Amy Sherman-Palladino and the Genius of Gilmore Girls

I wrote an essay about Amy Sherman-Palladino for a screenwriting class last semester, and I thought it would be a good idea to post an excerpt on my blog, given the recently confirmed news of the Gilmore Girls Netflix revival. Enjoy!

After a series of stints on sitcoms, Amy Sherman-Palladino wanted to create her own show. She set up a meeting at The WB with then-president Susanne Daniels, who she wanted to work with. She pitched a lot of ideas, but the one The WB was most interested in was the least developed one. This was the pitch that would become Gilmore Girls. All Sherman-Palladino had was a mother and a daughter who were more like friends. “I didn't have a show, mind. I had a relationship.” (AV Club) Sherman-Palladino was then tasked with coming up with a pilot script from there. She and her husband Daniel Palladino (who would become a crucial part of the development of the show) took a vacation to Connecticut, and that caused the development of the “small town” personality of the show. “Our few trips to smaller towns [...] fed into my psychotic version of the warmth and safety of a smaller environment, where people kind of gave a shit about each other.” The small town aspect became very important as the characters began to take shape. “If [Lorelai and Rory] were going to live in a small town in Connecticut, [Lorelai’s] parents needed to be big-city, which–in Connecticut, Hartford is about as big as you're going to get.” (AV Club) It made sense that a 16-year-old Lorelai with a newborn baby escaping the stuffy life of her parents would end up at a completely opposite place: a warm, safe, and accepting small town. 

Writing and shooting this pilot was only the first taste of Sherman-Palladino’s excellent skills in creating characters and the worlds that surround them, and also her trademark fast dialogue. “[The pilot] was like 60-something pages. I knew I needed to get it down to 50, but I was just feeling internally that this was right. We shot it and we were 15 minutes short. Legally you cannot put the program on when it’s that short. We had to shoot four extra scenes.” (EW) Throughout the run of Gilmore, Sherman-Palladino and her writing team regularly turned in 70-80 page scripts, all of which fit the regular 43 minutes that aired on television because the characters spoke so fast. It is estimated that Gilmore has 20-to-25 seconds for one page of dialogue, much faster than the standard page-a-minute formula. (WSJ) But this dialogue wasn’t just dialogue to fill pages, or characters talking just to be heard. Every sentence was constructed for a reason, and furthered the plot or the characters in some way. “The show’s characters weren’t caricatures; in fact, its female characters especially possessed uncommon complexity. They were intelligent and ambitious, and also allowed to slip up without fear of being devalued or stabbed in the back by friends. The Gilmore Girls universe was a safe place for women to make (and learn from) mistakes.” (Salon - Paskin) That is a big reason why this show has stood the test of time and has captured the attention of mothers and daughters for 15 years.

Amy Sherman-Palladino, despite not having created many shows, has made a big impact on a lot of people, if only through her work on Gilmore Girls. “Her talent in creating witty conversations, presenting diverse family dynamics, and writing hilarious comedy in Gilmore Girls captured the hearts of many viewers.” (Fusion Film Festival) Her female characters are written with such complexity that they become easy role models for young women, not because they are perfect, but because they show that it’s okay to be imperfect. “Sherman-Palladino also recognized how important it was to let the characters grow and evolve: They didn’t have their educational or personal ambitions stifled, and weren’t shoehorned into awkward situations for the sake of good TV.” (Salon - Zaleski) Sherman-Palladino herself is also a great role model for young women, because she is not afraid to get what she wants. She gave this piece of advice to women: “If you have to be better than the men to get ahead, just be better. Work harder, get it, succeed, and then be in the position to do that for other people. Because that’s what men did.” (Refinery29)

Links to references:

• AV Club
• EW
• WSJ
• Salon - Paskin
• Fusion Film Festival
• Salon - Zaleski
• Refinery29

The 100 is the Best Show on TV Right Now... and Here's Why

The 100 returns for its third season today,Thursday, January 21st, and I’m here to tell you that you should be watching it. There are a list of reasons why people have written off this show, chiefly the fact that it airs on The CW, a largely “teenager” network, but those people are wrong.

The 100 takes place 97 years after a devastating nuclear war took place on Earth, killing nearly the entire population. Now, the survivors live in an orbiting satellite called the Ark, where the life support systems are failing rapidly. A selection of 100 juvenile prisoners are deemed expendable, and are sent to the ground to see if it is livable. The cast is led by Australian actor Eliza Taylor, who plays Clarke Griffin, an independent and headstrong character who becomes one of the leaders of the 100. The 100 face many challenges, from both within and without, in their quest for survival.

While the premise is an interesting one, the core of the show is its moral center. One of the biggest conflicts the characters constantly struggle with is the difference between “who we are and who we need to be to survive.” The characters, most of which are under 18, are forced to make difficult decisions way beyond our scope of the capacity of 18-year-olds. From a technical standpoint, this is remarkable because the writers put these characters in impossible situations without giving them an easy way out. Too often, television characters are saved by a deus ex machina event that “saves” them from making a difficult choice, or completing a difficult action. The 100 doesn’t do this. If a situation arises that could cause a massive impact on the characters’ lives, it’s safe to say that that situation will come to fruition. There will not be an easy way out. Additionally, the characters will feel the consequences of those actions, both physically and emotionally. These consequences are explored in terms of guilt over one’s own survival.

This show is also one of the most diverse out there. Just in terms of the main cast, representation includes disabled, lesbian, bisexual, black, Latina, Korean, and biracial characters. These characters are all given the opportunity to be deeply explored and discovered. None of the characters are tokens or stereotypes, and they are all extremely complex, as people are. The characters also grow immensely from who they were in the pilot. They remain true to their core beliefs and character traits, but discover new things about themselves as they navigate the new world of the ground.

A lot of fans of the show (and even the creators) admit that the show takes a few episodes to really find it’s footing. A major event takes place in the fifth episode of the first season that, for me, was the major hook to keep me watching. I was definitely interested in the show enough to get to that fifth episode, but that was the one that made me realize how groundbreaking it really was. After that major event, the conflicts and problems just keep getting bigger and bigger, while still keeping the characters’ emotional journey central. The second season expanded the world of the characters in a major way, and judging by trailers and teases from cast and crew, the third season will expand the world even more. The show will hopefully continue to explore the moral ramifications of survival and what it takes to be a “good” person in a world like that.

The first two seasons of The 100 are currently streaming on Netflix. You have no excuse.