever point about Aliens/Terrible Child Actors they’re trying to make here. Michel and Lorelai could have thrown down on the reception desk and instantaneously conceived and birthed a centaur and I would not have been able to look away from this Medusa’s head of a child’s face.
After Michel gave these little monsters lollipops, he had the greatest line of the whole episode:
Michel: “On a scale of 1-10 how much did I sound like a child molester?”
Lorelai: “6?”
Michel: “Getting better!”
Omg so wrong and it made me think of this best scene from “Peep Show”.
Michel asks Lorelai to drinks that night so they can talk, which feels ominous, and Lorelai feels it too. Seems like her fears about Michel leaving were well founded. Cool that she had all that support from Luke about it. As Lorelai walks away, Michel turns to check in a family, and we see what we never in a million years could have guessed would ever happen on this show: for one shot, the four people onscreen are all black, and that is awesome. Now that that’s over, “GG” will quickly return to its position as Whitest Show in TV history.
One thing that Daniel did very well here is to call back to the town meeting from ‘Winter’ or ‘Spring’, when Babette shouted something about the ‘secret bar’ in town, which we never previously heard anything about. Well, that’s where Lorelai and Michel go for their drink! I adore how they set it up, with the space looking like any regular, popular, lounge-y speakeasy space, Lane and Zack playing their instruments softly in the corner, Lorelai making terrible jokes, all normal, until a few shouts of “Five-oh! Five-oh!” (like Hawaii?) ring out from outside and everyone blows out their candles, grabs their drinks, folds up their tables and chairs, and stands flat against the wall in the dark. Then Taylor walks by – and sees nothing. I loved this reveal that this was the secret bar!!
So the news is that Michel is indeed leaving, for the W Hotel so he can run a spa like he was born to, and get paid more like he deserves but the Dragonfly can’t afford. I loved his defense of needing more money: “We have a baby on the way! Well I think Frederic ordered one, I have to check.”
Grumpy Luke is even grumpier as he prepares Burger Day at the Inn. WHY IS HE STILL COOKING AT THE INN? Can’t someone tell Lorelai just to hire a f-ing new chef? I cannot stand new mean Luke but I fully understand his grumpiness in this scene. But I would prefer he actually learn to communicate with Lorelai and tell her she’s being unprofessional by refusing to, you know, run her business.
Back at the Gazette offices (at night? These oldsters have to sleep, Rory!), Taylor apparently thinks he’s the editor and is preening his feathers like he owns the place. I guess as official King of the Hollow, Taylor does also run this, but if Rory’s not getting paid can’t she just kick him out? So annoying. We get a good few minutes of hilarioussss jokes about how old the computer system is. Why does this have to be a terrible experience for Rory? Why couldn’t this be her big return to running a newspaper? I hope it just means that something better awaits her in the next episode, professionally.
With zero help from her staff about wtf happens at this paper, Rory has to deliver the newspapers herself, by foot. She and Lorelai run around town in a delivery montage and fight about which part of town is east and which is west, while ‘These Boots are Made for Walking’ plays, and it’s all kind of dumb and blah, and then Doyle calls Rory, and honestly, I have never been happier to see Doyle! He is such a good character. In classic form, he complains that Rory butchered his movie review that he submitted to the Gazette – because she had to trim the original 20,000+ words he wrote. I like the insinuation that writing terrible screenplays would have lessened his sharp editing skills. And I love what a good friend he is that despite his success, and despite his divorce from Paris, he still helps out Rory. Decent guy.
I’m going to ignore the mid-montage inclusion of the 30-something gang and the continued mockery of this demographic and their love of Paul Thomas Anderson because it is painful, offensive, and trite.
After her papers are all delivered, Rory calls Emily, at noon, and Emily is still sleeping, and isn’t sure what day it is. She’s completely out of it, seemingly sick if not totaled by depression. Guys, if they decide to kill Emily Gilmore, I will revolt. I will riot in the streets. That would not only be horribly sad but it’s also just lazy storytelling! Get a better idea, Tweedles! Don’t kill her!
