Gilmore Girls power: Why we still love this comforting classic 20 years on
At 22, I experienced a moderate bout of depression. Living in a packed house I shared with strangers and having just ended a draining relationship, I was in a weird, transitional period, and I was finding it a bit much. I worked mornings, which at least meant my days began with structure and a sense of purpose. My afternoons, by contrast, were lonely and aimless, defined by hours-long naps and eating large bags of crisps. There was, however, one other, nicer, constant, something I always looked forward to, no matter how grey I felt. Arriving home from the office at about 2pm, I would boot up Netflix, always with the same objective: to transport myself to the almost pathologically cosy, gently kooky world of the mother-daughter dramedy Gilmore Girls.
Originally airing from October 2000 until May 2007 (and now enjoying a second wind in the streaming age), Gilmore Girls is a thoroughly wholesome TV hit. Its unhurried pace, low stakes and sleepy, picturesque setting have led fans and critics alike to cite it as a high point for comfort TV. And as of next week, it will have been keeping viewers warm for 20 years.
Gilmore Girls remains beloved largely because it got the basics right. It is most notable for its motormouth, pop culture-referencing dialogue – straight from the quip-o-matic pen of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino – and its core pairing: double act Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, played by Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel respectively, in careerdefining roles. Lorelai and Rory’s love story is the beating heart of the show. In giving more oxygen to their relationship – their joys, their fights, their breathless commentary on junk food and John Hughes movies – than it does to overly dramatic plotlines, it found a unique place in the TV landscape during its initial run.
Smarter and less soapy than other programmes aimed at a young, largely female demographic, such as Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill, it leaned into the fact that it was “just” a show about a single mother, her clever kid and the eccentric, lovable people of Stars Hollow, a fictional Connecticut town. Episode to episode, Gilmore Girls’ trick is inprioritising minutiae – dinners at Lorelai’s hoity-toity family home, town meetings and idiosyncratic conversations where Rosemary’s Baby and Juicy Couture get equal weighting – so that when its emotional moments do come, they really resonate, the bonds they are based on having been so carefully developed. The show’s willingness to stroll instead of sprint, however, meant that it mostly flew under the radar when it was released. The first season aired on Thursdays at 8pm in the US, in the same slot as Friends and Survivor, two of the period’s heavy hitters, and in 2001, the New York Times called the show “one of the best series on the air, and possibly the most underappreciated”.
Longtime fan Kevin T Porter, one of the hosts of the much loved Gilmore Guys podcast, tells me that watchingthe series in its early years felt like “being in a secret club”, thanks to its cult following. In 2014, however, when the show made its way on to Netflix in the US, it received renewed attention, buoyed by social media. (It went worldwide in July 2016, and Netflix’s divisive sequel miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, written by Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel Palladino, followed in November that year). Many were beginning to recognise for the first time its quiet but palpable innovations – Sherman-Palladino’s boldly individual tone, and the positive portrayal of a single mother and her child, conceived through a pregnancy at the age of 16.
“At the time of its broadcast run, Gilmore Girls was perceived critically and culturally as low art,” says Porter. “It was glazed over, and that’s an interesting testament to the way culture has shifted. We see the same arc with Amy Sherman-Palladino. She was a lone wolf at that time, telling stories that were matter-of-fact feminine, but also unapologetically so.”
It is only in recent years that Sherman-Palladino’s impact on TV has been properly recognised, perhaps as a partial result of Gilmore Girls’ reintroduction. While neither of the stars have subsequently hit the heights they reached with the show (although in the case of talent like Graham’s, in particular, let’s hope that the best is still to come), Sherman-Palladino has been consistently awarded for her latest creation, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel – which, although set in 1950s New York, is “the same sort of show as Gilmore Girls in its bones,” as Porter puts it. Elsewhere, the show’s effect is still apparent in television being made two decades later: Stars Hollow’s influence has felt especially clear on the small town class-clash comedy Schitt’s Creek, which swept the board at this year’s Primetime Emmys.
For fans, however, Gilmore Girls’ legacy will always feel more personal than anything else. That is partly just due to the maths. As Porter says: “Gilmore Girls was on for 153 episodes. Just the sheer volume of time that viewers spent with it created a kind of relationship that I think people don’t have with TV now.”
To leave it solely down to numbers, however, would be to underplay the magic of finding the show when you need it most. From the jaunty message of companionship in its theme tune (Carole King’s Where You Lead) to a central bond that pivots on simple axes of love, loyalty and filter coffee, when I think about Gilmore Girls, I think about being kept company when I felt most alone. Talk about a comfort blanket.