What I'm Watching: "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life"

Finished Netflix's Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life last night and I have a lot of feelings. Personally, I loved it.

Well, I loved "Winter" and "Fall," anyway. I could have done without a lot (most of) of "Spring" and "Summer" for various reasons — that agonizing Stars Hollow musical and an anvil-over-the-head hammering of certain jokes over and over again (Kinky Boots and 30-something Gang, I'm looking squarely at you) — but I loved the final four words and I ultimately loved the journey that Lorelai and Rory went over over these six seasons and the revival (yes, six seasons because I refuse to acknowledge the "gas leak" season) and I loved the callbacks, circular storytelling, and ultimate reveal that the revival was leading up to, one that revealed the deeper context of earlier scenes.

*SPOILERS*

Was it perfect? No, it wasn't. (Again, see: "Spring" and "Summer.) Was it bloated? Yep. (Same.) But "Fall" in particular made me, well, happy: Lorelai's phone call to Emily, the payoff involving the portrait, the final four words, Lorelai and Rory sitting on the Stars Hollow gazebo, the show's weird eccentricities and its even more eccentric characters, the way Stars Hollow offered a utopian version of Twin Peaks, and the pull that the town had on the central characters — how it was initially an escape for Lorelai and how it was ultimately home for Rory, drawing her back in.

(While I didn't love Rory's unprofessional behavior as a journalist, I did appreciate the show's notion that seemingly gifted and brilliant Rory might not have the future that everyone ascribed for her as a child/young adult. Life so rarely turns out the way you expect, after all. It's messy and often cruel.)

I did appreciate the symmetry of having Rory be 32 years old now, the same age that Lorelai was when we first met the two of them. And that Rory is the product of a different time than her mother, but that they are essentially quite similar: strong-willed, independent, and stubborn to a fault. And that ultimately neither truly reaches their full potential.

Does it make Gilmore Girls a tragedy? In a way, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. In a show that can often have a tendency towards the twee, it grounded the revival in a meaningful and unexpected way. To me, it fully repositioned Rory in Lorelai's role, albeit with a caring, compassionate mother, doomed — or privileged? — to follow the same cycle as her mother, to find a partner that wasn't a man. And it allowed Lorelai to finally let someone else in who wasn't her child.

Stray thoughts:

—Six or eight one-hours would probably have served this better than four 90-minute movies (though the finale, while 102 minutes, felt more brisk than the previous three installments).

—I loved everything with Paris (save for that bizarre Tristan freak-out, particularly as it wasn't Chad Michael Murray and what would Tristan have been doing at Chilton alumni day as he didn't actually graduate from Chilton), though wondered why the hell Scott Cohen couldn't have shown up as Max —some of the Headmaster Charleston stuff would have even worked more effectively if it had been Max and Rory's conversation — and where Madeline and Louise were.

—Why so much Kirk and so little Miss Patty (particularly in the town hall meetings, from which she was entirely absent)?

—Love you, Sutton, but ouch, that entire storyline was painful and painfully extended.

—I wanted so much more from those therapy sessions.

—I loved Rory's meet-cute with Dean at Doose's Market, where they had their first kiss and the cornstarch callback. And I loved how sad and nostalgic it was and how she framed their relationship. (I might be the only viewer that actually did like Rory and Logan together, even though he was engaged and wasn't breaking that commitment despite continuing to sleep with Rory.)

—Sam Phillips' "Reflecting Light" is one of my all-time favorite songs and one of my all-time favorite Gilmore Girls moments and I loved how it was used here in the off-kilter fairytale moment that utilized it perfectly.

—I hated the subplot about the pop-up restaurant chefs at the Dragonfly. HATED. It made me cringe each and every time.

—Not enough Melissa McCarthy as Sookie, but I'll take what I can get.

I believe that we're often (or always) attempting to return home or that we struggle to return home to a place that never existed. The revival is ultimately the embodiment of "saudade," the love that remains. It's nostalgia and longing and heartache and regret all at once. The Gilmore Girls revival might not be perfect, but it's captures the reason why we attempt to reclaim the things we've loved and lost: sometimes there are rare moments of magic.