A Gilmore Girl Is Back In Town

Substitute the bar for a gazebo, transform the restaurant into a New England hamlet, and maybe even switch out Sam Malone for Luke Danes, and welcome to the Gilmore Girls' fictitious town of Stars Hollow-a modern-day Cheers.

"It's a place where everyone knows your name, and not just a bar ... but a whole town and a whole community," said Gilmore Girls' writer, David Grae.

Since Gilmore Girls' creators and chief writers Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino left the show at the end of last season, many worried that Stars Hollow would lose its distinctive small town charm this year and become just another face in the crowd among a growing number of television dramedies. After wrapping up production on its seventh season last Monday, however, Gilmore Girls-a show about an unconventional mother-daughter relationship between Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel)-is rumored to be returning for a shortened eighth season of 13 episodes.

In a recent interview, show runner David Rosenthal said that the final call will be made by Graham and Bledel. "It's one of the highest rated shows on the CW," said Grae, "so the network and the CW obviously want the show to come back."

Making the switch from the WB to the CW was another significant change to occur during Gilmore Girls' current season, as was Graham's new role as a producer, which she took on in addition to being one of the lead actresses. But for Rosenthal, assembling a writing staff was a chief concern-he ended up with six new writers and two returning writers, including himself.

"When I came in to work, there was always the idea that I would eventually take over the show," said Rosenthal, who began writing for Gilmore Girls at the start of the sixth season. "I worked with Amy and Dan for a year, and then they decided to move on. It was a relatively smooth transition."

"As far as I understand, no writer ... has had any contact at all with Amy and Dan this year," said Grae. "But I don't mean for that to be dramatic. It's not unusual, and it doesn't surprise me."

During the fourth season, Sherman-Palladino and Palladino were successfully able to transition Rory from her posh, private high school, Chilton, to her current school, Yale. But as she is expected to graduate at the end of this season, the new writing staff may have to find a way to shepherd Rory from college to the real world without any guidance from the Palladinos.

In last Tuesday night's episode, the first to air in over a month, Rory decided to turn down a job at a newspaper in Providence in favor of pursuing a fellowship, so, as for now, her plans for the future are still undecided. Both Rosenthal and Grae agree, however, that the show's plots will follow carefully crafted trajectories.

"In a show like this you really have to know where you're going," said Rosenthal. "You start on a macro scale before you get into the micro stuff of each individual episode."

Grae explained that weeks before starting on an outline for the opening scene of the season, the writers work on fleshing out concrete story-lines for the first 13 episodes while having a good idea of what the back nine (14-22) will entail.

"There's always an emotional story for Lorelai and for Rory in every episode," said Grae. "And 19 times out of 20 there is another story-a lot of times it's Luke's story."

In fact, Grae particularly likes the work they did in the season premiere in the scene where Kirk- arguably Stars Hollow's most awkward resident-drives his car through Luke's Diner. While crediting Rosenthal with the idea, Grae said, "It was sort of an interesting way to kick off the new regime of the show-sort of breaking the mold and smashing through Luke's, but also really funny and very much in keeping with the show."

Moments like that one are written in what is aptly dubbed "The Room." The writers meet there to draw inspiration by speaking to one another, and with the help of a white board, they are able to create character arcs and plot developments. Although Rosenthal makes the final call on all aspects of the show, he said that "oftentimes, the person who has the clearest vision and is the most passionate about something wins the day."

For instance, Rosenthal said that Grae was the one who came up with the idea for a gift that Rory's boyfriend gives her: a model rocketship from a famous Twilight Zone episode. "We went a long time throwing back ideas, such as a weird piece of art or a sculpture," said Rosenthal. But Grae's Twilight Zone rocket "was something that could start out seemingly confusing and funny, and then ultimately be this romantic, sweet thing."

Certainly the biggest story line for the writers to tackle this season was Lorelai's volatile love life. Many fans have been waiting seven years for Lorelai and Luke to get together and stay together, so Rosenthal fully anticipated the negative reactions that would result when he decided that Lorelai and Christopher, who is Rory's father, would elope in Paris.

"Happily ever after isn't a show, it's an ending. To do a show every week, you need conflict," said Rosenthal. "Sometimes fans want the romantic couple to be together and be happy all the time, but that doesn't provide the most interesting drama."

"We knew before we got Chris and Lorelai married that they would end up divorced. And by the way," Grae said, "the whole story between Chris and Lorelai, in some ways, was a legacy of Amy's." According to Grae, the last scene that Amy Sherman-Palladino ever wrote was in the final episode of season six, when Luke rejects Lorelai's marriage ultimatum, and Lorelai once again turns to her childhood sweetheart, Christopher, for a little more than just condolence.

"If not for that, maybe we wouldn't have gotten Chris and Lorelai together this year," said Grae. "But that was the situation we were handed, and we were interested in the potential fallout from that moment."

With Chris now out of the picture, though, the end of season seven definitely has the makings of a Lorelai-Luke reunion. And if the show continues for an eighth season, Gilmore Girls fans will get more of what they love: an allusion to Proust's Swan's Way thrown alongside a pop-culture reference to Taylor Hanson, the endearing weekly town meetings contrasted by the often somber Friday night dinners, and even the distinctive sound-track, which has chronicled the life of the mother/daughter duo since episode one.

An official announcement that Gilmore Girls is returning would certainly be cause for fans to celebrate. But in place of the beer bottles at Cheers, fans of Gilmore Girls could raise their coffee mugs in a collective toast to Stars Hollow, It's not the Cheers bar, but everyone probably still knows your name.