Gilmore Girls was a cozy series following Lorelai, an extroverted, single working mother, and her shy, brainy daughter Rory. The show started when Rory was accepted into Chilton, a very prestigious school. Lorelai was not poor, but she could not afford a $50,000 yearly tuition, so she reconnected with her wealthy parents to help pay for Rory’s studies. As the seasons went by, even the most devoted fans noticed that Rory had devolved into an entitled young adult by the end of Season 6.
The character corrected course in Season 7, but the Netflix revival A Year in The Life only exacerbated her faults and her critics. The three main criticisms of Rory were about her constant denial of her incredible privilege, her chronic unfaithfulness to boyfriends and her loss of a spine. These were reasonable because it's difficult to watch a relatable character who's framed as a good person settle into being a lazy jerk, particularly in coming-of-age narratives. However, characters are not real people; they are purposefully written to drive a plot.
In the case of Gilmore Girls, Rory’s ending happened to be fixed in stone for creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. For Sherman-Palladino, the last words of the series were meant to be, "Mom, I’m pregnant." She pictured Gilmore Girls as a circular story, where Rory ended up in her mother's position despite Rory's different personality and upbringing.
Palladino’s problem was that Season 1 Rory didn’t deserve that ending. Her seriousness contrasted with Lorelai's carefree personality, and an unexpected pregnancy that crushed Rory’s dreams and dashed her efforts would have felt like a punishment for both of them. One possible solution would be to slowly turn Rory into a flailing adult whose life was going nowhere, so an unexpected pregnancy could have then had a grounding effect on her. The other option would be to correct the course before the show’s finale and to offer Rory a wide-open future.
Sherman-Palladino seemed to be taking Rory down the first path when her contract, as well as Daniel Palladino's, fell through with The CW network. The seventh season of Gilmore Girls had David Rosenthal as a showrunner instead, and he and his crew opted for Rory's academic and professional redemption, graduation and open future. This was the right call, and an uplifting finale for fans of the character.
However, when Netflix brought back the Palladinos for A Year in the Life, several years had passed and the world had changed. Many fans of the series had adopted a more critical lens, recognizing that the Gilmores had always been incredibly privileged; however, the service trusted Palladino to put together a nostalgic show with a feminist twist. Despite this, Palladino seemed to want the finale she had envisioned from the beginning, so instead of picking up Rory's story at a logical point as an experienced 32-year-old journalist, Palladino dialed Rory's personality back to the end of Season 5, when she was barely 20 and a complete mess.
As an adult, Rory’s faults are no longer "cute." The fans that grew up with her couldn’t relate anymore. Rory’s constant unprofessionalism is seen as disrespectful, and her decision to write her mother’s story against Lorelai’s will doesn't feel like it's coming full circle; it feels like a lazy grab. Her most grating trait is not her ignorance about her privilege, but it's that she never tries to use her privilege to accomplish something of herself. Even worse, her antics feel rehashed and boring.
In the end, the driven, self-reliable teen has been twisted into a dependent woman reaching for comfort in the recently sold home of her late grandfather. She now types away her mother’s story instead of working on her own life, and she's forever tied to an unavailable, married lover through an unexpected pregnancy.
The framing is off too. Girls also featured a privileged writer who ended unexpectedly pregnant; however, Girls rarely shied away from the pitfalls of any situation, and the few, quiet successes really counted. In contrast, the framing of Rory’s ending is pure saccharine, begging the audience to love it, and most of them don't.
Directed and written by Sherman-Palladino and husband Daniel Palladino, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life stars Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Scott Patterson, Melissa McCarthy, Matt Czuchry, Keiko Agena, Yanic Truesdale, Jared Padalecki and Milo Ventimiglia. The four episodes will air on The CW from Nov. 23-26.