When Our Opinions Of Our Favorite TV Shows Evolve… And Surprise Us

I recently began a binge watch of the CBS hit The Good Wife, after being urged from many friends, and it immediately became an instant favorite for me.

As I became immersed in the world of Alicia Florrick and her torrid love affair with Will Gardner, the story most recommended to me by those same friends, I found myself growing increasingly bored with the developments between the lead characters on the show and found myself much more connected to a supporting character who was already familiar to me.

I’m a Gilmore Girls enthusiast, to say it in nice terms that won’t make me sound like a total weirdo. As a superfan of the show, I can say with total certainty that I’ve seen each episode somewhere between 25-30 times. Gilmore Girls is a comfort show, it’s the show that’s on a constant loop in the background of my busy life as a new mom.

So while watching The Good Wife, it doesn’t really seem surprising that the character I’d most connect with would be a familiar face from Stars Hollow, with the exception of one thing: that familiar face is the same one of the character I despised most on Gilmore Girls.

The Good Wife’s Cary Agos is a smart young lawyer, one who I’d go so far as to characterize as an underdog, which also happens to be one of my favorite types of characters in a series. He’s got a tortured history with his dad, he’s risen to success despite every obstacle thrown at him, and he’s half of a romance that I’ve personally loved watching the evolution of.

But here’s the thing…the actor who breathes life into Cary Agos, Matt Czuchry, is also the guy who brought one of my least favorite characters in television history to life, Logan Huntzberger.

It should be noted that Gilmore Girls and The Good Wife are very different shows with completely polar stories to tell. Yet here I was, torturing myself over the similarities I was drawing between my new favorite character and a character I offer very little forgiveness to upon each watching of Gilmore Girls.

Immediately, I began making comparisons between Cary and Logan, considering each character critically, attempting to move past my pre-conceived notions about Cary due to my dislike of Logan.

What I came up with surprised me. Did I change? Would I need to revoke my Team Jess status and trade in my t-shirt for a Team Logan one?

During a recent viewing of Gilmore, I found that I didn’t hate Logan the way that I used to. I was suddenly offering slack to his less desirable behaviors and feeling sympathy for his plights, thinking about how challenging his life actually was despite seeming to have everything.

That’s when it hit me…my opinions of this guy had evolved, over a decade later.

I was considering things about Logan that I had always vehemently argued against. His drinking, his partying, his selfishness, his entitlement, all things that I used against him in my own mental pro-con list about Rory’s love life.

And here I was, so many years later reconsidering Logan with a fresh set of eyes, eyes that had matured and now placed value on different traits since growing up a bit myself.

While I’m not changing my allegiance to Team Jess, because that would be just silly, I can now appreciate aspects of Logan that I never truly took notice of before: the stability of his romance with Rory, the way he considered her feelings, his brutal honesty with her in the beginning of their courtship…these are all actually pro’s that do deserve to be mentioned.

Which led me to thinking about how our opinion of our favorite shows changes over time.

Right now, I’m doing a re-watch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on our site, and the biggest thing that has struck me during the watch is that I find looking at a nearly 20-year-old show with thirty-something eyes is completely different than looking at it with teenage eyes.

I find that the characters are much more flawed than I remember and that they make reckless decisions. The writing that I once found “brilliant” I now sometimes see as campy and a bit of a trope, oddly.

So what is this evolution? Does it mean that I don’t love things as much as I once did? Is the source material suddenly not as appealing? Were my favorite shows actually bad?

Not at all.

I think we, as viewers, grow up and our perspectives change. That’s not science or opinion…it’s a fact. As we age and re-watch things from our past with a different outlook, we end up identifying with aspects of series that we didn’t initially, and that our source material actually becomes richer to us, because we are now looking at it from other angles.

I’ll use Gilmore Girls as an example once again, only this time, thinking of the Gilmore girls themselves. As a teen, upon its first airing, I identified with Rory. We were the same age and basically grew up together.

In my twenties, I watched the show through Lorelai’s eyes, and this time found a new respect for a character I never quite connected to before. I found myself intrigued by HER story, and siding with her on arguments and opinions in the way I once connected to Rory.

And now, in my thirties, I find myself considering Emily much more, feeling empathy for her own struggles in the Gilmore story and in the pain she feels as a result of the choices her daughter and granddaughter made. This is amazing, actually. I’ve been able to appreciate and grow with three generations of women and can now see things from each character’s unique perspective and voice.

Some of the best series on television are the ones that are so well layered that they grow with us, the shows themselves becoming ageless, and we’re fortunate as viewers to have a number of series like this within our grasps.

Watch Friends again and see if Ross and Rachel still make you feel butterflies, or if they now induce eye rolls. Turn on Beverly Hills, 90210 and decide if you’re really on board with every decision Brandon Walsh made, or if suddenly Donna Martin seems like your kind of girl.

It’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to now. I’m excited for the possibility of re-watching more of my favorite things to see how much my thoughts have evolved over time and if, like Logan, I find myself forgiving characters I once despised.

This opinion evolution can take a show that we once watched and make it an entirely new story for us.

I’d encourage you all to try it. Go back and watch something you held near and dear and see if your own maturity has now made you look at it differently. Experience the depth that your old favorite actually has.

Appreciate the lengths that writers went to a long time ago to tell a well-rounded story that would appeal to you for many years to come.

I guarantee that you will surprise yourself in the best way — and that you may even learn a little about how you’ve changed.