Gilmore Girls is my favorite show. I watched it as a teenager with my mom when it first aired on the WB. I watched it with my husband when we were newlyweds. We are now on our third re-watch together.
Those are just the times I’ve watched it from start to finish, by the way. I’ve watched plenty of re-runs of my favorite and not-so-favorite episodes. I’ve memorized chunks of dialogue. I can attribute outfits to plot points. I have opinions. A lot of opinions.
I’ve been dreaming up a Gilmore Girls-centric series for my newsletter for months, in which I can share these opinions, express all of my feelings, and hopefully strike up some conversations with fellow fans.
Now, at the height of fall, after having just watched “The Pilot” for the umpteenth time, it feels like the right time to kick it off.
Welcome, to Guerra Talks Gilmore.
Returning to Stars Hollow feels like coming home. I share Lorelai’s passion for hard work and find her wit infectious. I share Rory’s love for books (I don’t think she actually loves writing, but I’ll get to that somewhere down the road) and her selective type-A personality. I long for their iron stomachs and wish that I, too, could eat endless amounts of cheese fries, pizza, Pop-Tarts, coffee, and so on without getting a stomach ache (so I live vicariously through them).
True, these women and the characters they come in contact with throughout seven seasons (plus a revival) are fiction. But gosh, I am so heavily invested in their lives and you know why?
Because Amy and Dan Palladino are phenomenal storytellers. They’ve perfected the flawed character. Their quick and intelligent dialogue is intoxicating. I hang on every character’s every word. And do not even get me started on their affinity for writing relationships between characters - romantic, platonic, and familial.
It is my hope and dream to create characters within my novels that my readers will love and care for, the way the Gilmore Girls fandom loves and cares for this mother-and-daughter duo. And so, I thought, what better way to learn how to achieve just that, than by studying the work?
Here’s what you can expect from this series: Commentary on the episodes, critiques on plot, character analysis, some opinions, and probably a lot of hot takes (like Mitchum Huntsberger was right and April Nardini was not the problem). But, seeing as I’m only one episode in, this post in particular is going to be relatively light.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
The opening.
I love the introduction to this series. The camera pans to Lorelai crossing the street to Luke’s Diner (at this point, Luke’s is mostly a hardware store, with a few tables and a very small counter - curious how it grows in square footage in the next few episodes), claiming the table closest to the door, and spinning toward Luke, clutching a generously sized mug for a bare-bones coffee shop.
This isn’t exactly a meet cute, since we learn within the characters’ first dialogue exchange that they’re plenty familiar with each other - so much so that Luke knows Lorelai’s already had multiple cups of coffee already that day - but it is cute all the same. Their exchange also gives viewers a first taste of the quick wit that is paramount to the show’s originality.
From there, Lorelai gets hit on by Joey, a rando just “passing through on [his] way to Hartford,” who isn’t great at taking hints but eventually moves along when Lorelai makes it very clear she is not only meeting someone but not interested. Enter Rory, stage left. Lorelai goes to get Rory coffee, and Joey takes her place, now shooting his shot with Rory. Lorelai swiftly returns to the table to tell Joey to take a hike (in so many words) and he flees when she reveals that Rory is, in fact, her daughter.
We clock their closeness in age and unique bond, and voila. We’re sucked into the storyline of a unique mother-daughter duo.
Rory’s really unfortunate sweater.
I won’t spend too much time on this. I wrote an entire article about Rory’s infamous fisherman sweater for InStyle, so you can read the full extent of my disgust with this look here.
I know it had a moment this fall. I know everyone was on the hunt for Rory Gilmore’s knit cream sweater. And, listen, I have no issue with the sweater itself. It does look cozy. But I am baffled by the way it was styled. When Lorelai asks her daughter, “What’s with the mumu?” I wondered the same thing. But even more than that, what is with the green and yellow rope necklace around her neck?
No, Rory. Just no.
Getting acquainted with The Kim’s.
