Gilmore Girls grows up and gets old

Gilmore Girls sucks. 

I'm not even going to sugarcoat this one for you. After six seasons of high-quality programming, the CW's top show has turned into a pile of garbage that gets slopped into the 8 o'clock timeslot on Tuesday nights.

I'm not one of those guys who bemoans the show's existence, suffering through episodes only because a girlfriend makes me tune in. I used to love the show. It was smart, funny and original, and always kept me coming back for more.

The rapid-fire pop culture references and dialogue that moves faster than Paris Hilton on a first date was a change of pace for network TV. It made you think and laugh at the same time, the sign of a show really knows what it's doing.

Then there were the characters.

The relationship between Rory and Lorelai was always fantastic, but it was everyone else in town ho kept things interesting. From Kirk's splash of crazy every week to the Gilmore grandparents' pretentiously hilarious takes on life, the supporting characters never disappointed — even if some of them seemed more likely to reside in a mental institution than a small Connecticut town.

But as Rory got older and the seasons dragged on, things just started to change. During Season Five, when Lorelai started dating Luke and the overly confident Logan entered the picture, everything really started rolling downhill.

It's been capped off by a change of head writers this season.

After last year's boring-as-hell showing, Amy Sherman-Palladino—who created the show and all its quirky characters from the ground up—packed up and headed in any direction away from Stars Hollow.

Gilmore Girls wasn't very good by any stretch of the imagination at the start of last season either, but it also wasn't terrible. As the year went on, though, Lorelai lost her edge, and Luke magically had a 12-year-old daughter and at that point, it was more bleh than decent.

This year is a whole different animal.

While most shows can take a regime change at the top like that in stride and still put out quality content, it's obvious Gilmore Girls is not one of those shows.

David Rosenthal took the reins before this season began, and so far he has taken the show to a new level of crappiness. With dialogue that went from witty and clever to mind-numbingly dull, and storylines that cause me to long for watching grass grow, Rosenthal and his staff has caused one of my beloved shows to turn into a program I tune into every week simply out of habit.

That shouldn't be too surprising, considering the fact that Rosenthal's previous credits include Hope & Faith and Good Morning, Miami—not exactly a formidable one-two punch of television glory.

While Gilmore Girls hasn't reached the point of un-watchability yet, it's pretty close, and if things don't make some kind of O.C.-like turnaround soon, the Gilmore household is going to lose another member.

Reach Intermission columnist Ben Miller at benmiller@thedaily.washington.edu