'Gilmore Girls' View of the Revival from a Fan

              The moment we have all been waiting for is here. It’s been nine years since the last episode aired on CW where we were left with a kiss between Lorelai and Luke. So many unanswered questions, were Luke and Lorelai ever getting married, where would Rory's path take her job wise, and the biggest question of all was which boy in Rory's life would she end up with?? When Netflix decided to pick up Gilmore Girls to do a 4 part series, I counted down the days for all of these questions to be finally answered. The day after Thanksgiving, I rushed home from work and got lots of junk food (it’s the only way to watch GG) to binge watch all four 90 minute episodes of "A Year in the Life". A long six hours later, I felt so lost, I actually might have been more lost than I was before.

“ It’s a life style, It’s a religion”

Season 1 Episode 14

             It took me all weekend to absorb the contents of the 4 part series, I felt so lost that I had to get more information on why it turned out the way it did and even re-watched some parts of each episode. If you have not watched it yet, this is the time in the blog where I tell you to stop reading here, go watch it, and then read the rest because there will be many BIG spoilers. I'm going to go through all the seasons with you and see if I'm not the only one with all these questions left after watching.

             Episode one, Winter, started off great with the first walk through town in the snow. Then we're hit with a curve ball ,Who is Paul? Well if you don’t know, it’s okay since no one else can remember who he is either. I really could have done without his character because it really made Rory look like a bad person at the end of the day. Kirk is up to another job start up again, this time ripping off Uber. This job ends up taking him to Emily's for Friday night dinner. 

             One thing I really liked was the tribute to Richard Gilmore, Edward Herrman. I feel like due to his death, it really had the story line build around it, especially between Lorelai and Emily through all the four episodes. Emily, I’m happy to say had the perfect change in her life from an uptight upper class woman to a little more down to earth. It’s most likely the only time in her life that she has finally kept a maid, could be because Gipsy plays a double roll as Berta the maid. This is the type of mom that Lorelai could most likely relate to more, but sadly I feel like this still did not bring them closer together. Even through them going to therapy, yes I said it therapy, which is unlike either one of them to go, since they were always so against therapy before ended up helping Lorelai more than their mother-daughter relationship. However, Emily’s words still affected Lorelai so much that she starts to question things in her and Luke's relationship, whether he feels like he’s missed out on having kids or being focused into things just because of Lorelai sending them to a surrogate. You’ll never believe in a million years that Paris, yes Paris, who is supposed to be a judge/surgeon is the fertility specialist, that has Luke wondering how they ended up there and whether or not he is supposed to sleep with the woman to make a baby. 

           If anyone is team Logan, you must be jumping for joy knowing that Logan and Rory are in a friends with benefits situation. It would have been great if we had them go back and show how these two started seeing each other again, since last time they were together, Logan gave Rory an ultimatum, either to marry him or not to see each other anymore. If you're not team Logan, though, you can also jump for joy knowing that this isn't a real relationship between them since he is engaged to another woman. Sadly this is showing that Rory hasn’t really broken out of her being into married guys phase.

                Spring episode two, shows that the town hasn’t lost its crazy festivals that help fund weird things needed to be done around town. After all these years Rory and Lane are still closer than ever, we get to see Lane’s Father…YES, finally after sixteen years and only hearing about her "parents" in the first few season to only seeing her mother in the picture, we have her point out her father for the first time. No back story or real name, so we could know more about her father; just pointed him out and flash to the next scene. 

                 Rory is grasping at straws for a writing job by trying to co-write a book with Naomi Shropshire; this crazy woman that she wrote an article about for the NewYorker, while waiting to hear back from Conde Nast for an interview. Its nice to see that town meetings are still in full affect as they talk about topical interest of this day and age, and try to figure out Andrew's sexual orientation. This is something they do enlighten us about Michel, since he is now married to a man that wants a kid, which we all know that Michel is not a kids kind of guy.

“I want to play an insipid board game” Season 5 Episode 2

                 Rory goes back to Chilton; no she is not a teacher, thank goodness, but head master Charleston does give her a job offer to be one since he sees this smart woman aimlessly wondering through her 30's without a full rounded job prospect. Then finally Conde Nast contacts her for an interview, since she has Logan's father set it up, GQ magazine asks her what she is up to in her career and she blows it, in my eyes making herself sound more pathetic than she really is. From what I picked up during the interview, the only reason they never called her was because they really never had a job opening, not that they didn't like her, since when she calls to say she will write the lines piece, they told her they had no money to pay her for it. This desperate attempt for a writing job leads Rory to sleep with a Wookie and confess her love life to Lorelai about her affair with Logan.

