Review(s): DVD Gilmore Girls - Pilot (TV Premiere DVD)
Great pilot episode.
This dvd is just a promotion idea to get people interested in the series. They sell first episode DVD's like this in stores all the time. They figure people will be more likely to put down $55 on a set of DVD's if they knew what they were getting.
Anyways the pilot on the show was great, and this DVD is very unnecessary if you already like the show. But, if you have never seen an episode and you just want to give it a try then this is something that you should check out.
I have never bought one of these first episode disks but i have seen some in Best Buy, and I believe you will actually get a coupon or something for $5 off the first season set.
Our introduction to Lorelai and Rory Gilmore of Stars Hollow
Actually, I like to collect television pilot episodes, or at least I did before the explosion of channels on cable offering dramatic programming. When there were only three or four networks it was easy to keep up with the new offerings, but now we live in a world where ESPN is offering dramatic programming (at least they still cover sports news, unlike some music channels that have stopped showing music videos), so now I tend just to keep choice examples instead of trying to get them all. Consequently, having the pilot of "Gilmore Girls" on DVD without having to have the entire first season appeals to me (besides, my oldest daughter has the whole season on DVD, and I know where she lives).
As Jules Winfield explained in "Pulp Fiction," pilots are the episodes of a would-be television series that are made to get a network to allow the television series to be made. There are a statement of the intentions of the creators without necessarily be set in stone (go watch the pilot for "M*A*S*H" where there is a different chaplain, a black doctor on staff, and Radar is no innocent), so it is interesting to see what gets tinkered with in the wake of the show being picked up. Having just finished watching the first four seasons of "Gilmore Girls" going back and watching the pilot heightens the changes much more than it does accentuate the core elements.
In the small Connecticut town of Stars Hollow, Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) is trying to get through a normal day. This means getting her morning fix of coffee from Luke Danes (Scott Patterson) as his cafe and dealing with the latest crisis in the kitchen involving cook Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) at the Inn that Lorelai runs. Then everything changes because Loreliai's daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) has been accepted to Chilton, a prestigious private school. Rory's goal is to get into Harvard and an education at Chilton would be a big step in that direction. Unfortunately the tuition payment Chilton requires up front is even bigger and Lorelai is forced to go and do the last thing on earth she wants to do, namely beg for money from her parents, Emily (Kelly Bishop) and Richard (Edward Herrmann).
We come to understand the situation. When she was 16-years-old Lorelai got pregnant. She left the home of her well to do parents to have her baby and raise it by herself, getting a job as a maid. Visiting her parents is something Lorelai only does on major holidays (none of which fall in September). Her parents are willing to pay for Rory's tuition, but her mother has conditions: every Friday she expects Lorelai and Rory to attend dinner at the Gilmore mansion. Lorelai is forced to agree and the fun begins.
"Gilmore Girls" is based on the profound irony that while Lorelai and Rory are as close as a mother and daughter can be, it would be rather difficult for their to be much more distance between Lorelai and Emily. In this first episode our sympathies are actually leaning towards Emily, simply because Lorelai is being so defensive. But what is also striking in the pilot is the distance that exists between Rory and her grandparents, who are taken aback at how tall she is and apparently had no clue that she was quite smart (although getting into Chilton would be a clue).
The other thing that really stands out is that the characters are in raw form. The two who are most on point from the start are Michel (Yanic Truesdale) and Lane (Keiko Agena), while there is little indication that Luke is going to end up being the show's male lead. Sookie is a bit too giddy and accident prone instead of merely being creatively eccentric, Richard looks younger but manages to fall asleep at the dinner table, and Dean (Jared Padalecki) starts off being a lot smarter than he ends up being played during the rest of the series. For that matter, Rory is a lot more confident at the start than she is the rest of that first season, but showing up at Chilton probably has a lot to do with that. Lorelai is pretty close to where she ends up, but she has about half the dialogue in the first episode and is obviously the voice of series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who wrote the pilot.
Watching the "Gilmore Girl" pilot again from the perspective of the fifth season what is impressive is not just the basic hook of the extreme poles of Lorelia's life as mother and daughter, which is still the heart of the show, but the way the series has taken its time. After all, from what happens in the pilot it will take until the final episode of season four for Lorelai and Luke to finally get to what "TV Guide" has named the 18th hottest kiss of all time (it is more cute than hot, which would be more David and Maddie on "Moonlighting"), not to mention what happens with Rory and Dean in that episode.
