Alexis Bledel, left, and Lauren Graham star in “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” (Netflix) In Monday’s chat, a reader asked me what my personal history with “Gilmore Girls” was. The short answer would have been that it was one of the shows that aired while I was still essentially in a pre-television state. We had a television when I was in high school, but we didn’t have cable, and other than “Early Edition,” which is honestly a pretty weird thing to have as one’s formative TV show, I hadn’t really gotten into the habit. And by 2006, when I had graduated from college and had cable for the first time, “Gilmore Girls” was headed into its final, Amy Sherman-Palladino-less season. I had a lot of other television to catch up on first. One of the great joys of growing up without much contact with pop culture is that I got to experience a whole range of things at an age when I was more prepared to appreciate them, and when I had the intellectual grounding to understand why they were important. I definitely appreciated “The Wire” having learned more about the drug war before watching it, and loved “The Godfather” more for being introduced to it by my Italian American husband. But the downside of this approach is that sometimes you miss the moment when something might have seemed refreshing or vital. And such, it seems, is the case with “Gilmore Girls,” which I tried to watch in advance of the Netflix revitalization of the series. I’d heard so much about the fast-talking, reference-slinging, mother-daughter relationship. But when I started the episodes, they just didn’t land with me. Maybe it was just that I’m no longer Rory Gilmore’s (Alexis Bledel) age, and I’m no longer craving an image of my bookish teenage self. Maybe it’s that after a decade of difficult heroines, Lorelai Gilmore’s (Lauren Graham) particular extended rebellion doesn’t do much for me. Or maybe it’s that I’ve come to associate talking at a certain speed not with cleverness, but with an Aaron Sorkin-ish act of hypnosis that conceals a certain level of smugness. This is not to say that any of you who love “Gilmore Girls” are wrong; I couldn’t make it through enough of the show to render what I consider to be a definitive judgment. But it was a good reminder to me. Sometimes, when I try to make up for television experiences I missed, I’ll find a treasure. But sometimes, the moment has simply passed. |
