Twitter last night was a playground. It was the Christmas Eve of we Canadians getting a new Prime Minister, the Blue Jays had yet to make us anxious and dramatic, and I was texting Lainey about The News: Gilmore Girls is slated to have a limited-series revival on Netflix (where limited-series apparently means four 90-minute movies).
You know. If you’re a Gilmore fan, you know. Amy Sherman-Palladino would never do it if all the essential players weren’t in, if she couldn’t do it exactly as she wanted to. This means all those conditions have been met (and though I won’t miss Sookie if she’s not there, I bet Melissa McCarthy shows up. She likes being at the party).
But I’m not actually interested in Gilmore fans for this article. I’m interested in those who aren’t.
If you love TV, and the screwed-up human interpersonal-dynamics aspect of who we are, and you want to see women on TV get to be complicated people, this is about that.
Mothers and daughters who want to change their dynamic but won’t and can’t. Women who know they need to stop giving time to the jerk, but nobody ever said the jerk was going to be able to go six rounds about Chaucer in a way that you never knew you needed. People who swear up and down that money and class don’t matter – until it does and they need it to and they know they’re hypocrites but can’t help it. People who say their friends are the most important to them, but are selfish anyway. People who wonder if their families made them this way in the first place.
This isn’t interesting to you? You don’t want to watch a show where women after women make complicated and unusually layered decisions?
Oh, you were fooled by the gazebo? Or the La-la-la music? That’s okay. You didn’t realize this show’s teenage character reads more books in a month than you have since you left university, and references the books in a way that reminds you you’re embarrassed not to have read them yet?
It celebrates smart. It’s unapologetically complicated. There’s not even a hint of ‘happily ever after’. It’s now going to be finished the way it should have been in the first place.
Most importantly—I have managed to wear Lainey down. She’s going to watch over the Christmas break. I can’t wait for her to meet Paris. You?
