Keiko agena pregnant series#
The whiteness of the series has already been dissected in op-eds aplenty, so I won’t wade too much into the representation discourse. Here’s the thing: It was formative for me to witness someone like Lane take up space in such a beloved, mainstream series, which is why it’s disheartening that the show eventually shortchanged her. All before age 25, Lane settled down with a mediocre husband (sorry, Zack) and weathered a surprise pregnancy after she had sex (lackluster sex, at that) for the first time, which forced her to put her music on hold. Then, toward the end of the series, her arc experienced an abrupt, disappointing transition. (“Eternal damnation is what I’m risking for my rock and roll!”) As a teen, she orchestrated ingenious schemes with great precision to shield her conservative mother from distress-from hiding CDs and makeup under the floorboards to having her boyfriend Dave pretend to be a Christian guitarist so they could spend the holidays together.
When she discovered her affinity for the drums, Lane dropped out of college and forged her own path rather than the one her mother set out for her, which was a huge deal considering all the cultural implications. She deserved better, and I’m here to talk about that.Īmbitious and quick-witted, Lane had a substantial arc during the first few seasons. But as Gilmore Girls celebrates its 20th anniversary this October, I can’t help but think about all the ways the show did Lane dirty in the second half of the series. The teen landscape in the early 2000s offered mostly uninspired clichés of the studious, well-behaved Asian girl, but Lane diverged from those tropes in all her rock-and-roll-loving, drum-set-playing, purple-hair-dyeing glory.
Playing Lane Kim on Gilmore Girls, she broke the been-done-a-million-times-before mold of the trite Asian girl. Twenty years ago, actor Keiko Agena did what I’d never seen done on TV before.
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