This Time For Sure: Gilmore Creators Leave Show

From the new location of Ausiello's Ausiello Report, which TV Guide
has converted to their hideously art-directed new blog system at:

Team Palladino Says "Goodbye, Girls"

My fellow Gilmore Girls fans, the news we've all been dreading has now
been made absolutely, 100 percent, painfully official: Series creator
Amy Sherman-Palladino has opted not to renew her contract and will be
leaving at the end of the season — and she's taking husband Dan with
her. A spokesman for Team Palladino says they "were desperate to try
and make a deal [with Warner Bros. Television], but unfortunately it
didn't work out."

GarondoMarondo...

Any chance Dan will go back to Family Guy as a writer? She can come too
if she wants.

..
Garondo Marondo!

(Crickets)

Yeah, I'm speechless, too. I've had more than a week to mentally
prepare for this outcome — heck, I even wrote a story and watched
helplessly as it was accidentally pushed live for a brief period last
Wednesday — but I still can't believe they're actually leaving. The
thought of Gilmore Girls heading into what is likely to be its final
season (and its first on a brand-new network) without its mama or her
right-hand man is unfathomable. But it is happening. And it's a total
bummer.

I won't know for sure why they're bolting until I actually ask them
(hopefully in the next few days), but as I reported on Friday, the
primary sticking point was apparently the length of Gilmore Girls'
renewal. AS-P wanted a two-year pickup, a demand that Warner Bros.
refused to meet since Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel are only on
board for one more year. Instead, the studio was ready to pay them
just shy of $5 million for a one-year deal, an offer that was
apparently good enough to refuse.

According to a statement released by Warner Bros., "While we are
disappointed that Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino have decided
not to stay with the show next season, we are very confident that Dave
Rosenthal, an experienced writer/producer with the show, will make the
transition seamless moving into the seventh year of Gilmore Girls. We
want to thank Amy for creating and nurturing this wonderful series for
the past six years and giving us one of the most memorable
mother/daughter relationships in television history."

(Crickets)

For now, I leave you with this quote from Graham, given to me around
this time last year when it looked like the Palladinos might not
return this season. I think she sums the whole thing up pretty well:

"I think it would be terrible [if Amy and Dan left]. We've had our ups
and downs, but it's not a show that has ever had anyone else with the
vision that she and Dan, who really are a force together, have. You
can feel when someone else is trying to write Gilmore Girls-ish
dialogue, you can just feel that it's... I know some people think that
we talk too much, or the tone is not for everybody. Sometimes I just
want to take a breath or have a reaction shot. I get it. But this is
the person who is telling the story. So someone would be stepping in
trying to replicate that, and I just think it's a bad idea."