‘Gilmore Girls’ creates nostalgia

Reunion series ends with suspenseful cliffhanger

Jayne Stevenson

 

After almost 10 years since the final episode of “Gilmore Girls,” the show returns for a series of four 90-minute episodes called “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” The four episodes: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, seem to put the avid “Gilmore Girls” watcher at peace after endlessly waiting for the release. For most of the reunion I believed I would have the resolution I needed from “Gilmore Girls” — that is, until the last four words of the series.

While most fans awaited the arrival of Rory’s three ex-boyfriends, I felt especially disappointed with the division between the Dragonfly Inn staff. Although Melissa McCarthy, who plays Lorelai’s best friend Sookie, has had many roles since the end of the show, her dream with Lorelai and Michel helped make the Dragonfly Inn so memorable. While Sookie went on sabbatical and didn’t return until the last episode and Michel looked for work at a new inn, the Dragonfly Inn lost its specialty. It was hard to witness changes in the show having felt like I was there for the characters’ seven seasons of development and life accomplishments.

The saddest loss of actors was Edward Herrmann, who played Rory’s grandfather but passed away in 2014. The show respectfully honored the character Richard Gilmore, but the show didn’t feel the same without him.

While many of the characters retained their characteristics — Lorelai and Rory with their coffee addiction and junk food diet, and Luke with his famous flannels and baseball caps — the reunion clearly filled in the changes in technology and society since 2007. With iPhones, Wi-Fi, laptops, references to Putin, man buns, Yelp, Uber and various product placements, Stars Hollow transformed itself into a more modern town. While the show’s changes may fit with current times, an upgraded Stars Hollow is not what I expected or wanted to see. My memory of Stars Hollow was a quaint, small town, and the adaption to more modern applications made it lose some of the charm I loved.

My main hopes for the show were to see Lorelai and Luke and Rory and Logan together. In the first episode the audience finds out Rory has a boyfriend named Paul, however he goes unnoticed by everyone, including Rory. The audience soon discovers Rory has a “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” relationship with her ex-boyfriend Logan when she’s in London, who happens to be engaged. While I have always been Team Logan, I felt conflicted for the entire show supporting two cheaters. In the original show Rory also slept with her married ex-boyfriend Dean, which makes it even more distasteful to see Rory repeat her mistakes from the past.

Rory’s setbacks during the reunion make her character more relatable to real life challenges than ever before. Although Rory had a piece published in the New Yorker, her career is in a slump. In high school and college, Rory seemed to have the perfect life. Following the words of Lorelai, it was her “turn for a few curve balls.” However, as Rory struggled with her journalism career, she found her new calling to write “Gilmore Girls,” a book about her and Lorelai’s life.

As the last episode of the reunion ended, I felt content and shed some tears as Luke and Lorelai finally got married in their town of Stars Hollow. With a minute left in the show, the only thing I needed was for Logan to profess his love to Rory. Instead, the show that followed the story of a mom who got pregnant at 16 finally reached full cycle as Rory ended the series telling Lorelai she is pregnant. Although the overall reunion connected the audience with the characters it missed for years, the ending cliffhanger created even more uncertainty than I felt before. Rory’s final words did not give me the closure I wanted, but instead sparked more questions.

While I’ve heard series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino intended to end the show revealing Rory’s pregnancy, all I can hope is that the audience will eventually receive some answers to finally feel at peace with “Gilmore Girls.”