The day after Thanksgiving is typically reserved for turkey comas and Black Friday shopping, but this year fans forewent doorbuster deals in favor of a TV revival 10 years in the making.
While the recent reboot fever has driven many fans to frustration, “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” was an unexpected revival that was necessary.
Where “Fuller House,” “X-Files” and other lackluster reboots felt like blatant cash grabs tacked onto long-wrapped storylines, “Gilmore Girls” has always seemed lacking in closure.
Fans expected “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” to answer their long unanswered questions, and for the most part, it did. What they didn’t expect was that the revival would create more conflict than it actually resolved.
If you haven’t finished the series, stop reading here.
Those who have, and who have had time to process those final four words — that is, if there’s enough time in the world for that — are probably feeling pretty conflicted.
In its defense, “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” did a lot of things right. For one, it truly felt like the original show, which is something many recent reboots couldn’t get right.
The first few minutes of the show were a little rocky, but the characters quickly fell back into the lightning fast dialogue we know and love.
Sure, the show seemed a bit self conscious of how much some of the characters had aged (what was with Luke’s atrocious hairpiece?) but overall, everyone felt just as familiar as if “Gilmore Girls” had ended last week.
One familiar character, however, was nowhere to be found. Edward Hermann, who played patriarch Richard Gilmore, passed away of brain cancer in 2014. Some of the reboot’s best moments were paid in tribute to him, using old clips and sound bites, as well as gathering the characters together for his funeral.
Richard’s absence also led to the other highlight of “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” which was the satisfying culmination of Emily’s arc. Throughout the original show, viewers were occasionally treated to the wild side of Grandma Gilmore, and with the death of her husband, Emily finally threw off the stifling constraints of society life altogether.
Director and producer Amy Sherman-Palladino made sure to bring back all of the fan favorites, including an undersized but entertaining cameo by Melissa McCarthy as Sookie and moments with Liza Weil as Paris and Sean Gunn as Kirk. It couldn’t have been an easy feat, but Sherman-Palladino weaves in just about every popular character from the original show.
While “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” did a great job handling the multiple supporting characters’ storylines, the Gilmore girls themselves were not so lucky.
Where Lorelai and Rory came across as smart, funny, quirky and occasionally self-interested during the original show, the reboot disrupts that balance and focuses on their worst traits.
Lorelai gets off a little easier and has more redeeming moments, but, well, let’s just say it — Rory is selfish, entitled, lazy and all-around insufferable.
We could rant for days about all the problems with Rory’s arc in the reboot, but the worst of all is her affair with Logan, who is now engaged to another woman. Although she, too, has a boyfriend, Rory apparently sees no problem with her repeated cheating. Since she’s cheated on just about every boyfriend she’s ever had (that we know of), we really shouldn’t be surprised.
“Gilmore Girls” fans have spent the last decade speculating which of Rory’s ex-boyfriends she should end up with, and while the reboot doesn’t actually give us the satisfaction of choosing a winner, it provides the realization that we were looking at it the wrong way.
No one deserves to be stuck with such a terrible partner — it looks like Dean is the real winner, since he seems to have escaped her whiny, entitled clutches.
In addition to removing all likeable aspects from one of its main characters, “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” also deems it necessary to submit viewers to a variety of weird, unnecessary stories. Why spend 20 minutes watching Sutton Foster ham it up in a terrible Stars Hollow musical when that time could be devoted to answering other unresolved plot lines?
Another disappointing, yet totally unsurprising aspect of the revival came in the usual “Gilmore Girls” insensitivity toward minorities and the LGBT community.
For example, Emily’s maid Berta was played by Rose Abdoo, the same actress who plays Gypsy. The idea that Sherman-Palladino apparently thought viewers wouldn’t notice the same Latina actress playing two parts is absurd, and her treatment of that Latina character is even worse.
Berta and her family members are depicted as speaking some kind of nonsense language that no one can understand, which is treated as a running joke by the rich white women they’re serving throughout the show.
While this insensitivity is in keeping with the original seasons of “Gilmore Girls,” is it too much to ask that people of color aren’t relegated to a punch line in this day and age?
Finally, let’s talk about those final four words.
For those who don’t know, Sherman-Palladino has said she planned to end the show with these words since Season 1. Therefore, although they might imply that more seasons are on the way, we’d say the odds are slim.
The ending of the reboot was insanely frustrating in so many ways, the main one being that all fans of the show wanted was closure — and all the final words did was remove any closure the reboot provided.
“Gilmore Girls” spent most of the series demonstrating that Rory is a smart, responsible woman who has learned from her mother’s mistakes and could easily avoid falling into a similar cycle. That’s why it’s so difficult to accept that she is doomed to repeat Lorelai’s life, even down to the Logan/Christopher and Jess/Luke parallels.
As for “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” as a whole, we’d have been better off without it. In every “Gilmore Girls” fan’s mind, Luke and Lorelai were already happily married, Rory was a successful journalist married to the boy of their choice and Paris was ruling the world.
Here are four final words for you, Amy Sherman-Palladino.
We prefer our version.
