a year in the life: the Gilmore Girls have grown up (and so have we)

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've been patiently waiting for the Serious Netflix Event that is Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, spending your time looking up photos of Alexis Bledel and wondering what her baby with Pete from Mad Men would look like.

November 25th has come and gone. Tucked into bed with a family-size plate of Thanksgiving leftovers, I prepared myself for 6 hours of pure Lorelai and Rory goodness.

I should have learned my lesson when Fuller House came out. I should have known. I should have known. 



I laughed, I scowled, and then I got to google-ing. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one with a complicated relationship with Gilmore Girls. The show came out when I was in middle school, a funny show that addressed real issues for real moms and daughters who weren't ready to sit through 45-minutes of the Dawson's Creek portrayal of real time in the name of bonding.

In the days following binge-watching session, I've been forced to rethink my entire adolescent obsession with Stars Hollow. (But not Jess--his return to primetime tv has only asserted that my taste was on-point. His face is a national treasure.) As a true GG-phile, season 7 was never screened in my home, which by that point would be my freshman dorm room.

Amy Sherman-Palladino has said that her vision for the end of the show was finalized before the cameras began rolling on the first season, although it's hard to imagine that the four-part extravaganza is exactly what she had in mind so many moons ago. For starters, there are the major big-budget aesthetic issues and random musical numbers. Shaky plot lines and unexplained gaps in the character development make the whole thing feel disjointed. My complaints can be summed up as basically everything listed here.

And last, but not least?

Those last four words, which were not, but could have been : like mother, like daughter.