At the First Hint of Fall, My Thoughts Wistfully Turn to the 'Gilmore Girls'

I just noticed the first hints of autumnal color in the leaves on the tops of two trees on my New England street. During the past two days, the temps haven’t made it above 70 and school has begun. As fall gradually unfurls, my thoughts turn to many things, like playoff baseball (Go Sox!), apple picking, making everything I can think of from the apples before they go bad, fresh cider and cider doughnuts, jack-o-lanterns and cozy sweaters.

And I also think about one of my favorite TV shows, the Gilmore Girls, a program which showcased fall in New England quite often. Set in a fictional Connecticut small town named Stars Hollow, about a half-hour outside of Hartford, it began in the fall, in September specifically. Its opening credits display the show’s title across a background of vibrant foliage. On the DVDs (I own nearly all of the seasons), you make episode selections by clicking on a leaf. The ABC Family web site which has a page for the show, is covered in fall leaves. Fall and the Gilmore Girls go hand-in-hand, despite Lorelai's professed love for magical snow.

 

Many memorable, quirky moments occurred in the fall: Rory Gilmore’s birthday was in the fall -- something that was marked during several seasons -- and she received her first gift from her first boyfriend Dean outside amidst the leaves while her mother Lorelai looked on through the kitchen window.

Luke Danes was constantly hounded by the Stars Hollow selectman, Taylor Doose, to festoon his diner with festive fall decorations, given its proximity to the town green where the Thanksgiving horn of plenty resided and where the fall fair was being held.

Rory got her first kiss in Doose’s Market while she was awkwardly clutching a box of corn starch from a Thanksgiving display (a box she inadvertently shoplifted), and then ran across the center of town, stepping around pumpkins and hay bales to share her good fortune with her buddy Lane.

Rory and Lorelai had four Thanksgivings one year when they were emotionally blackmailed and/or cornered by their friends and family and felt as though they couldn't decline the invitations.

The first one at Lane Kim’s house featured tofurkey, the second at Luke’s diner featured Luke’s gruff banter, the third at Sookie St. James’ house was highlighted by Jackson deep frying the turkey and Snooki getting drunk, and the fourth at Emily and Richard Gilmore’s was the site of an argument over where Rory should apply to college. The mother-daughter duo gave everybody a bouquet of fresh fall flowers, cranberry sauce and chocolate turkeys.

When Rory was a freshman at Yale, Emily and Richard insisted on tailgating prior to the Yale-Harvard football game (albeit tailgating alongside a massive motor home, using linens and fine china and the services of a wait staff). Richard got drunk, ran into an ex and, when Emily became jealous that he’d maintained regular contact with a former flame, she took out her anger on Lorelai who’d finagled an invitation to the tailgating soiree at the last minute.

Just a month or so earlier, Lorelai had eased Rory through the college transition by spending the night with her in her Yale dorm, inviting the female students into Rory’s suite as they ordered from all the take-out joints in the neighborhood so they could sample them, that was when Lorelai wasn’t arguing with Luke over his truck in which she’d left Rory’s Yale-issued mattress.

Are there any TV shows which remind you of fall? Any favorite fall-related Gilmore Girls episodes?

Image credits: ABC Family and The WB.



Thanksgiving, TV Style: From 'Cheers' & 'The Gilmore Girls' to 'Mad About You'

Two weeks from now, most of us will be attending or hosting Thanksgiving dinners, mixing all manner of family and friends, including some folks who shouldn't be combined regardless of how much wine is served with dinner. In anticipation of this uniquely American holiday, my mind, of course, turned to TV and some of the Thanksgiving episodes from my favorite TV shows.

For me, THE quintessential Thanksgiving TV episode has to be the Cheers one which ended in a messy food fight with cranberry sauce dripping off of Diane Chambers’ face and splattered across her over-the-top, Pilgrim outfit. Later, just as viewers were about to see what Norm’s wife Vera looked like, she got clobbered in the face with a pie thrown, ironically, by Diane. Who isn’t tempted to start a food fight on Thanksgiving from time to time?

Happy Thanksgiving - WKRP Turkey Drop - kewego

WKRP: The other “classic” Thanksgiving episode is, without question, the WKRP turkey drop one. Even though I was a kid when I saw this in repeats, I still remember practically every detail:

The location was the Pine Dale Shopping Center. Les Nesman was on the scene declaring that “the greatest turkey event in Thanksgiving Day history” was about to happen. Then the people and cars in the shopping plaza's parking lot were bombarded via helicopter with non-flying live turkeys. The episode was capped by a rumpled, traumatized Mr. Carlson saying, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”



Mad About You: Jamie and Paul Buchman hosted their first Thanksgiving dinner for their parents, family and friends as they were assaulted with an array of pointed darts of passive aggression coming at them from all angles as they tried to awkwardly blend the styles and traditions of the two families. For example, when Jamie and Paul said the dinner would be “buffet style,” their parents scoffed and opted to go “another way” when they weren't in the room, setting the table more traditionally. Paul's father insisted that there be canned cranberry sauce (as opposed to the homemade sauce Jamie was making). Paul's mother brought a sweet potato dish and said the one that Jamie made -- the one without the marshmallows -- could be stowed away in the freezer. The clincher was when the dog had hopped up on the counter and ate the turkey they'd prepared.

Image credit: AMC via Best Television Shows

Once and Again: This show, starring Sela Ward, focused on the impact of divorce on families with children. In its first season, Ward’s not-quite-divorced-yet Lily had Thanksgiving dinner at her house with her kids, her sister and her parents, who brought with them her estranged husband Jake -- whom Lily had explicitly NOT invited -- while her boyfriend Rick was lurking outside the house on the sidewalk waiting for her to come out. Rick appeared miserably lonely while his own children were spending the day at his ex-wife’s house, where she'd invited colleagues from work and her current boyfriend to spend the day. There was fighting and screaming and some lies were tossed about . . . just your garden variety American Thanksgiving.

Mad Men: The first episode of the fourth season, which recently concluded, contained what’s soon to be a classic Thanksgiving scene: Betty Draper Francis forced her daughter Sally to eat some of Betty's new mother-in-law’s sweet potatoes, which Sally promptly spat out onto her plate (gagged on them, really). Betty dragged Sally out of the room while Sally yelled from off camera for her mother to stop pinching her. Meanwhile the deeply depressed Don was in his darkened apartment insisting that the prostitute he hired repeatedly hit him in the face. (Jezebel has a good video clip – second video down -- of the scene in question.)



Gilmore Girls: Remember the year when Lorelai and Rory just could not say, “No” to Luke, the Kims, Sookie or Richard and Emily and wound up attending four Thanksgiving dinners in one day? The odd collection of dinners included one tofurkey, one deep fried turkey, an argument about vases and flowers followed by stilted conversation and an openly hostile shouting match held across a well appointed table.

thirtysomething: In season one, Hope was reluctant to host Thanksgiving dinner for all their friends. She wanted to spend a quiet holiday with just her, Michael and their baby. But Michael persisted and whined that they should have a Thanksgiving dinner. The compromise was that Hope would allow him to have the dinner, but she was going to do something else, like sort through photos. Then Michael and the baby got sick, quickly followed by Hope. However their friends pulled together, something, kind of -- Elliot and Nancy took their kids out for fast food -- and wound up piling into Hope’s bed at the end of the night, one big, happy, messy, sick family.

Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving TV episode?

Image credit: AMC via Best Television Shows.