Just Gilmore Girly Things: Explaining My Comfort Show

Just Gilmore Girly Things is a blog series on my inexplicable obsession with the CW/WB series Gilmore Girls that aired from 2000-2007. This series explores the personal and social connections I’ve made in my repeated watch-throughs over the last 23 years that nobody asked for. 

I’ve always loved TV. Long before I even knew I was depressed, it was one of my favourite ways of coping. Whether through cable or streamed (legally or otherwise…), I’ve spent years of my life binge watching long-running TV series like Scrubs, Greys Anatomy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, and more recently, Riverdale. Most of them I’ve managed to consume repeatedly.

But if you’ve ever talked to me about TV, then you’ve probably heard me refer to Gilmore Girls as my comfort show. In the two decades since it first aired, I’ve watched the original series probably at least seven times now, and I will find something to enthusiastically chew your ear off about every single time. 

I first watched it when I was about seven years old when it was first on the air. It was a show I remember stumbling upon and it was finally something that my brother and I could agree on watching (though that probably had to do with matching crushes on Alexis Bledel). It holds a special place in my heart—as much as I will tear it apart ruthlessly. 

I’ve, hopefully, changed a lot since that first watch, but even as my values and perspective changes, my opinions on the show only evolve over time. From my early years relating to Rory’s (Bledel) not-like-other-girls archetype to now, relating more to Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) and Luke (Scott Patterson) as I settle into my transmasculine identity. It’s rife with lessons on how and why we relate to each other the way we do. 

Gilmore Girls at its heart is about relationships. Maybe it’s because I grew up undiagnosed autistic and relationships were always confusing to me, but there is something comforting and familiar in the many dysfunctional relationships in it. Not just in the romantic relationships, but the familial and platonic ones too. 

And as an aromantic person, there’s actually something relieving about the fact that while romantic relationships are important to the plot, they’re not the foundational relationships that the series revolves around. It’s about family, friendship, work, and community. The romantic relationships come and go, but those aren’t the relationships we dwell on. 

Many of the main characters (grow to) feel real and multidimensional, their attitudes and personalities are easy to apply to the many people around us in our lives. Every time I watch, I feel like I understand my mother and other relationships better. Most of the time I don’t think it’s intentional, but that’s kind of what makes it brilliant. 

Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory are based on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s own relationship with her mother growing up. And that’s something you can feel in the writing. Their quirks, the intimacy between them, the evolution of their relationship, all feels natural and sensical. Their decisions make sense for their characters, which helps make it easier to discern why they do what they do. 

And not only that, none of them are actually perfect. In almost every conflict that occurs, there’s never a singular “bad guy.” Most of the time, both parties overreact, project, make assumptions, or generally just make things worse. It can be a pretty good lesson in cause and effect when it comes to other people’s conflict strategies. 

The eccentricities intrinsic to many of the characters, the things that make them lovable goofballs, can also be translated to neurodivergent experiences. It’s a world where (some kinds of) disabled people exist, even if we don’t name them as such. 

But I don’t just learn through the act of watching alone. It’s in sharing the show with someone else. When watching it with somebody new for the first time, or discussing with other fans ranging from the casual viewer to the hardcore re-watcher like myself, I learn so much from how others react or project or relate to the series. It can reveal a lot about our relationships with our mothers, with Whiteness, with class, with any number of things we can discuss from it. 

In fact, with both my abusive exes, it was in some trivial debate over the show that would alert me to red flags about them. Usually, it would be in their seemingly inexplicable anger every time Lorelai does something selfish or imperfect in her relationships. With one of them, it got to the point where I had to ask if she was triggering unresolved trauma. 

But I think what I love most about the show is that I can process and analyze these reactions and relationships with minimal stakes involved. While there’s conflict after conflict, there’s no serious consequences that they actually face. There’s always a safety net to keep them out of poverty; however bad their relationships get, none of it ever escalates to abuse because the Gilmore girls are always able to maintain their autonomy. 

Sometimes it’s kinda nice to be able to think about relationships in a way where the consequences don’t have to be scarring traumatic events. I like seeing examples of relationships that acknowledge the emotional toll they can have on us, but aren’t complicated by inherent power structures that remove our agency to have control over how we navigate them. 

Maybe it’s just a fantastical escape for me to imagine a kind of life that isn’t boring or conflict-free, but isn’t defined by the various oppressions I have to constantly battle. It can be hard to say whether or not this portrayal is an idealistic fantasy or the actual reality of life as a middle class white woman in suburban America. 

Either way, these are far from my only thoughts on the series, but I’ll leave it here for now. I’ll be back next week to reveal more of my thoughts on some of the crucial relationships explored in the series.