I don’t think The Kims get nearly enough credit for their performance in this show, but especially Mrs. Kim, played by Emily Kuroda. We meet Lane when she walks to school with Rory, but we get a better understanding of their friendship after school when they go to Lane’s house to do homework. These two have known each other since they were kids, and their relationship reminds me of the special bond I have with my oldest friend. They’re two very different people, with different backgrounds, but who love each other like family all the same.
Suki’s clumsiness.
I remember Suki being a bit spacey sometimes, but I forgot how chaotic they set her character up to be in the kitchen. She’s falling every five seconds, setting things on fire, getting stitches, opening her stitches. It’s giving Eric Matthews from Boy Meets World but in reverse. They sharpen up her character as time goes on, and the clumsiness fades away pretty quickly.
Dean and Rory’s meet cute.
There are video edits floating around social media that the way Dean introduces himself to Rory is creepy and kind of horror movie-esque, but I actually love it.
I’ll admit, I am a first-season-only Dean stan because I live for the good-looking new-guy-drawn-to-the-shy-quiet-girl trope. Say what you want about his “I watch you” speech being suss, but did any of you go to high school? Who didn’t want someone to notice them - and I mean really notice them? I had to wait until college before a boy took note of the book I was reading so he could surprise me with the sequel when I finished. And that boy, by the way, is now my husband. Dean may not be the ideal man, but he does have plenty of great qualities in the early episodes.
I also thought how flustered Rory got around Dean was adorable. Her stuttering about the cake shop selling round cakes gave me flashbacks to Baby’s “I carried a watermelon” in Dirty Dancing.
Ah, young love.
Setting up the plot of the entire show.
Never have I ever witnessed a more perfect setup of a show’s overarching plot. From Lorelai refusing to go to her parents for financial help, to having to cave when the bank refuses to give her a loan, to the brilliance that is Emily Gilmore coming up with the Friday night dinner arrangement, and all of the familial tension that ensues - it’s just fantastic. Brava, Amy and Dan.
A glimpse at Rory’s true persona.
Rory is so self-centered it’s ridiculous. Now, you might argue, “Every teenager is self-centered, Julia,” and, to a degree, you aren’t wrong. Teenagers are in their own little world and life revolves around them because they exist in the fishbowl that is high school and all the drama that comes with it.
However, when Lorelai - in her sassy Lorelai way - tried calling a truce over a very tense dinner by saying “Hey, I had dibs on being the bitch tonight,” and Rory responded by mumbling, “Just tonight?” I turned to my husband and said, “She’s lucky she isn’t my daughter.”
Listen, I get it. We’ve all been hopped up on hormones before, and it’s a rush when the person you like, likes you too, especially the first time it ever happens. But there’s no way I would have ever spoken to my mother like that, and this isn’t the last time Rory is rude or unfair to her mother for reasons that actually have to do with Lorelai.
So while, yes, Rory is tolerable and, sure, I’ll go as far as to say pleasant in the earlier season, she didn’t have a dramatic character change in her college years. She was bratty all along.
Richard’s confusing obsession with Christopher.
I never understood Richard’s warmth toward Christopher and coolness toward Lorelai. Christopher got his 16-year-old daughter pregnant. Most fathers would be furious. Sure, he was angry at the time, but his comments about how Christopher was this successful entrepreneur and businessman, and Rory must take after him irked me almost as much as I imagined they irked Lorelai. After all, she’s the one who’s running an inn, and who worked her way up while also figuring out life as a teenage mother.
She parented the daughter Christopher fathered. She made a life of herself without any help or financial backing. Christopher is just… well… we’ll see.
The ending.
It’s a happy one, mostly. We leave off with some tension between Lorelai and her parents, but no one plays the bitch card at their second dinner that night. The episode ends with Luke begging Rory not to become like her mother, to which she replies, “Too late.” Cue the warm and fuzzies.
Until next time.
❤️