This show doesn’t hold up in any way

As a kid, I initially found Gilmore Girls extremely comforting. Mainly because of the idyllic town of Stars Hollow, where nothing really ever goes wrong and everything works out in the main characters’ favour, always. The town was a real safety net, a far cry from the reality of my own child and teen hood.

However, as far as good qualities go, that’s where they end. And I wouldn’t even call that a good quality. There’s something absurd about how idyllic the town is that didn’t really work long-term, even for me as a kid. It’s too fake.

Over time, the show really started to get on my nerves. Then, a recent re-watch killed whatever love I had for the show. There are so many issues I have with it now. The drama always seems contrived and easily solvable. Even though she was a good character, they never knew what to do with Sooki, so they were always making her pregnant. The Gilmores are all incredibly obnoxious. And the fact that everything generally turns out well for them no matter what mistakes they make, or doesn’t go bad when it should, actually pains me. There’s something infuriating about watching bad people succeed or not fail and learn.

I think the worst of it is Lorelei and Rory.

We’re supposed to believe that Lorelei is this together single mother success story who worked her way up from the absolute bottom. Yet this is a woman who can’t do laundry on a good day, is constantly cutting out of work for coffee and who expects major tasks to be completed by everyone around her – which they are, because she’s apparently that amazing. The show never hesitates to tell us what a catch she is, but it never actually explains in what ways she’s a catch.

And despite Rory being this responsible, bookish introvert, she somehow continually ends up in idiotic situations and cheats on her partners, mostly due to the constant shoehorning of Lorelei’s personality onto her own. Even as the show clearly conveys how different these two are, it always sabotages its own plot lines to assure audiences that, no, really, Lorelei and Rory are exactly the same.

I didn’t even bother with the revival because I knew it was going to be trash, much like this show became over time.