gilmore girls

What was on TV? Tues, Feb 8, 2005

I say goodbye to Star Hollow. Plus Veronica Mars and House.

Grace MacLaine

10 Feb 2025 — 3 min read

20 years ago, Jose Canseco published his iconic memoir, making the steroids scandal 150% entertaining for years to come. Let's see what was on TV.

8:00 Gilmore Girls on the WB

5x13 "Wedding Bell Blues"

This was the 100th episode of Gilmore Girls, and it had everything fans wanted. A wedding, Rory and Logan kissing (AND hooking up!), the Christopher/Lorelai/Luke triangle heating up. It received glowing reviews at tye time. And I just didn't care! I give up. This show isn't for me.

9:00 Veronica Mars on UPN

1x13 "Lord of the Bling" (record House on Fox and Frontline on PBS)

Every crime show had a hip hop episode in the mid-2000s. All the CSIs, all the Law and Orders, and beyond. So of course Veronica Mars has its own entry in the subgenre.

Veronica Mars status as a crime procedural and a high school show allows it to approach all this from a new angle: generational strife. See, hip-hop mogul Anthony Anderson came from the streets and wants everyone to know it. But his kids live in Neptune! His kids are wholesome nerds living a comfortable existence, and he kind of resents that, and they resent him for resenting that.

This episode also shows us a new side of Veronica and especially Lily Kane. See, Veronica was friends with Anthony Anderson's daughter Vanessa when she first moved to Neptune. But when Logan kissed her while he and Lily were "on a break," Lily decided that Vanessa was a slut and it was all her fault. And Veronica went along with it. It's the first time we've seen Lily, our tragic murder victim, do something really ugly. She was racist and sexist! Dimensional and flawed murder victims FTW!

10:00 House (recorded)

1x10 "Histories"

The whole point of this episode is that the medical mystery of the week is a homeless woman. So she has no medical history, and they just have to go by what they see. That makes the episode feel like a very bare-bones version of House. It becomes all about the medicine, and we cycle through all the usual suspects (just not lupus, of course). It lays bare the show's formula. I really hope we can shake up that formula soon. I'm growing tired of it.

Late Night

Conan did a whole Michael Jackson segment tonight. Michael Jackson's sexual abuse trial was beginning, and I have listened to so many pedophilia jokes this week. And also people treating the trial as an excuse to make lazy gay jokes about Jackson. And that's somehow worse.

And that's just on Conan and SNL, I'm sure that Jay, Dave and the rest were also having a field day. The constant jokes and total disregard for the victims is just ugly, ugly stuff. And they were in the middle of jury selection at this point! The actual trial hasn't even started yet and I'm already at the end of my rope.