Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life Review — Winter

I remember sitting down to watch the series finale of Gilmore Girls nearly ten years ago.

And I remember the feeling of disappointment I felt seeing how my favorite TV show, one of the only shows I made time to watch back then, finished its story.

It felt forced, rushed, and incomplete. And ever since, I couldn’t help but wish for something more. Maybe a movie to finish the series — and one that was written by Amy Sherman-Palladino, so that we could have an ending in her voice.

Sitting down to watch the first episode of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was an emotional experience, and I have to say, I’m not disappointed. Not in the least.

The opening is enough to bring any Gilmore Girls super fan to tears. It’s a black screen with credits as we listen to familiar voices and memorable quotes from the original series. We even get to hear the voice of Edward Herrmann as Richard Gilmore.

While the first bit of “Winter” actually feels disconnected and forced, it doesn’t take long for everything to fall into comfortable rhythm. Halfway through it, it starts to really feel like early seasons of Gilmore Girls.

The storytelling takes a minute to get used to. We’re whisked through the entire winter season, as we knew we would be, which means everything moves quickly. What’s nice about the way this is done is that it allows us to focus on our main characters while also getting snapshots of what’s been going on with everyone else.

So where is everyone in their lives this many years after we’ve last seen them? Rory is working on her journalism career but doesn’t have a steady job. Lorelai and Luke have presumably been in a relationship since we last saw them at the end of Season 7. They live together, but aren’t married, and it seems to be working for them just fine. For now.

What isn’t working so well for Lorelai is dinner at the inn. The Dragonfly is still successful, and Michel is still there, but Sookie is revealed to be on sabbatical. In the woods. It’s a quirky enough explanation to feel completely right, if you ask me.

But no one is as good as Sookie, and Lorelai won’t even tolerate Anthony Bourdain in the inn’s kitchen, much less a chef who takes away her coffee pot.

Some things never change, and it’s those details that make the revival series particularly special.

Oh, and we get a concrete answer to a question we’ve had for years. Michel IS gay, and he’s now married and complaining to Lorelai about how his husband seems to want children.

That reveal is one of my favorite moments, hands down.

Richard’s absence is a significant driving force in the story. It’s affected Emily and Lorelai’s relationship, and it’s causing Lorelai to start worrying about her own mortality. I’d go so far as to say it also has something to do with the way Rory is living her life — both in terms of her career and her complicated love life.

I’ll get to that in a second, though.

The details of Richard’s funeral are beautiful and emotional, but I have to admit, I feel a little cheated here. The flashback to the funeral works well, and we do get to see Emily, Lorelai, and Rory deal with it in their own ways, but it seems like something that could have taken just a few more minutes.

However, what happens after the service feels exactly right.

It’s a large gathering just as you’d expect for Richard Gilmore, and Emily keeps her composure just as Emily Gilmore would do. Rory has to run off to catch a flight, but Lorelai stays to be with her mother — a decision that is well-intentioned but ends, in Lorelai’s words, “full circle.”

It’s heartbreaking that Lorelai can’t think of a good story about her father, but it’s not surprising. It’s actually a call back to Season 1 when Richard finds himself in the hospital, and Luke drives Lorelai to see him.

She tells him she knows she should be remembering all the good times she had with her father, but she can’t think of those times. She just remembers him putting on his suit and going to work. Except that he bought her a doll once.

Emily and Lorelai end up fighting in the kitchen — another call back to Season 1. It’s also a reminder of why their relationship has been so strained.

Okay, so now let’s talk about Rory’s love life.

My hope for Rory was that we’d see her as a single woman at the opening of the revival. That’s not the case, and I haven’t fully decided how I feel about her actual situation. She has a boyfriend named Paul, who is incredibly forgettable (the running joke of the episode) and who she knows she needs to break up with.

But more significantly, she’s been seeing Logan in secret whenever she goes to London. They have an agreement: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

It’s an arrangement that makes sense for Rory and Logan if you consider their history, and I like seeing Rory with this free spirit attitude.

As for Lorelai and Luke, we start to get a clearer picture of their relationship throughout the episode, and Lorelai worries that Luke has made concessions in order to be with her. A main one of those being having children. At this point, though, it does seem like they are a bit too old for it, and it’s implied pretty quickly that Lorelai is no longer able.

Enter Paris Geller, who has only changed in that she is even more fierce than she was when we last saw her. And it’s amazing.

Seriously, Paris is one of my favorite things about this revival, and her involvement in something so personal for Lorelai and Luke has incredible possibilities.

Luke squashes the idea of a surrogate pretty quickly, and Lorelai is obviously disappointed. More kids has always been something she’s considered, and I think it was something that should have been in the cards for Luke and Lorelai — even from the dream Lorelai had once that she was pregnant with twins.

“Winter” ends with a classic Emily Gilmore move. She’s taken her daughter’s suggestion of seeing a therapist, but she manages to con Lorelai into coming with her. Because, of course she does. Would you expect anything less?

Overall, the first installment of the revival series is a perfect mix of nostalgia and new story for characters who are still every bit as quirky and wonderful as they always were.

Other Thoughts:

• Ever wondered how Luke would deal with the changes in technology? He gives out fake wi-fi passwords to his customers, because of course, he doesn’t want them sitting there on their laptops.
• Hep Alien is still rocking, even though Zack has what sounds like a successful 9-5 job.
• Kirk actually has a pretty heavy presence in this episode, and of course his next venture is a rip-off of Uber. I honestly don’t know how I didn’t predict that one.
• Lorelai still has the same car! It’s broken, but still.

What did you think of the first episode of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

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