The air is getting crisper and the mornings colder. Somewhere, far in the distance, you can hear the faint music to “Where You Lead I Will Follow” — it’s Gilmore Girls season. As certain as the leaves turn orange, the early 2000s TV show returns to the collective consciousness this time of year. Coming up in its 24th year, it appears to be increasing, rather than decreasing in popularity—lines from the show feature in all the popular circulating soundbites on social media. If I describe something as “straight out of Gilmore Girls”, you’ll likely understand what I mean even without watching the show.
Gilmore Girls follows a single mother, Lorelai Gilmore, and her 16-year-old daughter Rory living in a fictional New England town called Stars Hollow. The show deals with themes of friendship, love, and growing up, and it is told through quick and witty dialogue that is mostly lighthearted. It is peppered with 2000s pop culture references, many of which surely go over the heads of young viewers today. But this is also a reason for its continuous popularity. Gilmore Girls satiates our current obsession with nostalgia for the early 2000s. Watching the show is like stepping back to a simpler time. To a place made up of Juicy Couture tracksuits, CDs, and flip phones. Digital devices are almost non-existent, making relationships seem more social and authentic. Executing the same concept in today’s digital world would be difficult.
The social aspect is also helped by the fact that the show is set in a small, tight-knit community. As viewers, we get to know a colourful and eclectic group of characters and become invested in the intricacies of their relationships. We feel like part of the town. This is why it also starts to feel suffocating now and then when Lorelai’s or Rory’s personal life becomes the town’s business. While Rory maintains a fondness for Stars Hollow throughout the show, it is natural that she should dream of going on to study elsewhere and travel the world. Those of us who grew up in a small town and saw college as a way to not only intellectually, but also physically, broaden our horizons, relate to Rory’s aspirations.
More than autumn, Gilmore Girls is associated with the back-to-school season. The first episode centres on Rory’s transfer acceptance into the prestigious Chilton Preparatory School. After initially struggling to catch up, Rory is soon top of the class and seemingly balances her work and personal life perfectly. The idea of Rory as ambitious and studious sticks with viewers. When she later struggles to live up to the ideals set by those around her, viewers feel as let down as the other characters in the show. We adopt their expectations.
Later in the show, Rory decides to go to Yale, and there, our idolised version of her falls apart and reality takes its place. When she receives a poor grade on a paper, her professor suggests that she drop the class. For the first time in college, Rory isn’t able to live up to her own and other’s expectations. When the editor for the Yale Daily News doesn’t like her initial pieces she is again thrown off guard. Like all students, she has to navigate an entirely new set of expectations in college and struggles to do so at first. She maintains her dream of becoming a journalist, but that dream is quickly shattered by the words of a newspaper mogul who tells her that she is not cut out for the job. Soon afterward, Rory takes a leave of absence from Yale.
On the surface, her leave seems like an overreaction, but Rory is the kind of person who has always looked for approval from others – and received it. Inevitably, she bases her worth and her abilities on the opinions of others. Having aspired to become a journalist all her life, she faces uncertainty for the future when she is told that journalism is not for her. No matter how certain you felt about your CAO choice at the time of applying, there will, most likely, come a point in college where you start to question what you have been working towards all your life. Eventually, Rory finds her way back to Yale, but those moments of uncertainty and shattered expectations truly capture the realities of college. College is where kids deemed “high academic achievers” growing up congregate and compare themselves to each other, and Rory’s character development shows how that environment mentally affects students.
Gilmore Girls has remained the same TV show since it aired, but our perception of it has significantly changed. Now, we look at it through the lens of nostalgia, regardless of whether or not we remember the early 2000s. Rewatching it from the viewpoint of college also forces us to reexamine our perception of Rory. Where once she seemed the perfect role model, now she appears more mortal, more like the rest of us. The cosiness of Stars Hollow, with its seasonal town festivals and mundane problems, makes it a comforting show to rewatch over and over again. But it is the raw, emotional moments that make Gilmore Girls a classic.
