Netflix – Gilmore Girls – A Year in the Life
Netflix – Gilmore Girls a Year in the Life. Not perfect, but full of beautiful moments. There were a few excellent one-liners (What was the exact moment you became a Mamet play?), David Foster Wallace references and a Hamilton send-up, “Stars Hallow Musical,” that was sublime. This section featured a scene-stealing Sutton Foster (and her former husband, Christian Borie). OMG. That was incredible on so many levels.
There was also a great riff on surprise wedding flash mobs – only with Steely Dan. “Old guys appear, and their hair falls out!”
This is the best reboot of a canceled TV series ever. While it was a tad too severe and nostalgic, there was enough fun and wackiness to recapture some of the original vibes that made it the cult hit it became. While some sections were missed (the “Wild” team didn’t work for me), seeing all the great characters again, including Melissa McCarthy, was satisfying. All older and thicker around the middle, they still had some of the exuberant charms the then cast of unknowns infused in those first couple of magical seasons.
For the uninitiated, here is my advocacy/review of the show with a horrible name I wrote about ten years ago.
Gilmore Girls
Forget about the mess of season 7 – that must have been an inescapable contractual nightmare. In seasons 1-6, we meet the inhabitants of Stars Hallow – a fictional and idyllic community where people we know and recognize on an archetypal level talk unbelievably quickly and pepper their conversation with cultural references that include everything from Alanis Morrissette to Waiting for Godot. Who can resist a show that makes Charlie Rose a frequent punchline?
Watching the show can be like playing trivial pursuit and will have you google-ing several times during each episode. The plots can be cheesy, but watching Lauren Graham delivering the brilliant dialogue of creator Amy Sherman-Paladino and her husband Daniel Paladino is a television wonder that shouldn’t be delayed because of a terrible title. Anytime I ask, “Have you seen Gilmore Girls?” I lose credibility – for no reason. Great show.
