‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life’: Was This Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Biggest Mistake?
It has been more than four years since Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was released on Netflix. The much-anticipated revival was written by the original creator of Gilmore Girls, Amy Sherman-Palladino. The lead up to its release was pandemonium in online communities dedicated to the series. Fans haven’t stopped talking about it since. Just, probably not in the way Sherman-Palladino anticipated. Fans anticipated something truly grand. What they got was a mix of confusing and convoluted. Four years later, one question remains, did Sherman-Palladino make a massive misstep by ignoring the show’s final season?
Ignoring all of season 7 led to a confusing storyline between Rory Gilmore and Logan Huntzberger
Reddit fans have spoken openly about their hatred for Rory Gilmore and Logan Huntzberger’s story arc in the revival. Rory’s decision to engage in yet another affair was certainly controversial, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been so universally disliked if fans had a little bit of context. When Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life picks up, Rory is in a relationship with Paul and sleeping with Logan. Logan is living in London and engaged to a French heiress. What Sherman-Palladino didn’t do is explain how and why they were sleeping together.
Sherman-Palladino completely destroyed all character development that Logan received in season 7 with the decision. She ignored the fact that he had walked away from the family business and accepted a job elsewhere. She forgot that he had become a “work dork” and figured out how to be his own man and shoved him into the Huntzberger dynastic plan without a second thought. Logan fans were so not there for it.
Lorelai’s drama with Emily erased all progress she had made with her parents
Throughout the show’s seven-season run, Lorelai and her parents made big strides. When fans first met the family, Lorelai was estranged except for holidays, and her parents had never even visited the town she called home. During her six-season career on the show, Sherman-Palladino expertly moved the family relationship forward and slid it back. The drama was realistic. Season 7 brought fans a ton of closure and hinted at the notion that Lorelai and her parents had finally come to an understanding because, in the end, Rory had fulfilled their dreams.
When fans picked back up with Lorelai, her father had died, and she and her mother were back to a terse, cold relationship. This time, though, the drama felt manufactured and misplaced. Wiping away everything they had been through together to bring them back to the same drama from season 1 felt oddly sacrilegious.
Amy Sherman-Palladino’s grudge made the revival too confusing
Sherman-Palladino made it clear that she didn’t watch the final season of the show. She and her partner, Daniel Palladino, departed the series after season 6 when they couldn’t come to a contract agreement with the network. Different writers took over, and while Gilmore Girls did lose some of its signature charm in the final season, important things happened. Sherman-Palladino clearly was holding a grudge when she signed on for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. She made that known by completely ignoring everything that happened in the show’s final season. It’s execution may have been a massive misstep.
Sherman-Palladino could have possibly gotten away with it if she had spent some time explaining the backstory. She chose not to, though, and that was the fatal flaw. Fans stumbled out of the revival the same way they walked in; they were given no context, and it destroyed an event that should have been special.
Will Gilmore Girls return for a second revival? It’s not out of the question. If it does happen, one can only hope Sherman-Palladino will have given season 7 a whirl by that point or, at the very least, decides to give fans a bit of context. The former would probably be better, and season 7 really wasn’t that bad.