Finally, we made it to the musical! You’d think considering that most of this blog is musical reviews this is the part I’d be really qualified to write about. But holy mother of god, this was (luckily) like nothing I’ve ever seen. Omg! It’s so off its rocker while also being kind of funny and mostly just bad, but in a way that accurately lampoons bad musical decisions. It stars Broadway ledges Sutton Foster and Christian Borle, who have four Tonys between them and lots more nominations. Suffice it to say, they’re among the best of the best, so if you are unfamiliar with them, know that their performances here were CLEARLY DIRECTED to be terrible. But great still. But terrible.
Workin on buildin workin on buildin STAAAARS HOLLOW!
Obviously, the musical was painfully horrible, and the music and lyrics were worse than the Hugh Grant movie of the same name. But so much of it was bad in a funny way (despite the pain) and so many terrible decisions – like the standard tap moves that turned into a kickline – were on the nose for making fun of what bad musicals usually do. It was meta. Some lyrics cracked my shit up:
“We met so awfully cute
And you were ripe and curvy
You brought me a crown* of citrus fruits
Which I hoped would cure your scurvy”
*it sounded like crown and I refuse to listen to that again so we’re going with crown
“We’ll have 14 kids and hope that 3 will survive!”
The best was Babette whispering to Gypsy “The guy is hot.” And also the apparent relationship between Tom (the Dragonly contractor) and Carole King! I want to see that storyline! I loved the random shout of “Lafayette!” in the Revolutionary Time song, and thought it would be great if that was as close as the show got to referencing ‘Hamilton’ – makes fans think of it, but it’s not being annoying by actually saying flat out “we’re referencing Hamilton!”, and it can be easily ignored as not a reference at all (it prob isn’t!). But, of course, I gave Daniel too much credit, because a minute later a third actor came onstage and started rapping. His first words were literally “Look I’m rapping, just like Hamilton on Broadway”. I mean. That’s not even funny. It literally hurt me to watch. I sacrifice so much for you. This is agitating my sciatica so much. $100 says the Tweedledinos never saw ‘Hamilton’, p.s. They can’t get tickets.
The only ONLY good part of that piece of shit section is that the guy actually said ‘Lin-Manuel’ in his horrible rap, and now I cannot wait for Lin, who JUST started watching Gilmore Girls, like season 1, last week, to catch up and see that he’s mentioned. Can you imagine how weird that would be, to get into a TV show and then have them reference you? So weird.
Christian Borle was SO into the finale that I kind of loved it! And Sam Pancake’s faces throughout the musical were pretty amazing. I mean, overall, I may have loved all of it (except the rapping/Ham reference). It was so freaking perfect to end with ABBA playing and forcing the audience to stand up and dance and clap because I DESPISE when shows do that – they force you to give an undeserved standing ovation! That’s the whole trick! And all the oldsters love dancing and clapping along to songs from their youth, so they leave the theatre on a high and forget how shitty the show was. Oldest trick in the book (since jukebox musicals happened). So it was quite perfect that they included it here as yet another aspect that had Lorelai (the only voice of reason in the room) roll her eyes almost out of her head.
Ugh and then they talked more about Hamilton. No way on earth that Taylor knows who RZA is. Omg they just keep talking about it! Ughhhh. The entire post-show session with the advisory committee is soo infuriating. Lorelai raises legitimate concerns – like the fact that the female character apparently has sex 26 times in the show – and the rest of the group just calls her a prude. Maddening. To top off this whole shitty post-show, Carole King’s Sophie says that she’s written a few songs that the show could include – and she gets up and plays ‘I Feel the Earth Move’, which Taylor hates. Oh come on. This is dumb.
Luckily, all that b.s. ends with a cut to Emily hosting a DAR meeting. And guys, we have a new DAR member – BARB FROM COUGAR TOWN! Oh my god I literally screamed BARB!! Apparently she is playing the exact same character. Revel in her glory, especially the last scene:
Back at the Stars Hollow Gazette, Rory twiddles her thumbs while she waits for the only thing that gives her life purpose – her ex-boyfriends. And with that, Jess Mariano waltzes into the offices. A really, really buff Jess. Rory introduces him to the two staffers, and Jackie Hoffman, comic genius, says “I remember you. Punk.” And it’s beautiful.
