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Two guys with a thing for 'Gilmore Girls'

 
Demi Adejuyigbe and Kevin Porter have found a big following for their “Gilmore Guys” podcast.
Demi Adejuyigbe and Kevin Porter have found a big following for their “Gilmore Guys” podcast.
Published Aug. 24, 2015

Their timing was impeccable, they just didn't know it.

Demi Adejuyigbe and Kevin Porter holed up in a Los Angeles recording studio, hit the "on" button and started rambling. "This is gonna be a show where we talk a lot about Gilmore Girls. We're gonna talk about Rory and Sookie and Lane and Mrs. Kim and Lorelai and Richard and . . ."

And so began the "Gilmore Guys" podcast, where a dedicated fan and a total novice discuss the beloved 2000s series about a mom and daughter in small-town Connecticut. Episode by episode, they relive and discover the fast-talking, culture-referencing, fuzzy-feeling-producing wonders of this show that aired on the WB.

In another time, you could liken this effort to someone starting yet another food blog, or outfit-of-the-day Instagram, or Pinterest scrapbooking board. It might gain a small following, but a few months later it would peter out into the vast Internet wasteland of creative conquests past.

Instead, the day after their first show went live, Netflix released all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls to be devoured by Gilmore loyalists and a new set of fans who weren't even born when the show first debuted. Soon, more than 500,000 listeners would download their bi-weekly podcasts every month. They got an agent, and paid advertising, and a small nationwide tour.

Nearly a year after they began Gilmore Guys, these two 20-something dudes are getting famous for chatting about a show that was semi-famous to teenage girls and their moms a decade ago. It's a lesson, they say, in what it means to try and make it in 2015.

"When you're in film school, they tell you the way to do this is to get a writer assistant's job and work your way. Pay your dues, network, blah blah blah," said Porter. "But now, you just make the thing you want to make. And if there's an audience for it, great. And if not, you still had the pleasure and joy of making exactly what you wanted to make."

Their show is an analysis of each episode. It includes supercuts of every single obscure cultural reference ("That'll do pig, that'll do"), a less-than-informed study of the show's fashion ("The baggy neck part . . .it's almost like a turtle neck that deflated .. is that a cowl?") and a discussion on everything from the fates of the characters to the director's camera angles, often with the aid of guest hosts.

Their audience is a group Porter and Adejuyigbe hoped was out there, but knew had barely connected in the seven years since Gilmore Girls went off the air. Like it has for dice collectors and people comforted by whispering and adult fans of My Little Pony, the Internet let the Gilmore lovers know they weren't alone.

"We sort of brought out more publicly this community of people that was largely in hiding," Adejuyigbe said. "Gilmore Girls was a popular show, but it wasn't Full House or something."

What Adejuyigbe and Porter are pulling off is the chance to re-experience watching Gilmore for the first time. Because Adejuyigbe has never seen the show before, fans are eager to see if his reaction will match their own. Does he want Rory to end up with Jess, too? Will he appreciate their favorite episode?

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"It's not like Mad Men or Game of Thrones. Those shows will have a legacy, but when I'm feeling down, I'm not watching episode of Game of Thrones with a horrific decapitation and a woman getting assaulted," Porter said. "It's like, I watched Gilmore Girls with my mom, it reminds me of this thing with my family. Gilmore Girls exists in a very warm place for people."

Now within the cult of Gilmore followers there are the "Gillys," the term the guys affectionately use for their own fans. The Gillys have an online forum dedicated to discussing the show. Two of them made a podcast about the "Gilmore Guys" podcast and named it "Gilmore Guys Girls."

The bigger they get, the better the guest hosts have become. They've stopped the running bit of fake-promising that guests Tom Hanks or Serial subject Adnan Syed would be on the show, and began booking recognizable faces such as Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer.

Still, the show's fans want to see the real Gilmore girls get on the podcast.

They've managed to nab Keiko Agena (who plays Lane), Wayne Wilcox (Marty), Sean Gunn (Kirk) and Scott Patterson (Luke). Getting Alexis Bledel (Rory) might be a stretch, but they're still holding out for Lauren Graham (Lorelai) who once gave them a shoutout on Twitter.

"It's like a little game of Pokemon," Porter said. "We're trying to catch them all."