OK so...I'm a fan of Gilmore Girls. Witty banter is fun. I love Stars Hollow as an institution. You get the picture. I watched the first three episodes of this when it first came out expecting that same kind of fun, airy thing but with some theater-geek elements courtesy of Sutton Foster. Now, the reason I'm giving this two stars and not one star is because I did, indeed, get some of that.
What I also got was a reminder of what women in general think of guys like me. And by 'guys like me' I mean weird, awkward, socially inept ones who love earnestly in spite of a social scene in which being a smooth operator is often rewarded with the gift of another person's body. The male lead was one of us quiet, love-at-a-distance-but-never-give-up types. I say 'was' because he got killed in an accident almost immediately. The woman he pined for had finally agreed to marry him...and then he promptly perished. It wasn't treated as a tragedy. It was treated as an opportunity for upward mobility and empowerment for the female lead. Actual empaths were horrified. All 5 of us.
I thought that when Sutton's kindly-but-oddball suitor finally got the 'yes' from her out of desperation, this would be a musical-esque story about the value of finding love in a place you never expected. About growing to love someone. What I got instead was a reminder that to most people, it's fine to define the socially oblivious by what they lack, not by what they might have if you get to know them. Nobody reading this probably cares. If my sentiment were a popular one, the world would be in better shape than it is now. But I had to write this down for all the other "creepy" non-neurotypicals out there like myself. Silence kills. Just like a car in an Amy Sherman-Palladino show, apparently.
What I also got was a reminder of what women in general think of guys like me. And by 'guys like me' I mean weird, awkward, socially inept ones who love earnestly in spite of a social scene in which being a smooth operator is often rewarded with the gift of another person's body. The male lead was one of us quiet, love-at-a-distance-but-never-give-up types. I say 'was' because he got killed in an accident almost immediately. The woman he pined for had finally agreed to marry him...and then he promptly perished. It wasn't treated as a tragedy. It was treated as an opportunity for upward mobility and empowerment for the female lead. Actual empaths were horrified. All 5 of us.
I thought that when Sutton's kindly-but-oddball suitor finally got the 'yes' from her out of desperation, this would be a musical-esque story about the value of finding love in a place you never expected. About growing to love someone. What I got instead was a reminder that to most people, it's fine to define the socially oblivious by what they lack, not by what they might have if you get to know them. Nobody reading this probably cares. If my sentiment were a popular one, the world would be in better shape than it is now. But I had to write this down for all the other "creepy" non-neurotypicals out there like myself. Silence kills. Just like a car in an Amy Sherman-Palladino show, apparently.