TV Review: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

TV Review: Gilmore Girls, A Year in the Life

Writing a review of the Gilmore Girls mini-series “A Year in the Life” is a lot like writing a thoughtful, considerate review of the latest Marvel Comics movie; no one who cares about it will have their opinion influenced by a third party’s independent perspective.  But as a fan of the original series I have to put my two cents in, something Lorelai Gilmore would approve of.

The series Gilmore Girls has been off the air for nine years, and there is always the risk that the voices that animated the original have lost their edge in the intervening 9/10 of a decade.  No such problem exists here, however, as Amy Sherman-Palladino’s and Daniel Palladino’s distinctive dialog comes spewing out of Lauren Graham’s mouth almost the moment the new mini-series starts.  For the most part the four 90 minute episodes track like four of the better episodes of the series, with the seams only occasionally showing where things were cobbled together to shoehorn in a cameo of a previous regular.

The episode pick up nine years after the run of the show, although time has stood still for most of the regulars.  Luke and Lorelai are still together, but not married; Emily Gilmore is still imperious, although stunned by the death of her husband (series regular Edward Hermann died two years ago); Stars Hollow is still filled with kooks and weirdos; and Kirk is still unintelligible even by Stars Hollow standards.  Rory has followed her end-of-the-series assignment of reporting on promising Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama (what ever happened to him?) by adopting a rootless existence of freelance journalism, which has been rewarding but has left her wondering in what city her underwear is in.

Each episode runs twice the length of an episode of the TV series, yet the pacing never flags.  Almost all the actors get back into their old characters with seeming effortlessness.  Liza Weill still manages to make Paris Geller both an abrasive know-it-all and an insecure little girl; one of the small pleasures of the mini-series is the amused look on Weill’s face in the background when Laine’s band Hep Alien plays a number.  Melissa McCarthy, who has had the most post-Gilmore success, not only shows up but recaptures Sookie’s inherent mix of super-competency and ineptness in the kitchen.

The best decision was to use some meta-references to guide the plot.  Some of them are throwaways, like making Danny Strong’s character Doyle a successful screenwriter (Strong won an Emmy for writing Game Change and co-created Empire).  But the main thread of the four episodes is triggered when Rory’s old boyfriend Jess suggests she write a book about her relationship with her mother.  She of course names the book “The Gilmore Girls” (which prompts Lorelai to give her advice from The Social Network to “drop the ‘the’”).  This plot line eventually leads to the famous final four words that Sherman-Palladino promised would end the show, which force a reconsideration of several plot points that had come before.

There are some legitimate criticisms.  One hates to tell an auteur about what her creation would or wouldn’t do, but having Lorelai decide to work out her problems by hiking the Pan-Pacific Trail (like in the BOOK Wild, not the MOVIE) is just plain absurd.  A 30-year-old Lorelai wouldn’t have considered hiking the 2,000-mile trail; the idea that a nearly 50-year-old Lorelai would buy a backpack and hit the trail is ridiculous.  The structure of fitting the episodes into four seasons causes some timing problems, as clearly the events at the beginning of Fall follow immediately upon the end of Summer.  And one has to wonder if Rory would really have a nine-year-long “friends with benefits” relationship with ex-boyfriend Logan even after he was engaged to be married.

And I couldn’t help but yell at my TV when Lorelai said to Luke, “I feel like we should already be married.”  Yes, because you had the wedding planned and he backed out because he felt you were rushing into marriage after nine years!  After which Lorelai promptly slept with her ex-boyfriend and married him.  So yeah, you should have been married ten years ago.

My biggest complaint is the fact that Sherman-Palladino has, for some reason, decided that Michel was gay.  For years I have been arguing that Michel was not gay, he was merely French.  I was pleased to see that one of the writers at AV Club referred to this as “retconning.”  There is also an odd scene where a town member tries to get busybody Taylor Dooce to out himself, which was legitimate but still a little creepy.

The acting is of course first rate, and one hopes that being in the mini-series/movie category will net a long overdue Emmy nomination for Graham.  Even more deserving is Kelly Bishop, who was never anything short of brilliant as Lorelai’s always correct mother, Emily Gilmore.  Her journey through these four episodes brings out multiple dimensions in the character that were always there but never allowed to surface.  Her last scene in the final episode, Fall, was one of the emotional high points of the series.

While the mini-series ends with the famous Final Four Words, the door is left open a crack for more Gilmore Girls.  If nothing else, the long look that Jess gives Rory after assuring his uncle Luke that he was over her could lead to something hoped for by Rory/Jess shippers.

Frankly, I never was a Luke/Lorelai shipper—I think they are a murder-suicide waiting to happen.  I may be the world’s only Lorelai/Digger shipper (she dumped him because he sued her father after her father cheated him in a business deal, saying she couldn’t date someone who was suing her family; that made no sense at all).  Be that as it may, Lorelai Gilmore will always be Lauren Graham’s greatest creation, and the same goes for Alexis Bledel and Rory Gilmore.  That Netflix for giving some closure to a great series that deserved better than the half-assed season 7 that the show was forced to end with.