The last few months I have been spending every waking minute of my life catching up and rewatching Gilmore Girls in preparation for the revival. I have drunk copious amounts of coffee, I now talk faster and every sentence is littered with pop culture references, at this point I would like to call myself an honorary Gilmore Girl.
I was extremely excited when the revival was announced, as Gilmore Girls was one of my favorite television shows growing up, and when the four “movies” were released on Netflix I counted down the seconds until I could devour it along with everyone else. We knew that most of the old characters were coming back in all sorts of capacities (including all of Rory’s exes), we knew that there were spoilery four words that closed the final episode, and we knew that the series will touch on the death of Richard Gilmore.
While the Gilmore Girls in the original series were Lorelai and Rory, A Year in the Life goes a little bit further and explores the life of Emily post-Richard as well. I would argue that the show became more of a closure for Emily and Lorelai than Rory. Rory’s storyline had her peppered in throughout the series, popping up in Lorelai’s and Emily’s stories, while cementing the fact that hey, Rory’s life is a mess.
Mourning Richard Gilmore
Emily has always been my favorite Gilmore Girl, perhaps it’s because of her great one-liners, or Kelly Bishop’s performance or because she reminds me of my own mother in numerous ways, but she was always the one I warmed up to faster and the revival was no exception. It is very difficult to imagine Emily without Richard, and you see it was painful for the cast as well. Even though Edward Herrmann died in 2014, these actors who had worked with him for seven years were still mourning him, and A Year in the Life gave them a chance to commemorate him properly.
There were poignant moments throughout the episodes where he loomed large, one, in particular, where Emily gave the wrong specifications to the painter, and there is a humongous painting of Richard in her living room. This is fodder for Lorelai in the series, but it is obvious as it’s an allegory for the influence that Richard still has over the Gilmore girls and it is evident in the end after Emily has healed a bit and she scales back and commissions a smaller painting of Richard.
The first episode, “Winter” provided us with a flashback to Richard’s funeral four months previously where Lorelai told a very inappropriate story about how Richard caught her having sex when asked to share a story about her father, and Emily took offense to this. It resembled exactly the type of interactions that we are used to between Emily and Lorelai, whereby Lorelai panics and says something inappropriate and Emily reacts, it’s just painful to see this happen in a situation where you can see they are both hurting and attempting to mourn in their own way. The payoff for the scene takes place in the final episode of the series “Fall” when after attempting a Wild-inspired (book, not movie) hike, Lorelai phones Emily and tells her a tearful story about how her father took care of her after a break up when she was a teenager. It was so beautiful and well acted by Lauren Graham, that I can’t even think about it now without shedding a tear. Lorelai needed to go on a journey, throughout the series in order to get to a point where she could properly mourn her father and have some closure with regards to the animosity that she felt towards him (and her mother).
And by the end of the series it looks like Emily and Lorelai have truly grown in their relationship. Emily has scaled back on her life, firstly trying to give away her possessions, then by leaving the D.A.R. (it’s about time), taking on a permanent maid (and her entire family), dating a new man (Ray Wise making an appearance), and then at the end selling their ancestral home and moving to Nantucket and volunteering at a whale museum. I must say this is not the end that I expected from Emily, I thought she would retire to Paris or London (like Trix), but this ending feels much more peaceful and simple and maybe a future that will mean a more relaxed life for Emily without the pressure of being a Hartford wife or widow. There is still so much hope for the future, as she invested in the Dragonfly Inn and made Lorelai and Luke promise to visit a few weeks every year.
Rory’s mourning of Richard was a lot more subtle than the other two, maybe it was her specific way of mourning or perhaps it was put on the backburner with all the other drama that was happening in her life. Rory felt almost tacked along with her grandmother and mother’s grief at the funeral and graveyard and her most poignant moment was when she was wandering around the Gilmore mansion while Emily was in Nantucket on vacation and you hear echoes of conversations that the family had in different areas of the house – them sitting for dinner in the dining room, Richard and Emily in the kitchen with Rory when she made pizza, Richard in his study – before she sits down in Richard’s study to begin writing her book. It’s a beautiful scene, but I wish the revival would have given us more of Rory dealing with her grandfather’s death especially since a lot of the original series dealt with the two of them bonding over literature and academics.
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Click next for our thoughts on the saga of Lorelai and Luke.
The Saga of Lorelai and Luke
Season seven of the original series ended with Luke and Lorelai making out and we assumed getting back together, and eight years later they are still together – not married, no kids – but still together. And despite the few curveballs that they throw at us, Luke and Lorelai seem happy through most of A Year in the Life.
A big problem that they seem to be facing is miscommunication or lack of communication, firstly Lorelai starts to worry whether Luke wants a child, and they consider surrogacy (with an excellent appearance of Paris), and then Richard leaves Luke money to franchise Luke’s Diner and he considers doing it because he thinks it will make Lorelai happy.
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After Lorelai’s Wild trip, Luke fears that she is breaking up with him and he pours his heart out to her telling her not to leave him, and she responds by saying that that she wants to get married. It’s the most honest and forthcoming that they have ever been with each other, and this more than the wedding was evidence to me that they were going to be okay. It shows growth between the two of them (because let’s be real, Lorelai was not the best at relationships) and growth in their relationship.
