On Mon, 19 May 2008 17:52:53 -0400, "David E. Milligan"
<davideml@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>"Rob Jensen" <ShutUpRob@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:sb1u24lo0845kp2igmtb8v8bspcjliq682@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On Sat, 17 May 2008 02:07:40 -0500, Cory <my_wheel_life@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>In article <170520081820239888%anybody@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>>anybody@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
says...
>>>> In article <%AoXj.34993$7a.23664@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, "David E.
>>>> Milligan" <davideml@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > ABC Family started back with the pilot ep today.
>>>> > And again I see why I was hooked from the very first scene
(despite the
>>>> > missing Gazebo and other SH landmarks).
>>>> > Knew from the start Lor & Luke were going to be the couple to
watch (but
>>>> > I never realized it would take so long for them to consummate their
"couple-ness").
>>>> > Lor said Ror was 16, but she wasn't.
>
> [...]
>>>
>> Rory's birthday is in early-to-mid-October (they're consistent with
>> that from s1 all the way through the series). Thus, in the few
>> episodes before Rory's Two Birthdays, any reference to her being 16 is
>> rounding, which isn't the least bit implausible.
>>
>> One very probable explanation (especially within Richard's social
>> circle):
>>
>
> Lorelai was trying to emphasize to Joey that Rory was WAAY too young
for him. Rounding up would
>not be the way to do that. Saying she was fifteen would make more of an
impact about her youth than
>sixteen would.
>
>> A person (whether Richard or Rory) rounds up when they don't want the
>> other person to know when Rory's birthday is so that the third person
>> doesn't try to get him/herself invited to Rory's birthday party when
>> s/he's not wanted.
>>
>> One more shot at it: The episode could have been shot and meant to
>> air *after* Rory's Birthday Paries.
>
> Since it was the Pilot ep, why would it be shown later? I thought
that was the idea of a pilot
>ep -- to start things out introducing the settings, the people, and their
relation****ps.
> I don't think the Birthday episode had been written yet. And when it
was, and since she
>couldn't be seventeen, they probably hoped no one would notice.
I see what you're getting at, but the subject of Rory's age
pre-Birthday Party was brought up one more time than the pilot. It
was brought up in the third episode, Kill Me Now:
RICHARD: (waiting impatiently for Rory) It's after 8:00. She should be
here already.
EMILY: She'll be here.
RICHARD: You're supposed to tee off at your designated time.
EMILY: You pay good money to that place. You'll tee off when you tee
off. Is that what you're wearing?
RICHARD: Yes.
EMILY: Hmm.
RICHARD: What's wrong with what I'm wearing?
EMILY: Nothing. It's fine.
RICHARD: This whole thing is absurd.
EMILY: She's your granddaughter.
RICHARD: She's a sixteen year old who would rather be at the mall.
I'm sure if I went around through eps 2, 4 and 5 I could find a couple
more references than just the pilot to the topic of rounding Rory's
age up to 16 when she was just a month-month-and-a-half shy of her
birthday. And it's really not too hard in this case to understand why
anybody and everybody who knows Lorelai and Rory would consciously or
subconsciously be rounding Rory's age up. Because Lorelai had Rory
when she was sixteen. Heck, you don't even have to backtrack from the
topic of Lorelai's birthday being mid-March-ish to do the math on
Rory's birthday (early October) to realize that Lorelai was 15 and ***
NOT *** 16 when Rory was conceived.
This would be entirely speculative without any sort of a reunion movie
as of yet providing any additional canonical information, but I would
think that Lorelai probably subconsciously started putting a little
bit more pressure on Rory regarding *** when Rory turned fifteen. Or,
alternately, that entire year, Lorelai freaked out and just didn't
date anybody -- not even the occasional two-months-and-she's-out guys.
And, most im****tantly, we have to take into consideration Rory
herself. We know from too many throughout the course of the series up
'til s4 that she was definitely feeling the pressure to, like, not
have a kid while she was still in high school. And she had to have
been feeling it from a bunch of differnt directions -- anyone rounding
her age up (whether in front of her or not).
But this is really one of those times where I put my dramaturge's hat
on to state the following:
The episodes exist in the order that they exist and therefore,
interpretation is a bit of an archaeological expedition of words. The
details specified were set in stone as soon as the given episode was
finished. So it's a proven fact that Rory is referred to as being
sixteen in at *least* two scripts (if not more, I'm not going to skim
through any more of the first six right now) as being sixteen weeks
before she actually does turn sixteen. Fact of the matter is, this
*seeming* error isn't actually an error *because* it's repeated and it
doesn't defy the laws of physics because it's just an idiomatic,
slanguistic way that age can be and is often referenced in our society
in an informal matter.
