For me, having relocated to L.A. from a variety of colder climes I vastly prefer, Gilmore Girls has always been — among many things — a tantalizing array of cute coats, hats, scarves, and boots, worn on strolls through the pleasantly crisp winter wonderland of my dreams, in which no cars careen off icy roads and nobody’s nose runs unbidden into his or her scarf. So there’s no way I could resist documenting the costumes in A Year In The Life. Fashion thoughts are in the slideshow; plot thoughts are below.
Oh, and in each recap I’ll refrain from spoiling the upcoming installments, so please do the same in the comments. Not everyone had a chance to blitz through these (or maybe didn’t want to, so as to prolong the experience). Let’s not ruin it for them. Some information about various relationships came out in dribs and drabs, so I’ve tried to be solid about what we haven’t found out yet.
Okay, holdouts, turn away if you’ve not seen it yet… 3… 2… 1… Are they gone? Right: Onto the storylines. (This will be a bit longer than in future recaps because I have to set up a lot of stuff.) I did love Gilmore Girls very much, warts and all, so watching this reboot felt like slipping into a warm bath: Yes, the water still gets cold too fast, and the bubbles don’t last, and sometimes my book gets wet and my neck starts to hurt. But the overall sensation is so comforting and relaxing and familiar that I can’t figure out why I don’t take them more often.
Rory: At first Rory blows in from London like a traveling success story, fresh off a buzzy “Talk of the Town” piece in The New Yorker — which Luke tucked into the back of the diner menu, because he’s being a proud dad — and full of meetings and promise. But quickly, the show becomes vague about just how successful she’s been in the past decade. Some of that is intentional, as Rory is trying to project more calm and optimism than she feels, and some of it is that I don’t entirely know if THEY had a handle on it. Like, they make it sound like she’s got good name recognition, but it’s also weird that she’d have said name recognition without having been on staff somewhere writing regular columns. They mention she wrote for The Atlantic a few times, is being recruited by a blog she disdains called Sandee Says because they want “that Rory Gilmore voice,” and has been asked by Conde Nast for a meeting that keeps getting pushed. But the rest is really unclear, and she shows little drive — which actually adds up for me; I buy Rory as a girl for whom adulation and accolades have so far come easily, and now that she’s got to push for it, she doesn’t know how. She’s rudderless, and without a solid job has given up her apartment in New York on the pretense of it being pointless due to her writerly travels. Instead, she spreads out her belongings across Lorelai’s, Emily’s, Paris’s, and her friend Deedee’s in London — who, in fact, turns out to be…
Logan: He and Rory are hooking up on the sly in his fancy UK pad, with a “whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” bent to it. (It’s basically, “When we’re together, we’re together, and when we’re not, we’re not.”) There’s a deep well of feeling and dependence on one another, but a total lack of willingness to make it official or permanent or to stop dallying with other people. He alludes to a ladyfriend who’s based in France — hence, his sexual freedom — and Rory is revealed to have a boyfriend named…
Paul: And Paul is the worst, through no especial fault of Paul’s. It’s what Paul represents. Basically, Gilmore Girls bites off a large chunk of Arrested Development and the Ann Veal story (“Her?!?”) by claiming Rory is dating a guy named Paul — and has, for two years at this point — whom nobody remembers exists. Including Rory. She even sets calendar reminders for their dates, only to forget until it’s too late and then make a note to herself about how she should really get around to breaking up with that guy. He’s nothing but a punch line, except that they also make him exceptionally decent and thoughtful, like when he gives Luke his grandfather’s antique wrench. It’s so mean to poor Paul. Arrested Development is, at least, a show about amusing jerks, where amusing jerkitude has a place front-and-center. Rory is one of the hearts of Gilmore Girls and is thus not meant to be an amusing jerk; she might screw up occasionally, and she’s as self-involved as the next teen/twentysomething/thirtysomething, but she is supposed to have a better nature. Instead, her lazily cruel treatment of Paul makes her awful, and nobody calls her out on it. Nor does anyone suggest that perhaps Rory simply can’t handle being alone, and thus is keeping some comfort food on the back burner until a better meal is delivered. Instead, everyone laughs about poor lame forgettable Paul. Then again, if Paul puts up with having a girlfriend he never sees because she keeps not showing up, he might be too stupid to live. Speaking of things that are not alive…
Richard: Edward Hermann and Richard Gilmore are both gone, too soon and so sadly, and I miss them. So do…