                This finally takes us to Summer, Episode 3 where Rory moves back home. This is by far my least favorite episode of them all. I know this will sound harsh but Season 7 was better than this episode in my eyes. From the annoying 30-year-old somethings of the town that have moved back to the 25-minute long musical that we all could have done without. Where there were a lot of great actors that appeared in this episode, it turned into a waste of time where they could have answered more of our questions. 

                Rory gets an opportunity to becoming the Editor of the Stars Hollow Gazette. The greatest thing to happen in this episode is Jess. Raise a hand if you’re a team Jess, I’m definitely bias when it comes to Rory's love life that I’m team Jess all the way. From the way they talked, it sounded like they have kept in touch all these years. Jess, the slacker teen boy, now has the same stable job at the writer's press. This shows us that he has grown up. Then he tells Rory to become a writer, not of articles but a book. He inspires her to write a book about her and her mother's life story. Thus, this is the reason I'm team Jess. He is there for her at every time in her life when she has been headed down the wrong path and helps her out of it. 

              It took me till episode 3 to realize that there was a lack of another main character…..coffee. Where the hell is all the coffee? Yes, they drink it but not hook me up to an I.V. kind of consumption of coffee.

“Coffee, Coffee, Coffee!!”

 Season 5 Episode 15

              They drank more scotch in these episodes than coffee. It should be “Scotch, Scotch, Scotch” instead. At the funeral - scotch, Friday night dinner - scotch, and "eating lunch" with Jess was them drinking scotch. Disappointing to see less coffee drinking to the point that it made me feel like something big was missing from the story. 

               Richard still has power over Lorelai's relationship from the grave. He leaves money to Luke to start franchising Luke’s diner. Emily drags him to look at properties to expand Luke's and if anyone else is a fan of Shameless, an HBO series, if I'm not mistaken the diner that they look at is the same one from Shameless. I love seeing the little things like this while watching Gilmore Girls.

               I was very surprised by Lorelai’s non-supportive attitude of Rory writing a book about their life. Lorelai is one to talk since she pretty much wrote a tell-all about her life already in the magazine when the Dragonfly Inn opened up, so why couldn’t she support Rory. Even Dean was a little uneasy on him being mentioned in the book. Which if your team Dean you’ll be let down when he only makes a short appearance talking about his kids, yes plural, kids, and once again didn’t phase Rory so I guess she'd been in touch with him also over the years.

                   Into the Wild with Lorelai during the Fall Episode 4. This last episode made me feel like that Amy Sherman-Palladino had come to a precipice at this point in the episodes. It felt rushed and incomplete. It started to feel more like either parts of a movie or if she ever took Gilmore Girls to Broadway this episode would be just that. This episode starts with Lorelai taking a trip into the Wild, yes like the book which was made into a very good movie. She hopes that it brings her to some kind of enlightenment by stepping out of her comfort zone. Disappointingly, this takes up more of the episode than need be.

                     The part that makes it feel like a Broadway play is a part I like in this episode but isn’t right for Gilmore Girls. The three horse man appear, Colin, Fin and Robert, they take her on their last Life and Death Brigade excursion with dancing and The Beatles. While this isn’t right for this series, it is playful and really well put together which as I said before, a Gilmore Girls Broadway show. This goodbye to Logan makes it sound like the end of their affair to make you believe it is the end of them.

                    Emily’s life turns to her giving up the life she once had and moves to Nantucket and gets a job at a whaling museum. In some weird way the life they have Emily go down suits her very well. Then after half of the episode is over, Lorelai and Luke decide to get married, finally right? Sad that Lorelai had to propose again but they get married. It seems like the perfect set up for the wedding and also seems perfect that they elope, but again the way they wrote this scene was like a Broadway play. Sookie only steps in for a short while, sadly, to of course make Lorelai and Luke's cake. 

                     Rory has her last heart to heart with her father, Christopher, asking him the big question on how he felt being cut out of her upbringing. Once we all saw the end I feel like her talk with her father was a little foreshadowing. The moment we all had been waiting for was the last four words, yes, there were still a lot of unanswered questions, but we wanted to know the last four words…..as Rory looks at Lorelai and says, "Mom, I’m pregnant."

                        That ended up being a bigger cliffhanger than we were originally left with. It was not the ending I had waited 9 years for, but I do like parts of the plot. I like the realistic aspects, showing that life is not only about change but also growing up is ugly and messy and even though this is just a show, it’s always been a story line so many women can relate to and I feel that it still did just that. Even though this is now leaving GG fans with not only more questions but now the hopes of a second A Year in the Life episodes. I’m thankful to say that according to Amy Sherman-Palladino, this isn’t the way it ends, those were not the last four coveted words and if she is given another chance to finish this along with a better budget, she would do it right this time. No unanswered question but the real deal with the a real ending. That being said, all I can hope for now is that she gets a chance and  hope  it was Jess that was the one night stand Wookie.

 Anita