Richard Gilmore

Richard Gilmore is Lorelai's father and Rory's grandfather, a retired insurance executive of the old Hartford establishment who prizes propriety, Yale pedigree, and the ritual of Friday night dinner. Gruff and formal on the surface, he is quietly wounded by the distance between him and his daughter, and eager for any excuse to close it.

Edward Herrmann finds real warmth under the starch, so that Richard's harrumphing about proper stationery or scotch never curdles into caricature. The show lets him be genuinely funny and genuinely wistful in the same scene, and Herrmann's gift is making Richard's stiffness look like shyness rather than snobbery — a man who loves loudly by being formal.