Tag Archives: Gilmore Girls

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Reinstating Friday night dinners with the Gilmores

October is my favorite month of the year. With it comes everything I love about fall: pumpkins, colorful leaves, warm sweatshirts, and hot apple cider. As I’ve discussed previously, fall also brings a new television season with many returning favorites and new shows to check out. However, this fall brings an extra special treat: fan*s can now visit the quaint New England town of Stars Hollow whenever they want because Gilmore Girls has finally come to Netflix.

My family first discovered Gilmore Girls about halfway through its original run and became hooked almost immediately. My mom, brother, and I had busy lives that often took us in different directions, but we spent nearly every night having dinner with the Gilmores, thanks to ABC Family. If we weren’t going to be home to watch the episode as it aired, we would record it on videotape (you know those things you actually had to rewind when you were finished with them?) and later watch several episodes at a time.

One of the best aspects of the show was how it appealed to a wide audience. My brother doesn’t watch a lot of television, and what he does watch are the shows one would expect a guy to be interested in, like Sleepy Hollow, Castle, Bones, and The Big Bang Theory, but he loved Gilmore Girls just as much as my mom and I did. The writing was smart and the dialogue was clever; I still often find myself wishing I were as witty as Lorelai Gilmore — she had a comeback for everything!

The show also had a rich tapestry of secondary characters that strengthened the show’s storylines; even though the show was about the Gilmore girls, the rest of the characters in the town really helped make the story what it was. More than once, I’ve wished I could live in Stars Hollow and gossip with Miss Patty and Babbette, guess what Job Kirk would have next, argue with Taylor at a town meeting, have Gypsy work on my car, or listen to Lane and Zac’s band.

I was initially drawn to the show because I identified with Rory a lot. She spent much more time on her schoolwork in high school than I did, but she was the type of person who would rather sit at home with a book or enjoy a movie marathon with her mother than go to a party on a Saturday night; she was shy and often awkward in social situations.

Lorelai and Rory were the type of fictional characters you wish were real so they could be your best friends (because, obviously, if they were real, we would totally be best friends). They had great taste in movies, television, music, and fashion — exactly the qualities any girl wants in a best friend. Also? They made binge-watching television and movies while eating massive amounts of junk food (and never working out) look cool.

Aside from feeling a kinship with Rory, I also loved that she was simply a good female role model to have on television. Sure, she made her share of mistakes — sleeping with her married ex-boyfriend, stealing a yacht and getting arrested, to name a few — but, overall, she set a great example for young women.

There are a lot of TV characters, celebrities, and media personalities that are having a negative impact on young girls. Google “media and female body image” and you’ll find thousands of results to substantiate the negative relationship between the two. And it’s not only body image — girls see eating disorders, destructive behavior, substance abuse, and any number of issues being portrayed on their favorite shows with increasing frequency. Gilmore Girls was a show popular with all ages that showed women it’s “cool” to be who you are without trying to impress everyone around you.

Rory was a strong, independent woman who worked hard to achieve her goals. She wasn’t the type of person to define herself by her relationships, and she didn’t bow to peer pressure. Even her fashion sense was practical and much better than what you see on a lot of teenagers on television lately. When she did make a mistake, she faced the consequences of her actions and accepted responsibility. A girl could learn a lot from Rory Gilmore.

Gilmore Girls was, simply, a genuinely good show. It was the perfect blend of comedy and drama, coming of age, and family comedy. No matter where you were in your walk in life, you could identify with someone on that show — or just wish you were someone on that show. It’s also one of those shows that never gets old; I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every episode at least three times and could never get tired of it. And now that it’s available on Netflix, perhaps a whole new generation of young women will learn how to be comfortable with themselves from Rory Gilmore.

If you’re looking for the perfect fall binge show, look no further. Brew a nice cup of tea (or coffee, as Lorelai would prefer) and curl up on the couch with the Gilmore Girls.

