The much trumpeted Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life movie series (available on DVD from Amazon) was on TV for Thanksgiving week.   Since the TV series Gilmore Girls (full-set available on DVD from Amazon) was a huge success with a cult following of its own, fans were expecting great things.  As we  know the girls and thought their were wonderful things in their future.  A 4-movie series of approximately 2 hours each covering a season of the year in their lives - thus 8 hours of time.  As a new show, movies occurred first on four different nights during prime time of Thanksgiving week on CW, where the original TV series had their last season.  The 1-hour TV shows started out on Warner Brothers TV aka The WB. Then you could watch it or any you missed  was an all-day "Gilmore the Merrier" binge-a-thon on UP TV on Sunday.

The Series opens with Winter (movie #1) and some expectations were met with Lorelei finally being a couple with Luke.  However, her fear of marriage remains, so they live together for about 9 years and so not have the twins she dreamed of during the TV series - no new kids so expectation failure here.  Emily, the oldest Gilmore, is shockingly the same personality but going through depression as her husband has just died  The teenage-to-early twenties "most likely to succeed" Rory is now a thirty-something.  Here the surprise happens as the youngest girl is made out to be the cliche "thirty-something" who returns home as a failure because she could not cut it in the real world without the support of her parents.  Growing up, she was told she could do anything and was wonderful, so really not a surprise that she did good for awhile and then went down to freelance work with very little options.  Most of the regular town characters we remember from the TV show are back for the movies too.

Then comes Spring (movie #2) and Summer (movie #3) seasons with more depressing happenings and occasional weird happenstances (like the Stars Hollow musical).   We decide Rory is more than a career loser, she is also a personal cheater.  Although Paris appears often, Rory's old boyfriends do cameos, as well as her newest and mostly forgettable beau.   However, only one of Lorelei's old beaus showed up and that was in movie 1.   Emily lets a foreign family she can not understand take over her house while she goes in and out of therapy, considers abandoning her old lifestyle, and really tries to cover-up her real feelings of loneliness. Lorelei and Luke experience issues.  Frankly, I think these 2 movies could be skipped and you would not miss much.  There is a small hint of Rory rediscovering her passion for writing and what is coming in the last movie, but skipping these will not make number 4 hard to follow.

The Fall (movie #4) season was the best,  We finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for Rory. Emily starts off on a new life for herself with her new sort-of family.  It seemed every TV season had either wedding planning or baby showers,  Finally there is a sparkly harvest wedding near the end of this show.  Two people who were in the original TV series and went on to have their own TV series finally appear in small cameo roles in this one before the wedding.  This movie was the most uplifting and more like the original TV series.  There was a little bit of frustration watching it in the beginning, but the ending was happy and partly surprising (possibly lead-in for another movie, but please just not too many hours).  I will not spoil it for you by giving you the details, other than to ask this question:  was it the wookiee or the London affair?  

In summary, you might need to see movie 1 to fully understand 4, but if you only want old-style happy then watch Fall and skip the others.