“Man, You’re Way Down in My Bogus Bag, and It’s Ziploc’d Shut!”

Yeah, I know that’s how you feel about me right about now.

I gave you this new site, made promises about focused content, and then left you high and dry for a week. To top it off, the last time we talked, all I brought to the table was a Saved by the Bell video!

And I’m about to short-change you again.

It’s not that I don’t have plenty to write about. I started this nap session trying to decide between a post about workout music, how pregnancy (of all things) can be so not feminine, and cooking habits. I had the best intentions for updating Featured and Cool. I even had great plans for comment responding and commenting and facebookin’. (It’ll happen! Be patient with me, please!) But Caelyn’s been restless since about 20 minutes in, which means I keep having to resort to one-handed typing, and that’s not good for business. (That’s not good for anyone.)

So what’s a bloggin’ mama to do?

Let someone else do the work for her! No, not the 5 remaining loads of laundry and the toilet scrubbing. The blogging!

Caelyn and I have been watching Season 6 of Gilmore Girls. We just wrapped “Super Cool Party People,” so we’re maybe 3/4 of the way through.

WARNING: Anyone who hasn’t seen S6 and doesn’t want any major details revealed to him or her should stop reading right after that video.

I know Season 6 has a bad wrap — Rory and Lorelai apart, April, nobody communicating, new camera angles, heart-wrenching drama, shark jumping, and that ending. (Oh, that ending.) But I was excited to start it anyway because I haven’t seen it since it originally aired. And you know what?

It ain’t as bad as you remember.

A lot of it is really good. I even enjoy some of the new techniques those Pallidinos tried out in this, their final GG, season.

Honestly, I suspected I might feel this way. I figured there was a good chance that I was just looking back on the season through the filter of the S6 finale . . . and, well, I was right. (I’m a little suspicious that my feelings about the series finale may have been colored by the S6 finale and the awkwardness of the S7 opening episodes too. But we’ll find out when we get there.) Nonetheless, there are still some problems that can’t be explained quite that easily.

The complaint I hear most often about S6, from serious viewers anyway, is “April!”

Let me assure you, I too felt like GG was above the “long-lost child/add-a-kid” gimmick and way above making that kid a Rory 2.0. I’ve concluded on many an occasion that April’s existence just feels like a cheap shot. Not to mention the fact that her mom, Anna, is the same actress who played Sasha, Jess’ dad’s girlfriend in “Here Comes the Son.” As if we wouldn’t notice. Oh, GG, I know you’re the one of the few shows that actually respects the intelligence of its viewers, but that little maneuver was a low-blow.

(The Anna character’s kinda generic and eventually obnoxious, but Sherilyn Fenn did a decent job with what she had. And I do like that Anna is actually a character who’s sassy, pretty, smart, and independent like Lorelai, instead of just some “What were you thinking, Luke?” ex-girlfriend. Of course, you might be tempted to express that sentiment when Anna starts flipping out about Luke letting Lorelai help with April’s b-day party, but “Ah, now I see why they broke up” would be more accurate.)

But I’ve also always contended that little Vanessa Marano, who plays April Nardini, handled the roll really well. And I’ve always said that I like what April eventually brings out in Luke and how her character acts as a facilitator for Luke and Lorelai to cut through the one-liners, work through their baggage and the personality issues that have hindered their relationships in the past, and get down to honesty in their own relationship.

Apparently, they should’ve let me write a few episodes, since ASP said basically the same thing I just did in an interview back in Jan. 06:

We brought Luke’s daughter in not so much to play ‘Oh my God, there’s a long lost daughter,’ but more to play, ‘Who are Luke and Lorelai to each other?’ They’re two mid-thirties people who have built very independent lives, needing no one, they’ve got their own homes, their own businesses; they’ve got things just the way they like them. They’re incredibly independent and strong-willed and stubborn, and those are tough lives to mesh.

The daughter thing was just a way to tap into an aspect of Luke that makes things interesting for the Luke-Lorelai relationship. Luke is very duty-bound and honor-bound and he feels great responsibility to family, even though family is something he scoffs at a lot. He’s also a very single-minded, tunnel-vision person. So he’s going to feel he’s got to take care of this responsibility before he can take care of any other responsibility. Right or wrong, it’s who he is.