Jess is in town to help Luke with Liz and TJ. Listen, if we don’t see Liz and TJ in the ‘Fall’ finale, I’m going to riot in the streets over this too. So Rory and Jess drink desk scotch and make small talk, until Rory confides in him that she feels like a failure, ‘coulda been a contender’ and isn’t, and is broke and has no car and let her license expire.
Back the f up, Rory.
First of all, you were driving your Prius the day before. So a) you do have a car, and b) you don’t seem to mind a little driving without a valid license.
Second, shut up with your whining about how broke you are. You just left your millionaire grandmother’s house, and she has never been shy about wanting to buy you all the things you could ever want. INCLUDING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN YALE TUITION. Your great-grandmother and OG Lorelai died several years ago and most definitely left you some moolah. Your grandfather just died and even moster definitely-er left you even more money. And to top it off, your father who is good for nothing BUT offering you money is richer than all of them put together! And then in the next scene you’re going to talk to Lorelai about how you’re looking for apartments in Queens and want a 2 bedroom place so princess can have a separate writing space! SO SHUT YOUR MOUTH ABOUT HOW BROKE YOU ARE! Especially to a guy who has built up his entire business from the ground up. What the hell Daniel! Get her story straight! This is infuriating. Why she so dumb.
Best is when she complains to Jess that all of her possessions are scattered around three different states (not to mention the other country, Adulterer). THAT IS YOUR FAULT, RORY. YOU DID THAT.
I used to very vehemently be on Not Team Jess, because he was such a shithead in his early seasons. But during my latest rewatch, later-seasons Jess is a winner. He has his shit together and he is the only guy who seems to understand Rory. Now, to continue the trend of him knowing what’s best for her, he suggests that she get out of this current rut by writing a book about her relationship with her mother. Um, yes, excellent advice! Do approve! It would be a fantastic way for Rory to achieve success in the universe of this show. Kind of pat but beautiful, I think.
Ps, you know that part in “Trainwreck” where Amy Shumer is at the movies with John Cena and some guy calls him Mark Wahlberg and Cena’s like, “Dude have you seen me?! I look like I ATE Mark Wahlberg!”? Jess looks like he ate teenage Jess. (In a good way. Have you seen this?!)
The next scene is upsetting in so many ways. The three Gilmore Girls go to the cemetery to see Richard’s new headstone – #5, because Emily is so picky or really they just keep getting the stone wrong! She can be picky about this. (Except, in general, like, stop burying people. Gross.) Emily has a new man friend, which is alarming, but hopefully he helps her get through her malaise. I loved when Lorelai was complaining about him to Rory, and how she couldn’t find anything online about him because there were too many Jack Smiths. “Try searching John, Jack is short for John.” “Okay googling John Smith and now my phone is just laughing at me.”
For the first time, Emily is right about Lorelai’s relationship with Luke. It turns out Luke never told Lorelai about that day when Emily ambushed him with Ida Attorney and took him to see franchise locations. Emily asks Lorelai, “Do you and that partner of yours ever talk about anything?” No, Emily, no they don’t.
Lorelai and Rory finally get a moment to themselves to chat about Rory’s big project – she’s decided to take Jess’s advice and write their story. Their moment comes at the cemetery, which lends itself well to a terrible joke on Lorelai’s part that cracked me up: “So what it is about! I’m dying to hear– (looks around) Sorry just an expression.” So dumb but I laughed. But when Rory tells Lorelai she’s writing about their relationship, their ‘journey’, Lorelai is not laughing. She’s actually angry and upset. We have rarely seen her like this, especially with Rory. As Rory explains more of the format, Lorelai just simply says “No.” She does not give her permission. I am shocked, really, at her reaction to this. She says how it’s her life and how she tried very hard to make sure that people only knew what she wanted them to know. This all seems very much out of left field, considering how Lorelai’s arrival in Stars Hollow with baby Rory was in the newspaper back then! Everyone knows everything about her journey! I don’t buy this AT ALL. No way in hell Lorelai wouldn’t love this idea. She’d be proud to be the subject of Rory’s ‘brilliant’ writing.
