National Post (National Edition)
A new fan for an old TV favourite
In 2020, I finally found a television show to watch with my daughter. She had, over the years, rejected my childhood favourites All Creatures Great and Small and Little House on the Prairie, and her precocious interest in the true crime documentaries I watch now never seemed like something a responsible parent would encourage in a nine-year-old.
Then we stumbled on Gilmore Girls, a show about daughters and mothers that I remembered finding mildly cute when I used to watch it alone as a freshly minted law grad, eating takeout on my futon, 20 years ago.
In terms of my daughter, I never expected her to like Gilmore Girls, or even watch it. I just needed something I could watch with her in the room, something that would not be so wildly inappropriate that it would distract her from her gymnastics and pillow forts. Something, preferably, that would not involve serial killers or nuclear meltdowns.
To my surprise, my daughter was not only distracted by Gilmore Girls, she was immediately drawn to Rory and Lorelai and all their quirky friends in cute little Stars Hollow.
It turns out that it does not matter that many of the jokes expired before she was born. While I struggled to explain O.J. Simpson and Y2K to illuminate punch lines to her, my daughter waved me off and settled in to see what would become of Rory's budding romance with Dean.
And a few seasons in, the unexpected interest remains.
Even if its focus on physical female attractiveness is more outdated than ideal, Gilmore Girls has surprised me also by offering norms I am happy to have my kid absorb. Rory and Lorelai's comfort with pie, Pop-Tarts, and cheeseburgers feels practically subversive in 2020, for example, but it is a relaxed approach to eating I wish for my daughter.
I like that these women dip into ice cream to soothe themselves and consider that perfectly OK. I wonder if watching Luke, the owner of the town diner, feed Rory and Lorelai comforting and celebratory meals feels familiar to my daughter, who lives in a home where my husband makes most of her dinners. I certainly appreciate the way the show depicts expressing love through food as a normal form of affection, not an alarming sign of dysfunction, as is more common today.
When I watched Gilmore Girls during its original run (or at least for its first few seasons before I aged out of the WB network), I was somewhere in between Rory and Lorelai, and in many ways far from either.
Rory's high school ups and downs felt adolescent, silly, inconsequential — of little relevance to me, an adult with a real job and my own apartment. At the same time, Lorelai's experience as a single mother of a teenager felt completely alien and daunting to me, a young 20-something with an apartment full of stuffed animals and no one to look after but a couple of pet rabbits, who were usually content with an ear rub and a bit of hay.
As you can imagine, watching Gilmore Girls now with my own daughter is a different experience entirely. While my kids are still younger than Rory's character, I have a decade and 15 years of marriage on Lorelai now, which in some ways puts my staid life closer to that of the character of Lorelai's mother, Emily (though with fewer servants and spots on charitable boards). And having kids at all — particularly two daughters — makes me look at scenes between Rory, Lorelai, and Emily with mistiness, where once there would have been disdain for the cheesy sentimentality.
One day, when she is old enough, I will show my daughter how much things change. How Sookie, the Gilmore Girls' chef (Melissa McCarthy), will go on to become a raunchy bridesmaid, then a depressed forger who lives alone with her cat. Or how Rory's nemesis, Paris (Liza Weil), will go on to become embroiled in murders … so very many murders.
Now, I am just enjoying having something I can watch with my daughter that genuinely entertains us both, without scarring her emotionally or requiring me to learn the names of YouTube influencers.
Interestingly, Gilmore Girls is a show about independent young women that I did not fully appreciate until revisiting it as a married middle-aged mom. Chalk it up to the intervening time and experience or COVID boredom, I'm not sure which, but I also now look at Gilmore Girls as a very healthy thing for a tween girl to watch.