Gilmore Girls be like:

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW (OBVIOUSLY!)

Time for some good old-fashioned Gilmore Girls review nonsense brought to you by me! Me, a literal moron who should not provide directions to the nearest grocery store let alone my opinions on television shows. But I do it anyway.

Before I get started, here’s a quick recap of all the “fun” names I use for the characters on the show:

C-Money = Christopher
Floppy = Dean
Broody = Jess
Smarmy = Logan
Judgy WASP Mom = Emily Gilmore
Spacey Grandpa = Richard Gilmore
Spiky = Tristan

Last chance to bail out if you don’t want to read spoilers. Seriously. I am going to spoil the FUCK out of this show. You have been warned.

Quotes from the first six seasons play over black credits as the show begins. The words have an echo on them, which to me makes this very ominous. Until the line “I smell snow,” I honestly thought we were going to have the first shot be a POV shot looking at the ceiling of a hospital room. Or have the sound of a flatline as Spacey Grandpa slips from this mortal coil. Nope! Cheerful La Las!

After that jarring entrance, we’re with Lorelai and Rory on the steps of the gazebo. Rory’s in town for one day before jetting back to London for work, so the girls have to get their taco/coffee/various other foods that have not yet been mentioned fix out of the way post haste. The most interesting thing about their walk & talk is learning that Stars Hollow still doesn’t have a functioning sewer system. Personal septic tanks are pretty common on the East Coast, but whole towns? Like, all the businesses are on a septic system? Is that legal? (I’m too lazy to google that to find out.)

Rory gets a phone call on one of her millions of cell phones but she can’t get any service in Stars Hollow because cell phones have stopped working there since the season she had a Sidekick. When she finally gets a signal she keeps running around like an idiot because she’s Rory and she’s quirky and fun and cute or some other nonsense the show is begging us to believe.

In Doosey’s, Rory runs into Lane who is sadly still living in Stars Hollow. Tragically, she’s still married to Zach. I had hoped that she would be fucking some super hot dude while playing in a band, but alas. Thus is the Tragic Life of Lane Kim.

While Lorelai is waiting for Rory to finish her phone call/catching up with the shit pile that is Lane’s life, this happens:

What the fuck? Kirk looks…good? What the hell happened? He’s even wearing a really nice coat! What universe is this? Is this the universe where Donald Trump didn’t get elected and we made progress on climate change?

As Rory and Lorelai walk back home in the snow, the god damned troubadour makes an appearance. NOOOOOOOOOO. NO. There are certain things I always hated about the Gilmore Girls and this motherfucker is one of them. He could have stayed back in 2005 and I wouldn’t have complained.

I was wondering why Rory didn’t meet Lorelai at Luke’s until we go to the Gilmore home and find Luke in the kitchen making dinner. Apparently everything is all good with Lorelai and Luke’s relationship? Are they married? Just living together? Oh, and Rory wrote a piece for the New Yorker but she no longer has an apartment or any permanent address. She feels that this is her time to be “rootless” and just allow life to take her wherever. With that, my theory that Amy Sherman-Palladino is writing Rory as a 22-year-old instead of the 32-year-old she actually is was born. There’s nothing wrong with not having all the typical markers of adulthood by the time you’re 32, everyone moves at their own pace. But, Rory shouldn’t just be deciding that this is her time to see where life takes her. That’s what she was doing in her 20s when she left Smarmy and joined the Obama campaign. But ASP didn’t watch season 7, so…

Also, for some reason Rory shipped all her stuff to all the people she knew. Lane has boxes and Lorelai has boxes and maybe other people do too? That’s inefficient.

Rory has a boyfriend (OF TWO YEARS) named Paul that no one ever remembers. Lorelai and Luke don’t remember any of the conversations they’ve had with him or the times they’ve met him.. Rory even forgets she’s dating him. I guess the joke is that he’s a forgettable guy, but they’re so indifferent to his existence that it makes all of them look like dicks.

