small-town

Long before “American Idol” and its ilk, pageants were a means for a small-town striver to vault herself into a bigger world.

Beneath the supernatural grotesqueries, Mr. King reflects on the mundane horrors—insularity, seediness and dead ends—of American small-town life.

The series, which starred Lauren Graham as Lorelai Gilmore, a young single mom, and Alexis Bledel as her teen daughter Rory, is beloved for its witty writing and the small-town charm of its fictional setting, Stars Hollow, Conn.

Writing for yet another Supreme Court majority, though, Gorsuch was captivated by the story of a noble small-town football coach villainized for courageously living out his Christian faith.

Here, it’s employed to accentuate the small-town sunniness of the place along with its buzz and sweat, emphasizing Lee’s quixotic trust in the inevitability of truth.