Cast not happy with series finale

by Arieanna on May 15th, 2007

The Washington Post has some interview segments with Kelly Bishop, Edward Hermann and Liza Weil - all of whom are dissatisfied with the season finale. Bolded sections are my emphasis only.

Forget closure, people. It appears the fans are the ones getting left at the altar…

according to more than one cast member, the conclusion is less than satisfying… One of those shows that had only decent ratings but a tremendously loyal following, "Gilmore" wraps up in a way that series regular Kelly Bishop describes as "disrespectful" to fans.

"There’s so much written into that script, it almost seemed as if — certainly with my character, certainly with Lorelai and Luke — that we were ready to move on to the next story line," says Bishop, who plays Emily Gilmore, Lorelai’s often prickly mother. "That we were ready to begin the next season in the very next moment . . . I see a series of dots after the last scene of the show, rather than a period, or better yet, an exclamation point."…

More after the jump…

"I felt like the bottom dropped out," Bishop says. "I thought [the 13-episode season] was excellent because we could really wrap up the stories nice and neat and kind of give the audience a chance to say goodbye."

Truth is, the show has been ready to go for a while now. Last year, series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino left, and David Rosenthal took over as the show’s supervisor. The writing, says Edward Herrmann (who plays Richard Gilmore, Lorelai’s father), then "tended to lose a little of its sharp edges." And there were plot twists that irked the faithful. Lorelai married Rory’s biological father in a spur-of-the-moment wedding in France, a detour that has since been disposed of. Logan, Rory’s debatable boyfriend, proposed in the middle of a formal graduation party at her grandparents’ house — a move that any Gilmore fan would consider cringeworthy.

So it comes to this: In the penultimate episode, which aired last week, Rory said no to Logan’s proposal. Which is probably a good thing, given that she’s only 22 and she’s incredibly brilliant and she doesn’t need to be limiting her future career to a 60-mile radius of where he’s already chosen to live. Still, did he really mean it when he said it was all or nothing? Marry me or you’re dumped? Whoa. Some whiplash there. There must be some fallout coming on this one . . . oops. Nope. No time left for that.

Luke and Lorelai, meanwhile, are in another one of those moments where they are misreading signals and not talking to each other about how they feel and generally stalling on their way to a magnificent future together. We think.

"There are suggestions that it would be resolved that way," Herrmann says, "but we’ll never know, because we didn’t know it was going to be over. You don’t have the emotionally satisfying moments. After seven years, each of those storylines needs its own episode, almost."

What will happen will be a town-wide graduation party for Rory, one last hurrah for the fictional hamlet of Stars Hollow, with all its quirky and endearing regulars — Sookie and Jackson, Lane and Zack, Kirk and Taylor, Miss Patty and Babette. With such a crowded final setting, Bishop says, it was hard to have many intimate moments.

"It’s unfortunate that, I think, a lot of those fans are going to think there isn’t closure," says Liza Weil, who plays Rory’s best friend, Paris, and who points out that the writers were hamstrung by the situation. "Hopefully, there won’t be toilet paper in the trees of all the writers."…

It’s a little sad that everyone knows the episode did not do justice to the show - that the other cast members felt us fans deserved more. I just with the network and AB / LG had seen it. My sense is they got so wrapped up in the details and negotiations that they lost the big picture. And forever we’ll be left hanging.

Tags: gilmore girls, gilmore girls finale, kelly bishop, edward hermann, liza weil

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