Gilmore Girls revival a strong finish to fan favorite

The end of Gilmore Girls’ seven-year run of weekly episodes on network TV left fans feeling unsatisfied with its incomplete ending. The new, four-episode revival (released Friday on Netflix) brings both the nostalgia and satisfaction fans had hoped for while pushing the storyline to new territory.

Strong characters, witty banter, and mother-daughter dynamics allowed the original show to stand up to other weeknight competition like The West Wing, Sex and the City, and the The O.C. From 2000 to 2007, audiences watched Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) grow from a nervous 15-year-old to a poised Yale graduate while her mother, Lorelai (Lauren Graham), earned a business degree and opened her own inn in Stars Hollow, Conn.

Eight years later in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Rory is the stereotypical millennial, struggling to find a meaningful writing career and facing the reality of moving back home with no job. As long as Rory is unsettled and wandering during the first three episodes, viewers feel a little unsettled and weird, too. When she ultimately goes all Jo March, abandoning aspirations of writing for silly online magazines in favor of “writing what she knows,” everyone feels much better about her future.

The four 90-minute, movie-like episodes follow the seasons (winter, spring, summer, and fall) and allow for fun montages, physical comedy, and even music that isn’t possible in a traditional show. The story probably could have been summed up in one movie, but the seasonal scheme has a nice rhythm without feeling overstretched. The longer format also provides space for cameos by former supporting characters and other guest stars whom fans will recognize if they’ve continued to follow Graham and show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.

The revival takes the opportunity to do some good-natured teasing of middle-class women and the trends over which they obsess. The original show was famous for these offhand cultural references, but the new episodes weave them into the fabric of the story (think long-distance hiking and Japanese-style organization), making them all the more entertaining.

For all its hilarious side characters, the main premise of the Gilmore story started with a teenage pregnancy. Lorelai Gilmore might have made a series of stubborn or bad relationship decisions following Rory’s birth, but at age 16, she chose life.

In the revival, we also learn Lorelai has been living with her boyfriend for the last nine years. The relationship is not glorified; both partners struggle palpably with the uncertainty of their arrangement, ultimately concluding what’s missing is solid commitment.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to watch Rory, now 32, making some of the same sexual mistakes her mother made when we first met the pair in 2000. It’s even harder to watch her deceive family and friends in the meantime. Rory has an Ivy League degree and ends the last episode with a promising career ahead of her, but the famous “last four words” of the revival bring a bittersweet cliffhanger to her story.