Arts Vanity: Growing Up Past “Gilmore Girls”

I watch “Gilmore Girls” every fall. I first watched it on Netflix in 2017, when I was sixteen, the same age as Rory in the first season. I always say I won’t do it, I won’t trawl through over a hundred hours of Stars Hollow antics, I’ll watch something new — and yet, as soon as the leaves turn orange and the wind turns chill, every year the theme song “Where you leave, I will follow…” can be heard blasting from my laptop.

For the uninitiated, “Gilmore Girls” follows the fast talking Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her overachieving daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel). After she fell pregnant at the age of 16, Lorelai left her parents’ world of privilege to raise her daughter on her own terms, but now that Rory has gotten into a private high school that will set her up to get into Harvard, Lorelai needs to reconnect with her parents to pay for her daughter’s education. Featuring three dysfunctional generations of Gilmores, the seven seasons follow Rory through high school and intro college and Lorelai’s pursuit of her dream career, as well as both of their tumultuous love lives, all against a backdrop of small town charm and old-fashioned elitism.

As someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of the show, I have no shortage of opinions. I have my favorite and least favorite episodes — “Haunted Leg” and “Friday Night’s Alright For Fighting” show off everything that make the show great, while “We Got Us A Pippi Virgin” and “A Vineyard Valentine” are both unsalvageably cringe. I also have strong opinions on the main arcs: That, as Bledel herself described, they definitely overcorrected when trying to address how “perfect” Rory had been in the earlier seasons; that the drawn out conflicts with Christopher (David Sutcliffe) were actually important and meaningful; and that Jess (Milo Ventigmiglia) was hands down the best of Rory’s boyfriends.

Seven years later, I’m now 22, the same age as Rory was in the final season, and just like she was, I am approaching graduating from college and starting life in the real world. The 2016 revival, “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” gave a glimpse at the characters seven years after the series’s end, but it is no help to my current existential crisis. For example, if in seven years I’m having an affair with the guy I said I didn’t want to marry at my college graduation, someone please shoot me. Though the characters’ aimlessness in the revival may have been appreciated by some millennials, it’s still anxiety-inducing to be reaching the end of the life guidance “Girlmore Girls” has to offer (from Rory’s perspective anyway, though I did already miss the boat for getting pregnant in high school if I wanted to try out Lorelai’s life). To be clear, I have never actually used “Gilmore Girls” as a guide for my life path: I don’t crave small town simplicity, I don’t go to Yale (*insert snide and elitist joke here*), and I don’t have a trust fund, but I have always loved how much heart this wonderfully comforting and offbeat show has showcased.

Thanks to streaming, “Gilmore Girls” continues to be a beloved show, getting rediscovered by more viewers every year. It’s unclear what has given it so much staying power in the cultural zeitgeist — whether it’s the unapologetic centering of female relationships, the mile-a-minute dialogue crammed with niche pop culture references, or the warm fall aesthetics — but one thing is clear: Though it ended well over a decade ago, “Gilmore Girls” isn’t going anywhere. And I’m excited to keep appreciating it, and to find some new shows to project on.

—Outgoing TV exec Millie Mae Healy is open to suggestions for shows, but would like to assure readers she is obsessed with shows other than “Gilmore Girls.”