Inexplicable Gilmore Girls Review: A half-and-half “ending” for our gals

What a natural looking baby bump!

Warning: Spoilers follow for episodes 13 through the end of season seven of Gilmore Girls.

The regular run of Gilmore Girls kind of ends abruptly, in a way. Like, if they had gotten another season, or if they had known that the seventh season was most definitely going to be the last, you get the feeling they would have wrapped things up differently.

Namely, Rory. The show basically ends with her turning down Logan’s proposal, which isn’t so great for her personal life, because they clearly have feelings for one another. It also goes back on his promise to “follow her,” which isn’t mentioned. Maybe the new writing staff just forgot about that moment. She was set to follow Obama on the campaign trail, and even though it’s for an online publication, that was still a pretty plum assignment at that time.

Then again, Rory is awful, so meh. It’s hard for me to get really worked up about her future prospects, because she’s casually awful the whole seventh season. I mean, she shits all over The Providence Journal Bulletin! I’m glad you didn’t find another job after that, Rory, because that’s a hella good job for someone right out of college. (Although, maybe it’s another paper I’m unfamiliar with, because it hasn’t regularly been called the Journal Bulletin since they ended the multiple daily editions of the paper.)

In contrast to Rory, Lorelai and Luke have a hasty reunion in the show’s final two episodes, once Lorelai realizes that Luke whipped up everything for Rory’s party. It’s a cute moment, but the impact is dulled because we had the 12 episode Christopher-Lorelai Emotional Downward Spiral to start the season. The season would have been much improved with a focus on Luke and Lorelai together, getting rid of the Christopher shit, instead of 22 episodes of “will they / won’t they?” again.

Other storylines and thoughts:

- Lane, Zach and Mrs. Kim are secretly the best characters of the show, from an entertainment and growth aspect. Karen gets annoyed because I dwell on the side characters so much, but honestly, they’re just so much more satisfying to watch! Instead of the fractured relationships of the Gilmores, the Kims grow as people and eventually come to support each other, and Zach slowly matures from a doofus into a decent dad. Put a Zach-Lane spinoff on the list of shows I’d watch, along with The Adventures of Young Lorelai Gilmore.

- I only partially endorse the fan theory that the absence of the Palladinos causes season seven to suck. Yeah, it’s clearly worse than season six… But season six was worse than five, which was worse than four, and the show peaked in the third season with Rory’s high school graduation. The main crux of the show was the entanglement of the Gilmores with each other, and the men in their lives, and there is a shelf life for how long that can be entertaining.

The later seasons didn’t adapt well enough for my tastes, probably because doing so would be expensive. Like the first season, you can see the budget constraints in the last season, whether we’re talking about the horrible blue screen work for the “Christopher and Lorelai in Paris” episode, Lane’s pregnancy body, or the severe lack of guest and recurring stars.

The latter really sneaks up on you, especially in the last half of the seventh season. Lucy and Olivia are prominent characters in the first 12 episodes, and then completely absent until Rory’s graduation from Yale, and even then, they’re in one scene. Sookie, Lane and Paris receive main cast billing, but they’re completely absent from around half the episodes. Even Emily and Richard are severely backburnered after Richard recovers from his heart attack.

- Stars Hollow denizens are at their worst when Rory graduates from Yale. They’re up in arms because Lorelai can’t get 20+ tickets to the ceremony, and they won’t take no for an answer. Again, it’s like this Bizzarro World where they can’t accept legitimate reasons. (And, by the way – Stars Hollow is big enough that it has its own high school! But Rory is apparently the only high school graduate, or person under 25 that anyone likes.)

- Logistics note: I have finished watching THE REVIVAL now, so I’m Gilmore’d out. I’m not sure if I’m going to do two, three or four posts about it. I have to see where my muse takes me, and reflect upon how much rage I feel over some of Rory’s actions. Because, you know, she’s the worst.

The image screen grab comes from this site, which has six Gilmore Girls “fixes” that I mostly disagree with, because I dislike Christopher, and really like April, Lane and Luke. But still, they capped that image, so I don’t have to! Thanks to them.

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