The hit WB show, Gilmore Girls, just celebrated an important milestone. The show celebrated 25 years the same week that lead star, Lauren Graham, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The drama featuring Graham and Alexis Bledel as the mother and daughter, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, originally ran for seven seasons and went on to have a four-part revival in 2016, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. The series is best known for its quippy, sharp-witted dialogue that cursed (in the best way) many millennials to talk as fast as the characters in the show.
The series comes with its faults (outside of jokes that are now in poor taste due to it being a product of the early 2000s) including not only a divisive final season, but a divisive revival. Ahead of receiving her star, Graham expressed not only confusion, but weighed in on what she thinks about the four-parter. “I don’t exactly understand why,” she said of the polarized opinions. She said of her time making the revival:
“I was having the time of my life. I was on clouds every single day at work, and I felt like the work was really good and the episodes were really beautiful.“
What Made the End of ‘Gilmore Girls’ So Divisive?
While many die-hard fans (including this author) can respect the sentiment that Graham had a positive experience returning to the character and filming the four-part Netflix series, the narrative choice is inherently divisive. Showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino left the original series after Season 6, citing contract disputes with WB. David Rosenthal took over as both showrunner and head writer for the final season that saw what many were worried was the nail in the coffin for the relationship between Lorelai and Luke Danes (Scott Patterson). Having Lorelai not only resume a relationship with Rory’s father, Christopher Hayden (David Sutcliffe), but to marry him (and almost immediately divorce him) never sat right with fans, or even Graham herself. She says, “It just didn’t feel like the same show, so it wasn’t as hard saying goodbye.”
Eventually, Luke and Lorelai do reconcile, and when the revival resumes the story of Rory and Lorelai nearly ten years on, there’s a feeling that these characters have just been sitting in stasis. Luke and Lorelai aren’t married despite being very close to that in the series, and Rory is coasting through life, undecided, in all the ways her privilege, Ivy League education, and innate means say that she shouldn’t. It’s hard to watch, in a very “oh how the mighty have fallen” moment, for a character that many Millennial and Gen Z women practically grew up with. The revival did justice to saying goodbye to Richard Gilmore, after the real-life death of Ed Herrmann years prior, and allowed fans to see a new facet of Emily (Kelly Bishop), outside her self-described “corporate wife” status.
Regardless of your feelings about the revival, both it and the original Girlmore Girls are available to stream on Netflix. Stay with Collider for the latest updates.
- Release Date
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2000 – 2007-00-00
- Network
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The WB