It’s a great device for us because [the daughter plot] taps into that without bringing in another woman or another romance, because nobody’s going to believe that. These two people are meant for each other, the only think keeping them apart right now is their own baggage.

And Lorelai, being an incredibly independent, proud person, she’s not a pusher. She’s not going to say, ‘But what about me?’ It’s sometimes their own lack of communication abilities that have kept them single this long, and that causes our conflict . . . . *

Of course, she doesn’t agree with me about April being a cheap shot in the first place:

. . . So we don’t have to bring in the big elephant or the earthquake or ‘We’re trapped in an elevator’ or someone’s in a coma. *

C’mon! So you used one of television’s most pathetic formulas ever. So what? We die-hards are still here. We can forgive you. But, please, extend us the courtesy of admitting it! April’s an elephant! And, um, Logan’s Life and Death Brigade snafu smells an awful lot like “someone’s in a coma.”

Here’s another thing about April: When you tune in to S6 the second time, you know that Luke’s about to get his surfboard out of the storage closet. You know the shark’s coming with the ultimate of bike helmets on. You’re ready for it. You’ve already accepted it. And you already know that something good is going to come out of it. So you can just sit back and relax and think, “Hey, she’s pretty cute after all.”

But my biggest problem with S6 wasn’t ever April anyway. It’s what Team Pallidino did to their characters, the ones they created, the ones they nurtured for 5 years. Dare I say, their own flesh and blood!

It’s not so much the events that get me riled up. I can accept (even when I don’t always approve of) break-ups and moments of bad communication and cheesy cameos and questionable decisions and petty fights and ultimatums and suppressing your feelings for the sake of keeping your fella happy until you finally explode. But I just don’t like how much they allowed the characters to digress from their centers.

Then again, that’s kinda what S5 and S6 are all about — Lorelai and Rory challenging who they have been for the sake of becoming who they will be. But, still, it’s tough to watch sometimes. (Especially with the sneaking suspicion that not-renewed-contract sabotage might have reared its ugly head.)

Even so, I’ve decided that I don’t hate S6. In fact, I like it a lot better than I may have told you I did back when it was happening. (That doesn’t include the end. I have a feeling I’ll be sticking by my previous sentiments through this last messy quarter.)

So if you haven’t seen those last two much-discussed, much-criticized seasons, be sure to catch ‘em. If you have, pop in the DVDs and give late Stars Hollow another shot.

I mean it.

But, so long as we’re on the Gilmore Complaint Train (which, by the way, I rarely even buy a ticket for, much less board), I might as well mention what I think we all know to be GG’s one series-long flaw: too much cleverness.

Obviously, that comes most into play with the dialogue, but I think there’s a chance it’s also partially to blame for the short-comings of the final seasons. You can only get so clever, after all. If you keep trimming the bonsai tree, you’ll end up with a stump. Or something like that.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely disparaging GG’s pop-culture-spouting, quick-witted claim to fame. I even downright love it sometimes. But I can’t help but wonder if the behind-the-scenes people let their show get written into a very tight corner. Plus, every now and then it just feels like the kids around the writers’ table are trying too hard to be cool.

Of course, Amy disagrees with me there too:

Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator and executive producer of “Gilmore Girls,” and her husband, Daniel Palladino, who’s also an executive producer on the show, swear that they don’t set out to refer to tons of books, movies, cultural figures and song titles on their 6-year old show. It just sort of happens.

‘We’d be fine if an entire script went by and there were no references in it,’ Sherman-Palladino said in a recent phone call. ‘It’s never like, “We need a reference here.”’ *

And maybe that’s true. I just don’t buy it. But I have bought every season of Gilmore Girls. So what do I know?

And I long ago bought that this show from start to finish is one of television’s best. Not only that, I’ll go ahead and buy right now that you want to read more about too. And I promise, eventually, I won’t let you down.

* If you don’t want to wait on me, head on over to The Watcher and read the rest of Maureen Ryan’s “They’re slippin’ em Paul Anka, dig?” from which I pulled these quotes.