CAAF: Post-mortem

What a relief, The Return of Jezebel James has been cancelled. Out of loyalty to Amy Sherman-Palladino I watched the first two weeks and would have continued to watch — but it was painful. About five minutes in to the first episode it was clear the show was a bust, and after that it was just like sitting vigil. It felt like, if you had a friend who rammed her ship into an iceberg and everyone knows the boat’s sinking but you kind of owe it to her to stay on board anyway and drink with her until the whole thing goes down. Or something like that. It was bad.
So that laugh track was an abomination before God, but what else went wrong (I ask ye, the other four people who watched the show)? For me, Parker Posey seemed overly vague and drifting in her role, like she never clued in that she was a lead and had to hold the center down. Instead she played her part like a satellite character: A two-note sidekick.
And then, I think, part of the fault must lie with how her character was written, with scavenged Frankenstein-ish pieces of Lorelai Gilmore (e.g., the compulsive list-making, the fascination with girlie monstrosities like Hello Kitty) stapled on here and there, which made for an incoherent whole — again, at least as Posey played it. I hate to say this because I adore her, but these tics felt less like a return of beloved tropes, than a failure of imagination on ASP’s part*. She writes so well about neurotic, complicated, high-strung women, but I want her to push on.
* I felt the same way when Anna and April, Luke’s ex-girlfriend and daughter, were introducted in GG Season 6 — Anna with her fast-talking and her quirks, April as a bookish brainiac — and it was all a little too mirror, mirror on the wall to the Lorelai-Rory houseold.