On November 25th, Netflix will release Gilmore Girls: A Year in The Life. This show, a Netflix exclusive, will center around the lives of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, mother and daughter, respectively. It premieres nine years after the show Gilmore Girls ended its seven season run on the WB and the CW. The Netflix show is actually a revival, updating audiences about the lives of the characters after the show ended. As a borderline obsessive Gilmore Girls fan, November 25th couldn’t come fast enough. The show is one of the best in television history, and here are just four reasons why.
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Admirable mother-daughter relationships. The majority of pop culture TV shows don’t have much parental involvement, and if they do, it pertains to the animosity between a parent and child. Specifically with moms and daughters, their relationship becomes a plot device for drama. On Gilmore Girls, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Lorelai and Rory are best friends, sharing everything with each other and being each other’s biggest supporter. Moms and daughters, like my mom and I did, could watch the show together and find their relationship depicted onscreen. It gives a great model of how loving these relationships can be.
2. Great role models. Lorelai and Rory, the two main characters, are exceptional role models. Lorelai is the ultimate feminist, never letting her relationships with men affect the more important one with her daughter. Instead, they were a supplement to her life, but never the focal point. She was just fine with or without one. She’s also a savvy businesswoman, working up from a maid at The Independence Inn to running her very own Dragonfly Inn. Lorelai’s smarts and hard work got her there. Rory Gilmore is a formidable role model in her own right. Fiercely intelligent, she transferred from public school to Chilton Preparatory School, a highly academically ranked private school. Rory thrived there from her sophomore year to graduation, writing for The Franklin, the school newspaper, and graduating as valedictorian with a 4.2 GPA. From there, Rory attends Yale University, majoring in English and becoming the editor for The Yale Daily News. These accomplishments display a fabulous work ethic. They also indicate the importance of following your passions and never apologizing for who you are. Most young women are embarrassed to share their love of anything academic, like reading or engineering. Rory gave them the great example of how far these passions, and passion in general, can take you, and that being smart is something to be celebrated. Through Lorelai and Rory, audiences found wonderful role models.
3. Lovable environments. Gilmore Girls takes place in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. It’s a beautifully picturesque small town, filled with quirky places like Luke’s Diner, Stars Hollow Books, Weston’s Bakery, and numerous others. The town is such a fun one to be in; there are weekly town meetings, a town troubadour that sings in random places, and tons of festivals throughout the year. Town residents dress up as art pieces and act out the paintings in the Festival of Living Art, dance for 24 hours straight in the aptly named 24-Hour Dance Marathon, and watch movies in the Stars Hollow Movie Festival. Rory gets to grow up in this lovably zany environment. Outside of Stars Hollow, Rory and Lorelai frequent Hartford, Connecticut, where Rory’s grandparents live. Lorelai grew up there, and although it’s a bit more posh than Stars Hollow, it’s still a wholesome and enjoyable place to spend an evening. Throughout the show’s run, many nights were spent there, as Lorelai and Rory had annual Friday night dinners with Richard and Emily Gilmore. Rory’s school, Chilton, is also in Hartford, increasing the amount of time she spent there. All of these towns were hugely influential in the lives of the characters and were a quirky background to the plotlines.
4. Romantic relationships. What’s a television show without a bit of romance? Lorelai and Rory had plenty of suitors over the course of the show. They’re a bit divisive among the die-hard fans of Gilmore Girls. For Rory, you’re either Team Dean, Jess, or Logan. Dean was her adorable first boyfriend, during her sophomore year of high school. Jess was the intellectual bad boy that rolled into town and stole Rory’s heart during her junior and senior year. Logan was the posh scholar that Rory found herself involved with during her tenure at Yale. Luckily for the audience, all these boys drifted in and out of her life throughout the course of the show. Lorelai had her love interests as well. Rory’s father, Christopher, was in and out of her romantic life. She also dated around a bit during the show. However, the main love interest for Lorelai was Luke Danes, the owner of Luke’s Diner. The two obviously connected, yet took forever to actually admit it to themselves and get together. A trend in Gilmore Girls, they drifted in and out of each other’s romantic lives, yet were the perfect couple whenever they were together. For the audience, it’s a wonderful theme of the show to ponder when two people would be together, whether or not they should be, and for how long. The boys aren’t too hard to look at either, especially Jess. However, I’m Team Jess, so the die-hard Gilmore Girls bias is setting in!
If you’ve seen Gilmore Girls, you’ll agree with every theme I’ve just stated. If you’ve never seen it, I bet you’re clamoring now to start binge-watching. You’re in luck; before the revival premiere on November 25th, you can watch all seven seasons on Netflix now!
Works Cited
“Google Images.” Google Images. N.p., n.d. Web.