Most of the problems with the "Gilmore Girls" pilot can be traced to the fact it is a pilot, which forces Sherman-Palladino to introduce a lot of characters while setting up the show's situation and initial conflicts. This is why we end up being told about the close relationship between Lorelai and Rory more than we are shown it, especially when Rory has second thoughts about Chilton after first meeting Dean. But then the sparks between Lorelai and Emily are obviously more intriguing at this point. But as long as Lorelai and Rory talks fast and drop lots of pop culture references that is enough to get me hooked on the "Gilmore Girls" and makes the pilot episode worth having around for periodic reminders on how it all began.
What terrible acting.
This AOL TV show was and still is stupid, Why an actor like Edward Herrmann would appear on it, I don't Know. I don't know what was worse the corny dialoge or the writing. I guess both. Ms.Grahum can not act, although Alexis Biedel might have a future in acting, if she can get away from drek like this.
Related DVD's Gilmore Girls - Pilot (TV Premiere DVD)
The sum of its parts was definitely greater than the season whole as Gilmore Girls kicked off its fourth year by separating its high-powered mother-daughter duo. After years of toil at snooty private school Chilton, Rory (Alexis Bledel) was finally off to the greener pastures of college as she began her first year at Yale. The not-so-long distance put a crimp in her relationship with her mother, Lorelai (Lauren Graham), as the two were forced to continue their chatty conversations via phone--not exactly the same as trading barbs face-to-face. While Rory adjusted to college life with cranky roommate Paris (Liza Weil) in tow, Lorelai found herself without a daughter, but gained a boyfriend in the form of Jason "Digger" Stiles (Chris Eigeman), a childhood friend and now her father's... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 27 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Senior year meant some surprising changes for the Gilmore girls, as both Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) wrestled with their pasts in order to figure out what the heck they were going to do with their futures. In the wake of finding out that her relationship with Rory's dad was not to be rekindled, Lorelai endured a variety of suitors as she attempted to keep her life on an evil keel--not easy when her former flame's girlfriend was pregnant (and clueless), her former fiancé shows up unexpectedly, and her beloved inn suffers some unforeseen damage. If it was minor drama for Lorelai, it was full-fledged soap opera for Rory, who broke up with longtime boyfriend Dean (Jared Padalecki) in the wake of her attraction to the moody bad-boy Jess (Milo Ventimiglia), only to... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 03 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A very atypical mother-daughter relationship is at the center of Gilmore Girls, a comedy-drama that immediately set itself apart from the herd with smarter-than-smart dialogue and an endearing mix of whimsical comedy and family drama. Set in the Capra-esque burg of Stars Hollow, where everybody knows everyone and eccentrics abound, Gilmore Girls was less a mother-daughter show and more of a screwball buddy comedy in which the two buddies happened to be parent and child. Pregnant at 16, Lorelai (Lauren Graham) left her rich parents to bring up her daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) on her own terms; when Rory herself turns 16, Lorelai wants to send her academically gifted daughter to the prestigious Chilton school. The catch is, Lorelai can't afford it on her own, and... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Kenny Ortega - Lev L. Spiro - Peter Lauer - Neema Barnette - Robert Berlinger DVD Release Date: Released the 07 December 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Love was in the air at the beginning of the second season of Gilmore Girls, as both Gilmores found themselves in the midst of perfect, giddy relationships--or so they thought. Lorelai (Lauren Graham) had accepted the proposal of English teacher Max (Scott Cohen) and was excitedly planning her first wedding; Rory (Alexis Bledel) was back on happy footing with townie hunk Dean (Jared Padalecki) after a dust-up near the end of season one that prompted a mini-break for the teen twosome. However, series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino had anything but smooth sailing on the horizon for her heroines, giving Lorelai a severe case of cold feet and Rory a major distraction in the form of Jess (Milo Ventimiglia), the bad boy newly arrived in town. Soon, Rory found herself extremely attracted to... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 07 December 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Perennially one of the WB's highest-rated series, Gilmore Girls hit its creative high point to date with its stellar fifth season, which started out with young Rory (Alexis Bledel) feeling the fallout of doing something terribly non-Rory-like: sleeping with Dean (Jared Padalecki), her married ex-boyfriend. Rory's indulgence in adultery put, for the first time, a serious, sharp wedge in her relationship with her mother, Lorelai (Lauren Graham), who was both shocked by her daughter's behavior and worried Rory would repeat the mistakes Lorelai made at her age. But while Rory jetted off to Europe with her grandmother (Kelly Bishop) for the summer, Lorelai finally got her relationship with diner owner Luke (Scott Patterson) into a serious groove, starting with an official (and... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 13 December 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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