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<\/p>\nIt\u2019s finally here.\u00a0The Gilmore Girls team came back to make four more episodes, covering a full year\u2014one for each season. They\u2019re set ten years after the show ended.<\/p>\n
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I watched Gilmore Girls while I was in college. I saw a few episodes here and there, and then, one summer, I binge-watched all seven seasons. Gilmore Girls was an important step in my acclimation process\u2014I grew up in a sheltered conservative homeschool community. Once in college, I struggled to understand and identify with classmates who grew up attending school, hanging out at the mall, and going to softball games. Gilmore Girls offered me a window into a different\u00a0world, and built my knowledge of popular culture.<\/p>\n
I never viewed Gilmore Girls through rose-colored glasses. I was angry with Rory when she temporarily dropped out of Yale, and appalled at the antics of Logan and his friends. I was beyond upset with Rory when she slept with Dean, and I never understood Jess\u2019s appeal. But the show also presented dynamics I understood all the way down to my toes.\u00a0Lane\u2019s conflict with her mother\u2014and Lorelei\u2019s conflict with her mother\u2014mirrored my own experiences. I got it. I felt it. It moved me.<\/p>\n
Ah, but I promised a discussion of the four-part revival! So. Let\u2019s do that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll have lots to say in the comments, but first, a few thoughts. When I initially finished watching the four new episodes\u2014which I did in one day\u2014I was pleased. The show brought back all of the feeling of the original seasons, even after a ten year break. It felt like real, old-school Gilmore Girls, all of it. And I loved it for that. But. As I processed what I\u2019d seen, I became more critical. The episodes were beautiful, don\u2019t get me wrong, and it was the writers\u2019 prerogative to sketch out the future the way they saw it. But.<\/p>\n
Rory. At first, Rory seems to be leading this glamorous freelance journalist life, but all of that quickly falls apart. It turns out she\u2019s sitting around waiting for the next big thing, and it\u2019s not coming. We see her offer to ghost write a biography, but that falls through. We see her promise to write an article on spec, but after going out and doing some reporting she appears to drop it. We see her go in to an interview with an online news site without a single pitch to sell. (She blames her would-be employer\u00a0for making her think the job was hers for the asking, but you\u2019d think a freelance writer would go about with\u00a0a stack of pitches at hand.) Finally, Rory takes an editor job at the Stars Hallow Gazette only to waltz off to try\u00a0a new project within months.<\/p>\n
Rory went to Yale. Rory is not unemployable. Rory\u2019s inability to settle down to one thing and her apparent belief that she should\u00a0have things fall in her lap rather than working for them starts to feel like a dig at millennials. Look, I had a pretty tight group of friends in college;\u00a0we graduated shortly after Rory did. We\u2019re only a few years younger than her. We didn\u2019t go to Yale, we went to a state school. Today, most of us are married, and all of us have jobs of one sort or another. Even friends who felt like they were at loose ends for a while, trying to figure out what they wanted to do, landed on their feet and began substantively building\u00a0a career by their late 20s.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying no one my age ends up in Rory\u2019s situation, or feels like they\u2019re at loose ends. I just hope no one watches the rival and comes away seeing Rory as a stand-in for Millennials. Perhaps I\u2019m being overly sensitive. Paris had a career. Dean had a job and three kids with one on the way. Jess seemed competent. Logan\u2014let\u2019s leave him out of this, because I have too many words. Still, I was left with the nagging feeling that the writers don\u2019t like millennials. Was there a reason they sent Rory in this direction? Did the earlier seasons set\u00a0her in this direction? Yes, she had a lot of things handed to her. Yes, people adored her. But she also was not afraid of bucking down and putting in the hard work, even when it was boring.<\/p>\n
But enough of Rory. I loved Lorelei. I felt like she had grown and matured as a character since we last saw her. Lane, in contrast, seemed frozen in time. I liked Emily\u2019s development in Richard\u2019s absence\u2014it felt very real to me. She still shouldn\u2019t have quit therapy. And Logan\u2014don\u2019t even get me started. I loved Paris, though I felt like her meltdown was a bit out of place\u2014yes, she\u2019s always been over-the-top, but she has a successful career and two beautiful kids. Yes, she was headed toward divorce, but her freak-out\u00a0seemed to suggest that even competent, successful millennials are living on the brink of emotional breakdown, and that was somewhat uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
And with that, I\u2019ll turn it over to you all. What did you think? Am I reading too much into things? What did you love best? What gripes did you have? What would you have done differently?<\/p>\n