Can you say, "Oy, with the poodles already?"  It’s Gilmore Girls, brought to you by our own resident expert, Miss Kitten.

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Eight years ago or so, Amy Sherman-Palladino presented a long line of ideas for the executives of the WB, which were turned down one by one. At the end she said, "And then I have one about a mother and daughter who are more like best friends rather than mother and daughter."  Had this one been turned down as well, Gilmore Girls would never have been made.

The concept is easy; fast-paced, intelligent dialogue filled to the brink with pop culture and historical references. Everything from Proust to "America’s Next Top Model." A small town full of very strange, very special, lovable, insane individuals, and last, but not least, the mother-daughter relationship that goes beyond any mother-daughter relationship.

Quick-witted, coffee-addicted Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) got pregnant at the tender age of sixteen, which broke her already fragile relationship with her parents. She moved away not long after and raised her daughter as a friend. Now with her daughter turning sixteen, Lorelai has to reconcile with her parents in order for them to help her finance her daughter’s education at a prestigious private school.

Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) is a nerd in many ways. She loves school and prefers to get her homework done as quickly as possible so that she can do extracurricular work on weekends, hopefully enough to earn her a spot at Harvard, where she has dreamed of going since she was four. When she isn’t doing schoolwork, she reads, preferably something written by an author with a Russian surname. She’s the picture of focus and order, but that may be changing as she begins to notice boys.

Other important characters include Luke Danes (Scott Patterson), the gruff diner owner who keeps the girls caffeinated, feeds them, and generally cares for their well-being; Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy), Lorelai’s best friend and co-worker; and Lane Kim (Keiko Agena), Rory’s best friend and confidant.  Additional characters include Emily and Richard Gilmore (Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann), Lorelai’s estranged, upper class, society parents.

Then there are the many insane inhabitants of Stars Hollow — the gossip queens standing outside the magazine stand, the town troubadour playing his music on various street corners, the town selectman bugging everyone with new regulations, and Kirk working every possible job there is, from delivering mail and being a sales clerk at the local beauty shop to installing alarms and starting up Stars Hollow’s first pedicab.

Pairings are a highly popular thing in this show. Lorelai and Rory have both managed to accumulate a small but significant list of love interests. For Lorelai, the pairing that has captured the hearts of most fans (including mine) is her long-term romance with Luke that blossomed at the end of the fourth season. With Rory, the fans are much more in disagreement, and they have grouped themselves into four main groups of shippers, one for each of Rory’s main love interests: Dean, Jess and Logan, the fourth for the unconventional romance between Rory and Tristin.

What separates shows I love from the rest are the characters, and this show is no exception. You have to look far and wide to find a more diverse and colorful group of people.  Another thing I love is the well-written, intelligent dialogue bouncing between the characters at an impressive high speed.

The biggest challenge when writing for this fandom is to keep up with the pace and dialogue of the show, not to mention coming up with your own list of applicable references for books, music, shows, movies and history, especially ones that will fit with both the storyline and who these characters are. This is a highly intelligent and hilarious show, a fresh breath in a world where comedy is mostly canned-laughter sitcoms.

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