With the next chapter of Gilmore Girls FINALLY arriving to Netflix this fall, I’ve been very much in the Stars Hollow spirit. I recently got my mom hooked on the early seasons; she’s en route to complete her binge before the 4-episode arch launches at the end of November—which, could there be a better release date?
November 25th.
The day after Thanksgiving.
Talk about having an easy answer to the gratefulness question at the dinner table.
“Yes, I’m thankful for Lorelai and Rory and Emily and Luke and if any of you say anything different you can take your turkey and go.”
My mom had never watched the show before. Never hopped on the Hep Alien bandwagon.
Get it.
The Hep Alien bandwagon…
…LIKE LANE’S BAND…
Never mind, let’s just move on, I Dean not mean to ruin the flow.
It wasn’t long after my mom started season 1 on Netflix that she was hooked. Suddenly I was getting texts in the late evening asking for ideas on how to fix her malfunctioning Chrome Cast so she could get her “Gilmore fix.” And now every few days I catch up with her on where she is, on how everyone in Stars Hollow is doing, and she constantly raves about her favorite character: Emily Gilmore, a.k.a Lorelai’s mother a.k.a the flawless Kelly Bishop.
As she fills me in, I always smile and shake my head, both in fond recollection of the early episodes and in amazement of how much further the characters have to go before they reach “present day” or, the start of upcoming miniseries.
There are so many emotions left to emote, so many fights left to fight, so many laughs left to laugh, so many “so many’s.” The characters essentially have multiple lives to live before they are ready to embark on the aptly titled “Year in the Life,” and this got me thinking: how many lives do we have left to live in these lives of ours?
We are all in different places, going through different things, wishing things would change, wishing things wouldn’t, and yet we have no idea how much farther we have to go, or how many more adventures we are set to face.
When we watch television shows, especially long running series’ like Gilmore Girls, we inadvertently become a part of the characters’ lives, going through everything they go through, feeling every single feel. When I think of it now, I can picture so many episodes where the characters seemed hopeless and how I sat “with them”, feeling that same feeling, wondering, “How can we fix this?” But then again, now I can also look back and think, “things get better” and “you get through this, I promise” and “the silver lining is right around the corner!”
In our own lives, we’re able to do this with hindsight, with lessons learned and memories stored. We can think back to times that were dark and wish our former selves would have known to cheer up, as better things were coming, things we never could have imagined.
So as I anxiously await the arrival of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, wondering where life will take them next and reliving—with my mom—where they’ve already been in the first seven seasons, it’s hard not to realize how much this show reflects all of our lives. How we never know what’s around the corner, whether it’s going to be light or dark or breezy or difficult, but that we can trust it’s something we need to go through in order to end up where we’re meant to be.
Which is hopefully with Jess.
I mean, hopefully Rory ends up with Jess.
You know what I meant.
Kimberlee K. 
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