On top of Rory’s weird mailing system and forgettable boyfriend, we learn that she really doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot going on career-wise. She’s not on staff anywhere and she’s freelancing. She did get a piece in the New Yorker but she had something fall through for The Atlantic. All the education and “RORY IS THE BEST!” and “EDITOR OF THE YALE DAILY NEWS!” and “SHE’S ON A PANEL AND THE BEST JOURNALIST EVER!” she’s just another struggling freelancer? Was Poppa Smarmy right about Rory not having what it took? (I always thought he was but the show didn’t seem to think that. Maybe it did?)

While talking at the table about how their lives are going, we get the first mention of Spacey Grandpa.

We knew he was going to be dead in the world of the show because Edward Herrmann is dead in real life. But I can’t help by tear up when I think that Richard Gilmore is gone. Even though he was a manipulative, money hungry jerk who delighted in certain cruelties, he was a good grandfather to Rory. He seemed to be a good friend. He loved his wife. There can never be a person, (or if they’re written correctly, a character,) that is pure good or ideologically pure. Human beings are too complicated to ever be “non-problematic.” That’s what I always appreciated about this show. The characters I care about the most are complex and they aren’t perfect.

At the Inn, Michele is finally out of the closet and married to a man named Frederick. What was the name of the night manager that he hated/loved? Is it that guy? Sookie is living in the woods or something? So ROY CHOI is running a pop-up restaurant from the Dragonfly? Uh huh. I’m totally buying that bullshit (no, no I’m not. This is fucking dumb.) Lorelai kicks him out like Emily Gilmore firing a maid.

The girls go to Hartford for Friday Night Dinner. Kelly Bishop has not aged a day. She looks amazing. As is custom, Judgy WASP Mom can’t communicate with her staff. I think this is supposed to be a joke but I’m not seeing it. And Judgy WASP Mom refuses to speak directly to Lorelai! Oh boy, I wonder why they hate each other now. Before we can find out, this happens:

Am I wrong to be upset that this mural painting is missing a mustache? After a blowout with Lorelai, we finally find out why Judgy WASP Mom is pissed. At Spacey Grandpa’s funeral, Judgy WASP Mom just wanted everyone to go around and say something nice about him. For some god damned reason, Lorelai didn’t want to participate and when it was her turn she started talking about the time her dad caught her fucking some dude when she was like 15. I know that Lorelai is a massively selfish disaster of a human being who cannot under any circumstances stand to be serious. But I don’t believe she would have done this at her father’s funeral. And I certainly don’t believe that she couldn’t think of a nice moment between her and her father! She could have mentioned the time he brought the dollhouse over or any of the hundreds of times he and Rory spent talking about books at the dinner table. She could have mentioned trying to set up his office when he started his business on his own. Any of those could have been quick anecdotes. But instead she does this?

She tries to blame it on scotch and it being late, but Judgy WASP Mom doesn’t buy it. Neither do I. My problem with this plot point is there doesn’t seem to be a real reason for Lorelai to act as she does. She tries to apologize but it doesn’t work. Judgy WASP Mom is nothing is if not the queen of holding a grudge. She tells Lorelai that she’s a selfish person who doesn’t give a damn about anyone else but herself. She’s not wrong.

Side note: Can we give Kelly Bishop the MVP award for this episode? I mean:

and

She killed every single scene she was in.

The funeral scene was hard to watch. One of the worst days of my life was the day of my father-in-law’s funeral. Watching the scene while they were all sitting in the chairs while the priest (pastor?) spoke, that was hard to get through because it made me remember taking my husband’s arm at the end of the mass and walking down the aisle of the church, my brother-in-law carrying the urn with his father’s ashes and his wife, my mother-in-law, weeping every step of the way. Patton Oswalt wrote in his wife’s obituary that his wife’s passing didn’t just leave a void. It left a “blast crater.” That’s what death does to us. It rips holes in our lives and all we can do it try to mend it in order to remain afloat. It doesn’t work. You can repair it but you can still see the crack, still see the spot on the wall where you spackled. It’s an emptiness that can never be filled.

