Best Geeky Finds – Winter, Spring, Summer, [and] Fall, All You Got to Do is Call…

Yes, I am a fan of Gilmore Girls. And yes, this is super late, considering Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life premiered back in November. What can I say, I like to let things sink in. Also, there are way too few Saturdays in a month to talk about everything I find. 

For those who are unfamiliar with Gilmore Girls, the show is set in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, CT, and tells the story of Lorelei (Lauren Graham) and her daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel). Giving birth to Rory at 16, the mother/daughter combo are close in age, the show starting when Rory is 16 and starting her first year at Chilton, a prestigious private high school. Gilmore Girls focuses on the duo, and how this affects their relationships, as well as how Lorelei’s rich parents affect their lives. Along with other quaint and interesting characters around town, the show went on for 7 seasons, lasting longer that the WB.

The problem, however, was that the show’s creators, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, quit the show after season 6, leaving the story and characters in limbo. The last season, while eventful, was not as unique as the previous seasons and the show was cancelled after the season finished shooting, with Rory leaving Stars Hollow to report on the Barack Obama presidential campaign in 2007.

Well, we know what happened to Obama, but 10 years later audiences were still asking about the Gilmores.

After much discussion with Warner Bros. and different television outlets, the show’s original creators planned out four 90-minute episodes for Netflix, recreating each set from scratch to bring the show’s backdrop to life again for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

Titled for the seasons they take place in, the new series watches Rory try to make sense of her life, taking random jobs she can get, never finding a stable career. At the beginning of the series we see her planning out a book with eccentric Naomi Shropshire (Alex Kingston), a Londoner whom Rory has already written a New Yorker article about. What this book the two women were to write is unknown given her rapid discussions and confusing boozy dialogue. Meanwhile, Lorelei has been living with Luke (Scott Patterson) since the couple made up at the end of the series, having never married, to the dismay of her mother, and furiously running the Dragonfly Inn without the help of her best friend and chef Sookie (Melissa McCarthy).

As the series progresses, Lorelei works on her relationship with her mother, while trying to understand her relationship with a father who has recently passed away. Rory on the other hand tries to figure out her own life and relationships, including the one she has with a boyfriend nobody, including her, can remember. All three past boyfriends from the original show appear: Logan (Matt Czuchry), Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) and even Dean (Jared Padalecki), with cameos and regular appearances from other Stars Hollow favorites like Kirk, Taylor and even an appearance by Carole King, who wrote and performed the original theme song.

Watching these four episodes made me feel better about my life. Having only recently found a job in my field of study after being nearly 10 years out of school, I had felt useless and worried about my decisions in school. Had I made the right choice of degree, and would I ever find a full-time job that wasn’t in a cubicle farm and was actually something I enjoyed? Having watched the original series in reruns during college, I saw Rory’s outlook on life, and how she had everything under control, and tried to base my work ethic and studies on how she got by in life. Sure, basing your life on a TV is never the best thing to do (especially if you pick a sitcom), but look at how her life went. She graduated from Harvard, got a job traveling with and reporting on the Obama campaign, a candidate who would in turn be successful in running twice, and in all aspects succeeded herself. Why not base a life on hers? I even made the joke sometimes whenever I caught myself not going anywhere without at least two books in my hands (not for school) that I was a male Rory Gilmore. So seeing her 10 years later and not knowing what to do with her life made me feel better about my own life and choices.

In addition to the show, Lauren Graham recently published a memoir, Talking as Fast as I Can, detailing her journey as an actor, and the steps she took the helped her twice become Lorelei. This includes her life in school, the many tiny and major roles she played before and after this show. She also sits down and watches all 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls for the first time ever, providing a running commentary on what she remembers from her time on set, as well as her time filming A Year in the Life.

If you are a Gilmore Girls addict and haven’t checked out the revival, I highly recommend it. If you have spent your entire life avoiding Gilmore Girls, I recommend you rethink your life decisions and watch the first few episodes. I guarantee you won’t regret doing so.

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