The Girls are back in a Netflix revival, but, as importantly for fans of the show so is the town of Stars Hollow with all of its human quirks and familiar sights.
-Steven P. Magstadt
Image via Netflix
Gypsy (Rose Abdoo), Miss Patty (Liz Torres), Babette (Sally Struthers), and all the hunky guys (Scott Patterson, Jared Padelecki, Matt Czuchry, Milo Ventimiglia, David Sutcliffe, Tanc Sade, Alan Loayza) are back as well as appearances by Jackie Hoffman(my favorite Jewess),Carole King, Dan Bucatinsky, Peter Krause, Paul Anka, and many others provide entertaining punctuation between plot points.
There are couple of conspicuous missing persons through part of, or the entire revival. Notably, it took name-dropping every prominent chef in North America and firing Chef Roy Choi for moving the coffee machine at the Dragonfly Inn to explain the absence of Sookie (Melissa McCarthy) in the kitchen. The intertwining story arcs of the main characters playing out London, New York, and Emily’s home replaced the Inn as a central filming location, so this wasn’t difficult to swallow.
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Another felt void is that Richard (Edward Herrmann) has died, and Emily (Kelly Bishop) has an entire family of Latinos living with her doing all sorts of things that would have horrified her if she weren’t busy learning how to be herself after losing a partner of 50 years. As we would expect, Emily did this with aplomb and just enough warmth to make us like her after trying to hate her.
Rory (Alexis Bledel) has become a box lady. Like a bag lady, but with boxes. She has boxes at Lorelei’s house, at Lane’s (Keiko Agena) house, at Emily’s house, and also - most weird - at Logan’s (Matt Czuchry) apartment in London. After she helps Logan finds his pants one random morning, she remembers that she needs to remember to break up with her boyfriend Paul (Jack Carpenter), and that Logan is engaged to a French heiress named Odette.
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While in London, Rory was attempting to write a book about River Song (Alex Kingston of Doctor Who fame). River had assumed an alias, but lost none of her rakish charm. Since we last saw her, River learned how to snag the star table in good restaurants, as well as other diner’s food, as she drank epic quantities of straight bourbon with impunity while dictating what would have been a fabulous synaptic misfire between two covers.
Luke (Scott Patterson) and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) were living together (again), and Lorelei is still having issues deciding if she is happy romantically even though she only has Kirk left as an alternate at this point if she were to break up with Luke (also again). Kirk (Sean Gunn) stuck with the delightfully fey Lulu (Rini Bell), so Lorelei has to look elsewhere. In the years since we last saw her, however, she has honed her consumption of unhealthy food stuffs into a near-medicinal practice that deserves a coffee table book of its own.
Rory found clarity through an intervention of her friends from the Life and Death Brigade in all their steam-punky glory, and decided that writing her own story would be a more sane choice than continuing in cahoots with River Song, despite the delightful tipples and nibbles.
As happened in every unhealthily close couple before and since Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, there was a massive dispute between Lorelei and Rory over the ownership of shared stories. Rory wanted to write a book about their lives; Lorelei tried to stop her claiming that Rory had no right to write this story.
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Eventually, Lorelei had an epiphany while watching a bizarre musical based on the history of Stars Hollow and leaves for the west coast in order to re-enact, “Wild,” (the book, not the movie).
Present is the back and forth from the original series that teetered somewhere between too close to home for comfort, (because all real loves sometimes involve real friction), and just silly enough to make us smile out of sheer warmth (because all real loves do that, too).
The revival might include references to “Hitting my steps,” Uber, and Twitter, and Lorelei might drive a Prius, but it should satisfy hard-core Gilmore Girls fans, and resurrect the original series for a new generation of viewers. Now. I am going to start from the pilot and go straight through all the fun again. You should, too.
