So obviously Lane Kim, goddess, got the shaft when Gilmore Girls got older, ending up with a dolt of a boy who wasn’t Adam Brody, and heading towards some townie future that was the exact opposite of golden girl Rory’s charmed life. It didn’t seem right or fair to the character, really.
One thing, however, where it felt like the writers dropped the ball was with the parallels between Lane and Lorelai: the yearning for freedom, the overbearing mother, etc. I would’ve liked to see a million more episodes with Lane and Lorelai where Lorelai serves as a mentor or something and Lane figures stuff out, instead of becoming a, what, 20 year old bride? So she can have sex? But then that one time sucks and she ends up with twins? (Gilmore Girls and sex is its own essay - but my conclusion is that Amy Sherman-Palladino is a joker, and sometimes she sacrifices character for goofy, funny weirdness probably stemming from network mandates: i.e., “I had sex, so now I don’t get to go to Harvard.”)
The other great Gilmore Girls in-joke that I only recently understood: actresses from Twin Peaks kept popping up as Luke-and-Lorelai roadblocks. Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn, the incomprehensible Anna), Shelly Johnson (Madchen Amick, pregnant Sherry), and Lucy’s sister (Kathleen Wilhoite, who played Luke’s sister Liz), irrepressible sirens, the lot of them; they kept getting in the way. Definitely a shout-out and kind of a hilarious joke - you imagine Lorelai getting obsessed with Twin Peaks when it originally aired, yes?
Both shows are all about diners, pie, and coffee, too.
They are mixed up in murder. They look good in sweaters. They are the women of Twin Peaks - or, at least, three of the women of Twin Peaks. They are six peaks. Which is to say, there are other twin peaks on the series, but together these three actresses account for exactly six of those peaks. And that is only one of their secrets.
Actual text from the Rolling Stone Twin Peaks cover story, October 1990.