The series culminated in their wedding at the end, Luke and Lorelai didn’t want the pressure of the actual day so they secretly got married the night before, in a beautifully decorated town square (done by none other that Kirk himself). The montage of this scene was beautiful, and it was great to see Luke and Lorelai finally tying the knot. However, the scene just had the reverend, the couple, Rory, Michel and Lane, which I feel like robbed us of the big town wedding that could have resonated with us for years to come. While I was never a big fan of season seven, the farewell party where the town said goodbye to Rory is one of my favorite scenes, it just brought together what made Gilmore Girls so special. I know that it was probably tough getting all the actors together, but I would have gladly substituted one of the big town scenes in the first or second episode for a large wedding scene. At the very least, Emily should have been at Lorelai’s wedding.
Rory’s career crossroads
Rory Gilmore was always a success. She went to Chilton, where she was valedictorian to getting into all of the colleges she applied to before settling on Yale. Even after she dropped out of Yale because her boyfriend’s father told her she didn’t have the chops to be a journalist, she became the most successful leader of the D.A.R. and then when she returned to Yale, she became the Editor of the Yale Daily News. Even when Rory Gilmore failed, it wasn’t for long.
When we pick up on Rory’s life in A Year in the Life, she’s a floater, she has a couple of by-lines from a few notable publications, she has an online magazine chasing her, she is co-writing a book with an eccentric English woman, and she seems to have a finger in many pies but attempting to get a job at Conde Nast.
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However, as the year goes on, one by one her opportunities fall through. She goes for an interview at the online magazine but her blatant disregard for the job has her blowing the interview. The English woman (played by Alex Kingston) fires her when it is obvious Rory has zero interest in what she has to say. The Conde Nast interview keeps getting pushed back until it does not happen at all. She agrees to write an article for GQ about standing in lines, which she does research for but it does not culminate in anything.
At the end of “Spring,” she moves back to Stars Hollow temporarily, and in “Summer,” she takes over as editor of the Stars Hollow Gazette where Jess comes to visit her and encourages her to write a book about her relationship with her mother. This originally causes conflict between Lorelai and Rory because Lorelai does not want her story out there for people to read, but she eventually comes around, only stating that she will not read it.
So why did A Year in A Life show us all these career routes for Rory to take if she was just going to give up journalism as a whole? Why not give us short snippets of each of her jobs with the realization that this is not her passion? Or that her focus has changed? We did not need the lengthy scene of Lorelai and Rory interviewing the people in lines if Rory was not going to write that story. We did not need the few Alex Kingston scenes if Rory was not going to write that book. This could have been shortened into one or two montages, and they could have given us more Paris instead.
Click next for our thoughts on Rory and her men.
Rory and her men
When you speak to anyone about Gilmore Girls the first thing to state is usually what team you belong to, as in which one of Rory’s boyfriends was your favorite. There is Team Dean – Rory’s sweet first boyfriend; Team Jess – her bad boy second boyfriend; and Team Logan – her rich boy college boyfriend. Everyone has distinct reasonings behind their favorite, and what I’ve noticed a lot of lately are people who side with neither boyfriend, were more of a Team Rory.
Let’s start on neutral grounds, at the beginning of “Winter.” we find out that Rory has been dating a guy named Paul, who everyone seems to think is forgettable, even Rory herself. Poor kid keeps getting forgotten in places, and throughout the year Rory is still technically in a relationship with Paul but she rarely thinks about him, is cheating on him, and keeps forgetting to break up with him. Until he breaks up with her in “Fall,” and you are reminded that hey, Rory had a boyfriend the entire time. Sigh, Rory is a terrible girlfriend.
Then there is Logan, the longest relationship that she had in the original series and the last one. In “Winter,” we learn that when she is going to London on business, she is actually shacking up with Logan. The two have a sort of “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” type relationship, with her dating Paul back home, and Logan is engaged to a French heiress. But as the series progresses, we learn that it’s more than just hook ups, Rory is emotionally attached to Logan as she phones him whenever something goes wrong and she needs someone to talk to. After she ends their affair, Logan with the help of the Life and Death Brigade (including my favorite member, Finn) give her one last night of debauchery – in a very long scene that made me look at my watch one too many times. However, this is the closure that Rory needs as she has one last night with Logan and bids him farewell.
We’ve mentioned above, but Jess returns to Stars Hollow in “Summer” in order to save his mom and T.J. from a vegetable cult (I laughed out loud for this), but he visits Rory at the Gazette to encourage her to write a book. He is still working at his publishing company, and the scene with him at his book launch in season six is still one of my favorite scenes, his growth as a character was excellent and we get to see him doing a job that he loves. Him as a publisher, also ties in well with Rory writing a book, because you know that he will publish it. At least that networking worked better than getting Logan’s father to put in a good word for her with Conde Nast did. Jess has some lovely scenes with Luke as well, as the two of them have come along way too, since Jess was so reluctant for the help that Luke gave him. In “Fall” as Jess is visiting for Luke and Lorelai’s wedding, Rory excitedly tells him that she has written three chapters of her book and Luke asks Jess if he is over the Rory thing and he responds with “long over” But we see him looking longingly at her through the window suggesting that he might not be as “over” her as he pretends to be.
