'Gilmore Girls' Was Love At First Scene For Luke

Happy days, Gilmore Girls fangirls and fanboys. Firstly, it's my pleasure to inform you that there's a new Gilmore Girls reboot featurette, which is already the sort of news that'll tattoo a smile onto your mouth for the rest of the day. Secondly, it features my favorite, the princely Scott Patterson, waxing lyrical about his first days shooting on the show, alongside tons of other cast members including Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop, Keiko Agena, Milo Ventimiglia and so many more. But what was the biggest reveal from his scene? Scott Patterson fell in love with Gilmore Girls right off the bat — just everyone else in the known universe.

Who can blame him? The show hits that sweet spot between being totally cynical and sassy and being wonderfully emotional and the writing's a gift for any actor. So it's hardly surprising when Patterson reveals "The fondest memory I have doing this show is the very first scene that I did, the very first day I was on set." At this point, it cuts to his and Lorelai's first exchange, when Luke interrogates Lorelai about her coffee consumption. Apparently, it was then that Patterson "just thought: this is going to work."

What I love about this quote is how Patterson's feelings about the show mirror what we as viewers witness between Lorelai and Luke in the very first scene. Just in case you don't possess a brain like a Gilmore Girls encyclopedia on the show, here's their first scene for reference:

Patterson falling in love with the show from the first moment emulates this immediate sense of connection we have between Luke and Lorelai. We know almost nothing about them or about what connection they have with each other, but, from the first moment, we get this gut feeling that they're going to be one of the major couples on the show. Maybe it's the warmth or humor with which they relate to each other? Or, more convincingly for me, maybe it's the rhythm of their speech patterns? While later in the series, Lorelai will date men who don't seem to get it and who pause and stutter around her, with Luke there's this linguistic flow. Since Amy Sherman-Palladino is too smart to do anything by accident, I'd argue she's laying the foundation for us as an audience to invest in Luke and Lorelai, in their exchanges, and, by proxy, in them as a potential couple.

So there's a pleasing symmetry here: Patterson falls in love with the show, Luke is already half in love with Lorelai, we fall in love with Lorelai and Luke falling in love and the show as a whole. Amy Sherman-Palladino, you super-smart TV witch, please do us mere mortals a solid and teach us how such TV sorcery works.

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