I know it's borderline insulting to split TV shows and movies along gender lines - especially because most of the time those distinctions are plain wrong. I have rewatched Girls more than any other show that doesn't end in -opranos, and last year I caned the entirety of Sex and the City as well as the two movies, chased down with And Just Like That..., and I am apparently a Miranda but identify as Carrie, thank you very much. But there are certain shows that just happen to prove the stereotypes right. For example, I have never been able to convince a woman in my life that I Think You Should Leave... with Tim Robinson is the funniest show ever made and not a sloppy pile of dog shit, nor have I got past episode two of Entourage with my girlfriend, who weirdly can't get on board with a juvenile male fantasy of Hollywood stardom that happens to also be very sexist.
But the series that really tears men and women apart is Gilmore Girls. This show is crystal meth to millennial women. I have known more than one with the ability to recite the lines of any given episode in real time like they're singing along to a pop song, not a TV series that has, by my count, 74 hour-long episodes a season. Until very recently, I could not have told you why Gilmore Girls - about a mother in her 30s and her teenage daughter wading through life, and also, nothing - inspires such culty devotion. And I have yet to meet a straight guy who will admit to watching it. But now I'm ready to stick my head above the parapet and say: I get it. I finally get it.
Last weekend, on a last-minute work trip, I found myself in a basic hotel in a remote Portuguese town. There really wasn't much to do. On top of this - and this is important context, I promise - I was absolutely exhausted from back-to-back Christmas parties and a 10-hour travel day. Unable to face the Netflix doomscroll, I just clicked into the first thing on the Continue Watching column, which was partway through a Gilmore Girls season three episode (because my girlfriend, like your girlfriend, is perpetually rewatching this show).
This, I think, was the right way to finally understand Gilmore Girls. It is not a show that impresses itself upon you, but slowly swaddles you. My previous resistance was that it seemed like nothing actually happened, plot-wise. But on this occasion, I began to see that as a virtue, not a flaw. One episode was just about Lorelai (the mum, played by Lauren Graham) and Rory (the daughter, played by Alexis Bledel) going to multiple Thanksgiving dinners - a classic sitcom set-up, but nothing really went wrong. In another, Melissa McCarthy's Sookie accidentally lands herself on a date with an old friend even though she's married, but just straight-up tells him, and he happily leaves. Where other shows would have drawn that out with excruciating tension, this one just resolves it and moves on to some other matter of medium importance (like Rory's college application, which I have heard about a few times but have yet to understand the stakes).
This is vibes-based entertainment. And the vibes are lovely, honestly. Everything is warm and comforting. Luke knows your order in the diner. The small town - it's called Stars Hollow for God's sake - is too picturesque to be real (and it isn't; I've personally passed the Gilmore Girls stand on the Warner Bros backlot). Lorelai and Rory speak like lots of great TV characters from the early 2000s: with witty pop-culture references and jokes that are more smirky funny than laugh-out-loud. The needle never really goes shooting one way or the other. It's a nice change of pace from the TV I've been watching recently, like the new season of Stranger Things, which is so far all plot and zero vibes.
I don't mean to mansplain Gilmore Girls. I'm only at the beginning of my journey. But I'll be clicking play again this weekend - and you should, too.
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NETFLIX
LITTLE WOMEN
Greta Gerwig's adaptation is better than any Christmas film I can think of, and it has the same warm, comfy vibe. Florence Pugh and Saoirse Ronan in particular deliver all-time heaters.
BBC IPLAYER
THE DROPOUT
Amanda Seyfried is eerily great as biotech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes in this show that charts her rise and fall.
DISNEY+
FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE
A great satirical drama about a middle-aged divorcé (Jessie Eisenberg) in New York, whose ex (eventually played by Claire Danes) disappears out of nowhere.
NOW
COMPANION
A fun, silly thriller about an extremely life-like robot girlfriend going haywire on a couples' weekend away.
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Has anyone had a stronger year across both film and TV than Tramell Tillman? He was the MVP of Severance's brilliant second season in the spring, and went toe-to-toe with Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning a couple of months later. To cap it off, in September, he became the first Black actor to win a Best Supporting Award at the Emmys. "I have been competing with the voices that would suggest that I wouldn't be able to do it because I'm Black, because I'm queer, because of these things that are like stumbling blocks - and that just makes me push harder," Tillman told GQ contributor Iana Murray. "Whenever I'm told I can't do something... we'll see what happens."
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"Emily in Paris is the best show on TV." |
ANGELO MITAKOS
GQ's FASHION EDITOR |
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ODESSA A'ZION IS OBSESSED WITH... ROSEMARY'S BABY |
"Oh my God, [Ruth Gordon] is one of my favourite actors. She is just incredible. She was in Harold and Maude. Seeing her play a character like that - she's just so fucking good." |
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