Millennials rejoice, it’s that time of year again — crisp air, falling leaves, pumpkin spice, and the annual “Gilmore Girls” rewatch. Every autumn, I (and millions of others) settle in with coffee and comfort carbs to rewatch Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) carry out their shenanigans. Only this fall is extra special because the show is turning 25. That’s right, our favorite fast-talking mother-daughter duo first graced our screens in 2000, making “Gilmore Girls” officially old enough to rent a car (and to make millennials feel ancient).
For anyone doing the math, 2000 is to today’s teens what the ’70s and ’80s were to us. Yep, ’90s-era Britney is now “throwback,” and the original “Gilmore Girls fans” are the same age Lorelai was in the pilot (or even older). Let that sink in. Yet, two and a half decades later, the show’s charm, wit and caffeine-fueled banter still feel timeless.
‘Life’s short, talk fast’
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The original show’s seven seasons (and even the 2016 reboot) are packed with pop culture references of the time, but “Gilmore Girls” never feels outdated. That’s because the timeline of references runs the gamut from “Casablanca” to Brangelina, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to the Bangles. Even Chuck Berry and Alan Ginsberg get a few shoutouts. The wide range of zippy pop culture fixations makes the setting feel fluid rather than stuck in the early aughts.
Netflix has been keeping the fandom alive for over a decade, introducing all new generations of Gilmore girlies, guys and theys to Stars Hollow. That’s why, 25 years later, fall is the official “La La La” season as fans continually revisit the series’ magic. Given the show’s focus on three generations of women, life has imitated art as grandparents, parents, and children can binge and bond over the show.
‘Some things stick’
“Gilmore Girls” is built on snappy one-liners, clever pop culture spirals and dialogue so fast that the actors could barely keep up. One of my personal measures of a teen show’s effectiveness is whether or not the graduation scene makes me cry. In Rory’s version, she explains, “I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina, and strolled down Swann’s Way.”
She then says that her second world is filled with her family and eccentric Stars Hollow neighbors. Later, Rory adds, “My mother never gave me any idea that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do or be whomever I wanted to be. She filled our house with love and fun and books and music, unflagging in her efforts to give me role models from Jane Austen to Eudora Welty to Patti Smith.”
That right there? It’s the perfect summary of the Gilmore girls’ love language: pop culture, with an enduring generational zeitgeist of references. That’s the key to the show’s larger-than-life impact that, 25 years later, has surpassed the original run.
Team Dean, Team Jess or Team Logan?
Everyone loves a good love triangle — or quadrangle. Facebook (and “it’s complicated”) didn’t launch until a few years after Rory was stuck in the middle of her initial tug of war between Dean (Jared Padalecki) and Jess (Milo Ventimiglia). Then came Logan (Matt Czuchry) in her college era, where Rory was still struggling to just make up her mind.
“Gilmore Girls” certainly didn’t feature TV’s first teen love triangle, nor was it the last. Regardless, one of the biggest ways to keep a fandom plugged in is to divide fans between different ships. Alternatively, pretty much everyone is Team Luke (Scott Patterson) for Lorelai, given the mass hatred of Lorelai’s deadbeat baby daddy, whom she just can’t quit.
During the OG series, I was always Team Logan or Jess, but never Dean “Obsessive Sociopath” Forrester. Thankfully, the anti-Dean sentiment now reigns supreme following a real-world reality check two decades after our teen hearts swooned over the ‘perfect’ boy next door.
Yet, in my humble opinion, by the end of the revival, I stand by the fact that Rory doesn’t deserve Jess. Given their shady philandering arc in the revival, Logan and Rory deserve each other. But whichever way you lean, there’s no denying that nothing gets the fan base more heated than this particular debate.
Hot take: Season 7 is far superior to Season 6. Fans love to blame the final season for the show’s downfall, but that decline started earlier with April’s sudden arrival, Lane and Zach’s ill-fated marriage, the Luke–Lorelai breakup, Rory’s brief Yale dropout, and the Lorelai–Chris rebound. If it takes that long to list a season’s problems, you know Stars Hollow was in trouble.
Everything fans resent about the final stretch began under creator Amy Sherman-Palladino: Lorelai and Chris’s wedding, Luke and Lorelai’s estrangement, Lane’s unexpected pregnancy. So while the last season wasn’t perfect, David S. Rosenthal’s ending tied things up far better than ASP’s original plan, which she later used in the revival.
Rory’s sendoff was the perfect farewell: a heartfelt goodbye party, Luke’s classic Grand Gesture, and a quiet final moment between mother and daughter at Luke’s Diner. And Lorelai’s father telling her, “It takes a remarkable person to inspire all this,” remains one of the show’s most poignant moments — and the last we ever heard Edward Herrmann as Richard.
But then, the revival came along — and undid much of that grace.
‘You are your mother’s child’
![Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life | Main Trailer [HD] | Netflix - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/VBK6ciLtd1I/maxresdefault.jpg)
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Writers sometimes cling too tightly to their original endings, even when the characters have outgrown them. After seven seasons — or nine, in the case of “How I Met Your Mother”— those long-planned finales rarely fit anymore. That’s exactly what happened with “Gilmore Girls.”
When Amy Sherman-Palladino returned nearly a decade later, she revived her long-teased “final four words”:
Rory: “Mom?”
Lorelai: “Yeah?”
Rory: “I’m pregnant.”
Say what? The entire show centered on Lorelai fighting for Rory to avoid her path. Even if Rory is in her thirties, the implication of single motherhood (and Logan as her likely baby daddy) felt regressive — like a loop instead of growth. It set up Logan as Rory’s Christopher, Jess as her Luke, and reduced Rory’s arc to repetition rather than evolution.
Between that and Luke and Lorelai’s unresolved issues 10 years later, the revival felt more like an outdated season 7 rewrite than a satisfying conclusion. The “Gilmore Girls” legacy still endures — even if the creator couldn’t quite let it grow up with the rest of us.
Yet, 25 years later, as the leaves turn and the coffee flows, there’s still no better way to welcome fall than another trip back to Stars Hollow.
Stream all 7 seasons of “Gilmore Girls” and “A Year in the Life” on Netflix
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