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Binging makes TV watching more like reading

Several months ago, I touched on how the way we view television is changing. We are no longer tied to network schedules, and the combination of DVR and online streaming has turned “binge watching” into a full-fledged revolution in media consumption.

Suddenly realize there’s a show you want to start watching, but it’s about to start its fourth season? No problem; chances are you can find every episode of that series somewhere online and catch up before the new season starts. I’ve done that for many shows in the last few years.

But binge watching doesn’t just change the way you consume a certain television series: it creates a whole new experience while you’re watching it. When you watch several installments back to back, you remember all the little details you may have forgotten from one episode to the next if you had waited a full week between them. Binge watching that show then becomes more like reading a book; you can always go on to the next chapter whenever you want.

I’m a big book nerd. I’ll read just about anything I can get my hands on, and I can’t walk out of a bookstore without buying something — even though I already have well over 100 books in my “to-read” pile. With books, I really love the stories and the way they immerse you in another place or time. Binge watching television can have the same effect in a different medium. Settling in on the couch to watch a good series isn’t much different than curling up with a good novel.

When I read a book — especially vividly written fiction — my imagination runs wild. The world of the book becomes real to me. Certain books have more of an effect than others, but each has some sort of impact. The same goes for a really well-written television show. The more you watch, the more it gets in your head, and the characters, along with the world they inhabit, start to feel more and more real.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve found that many of the shows I’ve binge watched are the ones I’ve become more invested in. We formed a bond during those 12 hours spent watching episode after episode. (OK, so 12 hours of television in one sitting is a slight exaggeration, but you get the picture.) In some ways, watching shows like this can almost become an addiction: you plan your day so that you have enough time to squeeze in at least a couple more episodes — because you can’t not watch.

Then, once you’ve finished the series (or all the episodes you have access to), part of you just wants to go back and start them all over, like you do when you finish reading a really good novel. You aren’t ready for it to be over, but there isn’t anything else left, so you might as well start again from the beginning. This happened when I binge watched Doctor Who and Torchwood for the first time years ago, and when I watched the first two seasons of Teen Wolf last summer.

Some people try to tell me rereading books is a waste of time, and the same could go for rewatching television shows. There are so many other options out there, they say, why bother with something you’ve already seen (or read)? I disagree.

I often equate rereading a book with a visit to an old friend. You get to relive all the things you loved, remember all the things you forgot, and sometimes learn things you hadn’t known before. I’m currently in the middle of rereading all the Harry Potter books and am enjoying them just as much as I did the first time around. The same is true when you binge-watch a series you’ve already seen from start to finish. You’re reminded of all the qualities you enjoyed about the series the first time, and you get to experience all your favorite parts over again.

My family and I have been rewatching Gilmore Girls recently, and there are so many things that we had forgotten about the series that some episodes feel like we’re watching them for the first time. And there’s something comforting about revisiting Rory and Lorelai’s adventures. I’ve always wished I could live somewhere like Stars Hollow (though if I actually did, I’d probably go crazy in a week), and I love visiting that town through the show.

There are those who would argue that watching television is not as intellectually stimulating as reading a book in your down time, but those people apparently haven’t tried figuring out what Hurley’s lottery numbers mean on Lost or put thought into any number of other television mysteries.

One way in which binge watching a series could arguable be superior to reading a novel is with those frustrating cliffhangers. The ability to binge watch a show that has a habit of ending in cliffhangers, either at the end of an episode or at the end of a season, means you don’t always have to wait a week (or several months) in between those episodes to see what happens next. Unfortunately, in a series of novels, there’s no way to avoid the big cliffhangers between books unless you wait until the entire series is published before reading.

When each Harry Potter book came out, I started reading and did not stop until the book was finished. I read all 759 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in less than 12 hours. That’s not much different than watching an entire season of television in less than a week. Book readers have been in on this trend for decades; now, binge watching is the new normal for television.

If you’re looking for suggestions on what shows to binge watch, check out our Binge Watch column where we periodically review shows our staff writers have binged.