A very frustrated Lorelai goes to Luke’s diner for coffee, which he tries to stop her from because it would waste the whole pot. Um, has he met Lorelai? She finally snaps and asks how much longer he’s going to be like this. Good question, I’ve been asking the same thing! Just a total dull grumperpuss! She confronts him with the fact that he didn’t tell her about Emily and the franchise locations – but he responds with how she lied about continuing therapy with her mother. I thought this would finally get them to speak kindly with each other, if Lorelai admitted to him that she’s been going on her own because she felt she needed it. I was so pumped for Luke’s take on this reveal. But instead of seeing him respond to her with love and kindness, he flat out does not believe her. She finally confides in him the secret she’s been keeping from him for fear of what he would think of her, and he does not believe her. Literally the worst thing he could possibly do to her, or anyone can do to anyone they supposedly love. They start fighting in front of customers and it’s very awkward, until Luke reminds her of their ‘deal’ – that they live separate lives, and keep their bits to themselves, as Lorelai set up. Obviously she did not set this up. That’s just what Luke wants, and Lorelai realizes that he sees them as two separate players and not as a team.
In the middle of a very emotional Lorelai sandwich is an emotional Rory filling, in which she talks to Lane about her fight with her mom while she reflexively keeps calling Logan and hanging up. Logan finally gets through to her and asks, Ace, wtf? in so many words. Rory explains how she keeps wanting to talk to him about her life but can’t, because she can’t ignore his fiancée anymore, like he apparently can. They ‘break up’, although Rory’s acknowledgement that they can’t ‘break up’ because they are ‘nothing’ was pretty sad. Is that the end of Logan Huntzberger? I can’t believe he is going to go out with a silent phone hang up. But I think he’s only in three episodes, so that might be that. Wow. Wait but Finn and Colin haven’t shown up yet and they wouldn’t be in Fall without Logan, right? Maybe Logan’s in 4 eps. I kind of hope that isn’t the end of Logan! What’s happened to me?!
Back to sad Lorelai stuff – Taylor and the guy from Brooklyn wrote a new song for the musical and invited the advisory committee to hear it. This is such by-the-numbers storytelling but I don’t care because the new song is actually good. Lorelai thinks so too, and it speaks to her. Don’t get me wrong, it would have less than zero business being in the Stars Hollow Musical as we know it. But as a plot device used to speak to Lorelai, it’s great. Lauren Graham is at her best in this scene and up to the end of the episode. We see in her eyes everything she’s feeling as she listens to the song, and as the lighting focuses just on Sutton and her, blacking out everyone else in the room, her anguish is powerful and staggering. She recognizes her own struggles in the music and connects deeply to the message as she starts to cry. It’s such a strong scene for her and for this revival, finally, to let her/anyone feel real emotion and acknowledge that something needs to be done about it.
On that note, she goes home to find Luke fixing things up like nothing happened at the diner. But Lorelai is shaken, and something is obviously different. She quietly informs Luke that she is going away, maybe for a while. She is doing ‘Wild’, she says – you may have noticed she was reading Cheryl Strayed’s famous book at the pool. He’s confused and makes dumb comments about how she can’t possibly know what that entails and isn’t serious. But this is a quietly determined Lorelai that we haven’t seen in a long time. She is going. Luke can’t stop her. He finally asks her a question he’s probably never asked her before – ‘why’ – and she responds with the quote from the song, “Because it’s never or now.” That’s not really why, though, Luke; it’s because you are being a complete diddadoof and she needs you to snap out of it and realize how much you love her and how you need to work harder and be better.
This scene is spectacular. The acting is top notch, the kind we used to see all the time in this show. And it is so cathartic to finally see Lorelai and Luke even approach talking about what they need, what they feel. And how this relationship is in need of a lot of work. Everything about it was perfect and moving and almost made up for the rest of the episode. I’m so glad this revival is finally addressing what needs to be addressed – and I’m trying not to focus on the fact that they are seriously running out of time to do it properly.
