Gilmore Girls is an American
comedy-drama television series created by
Amy Sherman-Palladino starring
Lauren Graham and
Alexis Bledel. Sherman-Palladino, her husband
Daniel Palladino,
David S. Rosenthal, and
Gavin Polone served as the executive producers. The series debuted on October 5, 2000, on
The WB and remained a
tent-pole to the network until its move to
The CW on September 26, 2006. The series originally ran for seven seasons and ended its run on May 15, 2007.
[1]
The show follows single mother
Lorelai Gilmore (Graham) and her daughter
Rory (Bledel), living in the fictional town of
Stars Hollow, Connecticut.
[2] The town is filled with colorful characters and is located approximately 30 minutes from
Hartford, Connecticut. The series explores issues of family, friendship and romance, as well as generational divides and social class. Ambition, education, work, love, family, and questions of class constitute some of the series' central concerns. The show's social commentary manifests most clearly in Lorelai's difficult relationship with her wealthy, appearance-obsessed parents,
Emily and
Richard Gilmore, and in Rory's interactions with the students at the Chilton Academy, and later,
Yale University.
Gilmore Girls was released to critical acclaim. It featured fast-paced dialogue filled with
pop-culture references. It won one
Emmy Award for makeup in 2004. The show placed
No. 32 on
Entertainment Weekly's "New TV Classics" list,
[3] and was listed as one of
Time magazine's "All-TIME 100 TV Shows" in 2007.
[1]
In 2016, the main cast and Sherman-Palladino returned for a four-part
miniseries revival titled
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which streamed on
Netflix.
Premise[edit]
The series has two protagonists: witty "thirty-something" mother
Lorelai Gilmore and her academic teenage daughter
Rory. Their backstory is established early in the show: Lorelai grew up in
Hartford with her
old money parents,
Richard and
Emily, but always felt stifled by this environment. She accidentally fell pregnant at age sixteen, and left home a year later to raise Rory in the close-knit town of
Stars Hollow. Lorelai found work and shelter at the Independence Inn, where she eventually progressed from maid to executive manager. Lorelai and Rory develop a very close relationship, living like best friends, and Lorelai is proud of the independent life she has formed away from her parents. In the
pilot episode, she is forced to go to them when Rory is admitted to Chilton Preparatory School but she cannot afford the tuition fees. Emily and Richard agree to provide a loan, so long as the girls join them every Friday night for dinner. This sets up the show's primary conflict, as the Gilmores are forced to face their differences and complicated history. The contrasting mother–daughter relationships of Emily–Lorelai and Lorelai–Rory become a defining theme of the show. Series creator
Amy Sherman-Palladino has summarised the core of
Gilmore Girls:
"I think the theme was always family and connection. I always felt like the underlying thing about Gilmore was that, if you happened to be born into a family that doesn’t really understand you, go out and make your own. That’s what Lorelai did. She went out and she made her own family. The ironic twist in her life is that then this daughter that she created this whole family for, likes the family that she left. It was a cycle of crazy family."[4]
The series also focuses on both girls' ambition: Rory to attend an
Ivy league college and become a journalist, and Lorelai to open an inn with her best friend
Sookie St. James. The romantic relationships of the protagonists are another key feature; throughout the series Lorelai has a "will-they-won't-they" dynamic with her friend, local diner owner
Luke Danes, while also harboring unresolved feelings for Rory's father,
Christopher Hayden. Rory has three boyfriends during the run of the show - local boy
Dean Forrester, bad boy
Jess Mariano, and wealthy
Logan Huntzberger. The quirky townspeople of Stars Hollow are a constant presence. Along with series-long and season-long arcs,
Gilmore Girls is also episodic in nature, with mini-plots within each episode - such as a town festival, an issue at Lorelai's inn, or a school project of Rory's
Lorelai goes to Christopher.
Season 7[edit]
Lorelai and Luke officially split when she tells him she slept with Christopher. Before much time has passed, Christopher convinces Lorelai to try a relationship. The pair spontaneously marry during a trip in Paris, but Lorelai soon accepts that it isn't right and they split amicably. Luke has a custody battle over April, after her mother moves them to New Mexico, and wins the right to see her during holidays. Lane and Zack have twins, and Sookie falls pregnant again. Rory completes her final year of college. She and Logan spend half the season in a long-distance relationship until he eventually moves back to Connecticut. He proposes, but Rory says that she wants to keep her options open, which leads to their separation. She panics about what she will do after graduating; following some rejection, she gets a job reporting on the
Barack Obama campaign trail. Stars Hollow throws a surprise goodbye party for Rory. When Lorelai finds out that Luke organized it, the pair reconcile with a kiss. Lorelai promises Emily that she will continue attending Friday Night Dinners. Before Lorelai and Rory have to say goodbye, they have one last breakfast at Luke's Diner.
A Year in the Life[edit]
Nine years after the end of the original series, Rory is struggling in her journalism career and having a no-strings-attached relationship with Logan in London, while technically having a boyfriend named Paul that she forgets about. Lorelai and Luke live together but are still having communication problems. Richard has recently died of a heart attack, which causes tension between Lorelai and Emily and they end up in joint therapy. Lorelai starts to question her life, so travels to California where she has an epiphany: she fixes the rift with Emily by recounting a happy story about Richard, and goes home to propose to Luke. Emily decides to sell the Gilmore mansion and move to
Nantucket, where she starts working in a museum. Rory decides to write a book about her life called "Gilmore Girls". After Luke and Lorelai marry, Rory tells her mom that she is pregnant and the father is left unknown.
Cast and characters[edit]