‘Gilmore Girls’: Luke and Lorelai Worked for 2 Reasons, Amy Sherman-Palladino Said
Gilmore Girls fans who shipped Luke (Scott Patterson) and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) didn’t get satisfaction from the original series. They had to wait for A Year in the Life for that. But season 5 of Gilmore Girls, Luke and Lorelai were together and things seemed romantic, for a little while.
Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and Executive Producer Dan Palladino were on a Television Critics Association panel in January 2005. In the middle of season 5, they explained why Luke and Lorelai were working at the time.
‘Gilmore Girls’ didn’t rush Luke and Lorelai getting together
Will they or won’t they is a common trope in television. Sometimes they will too soon. Sherman-Palladino thought four seasons of Gilmore Girls was just the right time before getting Luke and Lorelai together.
“We took our time,” Sherman-Palladino said. “I think people rush to get couples together. We have four years of these people walking past each other in the street going, ‘Hmm.’ We got to watch Lorelai go through three or four different relationships, we got to see Luke go through a couple of different relationships.”
Dan Palladino added that Gilmore Girls was more about spending time with the characters than rushing through plot.
We’re very stingy with plot, and that was always by design. I think a lot of other shows, you see in the course of a year, the couples will get together, break up, have a fight, pull a gun on each other, get back together. And we go very, very slowly, which I think is a different rhythm from other shows. I think that’s what a lot of the fans kind of respond to. They like our sort of slower pace. Our moments are smaller. Our emotional moments are kind of the tiny things. And I think those are hard to grasp when you’re just, like, blowing through a lot of plot and, every outbreak, something very, very big and plot-heavy happens.
Dan Palladino, Television Critics Association panel, 1/22/05
Luke and Lorelai were friends first
Sherman-Palladino that Luke and Lorelai’s Gilmore Girls relationship benefited from a foundation that benefits real-life relationships, too.
“We got to really know who they were, and we got to see them grow as friends,” Sherman-Palladino said. “And it is the old cliche that friends make the best lovers. But that was it. So we weren’t building a relationship on ‘Oh, my God, are you pretty.’ We saw them come to each other’s rescue and be there for each other and help each other out. We knew he cared about Rory, which is all that Lorelai cares about. So I think that what we did is we just simply took the time and we didn’t rush it. That’s number one.
Amy Sherman-Palladino already had plans to break them up
Big drama would come for Luke and Lorelai at the end of season 6. Graham would say those scenes were not her favorite. Sherman-Palladino was already planting the seeds while they were in the honeymoon phase of Gilmore Girls.
“Eventually we would like to take them from Nick and Nora to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Sherman-Palladino said. Because, seriously, drunken, glass-throwing, what could be bad? I think that as long as we find interesting ways for them to be who they are, I think we can keep it going for as long as we want.”
