TV Review: Gilmore Girls, season 1

TV #3 of 2023:

Gilmore Girls, season 1

This will be at least my third full watch-through of Gilmore Girls, which I think speaks to the overall quality of the program, but also to the ways in which a multigenerational drama like this can resonate with various audiences at various ages. The first time I watched this show, I identified strongly with Rory, the overachieving A-student bookworm who’s struggling with making friends at her new school and navigating her initial forays into dating. The big hook to the series is of course that she’s the child of a teen mom, now at that same age herself — and while Lorelai’s background is thus very different from mine, when I returned for a rewatch closer in age to her than to her kid, I found her adult plots had grown more relevant and I’d often see things more from her perspective during the occasional mother-daughter squabbles.

I’m now slightly older than Lorelai, and with young kids of my own, so I was interested to see whether she’d still be my primary point of entry and identification here. (Surely I’m not old enough to be an Emily yet, right? I’ll admit there are a few fights this year where I take the matriarch’s side and think Lorelai is being immature and needlessly hostile.) But honestly, I’m not sure if I’m feeling that sense of affiliation with any of them right now. I’m between Gilmores for once! If anything, I think I am vibing most heavily with Rory’s academic rival Paris, who is blisteringly funny, just as intelligent as her friend/nemesis, and quite plainly somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum. Her prickly exterior is a clear cover for a lot of pain, and I look forward to seeing her character get explored and developed further in the seasons ahead.

Overall, it’s a joy to become reacquainted with Stars Hollow, that impossibly cute and quirky small town in New England populated with troubadours and ridiculous community meetings and brunettes who talk with the fast patter of Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing staffers. I love how this is a serialized narrative about these people’s lives that unfolds naturally over time, and will continue to do so from here on out, with every episode carrying a clear sense of the prior context it’s building upon. Showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino makes it all look easy, especially given the TV landscape in the year 2000 when this debuted. (She was only 34 then, too — my current age!)

Two decades on, it’s also impressive how timeless these moments feel. Beyond the presence of pagers and a few dated cultural references, it all seems more or less set in the present day still. That’s the nature of this sort of slice-of-life storytelling, I suppose: homework and relationship troubles and family arguments remain topical forever.

Not all of the plots entirely land for me, at least when grading on a curve in memory of what’s yet to come. Luke and Lorelai’s mutually skittish interest is a real winner, as is the general premise of the program and how the setup of Friday night dinners brings Emily and Richard Gilmore back into their daughter and granddaughter’s lives. Dean as Rory’s first boyfriend is generally fine. But neither Max nor Rachel ever feels like a wholly fleshed-out creation, with each registering more as an obviously temporary roadblock than a legitimate romantic option for their respective partner. And for all that the season one finale tries to dramatically summarize and wrap up several important ongoing threads, it makes the major misstep of leaving out the older generation of Gilmores completely.

So four-out-of-five stars (Hollow) seems appropriate for this debut run of the series. It’s a strong foundation, and I can’t wait to see it get even better from here.

[Content warning for homophobia.]

★★★★☆

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