Annie loves Gilmore Girls--as, I've found, do a lot of women I know. I'm generally not so fond of the show. My main quarrel with it is that many of the "conversations"--especially those between the two main characters--seem to be races to see how fast they can get the lines out. They sound like they're just saying lines really fast rather than actually talking to each other, and the frenetic pace gets under my skin a little.
So the other night, I was wanting to do something that Annie likes to do. Usually, in order to do this, I have to think of something that she would want to do, propose that we do it, and then convince Annie that I actually want to do it. Otherwise she won't do it and we have to do something that I like. Few men have to suffer so much to do things for their wives :)
On this particular night, I proposed that we watch Gilmore Girls and managed to convince Annie that I wanted to do it. So we did. In the first episode we watched, Rory was having a hot affair with a former boyfriend (Dean) who had since married Lindsay (I think), who appeared to be a lovely girl.
Immediately I wondered why so many women that I know and admire, including my wife, talk about loving Rory so much. Rory's a tramp who breaks up a marriage that the wife was clearly trying desperately to save! Seeing later episodes only made it worse--yeah, Rory feels bad about it for a while, but ultimately she and Dean establish that he would have left his wife for Rory even if the wife hadn't kicked Dean out, and he and Rory date.
So my opinion of Rory was quite low.
To my astonishment, Annie had forgotten that the affair even occurred. She had an "oh, yeah..." moment as we began watching and were immediately confronted with Rory's adultery. How could something so big as a flagrant violation of the seventh commandment escape her memory?
My conclusion was that Annie had seen all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls multiple times, and thus she knew Rory a lot better than I did. Maybe Rory learns, at some point, that adultery is still a horrible thing no matter how much you happen to love the other person. Or, more likely, maybe Annie, knowing more of Rory, was able to balance everything out and still love her.
That would have some comforting implications. I tend to look at my mistakes one by one and internally castigate myself for each mistake relative to its severity. Because I make a lot of mistakes, some of them quite serious, I'm almost always mad at myself about something. This is extremely frustrating to Annie, who frequently has to assure me that I am a good person and that she loves me even though I keep screwing up. She looks at me as a whole, and miraculously is able to see good.
For God, who can look on the totality of my existence, perhaps that ability is eternally magnified. Perhaps that is why He can have billions of children who rape, murder, steal, and commit senseless acts of cruelty, and still love each of them more than we can comprehend. And perhaps that is why every time I pray saying "Father, I messed up again," He's there to help me pick up the pieces.
4 comments:
that's pretty deep musings from a gilmore girls episode :)
Not surprising from you though.
I must say, Gilmore girls was much loved in maren and I's apartment...at least the seasons prior to the adultery.
I was really bothered by it as well and hated how Rory and Dean excused it by saying he didn't really love the wife anyway, bla bla bla. Doesn't matter--he married her, that's his problem to work out. And yet it's a common excuse by a lot of people who don't believe as strongly in marriage as an institution.
Anyway. Good for you for watching Gilmore Girls w/your wife. And it's true--we all make mistakes, sometime small, sometimes big and somehow just by repenting and desiring to be better, they can be fixed. And God loves us even in the midst of our mistake-making.
Brandon you just blew my mind. As you might know, I tend to watch shows the same way - looking for the moral message, analyzing what they're trying to teach me, and then take that, its entertainment value, production quality, etc and evaluate whether I like the show or not.
You've changed how I will think about shows. I still don't like Rory though. And I still will probably get really bugged when the characters that are supposed to be likable do despicable things.
But, I agree that people should have moral bank accounts. Individually, I should never consciously draw from that bank account, I should always assume it is empty. But when others draw from it by making mistakes, I should realize that I probably draw from mine daily and that this person is still a good person (they have a positive balance).
As Amber said, we have seen quite a bit of Gilmore girls. And as many shows are, the beginning season were better than the latter. Same here. The first ones, she is still pretty young. The last ones, she is in college, immorality is rampant and i stopped liking the show. The Adultery episodes were disgusting. Remembering it now, it makes me feel sick inside. EHH. Can't stand it. There was much good in that show, but they loused it up. Eh, well. Life goes on for us non-gilmore-girls watching folk. BUt i do have to say that i LOVED there fast talk. I just wish i even knew what half the stuff they were talking about was. :)
PS i thought about correcting my typing mistakes, but just for old times sake, i'll leave those in for ya.
It's sad and frustrating that people don't understand anymore that marriage means sticking together and not letting anything pull you apart. Which means you tie up all the loose ends from previous relationships and you don't let anyone else in. I may have only been at this marriage thing for a little over a year, but I know that much.
As for the fast conversations...I guess they just show that it's a fictional TV show. No normal person could think of witty retorts and pop culture/literary references as much as they do. They've come to bother me less the more I've seen them.
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