In June, my friend Anita, who is in her 60s, was in town and wanted to check out Don't Tell Mama, a piano bar in the theater district that she once had a really good string of nights at in the 90s. Since I am a pessimistic curmudgeon, I knew there was no way it would live up to her memories and of course, I was right. It was loud, sticky, and probably fun if you're drunk and in the right kind of mood, but a horror show for anyone over 25 and sober. Watching "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" is like trying to revisit a place from your youth as an adult and realizing nothing is the same and even if it was, your brain probably wouldn't allow you to register it.
Someone on Reddit compared it to the BoJack Horseman quote where he says, "I felt like a Xerox of a Xerox of a person," noting too much time had passed between the original show and the revival, causing everyone to "act how they think they acted back when they were those people." It's an imitation of a bygone era that only makes time's passage feel more acute. I hate to keep dredging up that Perfume Genius tweet, but I, too, "like watching The Gilmore girls because they are never scared of dying." Unfortunately, in "AYitL," I can feel the threat of death creeping in. While watching, I am constantly reminded that these characters are getting older, which means I'm getting older and pretty soon, we'll all be dead. That is not how I want to feel when I visit Stars Hollow.
In "AYitL," which I honestly barely remember because I don't want to, everyone is unhappy. Rory's career is floundering, she's dating some guy she obviously doesn't give a shit about... she's basically the poster child for former gifted kid syndrome. Lorelai and Luke have been in a stable relationship for many years, but they're still unmarried and while that might not matter to some people, it clearly does to Lorelai. In the original run of the show, she wanted to get married and have more kids. When she and Luke got back together at the end of S7, there was nothing stopping them from going ahead with those plans, so why didn't they? Paris and Doyle are divorced; Lane and Zack are still together; Richard is dead and yet Emily has not come out as a late-in-life lesbian. Characters and circumstances have changed, just not in a sensical way considering nine years have passed. They've aged, but any relationship or character development that would have happened was put on pause.
The Palladinos exited the show after S6, so they never got to end the show like they originally envisioned. Instead of taking their S7 ideas and throwing them out the window, they forced them to fit characters who were nine years older. For example, "the last four words" hit much harder coming from 23-year-old Rory vs. 31-year-old Rory. If ASP hadn't mentioned them for nearly a decade in post-OG "Gilmore" interviews, she could have taken the narrative in a different direction; unfortunately, she backed herself into a corner with little choice but to double down and commit. The character who makes the most sense in "AYitL" is undoubtedly Emily, and I think that's because Edward Herrmann's (Richard) death forced her story in a new direction.
Pair it with a Crodocake, Luke's Diner coffee (which you now realize tastes like pennies), and then wash it down with a Gob Bluth Forget-Me-Now.
