My favorite character is the mother, Lorelai Gilmore. I always related to her the best, though not because of similar life experiences. Lorelai was raised in a wealthy, snooty environment and ended up getting pregnant as a rebellious teen. That brought her Rory, and after the birth of her daughter she fled the suffocating mansion she was raised in to live in a shed and work as a maid.
What I love about Lorelai’s back story is that the show never pretends the decisions she made were good ones. Lorelai is a flawed character. She can be selfish. She can be stubborn. She can be petulant. She holds a grudge. But now I’m selling her short, because she also has many great qualities. Her personality is dazzling. She’s smart, funny and hip. She throws out pop culture references at the rate other people breathe. She cares immensely about her daughter and her friends. She works hard. She consumes ridiculous amounts of coffee and take-out. Maybe you don’t want to be Lorelai, but you probably want to be her friend.
Two of the greatest things about Gilmore Girls were the town of Stars Hollow and the relationship between Lorelai and Luke.
Who wouldn’t want to live in Stars Hollow, the quirky and idyllic small town where Lorelai chose to live with Rory. It was full of kooky characters and bizarre town festivals, meetings and businesses. ¬¬¬And it had Luke. Luke, the gruff but lovable diner owner who subtly flirted with Lorelai for FOUR YEARS. It takes two fantastic characters and a really devoted fan base for a show to be able to have two characters so obviously meant for each other delay their romance for four freakin’ years.
At first, the romance was perfect. Luke and Lorelai made a believable couple. The first conflict they hit was a result of Lorelai’s parents’ intense (and rudely blatant) disapproval of Luke. The couple broke up. Lorelai was crushed. Luke was stoic, but angry and hurt. Eventually, they reconciled. They got engaged. They should have lived happily ever after.
I blame the show’s creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino. Though a lot of people say the seventh season, which was written without Amy, was the worst, I disagree. Season seven was damage control for the sixth season, which I consider to be the low point of the show. So much was wrong with season six. Let’s review: The saga of Rory, community service and becoming a mini-Emily; Luke finding out about April (a long lost daughter, like on a soap opera) and hides it from Lorelai; Lorelai and Luke break up for a second (and highly unnecessary) time; Lorelai ends up in bed with Christopher.
Frankly, they couldn’t have screwed it up more. It meant that the final season of the show was left with the monumental task of getting Rory to reconcile with her grandparents and graduate from Yale, getting Christopher out of the picture and getting Luke and Lorelai back together. And that’s not to say that season seven didn’t feature some epic screw-ups. They actually made it worse, at first, by having Lorelai and Chris marry in Paris. What the hell? Suddenly Lorelai was legally committed to someone who was not Luke – what a travesty. Luckily, season seven brought back the smart, confident Rory that I’d grown to know and love. Not that pathetic, lost party girl we’d seen throughout the sixth season. And for all the problems with the sixth season and the first part of the seventh season, I thought the show ended perfectly – redeeming it in my eyes.