Popular Culture?

Those of you who know me well will know that I am addicted to the worst aspects of popular culture - Big Brother, X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing - but I also have a guilty secret love - The Gilmore Girls. Last year when I was watitng for the axe to fall and the final foreclosure papers to arrive I clung to a never changing ritual of watching Lorelei and Rory every morning at 11.00. Their relationship seemed so close to that of mine and my mother's but agreeably distanced by the quaint New England town and their kooky, savant coolness.

I was already on borrowed time with them - the series ended with Rory off to shadow Obama's campaign and Lorelei and Luke finally entwined in an embrace - but good old E4 still comtinues with twice daily showings so that I can watch again and again. And I do.

What is it about something so sugary sweet and clearly packaged to pull on the heart strings that overrides reason and logic and still has me begging for more? Why do I cry every time I see the episodes where Lorelei is betrayed by her mother, again, and Rory goes to live with her grandparents in Hertford? Why do I cry even more when Rory goes home?

Maybe it is as simple as wanting to be Lorelei - don't we all? Stick thin,  beautifully dressed and with wit to die for what's not to love? Her inability to make a relationship stick has an adolescent resonance, her vulnerability a reassuring chink in the Gilmore armour. I have no illusions about Rory - too pretty, too clever - and then the little face crumples under some unexpected setback and I crumple with her - ready to take up cudgels against all who hurt her.

Only one other TV show did this to me and that was years ago. An Australian soap called Country Practice. In that the main character, another kooky, strong individual, Molly got leukemia and died very slowly over about twenty episodes. It used to be on at 12:30 and Mum and I would rush to the telly with our coffee and sit transfixed for twenty minutes as we watched brave Molly bid goodbye to her daughter and friends. I can still make myself cry by remembering the very last episode where we saw the action through Molly's eyes - right up to the end where the screen went blank and all we could hear was her husband Brendan calling her name. Great stuff.

Scholck TV my darling friend Peter calls it and I suppose it is but it answers some need within. So - let's bring back the Gilmore Girls. I want to find out how Lorelei and Luke are doing, has Rory taken Washington by storm,  are Emily and Richard still as awful and whatever happened to Miss Patti? Let's have a little more prettiness and pleasantness in our watching and not the constant salivating over cadavers that seems to be the fashion at the moment. NO MORE CSI: BRING BACK THE GILMORES!!!!