Gilmore Girls: A Year in The Life - Review
Series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino returns to give Lorelai, Rory, and Emily Gilmore the proper finale the show deserved.
Arrested Development. The X-Files. Heroes (Reborn). 24. The recent trend of TV shows being resurrected highlighted a fact about TV series that dare return from the cancellation grave: they suck.
TV has a different cultural connection to the viewer than most other mediums. It is produced with a much faster turnaround due to commercial imperatives, meaning series often have a greater connection to the zeitgeist. Once the series stops reflecting the mood of the viewer, they lose the passion that drives the show. Bring a show back from the grave and you’re stuck trying to retrofit an old passion into a completely different cultural mood. It is an almost impossible task.
Which is what makes the Gilmore Girls continuation such a wonderful treat. Not only does it not suck, but it also delivers the series an essential conclusion which, once seen, it’s impossible to think of the show ending any other way.
Girl From Mars
The danger for series revivals like Gilmore Girls 2016 is achieving the balance between providing enough moments for fans of the show to make them feel again included in the return of the show, while also creating pathways forward to ensure that it isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia.
The 2014 Veronica Mars movie failed at this, using much of its run-time to shoe-horn in references to the original series, while burdening it with an excess of cameos. It was almost a masterclass in how not to handle a series revival. Thankfully the balance is better struck with Gilmore Girls.
Much of the fan service is handled within the first episode of the series. Rory Gilmore returns to town after a longer than usual absence, which gives the show an opportunity to catch-up with beloved characters without bringing the narrative to a crashing standstill.
The show also manages to avoid the pitfalls that Arrested Development found itself struggling with: bringing together an in-demand cast who were largely otherwise attached to other series in production. That series separated the cast, pushing them into individual narratives. Here, we do see a whole lot of scenes with both Lorelai and Rory engaging with beloved characters in side-storylines, but it’s difficult to tell entirely whether that was by design to accommodate schedules, or whether it was really just adhering to the structure of the original series which generally kept Rory and Lorelai apart.
Regardless, the only thing here that doesn’t feel like Gilmore Girls is the 90 minute TV movie length. Doubling the episode length means that writer-directors Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino are given additional time to pad out their episodes with unnecessary padding. Both can be hit or miss when given the opportunity to indulge their off-beat storytelling approaches. Sometimes it yields gold, other times it falls flat. Across these four episodes, the indulgences are all the more noticeable when they crash with a thud.
The Magnificent Gilmore Girls
Perhaps reflective of series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s own feelings on a show no longer under her control for its final season, as the Gilmore Girls return for this four TV movie event, the titular girls have fallen on hard times. The once vibrant and promising lives that the girls lived have become fallow.
Despite its Magnificent Ambersons beginnings, the series is clearly on a path to put both Rory and Lorelai through a trial, with both having completely lost their mojo. While it’s difficult (as a fan of the characters) to watch that, particularly through the 90-minute runtime of the movies, the inevitable final act rally as they make a concerted effort to get their groove back is a strong reminder of how the show can feel when at its absolute best.
The fact that we have spent time away from the characters as their forward momentum has gone into decline makes their woes hurt all the more. It’s as though our absence from their lives has contributed to their downfall.
From a narrative perspective and stepping outside the dorky fan-perspective, the time jump between the original series and this set of TV movies works remarkably well to the shows benefit. This is particularly true for the journey of the Emily Gilmore character who spends much of this limited series processing grief. While it is sad that the show was robbed of Edward Herrmann, following his recent passing, his absence frees up Emily to reach an incredibly satisfactory endpoint on her own terms. Of any character arc resolution, Emily’s is, by far, the most satisfactory.
That isn’t to say that Lorelai and Rory are denied satisfactory conclusions. While the time jump provides greater weight to their stories, one could envisage their arcs working just as well at the conclusion of the original series.
The only thing that is damaged by the conclusion is the highly anticipated four final words.
The fab four
No, don’t expect a revelation here as to what the four final words are. Just know this: when Amy Sherman-Palladino revealed that she knew what the final four words would have been if she had created the show, it resulted in two things.
1) Fan enthusiasm was kept alive as speculation over what those four words would have been (btw, I completely nailed it), which helped bring the show back.
2) While the words completely validate the entire shows run and structure, it forces a Lost-like situation where the show stops being about the journey and is instead focused on a single end point for many fans. And boy are those fans going to be disappointed by what is said.
Expect a decaf mid-show
Fans of the show know that the joys of an Amy Sherman-Palladino production also come with episodes written by her husband Daniel. His episodes are usually broader in comedic intent, while plumbing pop culture for a deeper connection to characters. As ASP directs the first and final chapters of this 4-part limited series, Daniel handles the middle two. And for some viewers, this is where the return will be incredibly divisive. This is especially felt in the third installment, ‘Summer’’.
Personally, I really enjoy Daniel Palladino’s work, but he walks a tightrope and not every decision made is the right choice.
The opening of Spring delivers the shows absolute best, laugh-out loud moment as Stars Hollow patriarch Taylor Doose remains oblivious to a specific issue surrounding the staging of a gay pride parade in the town. This is absolutely Palladino at his best.
And then there’s the final third of the show which is given over to the performance of a stage show that wears out its welcome by a good 10 minutes before it finishes. Where the dance sequences in Bunheads were genuinely engaging and validated the environment of that show, here it is an aberrance. The show comes to an absolute crashing halt as the show changes gears, driven entirely by characters with which the audience have zero familiarity.
Et tu, Bunheads?
While Amy and Daniel were away from Stars Hollow, they were busy working on other shows. Most notably, their recent one-season collaboration Bunheads.
The show, about a group of girls who attend a ballet school in a sleepy coastal town, was an absolute gem that deserved a wider audience. It is absolutely the best series that Amy and Daniel have produced to date.
While it is great that Gilmore Girls and a whole bunch of other shows are getting the chance to return to TV screens, Bunheads simply never will. That show was about the journey of teenage girls dealing with passions, heartbreak, and bodies that really aren’t made for ballet. With those girls now much closer to adulthood, Bunheads is lost to us.
Unless you’re watching Gilmore Girls 2016 where there are Bunheads galore. While none of the actors are playing the same characters (heck, one is aged up to a 30+ Stars Hollow resident), it was a delight to find them on screen speaking the language of Palladino once more.
The only time the snappy, forceful dialogue ever quit in Bunheads was during the shows dance sequences. It seems that the DNA of Bunheads continues to live on in the showrunners, with both Amy and Daniel delivering a choreographed musical sequence in the final two episodes.
Where Daniel’s effort completely tanks Summer, Amy’s is an incredibly welcome distraction, infusing a 1940’s speakeasy dance sequence into the series with limited effort.
The Pop Tart denouement
Despite the fan service being kept to a minimum, the four TV movies are a production for fans of the show. Just as the final episode of a series isn’t built to deliver new viewers, this too is constructed purely as a send-off to a beloved show.
Any new viewers who stumble into the show will be confused by so much. Especially Kirk.
Gilmore Girls 2016 is a clunky, awkward, flabby beast filled with characters that you’ll adore, genuine laugh-out loud moments, and a couple of genuinely touching moments. In that sense it is no different to the original series run.
