'GILMORE GIRLS,' KEEPING THEIR WIT ABOUT THEM.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

Lauren Graham, flat out, is a marvel. It's hard to imagine many actresses who could relentlessly deliver quippy lines that sometimes evolve into full-blown cheeky mouthfuls for an hour at a time without making her character seem unreal or overbearing or simply without exhausting her audience.

Graham has not only mastered the art of unleashing fusillades of pithy, sometimes mannered, sometimes impossibly precise and hyper-composed dialogue, she's made it sweet, endearing and beguiling. In ``Gilmore Girls,'' her Lorelai is never wanting for a word - or many - for those surrounding her.

She teases someone for belaboring a point with, ``The Gettysburg Address was only one page and that was about a war.'' She attacks her mother for her handling of maids with, ``These are women from countries that have dictatorships and civil wars and death squads and all of that they survived, but five minutes with Emily Gilmore and they're begging for Castro.'' Her punch-line-per-episode ratio must be in the stratosphere.

``Gilmore Girls,'' the clever comedy about a small-town New England mother and daughter who seem more like sisters (or, rather, best friends - sisters don't get along so swimmingly), returns for its second season after establishing itself as a critical and cult favorite last season.

Amy Sherman-Palladino, who writes those inspired barrages of words that spew forth from Graham (not to mention Alexis Bledel, equally charming as Lorelai's equally chirpy daughter, Rory), created a show that was so cluttered with epigrammatic punch lines that she was accused by a particularly dim conspiracy theorist of getting ``The West Wing's'' Aaron Sorkin to ghost-write the show (as if he had the spare time).

There's a big difference between the two shows: Whereas everyone on ``West Wing'' pretty much has the same interchangeable, glibly intelligent voice, characters on ``Gilmore Girls'' are all quirky in their own ways.

Tonight picks up where last season's cliffhanger left off: Lorelai is weighing Max's (Scott Cohen) marriage proposal, leaving Luke (Scott Patterson), the curt diner owner who everyone in town except Lorelai understands carries a torch for her, to lick his wounds in stoic silence.

There's a too-cute scene in which everyone in town follows Lorelai to Luke's to see her break the news of the proposal to him (what is this, River City?). And shoehorning two free-standing episodes together to create a TV movie isn't a bad idea - unless the second episode openly negates a plot point in the first. Which happens here - Lorelai's mother (Kelly Bishop) seems to learn the consequences of her judgmental behavior in tonight's first hour, only to employ it with a vengeance in the second.

Still, the show's sunny charisma and sparkling badinage remain firmly in place. Sherman-Palladino has created a genuine dilemma: Max is a perfectly nice guy, but hardly the perfect fella for Lorelai, who may not have many other options in her modest New England town (but would Luke really be an improvement?). Nonetheless, here's hoping this story line resolves itself fairly quickly, since its outcome seems fairly inevitable.

After all, were Lorelai to be perfectly happy, she probably wouldn't run off at the mouth so much. And where would that leave ``Gilmore Girls''?

``GILMORE GIRLS''

What: Second-season premiere of the acclaimed comedy-drama about a tightly knit, tight-quipping mother and daughter.

The stars: Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop, Edward Herrmann, Scott Patterson.

Where: WB (Channel 5).

When: 8 tonight.

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Lauren Graham, left, and Alexis Bledel return as best friends who happen to be mother and daughter on ``Gilmore Girls.''