Netflix's Gilmore Girls revival feels seamlessly like the victory lap the show wasn't able to take in its final season...
You'd think we'd be used to this by now – a beloved property rising from the ashes, saved by a streaming platform, and moulded into nostalgia fuel. There was Veronica Marsand The X-Files, and soon there'll be Prison Break. But Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life has seemed bigger than those, more anticipated by a greater number of people.
That could, of course, be due to how long, hard and creatively Netflix has been pushing the revival. In an age when event television has ceased to be, somehow it's managed to create the kind of buzz around the show usually reserved for your Walking Deads or Game Of Thrones.
Released on this upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, this was designed for festive family viewing (62% of mothers and daughters say sharing TV shows helps build a stronger relationship, according to Netflix). It's the perfect show to bring people together across several demographics.
Fittingly, then, the series - consisting of four ninety-minute instalments - begins with Winter. Aside from being the order as laid out by Carole King in the show's theme song (winter, spring, summer or fall etc.) it's also the perfect way to reintroduce us to Stars Hollow and its residents. In Lorelai Gilmore's own words, "everything's magical when it snows, everything looks pretty."
It sets the mood for the comforting blanket of homeliness the opening episode will wrap us all up in. The gang's all here, and as many fan-favorite characters enter the frame it's often tempting to pause for applause. Yet by some miracle it all feels seamless, with townies and Gilmores both right where we left them and changed in a realistic manner at the same time.
Rory (Alexis Bledel) is the most different, as was always her destiny. We immediately get the impression (matching what we saw in the trailers) that she visits Stars Hollow sporadically, and the unbreakable bond between mother and daughter has loosened a little as she's grown. Lorelai (Lauren Graham), meanwhile, is immediately recognisable, with Graham not missing a beat.
The girls still talk fast, eat too much and treat the world as their personal playground. They're also still slightly cruel and self-centred, and their friends and family continue to worship them.
There's plenty of fan-service here, but it doesn't dominate. On the contrary, I'd say that the Palladinos have taken some turns away from what a majority of fans might want to see, and gone with their own ideas for both Rory and Lorelai. There are a couple of left-turns that feel like they could have happened in season seven had the showrunner remained.
Rest assured, this feels from the first moment like it deserves to exist. After the departure of series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino for season seven on The CW, A Year In The Life is in many ways the victory lap it never got to take.
Even better, rather than tacked on to the end of a series that was already starting to show its age, this gets to trade in the fondness from fans new and old alike. The distance helps rather than hinders, with actors often seeming near years simply from being there with each other.
It feels at times as though Amy Sherman-Palladino has spent the last nine years reading every think-piece and hot take on the series, and taken bits and pieces accordingly. There are exchanges, character touches and even a retcon or two that reflect a lot of what fans have read between the lines since Gilmore closed its doors the first time.
This works beautifully during Winter, and less well in Spring (only two of the four episodes were made available for preview) Some are played for laughs, and at other times mined for heartbreaking drama. Also, season seven has not been forgotten - things that occurred and people who came into being during those 22 episodes still exist.
It isn't perfect, but then neither was Gilmore Girls during its original run. Nostalgia-glasses may have smoothed out some of the rougher edges, but it was a messy show from the start. Perfect television is rarely remembered as fondly as something like Gilmore Girls continues to be, and it's precisely those strange story choices and jokes that fall flat that make it special.
The episodes are too long, however, testing the patience of even the biggest Gilmore Girls fan at more than double the length of a traditional instalment. If you're planning to binge this, make sure you have plenty of coffee and pop tarts on hand.
We'll stop here, for fear of spoiling even the tiniest plot point. Overall, this is a perfect example of using the revival trend for good. It's bursting with love and care, everyone involved here because they believe in the story and the characters as deeply as the audience do. It's what fans have been waiting for, and at times it's even more than we could have hoped.
Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life lands on Netflix on Friday the 25th of November.