You can feel that emptiness on the show.

Back in Stars Hollow, 48-year-old Lorelai asks Luke if he wants to have a baby. Apparently he does but his way of telling her was to point at a random child and say “that’s the kid” one time. Glad to see Luke and Lorelai’s communication has not improved in any way over the last several years.

How the hell is Lorelai going to have a kid? She’s 48! FORTY EIGHT. I’m 36 and I’m too fucking old to have one now so we’ve decided on being childfree for ever and ever (which is probably for the best considering we have no chance of reversing climate change now that Trump has been elected. We’re all gonna die! YAY!) After all the temping and the testing, all we ended up with was a “chemical pregnancy.” I didn’t care for it.

Thankfully, the show recognizes that Lorelai getting pregnant at 48 would take SCIENCE so they go visit PARIS GELLER in her fertility clinic office. GOD BLESS PARIS GELLER. She looks great (love this hair on her) and she’s exactly what I thought she’d be. She tough and brash and conquering the fucking world because of course she is. However, I’m a little confused on exactly what they think they’re doing at this clinic. Luke and Lorelai are there to pick out a surrogate, who is a woman who will carry their baby. Are these women also the egg donors? Or does that still come from Lorelai? She mentions using eggs over 45 can be a problem, but then doesn’t get them to say if they want a donor or not.

Rory is in London meeting with some woman who wants her to help her write a book about herself. Oh, good. A job, even if it’s not “what I do.” What the hell DOES Rory do if not write for a living? Only write New Yorker-like pieces? I bet she doesn’t even have a blog where she swears and talks about her dead relatives and miscarriage. Amature.

And this is where the whole god damned show goes sideways. WHO IS RORY FUCKING IN LONDON? SMARMY.

Fucking seriously??

This is just more evidence that ASP is writing Rory’s story like she hasn’t spent almost a decade out of college. Smarmy went to London at the end of Season 6. ASP has said she doesn’t really give a fuck about what happened in season 7, so Smarmy leaving London and his father’s company for Silicon Valley never happened. Smarmy proposing never happened. We’re just getting the story of Smarmy and Rory from Rory’s senior year. And it SUCKS.

We’re also getting “We’re just CASUAL!” Smarmy and Rory, which is even worse than committed relationship Smarmy and Rory. I don’t know why it just is! AND! Rory is cheating on her forgettable boyfriend with Smarmy. Gross.

Rory meets Paris in Stars Hollow and they go visit Lane. Luke is giving out fake wifi passwords to people because he doesn’t want people sitting at his diner using his wifi. Yes, we get it ASP. “Those people” should only be on their computers in the privacy of their own homes which are all set up to accommodate peak business/writing productivity. If you’re on a laptop in public, YOU AREN’T REALLY WORKING! Did I get that right? On behalf of “laptoppers” everywhere who don’t have ideal homes to hang out in to get work done, kiss my laptop using ass. I get up at 4:30 every morning in order to take my laptop to the Starbucks across the street from my office and write for a few hours. Why? Because if I try to write at home I don’t get up. Or I get distracted. Or I don’t get as much time in because I have to consider the time it takes for me to get from home to work in rush hour.

I’m going to wrap this up because it’s over 2000 words long and this isn’t the Gilmore Guys podcast. I love that podcast, but shit is it way too long.

Paris thinks Lane used a doctor to get their twins, Luke and Lorelai decide not to have a “fresh kid,” Paris and Doyle are getting a divorce because Doyle is big in Hollywood now. Lorelai convinces Judgy WASP Mom to go to therapy and Judgy WASP Mom tricks her into going to therapy (as if that’s something any reputable therapist would agree to.)

So far I like the Judgy WASP Mom parts of the revival. I like the focus on Spacey Grandpa’s death. I don’t really care about anything happening with Rory. Luke and Lorelai seem off. I REALLY hate that she’s still fucking Smarmy (EWWWWWWWWW.)

If I had to rate this, I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5.