Lorelai & Emily: The two of them still have that same “one step forward, two steps to the side, another half-step forward, then three steps back” kind of relationship, fueled here by one of the least-believable things Lorelai has done. Basically, she pleases Emily by not fleeing Richard’s wake at the earliest opportunity, but then both ladies pass the bourbon all night and it leads to Emily asking the last clutch of mourners to share their favorite Richard stories. Instead of thinking about a positive or artful answer, Lorelai switches seats to be further away from her turn and then tries to wriggle out of the group, but gets caught in some dude’s wheelchair. Then, when Emily encourages her to share, Lorelai word-vomits something lousy and bitter about Richard catching her having sex at 15 and raging about it in front of their friends, and the time they were playing hide and seek and he left her crouched in a steamer trunk because he went on a business trip. This leads to a huge fight in which Emily’s justifiable anger and embarrassment turns into her wondering why Lorelai has such contempt for their family, and Lorelai’s lame behavior for a forty-something woman — and inability to justify it — dwarfs any legitimate point she has about their strained family life. Worse, Lorelai keeps insisting Emily put her on the spot, but the scene itself shows that she had plenty of time to muster something, the way most normal humans would do — or even to say, “I’m too sad and drunk to tell a story right now.” The thing is, the ensuing fight is good emotional ground for them to tread, but too often Gilmore Girls gets there by having one person behave in a way no normal person would behave. Yes, Lorelai has her defense mechanisms, and her parents turn her into the worst version of herself, but I still had trouble with her complete inability to punt. Even Rory wonders later why Lorelai didn’t just say something benign like, “He was a great reader.” Sigh. The net effect is that things return to being frosty between them, until Lorelai suggests that Emily see a grief therapist and Emily not only agrees but finds someone she likes. The look of sheer pleasure on Lorelai’s face when Emily calls to thank her… well, Lauren Graham puts years of longing to feel validated into that one smile. The gratification is so irresistible that she merrily agrees to “meet” the therapist, which Luke points out is code for, “Come to my sessions with me.” So, “Spring” will bring with it family therapy. The fight with Emily does lead to her saying cruel things about…
Lorelai & Luke. In the heat of their post-wake fight, Emily jabs at Lorelai for the fact that she and Luke aren’t married. She cruelly suggests this means they’re hardly a for-real partnership, and essentially advances the “you gave him the milk for free so he won’t buy the cow, and after a while free cows don’t look so good” trope. This, I think, is why Lorelai starts to wonder if she and Luke should have a baby. They have an uncomfortable chat in which it’s revealed that at one time or another, both of them were willing to think about it, but apparently ten years has not gifted them with the ability to communicate like human beings about anything so neither one of them knew the door was open. They look into using a surrogate, but Luke again doesn’t engage with the world like a regular human person, so he just freaks out and gets uncomfortable rather than have a proper conversation. I honestly think this is something Lorelai was only doing as a reaction to Emily’s goading, because that dredged up a fear of losing something more than what she already had. That’s the only way I can see so far that Richard’s death propels her arc forward. One issue I have with Lorelai sometimes is that nothing ever seems to affect her unless she’s talking to another person whom it affects as much, or more. Case in point, the loss of Richard appears to have no impact on her whatsoever except when she’s at the funeral and forced to stare at her own grief, hugging a sad Rory at said funeral, or fighting with a grieving Emily during and after it. Otherwise, in “Winter,” there’s no sense that his loss has changed anything or left her with any kind of hole. She even roundly, aggressively, persistently mocks Emily for the giant-size portrait of Richard in her house, as if it’s of a loyal dog or a former maid and not her dead husband of 50 years. You don’t get to tell people how to grieve, Lorelai, even if it wasn’t intended to be that big.
The Dragonfly: Sookie’s absence is explained by some fascination she’d developed with plants. In typically Gilmore fashion, The Dragonfly fills her absence with pop-up kitchens from hugely famous chefs that inexplicably agree to this job, and are then fired for benign things (moving the coffeemaker), leaving the inn with… no chef at all? At least Michel is still running things with his iron fist.
What I’m Missing: Rory and Lorelai didn’t really discuss anything meaningful. Like, I don’t recall them having any conversation at all about Luke or surrogacy or anything, even though they went to Paris – yes, Paris, who is now a fertility guru — for help. Lorelai also never told her about the fight with Emily at the wake (Rory left earlier because she had to fly to London, ostensibly for work but also for her regular booty call), so Rory found out afterward. Their relationship may have necessarily changed a bit in ten years, but “Winter” didn’t give much flavor to how or why. I felt like they were in separate orbits a bit too much. (If I’m conflating this detail with the situation in another episode, I apologize.)
