Quick Thoughts: "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life"

[Spoiler warning: I Will Talk About What Happens in the Revival and the Seven Original Seasons of "Gilmore girls"]

So, for most of the two months in between school, I've been spending a lot of it re-watching TV series that I grew up with, most likely as a bid for cheap nostalgia and/or because familiarity is comfy like the carcass of a woolly mammoth. The one I most frequently re-watched was "The Office (US)" because that series is both hilarious and well-made, but I want to talk about the Gilmore girls revival, because it's something that I re-watched after binge-watching the six seasons that came before it (Yes, six, because f*** the seventh season with its bullshit Lorelei and Christopher marriage that they didn't have the guts to follow through with and instead just po-po through it for a few episodes before breaking them up when it could've been explored more, damn it).

Personally, I had no problem with "A Year in the Life": in spite of being sadder and a lot more contrived, as well as the aging of the stars and the writing that slowed down this extremely caffeinated series, it's still enjoyable and reflexive of a more mature perspective from Amy Sherman-Palladino, in terms of dialogue and of story. Plus, it's always fun to see characters you've grown to love for seven seasons actually have grown and changed for the better since the last time you saw them. Luke has WiFi, Jess is still charming and strangely accomplished as a writer and publisher, Lane is still keeping her rock dreams alive, Paris is still awesome, and Kirk has a pig: all-in-all, just an enjoyable experience to be had.

The thing is, my main problem with this revival stems from Rory, the wunderkind who is now an aimless and homeless 32 year old freelance writer with very little to show for it. Not only is she with Logan still, not only does she seem to mooch off her more stable and caring friends, not only does she seem more like a twentysomething with arrested development, but she is just the most obnoxious person in this series today.

Her big writing project in the revival is about the Gilmore clan, something so narcissistic that even Miguel Syjuco would flinch in its masturbatory elements. Apparently, the Rory from the past seven seasons was hiding a shallow and entitled writer who relates more to the materialistic decadence of the damn Life and Death Brigade than the more soulful, effortful, likable working-class mentality of Jess and Lane.

I have no problem with unsympathetic characters if they were written to be unsympathetic, but Rory was characterized to be a more hard-working, focused person than what showed up in this revival. You could say that this was more of the Season Six Rory, but quite frankly, Mr. Shankly, this ain't even close to that.

It's odd, really. Logan and Rory and their whole shitty band of rich idiots get a lot of screentime, as well as a lot of weird quirk that veers the series too much into light nonsense. And while I did enjoy watching the musical, none of it is really funny or good enough to justify the time it gets in the series. If these quirky diversion were better integrated to the plot, if these felt more integral, if there was more grounding to these things, then maybe it would've been more enjoyable and likable, but at the moment, these are too out-there to be unquestionably necessary, even within the context of the show.

Basically, there are too many bad and/or unenjoyable moments to actually give this more than a 7 or a 7.5 out of 10.

To be clear, I still loved the revival. How the Palladinos handled the death of Edward Hermann was exceptional and heart-wrenching, as well as unequivocal proof that Lauren Graham and Kelly Bishop deserve Emmys for their efforts. And this series still had a lot of Paris and Jess and Luke and Kirk, so it still does retain that factor of cozy charm that the original has. I just wish that it was a lot better than it was, that Rory and Logan were closer to their characters than they were here, that the writing was a lot stronger and tighter than it was shown here.

But damn, we still got a "Gilmore girls" revival nearly a decade after it ended, so I'm definitely happy that it exists.