Lastily, there’s Dean, who we get one scene with in “Fall,” Rory runs into him at Doose’s Market, of course, after she ends things with Logan. Dean is in town to visit his parents and we learn that he’s married again (thank god, Lindsay is out of this nonsense), happily this time, with three kids and one on the way. He looks so happy, that it makes one ponder how good a Rory-free life could actually be. Rory tells Dean about her book and asks his permission to write about him, telling him that he was the perfect first boyfriend that he taught her what being safe meant, that she wished that she had met him when she was older. It was a lovely send off to that relationship and a great way of honoring it.
It would have been great if Rory’s whole romance debacle had ended with Paul’s breakup text at the end of “Fall” with the door closed on Logan, closure with Dean, a maybe with Jess, but still hope that there might be someone new but the last four words changed everything.
“Mom”
“Yeah?”
“I’m pregnant”
I don’t think I have ever sighed as loudly as I did when Rory uttered those words. We have come full circle. I think it’s safe to assume that the baby is Logan’s, it also makes a scene where Rory meets with her father and she asks him whether he regrets not being involved in raising her, a lot more interesting. Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator, originally said she created Logan to be to Rory what Christopher was to Lorelai – rich, entitled, fun, and irresponsible. If Rory is pregnant with Logan’s baby and Logan has no intention of leaving Odette, it’ll mean that Rory will have to raise her child as a single parent just like Lorelai had to with her. However, Rory is not sixteen and poor, she is 32, she has her grandmother, her mother, and the whole town of Stars Hollow helping her. This also means that the toxic relationship between Logan and Rory is probably not over.
Is this the only sort of closure we will get for Rory, that she will have her own child? Is this open-ended? Or does Sherman-Palladino intend to expand on this story? I’m not of the school that wants to see this play out onscreen, I don’t want to see Rory being the Lorelai to Logan’s Christopher with Jess or some other schmuck playing the Luke role, waiting in the wings for a Gilmore girl to get over their fascination with rich, entitled rebels. Perhaps this is all we get, we can make up our own future for Rory, maybe you choose to believe that Logan leaves Odette, and him, Rory and the baby live happily ever after in London. Or maybe you want to believe that the child is not Logan’s. Or maybe that Rory raises the child with Luke and Lorelai, or with Jess, or even Kirk. You can choose your own best case scenario.
Click next for our final verdict on the revival.
Our Verdict
Yes, this review had a lot of complaining, we will always have strong opinions about something that we love dearly, and Gilmore Girls definitely fits into that category. It was a show that was difficult to watch at times, but was endearing in the end. And will whole-heartedly say that if your were a Gilmore Girls fan you should definitely watch A Day in the Life, it’s a lot better that season 6 and 7.
If not just for the nostalgia of it all, it felt like coming home to see Stars Hollow unchanged as just characters got older. There was Mrs. Kim with her Korean choir, Jackson selling vegetables, Andrew complaining about something, Gypsy fixing cars, Taylor making announcements, Babette and Miss Patty gossiping. It was quintessentially what Stars Hollow was all about, and the best part of it was that the actors slipped beautifully into their roles, it did not feel rigid and new at all, it felt like we were just dropping in on ordinary days in Stars Hollow.
The development of the characters and especially the growth and closure for Emily and Lorelai was excellent – around Richard’s death, Emily’s aging, and Lorelai’s business and marriage. These areas of their lives were tackled so well, and it gave both characters a sense of peacefulness and closure that the original series did not give us.
Most of my problems with A Day in the Life was from the Rory storylines. I understand the importance of describing the career difficulties that Rory faces, most of us in that age group understands what it likes to fail at various career paths that you were previously believed was your calling, but this could have done a lot better and swifter. A lot of sequences in the episodes were too long – such as the subplot of the musical – if the whole musical was for Lorelai to hear the meaningful song that Sutton Foster sang, they could have just precluded it with one of the previous musical items. The Life and Death Brigade sequence too went on for ages.
But through all of this – the baby saga included – my biggest criticism was that there was not enough Paris Geller. Paris was by far the best character of the original series, and the first episode reminded us why as she is the fertility doctor that Luke and Lorelai consult with. While I am a fan of How To Get Away With Murder as well, and Liza Weil is great in there as well, Paris is the role she was born to play. The way she nuances Paris’ dramatics with her heavy moments and comedy is a work of art. When we meet Paris, she is divorced from Doyle (who is now a screenwriter), and she has two kids. We never get to learn what becomes of their relationship. Where is my Paris closure though? She isn’t even in the last two episodes.
Paris outrage aside, A Year in the Life was a gift, a present from the television gods, a last chance to say goodbye to our favorite characters, to reunite with our childhood heroes and to tell one final story. It’s amazing that Netflix can bring together all the original actors (even Melissa McCarthy) for one extravaganza no matter the outcome.
Rating: 8/10
What did you think of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life?
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