And that's waaaaay beyond us fans retconning Sean Gunn's first
character on the show "Mick," the DSL installer as just being Kirk
going through his Rolling Stones phase. That's really just a case of
Amy so liking to write for the actor that she created a specific new
character for him.
So, okay, sure, they all could have added the modifier "almost" to
Rory's age in those early episodes.
Whereas in the script for Kill Me Now, Richard says: "She's a sixteen
year old who would rather be at the mall."
You can't really have the dialogue be "She's an almost-sixteen-
year-old who would rather be at the mall" because, well, ugh,
unwieldly. And while it's technically correct, they clearly didn't
want to have Richard say, "She's a fifteen-year-old who would rather
be at the mall" because, well, the younger age suggests someone that
is less independent a teenager, less formed a personality than even a
sixteen-year-old would be.
He could have said, "She's almost sixteen years old; she'd rather be
at a mall."
Technically, the example I've provided is more correct -- but the
syntax change IMO alters the subtext so greatly that it might just
have spun Edward Herrmann off into a different interpretation of
Richard througout the scene. The example I provided has Richard being
a bit more introverted and self-pitying (the subtext being "she'd
rather be at the mall *than with me.* ) Whereas in the script as
written Richard is using the words as knives to transfer to Emily his
discomfort at not having to wait for his granddaughter but to have so
much time on his hands that he's fussing and fretting and trying to
look his best for her.
Also keep in mind that words are at a premium when you as a show
creator are contractually obligated to have a show that clocks in at
approximately 43 minutes and 12 seconds, plus or minus. That
timespan normally gets rounded up to 44 minutes for the sake of
brevity and informality and/or familiarity. Similarly, 15-going-on-16
gets rounded up to 16 for the sake of familiarity, informality and/or
to reinforce whatever the creator is wanting the subtext to be. In
that context, with so little time on hand to explain *everything* --
after all, they can't really put an asterisk on-screen during the show
with a footnote at the bottom of the screen that says, "he's rounding"
every time someone called Rory sixteen before she turned sixteen.
Okay, sure, a couple of the DVD season sets *did* have pop-up video
things that allowed for that, but somehow, I think it's just one of
those things that even the pop-up video tracks wouldn't point out
because it's just plain obvious: they're all rounding and they've
been rounding every since Rory got within spitting distance of turning
sixteen. The repetition of the fact that they're calling her sixteen
even when she isn't is im****tant in and of itself, it's information in
and of itself revealing how different characters regard Rory.
And I'm just going to say this again for emphasis as a dramaturge:
when any kind of diagogue is repeated, it's not a mistake. Doesn't
matter if it's not repeated until a later episode -- repetition of an
idea (such as rounding up an age) is *always* significant. It
*always* means something.
And in this case, it seems to me like basically someone who's started
watching the show straight through from the pilot to Rory's Birthday
Parties, one who notices the obvious statements of Rory being sixteen,
would, while watching Rory's Birthday Parties, realize, "Holy ****! I
thought she was *already* sixteen!" and then look back at all the
previous references in, after all, are a very small handful of
episodes and think not, "Geez, these writers don't know math," they'll
be saying, "So many of these characters are rounding Rory's age up to
the age that Lorelai was when she gave birth to Rory -- wow, her
pressure-cooker Sweet Sixteen year started, like, three months early."
Or something like that. ASP and her staff of writers know that we're
not idiots. We'll pick up on everything because they know that we
like to and they know that we'll trying to find transcripts or
freeze-frame a picture while the closed-captions are on to pour over a
single word, much less a single sentence.
Yes, there've been a couple of continuity (timeline) mistakes -- Kirk
being depicted as new to the town while arguing with Miss Patty at the
market in another early episode being one example of a clear
continuity mistake, but the presence of a continuity mistake does not
mean that everything that appears to be a mistake *is* a mistake. It's
actually the other way around -- everything is presumed intentional
(innocent) until proven a mistake (guilty). That's how interpretation
of a script *always* works, whether you're writing a new one or you're
datamining an old one.
So, anyway, they were rounding. Clearly, she isn't sixteen until she
turns sixteen, so when they refer to her as sixteen before she turns
sixteen then by definition, they're rounding. QED.
-- Rob
--
LORELAI: I am so done with plans. I am never, ever making one again.
It never works. I spend the day obsessing over why it didn't work
and what I could've done differently. I'm analyzing all my shortcomings
when all I really need to be doing is vowing to never, ever make a plan
ever again, which I'm doing now, having once again been the innocent
victim of my own stupid plans. God, I need some coffee.
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