Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life Netflix Mini-series Review

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016)
Mini-series - 4 episodes

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

Watch Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
Created by: Amy Sherman-Palladino
Starring: Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Scott Patterson, Kelly Bishop
Rated: TV-14

Plot
Consisting of four 90 minute episodes that depict one of four seasons, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore's story in Stars Hollow, Connecticut continues. Rory is trying to determine her next occupation while Lorelai deals with a loss at the inn, her mother's grief, and uncertainty at home.

Verdict
When one of your favorite series, like Gilmore Girls, returns you need to watch it. I've never watched this show until now, so I'm missing all of the background. I can't compare this to the original run. If you've seen this show, it's a must watch, but it does not stand on it's own. It banks hard on nostalgia, as it should.
It's quaint, but creates many silly situations. This isn't a show to which you can always apply logic, which is okay, but often it's so far out there that I can't begin to suspend my disbelief. Understand that this show caters to fans of the show, and those fans only.
Regardless of whether you're a fan, you should dislike the ending.
Watch it (If you've seen the show) Skip it. (If you've never seen the show)

Review
Gilmore Girls originally ran from 2000-2007. I've never watched the show, so I'm reviewing this mini-series based on it's own merits which makes me one of the few to watch this and not to have watched the original run. I did watch the one minute season recaps, but that didn't help much. That gave me a lot of names and a very basic premise.

Winter

I've heard of Gilmore Girls, no doubt it's popular, and when a beloved show returns nine years later, you've got to watch it, provided you watched the original run. When Fox brought The X-Files back, I watched every episode, and even kept watching after the strange episode where Mulder has a fake country music drug trip.


"How does that work?", is a question I asked often during this mini-series. This is very much a network sitcom, and I don't require a show to ascribe to strict logic. The back alley secret bar works perfectly fine, but when Rory takes an unpaid job at a newspaper when she's leaving town in three weeks, what's the point? Won't the newspaper shut down again?

This show delights in setting up a situation and providing no context. This is a bewildering show. Rory has left her Brooklyn apartment, but provides no clear indication as to what she's actually doing. As the episode progresses we're told she'll keep freelancing and live in three different places. While I get what she is doing, the question is why she decides to live in London, New York, and Stars Hollow simultaneously.

Summer

The banter is quick, but too cute. The little back and forth dialogue is too clever. It's something that would only develop in a writers' room, every line referencing pop culture like Spinal Tap or The Sopranos. It just didn't sound natural. No one talks like that. While I noticed it less as the show went on, I'd ascribe it to the first episode trying to show off, proving the ability hasn't faded.
We do get a recurring joke about Rory's forgettable boyfriend Paul. It's very much an Arrested Development Ann joke, with Rory forgetting she has a boyfriend in Paul, and forgetting to break up with him. We see him once. The joke is silly, but it completely works.

Lorelai and Emily in therapy.

The first episode sets the stage for where these characters are, the second and third episodes creates the conflict. Lorelai's mother Emily is dealing with the death of her husband Richard. Emily is in therapy and forces Lorelai to join her. This results in sessions of silence or Emily telling Lorelai to stop talking. Emily is pushing Luke to create a Luke's Diner franchise, to which he is reluctant.
Neither Lorelai or Luke is telling the other about what Emily is doing and this creates a rift. That and Lorelai is exploring the possibility of having a baby, because why not make her story line as messy as possible? I'm guessing that was added to provide a chance for Rory's old roommate Paris to cameo.

Is that Logan in the background?

Rory's life is floundering, but Jess provides an answer. Rory decides to write a book about her and her mother's relationship. If it succeeds maybe they can turn it into a television pilot, but what would they call it?
Rory approaches her mom about the book. Rory is unreasonable, demanding her mom release her rights to the book. I get Lorelai's side. She doesn't want to let all of the skeletons out of the closet. How real will this book get, and how will it depict her? Lorelai is coming to terms with the fact that her parents weren't the best. She has a hard time coming up with one good story about her father. Is this book going to take shots at her being a single mother?
Rory is so insistent on the book because her life has crashed. She had all of the potential, even had minor success, but she's still back at Star's Hollow, insisting "I'm not back." This book is her answer, the solution that will stop the free fall that is her life because she doesn't want to be stuck in the thirty somethings gang, a group that has returned to their childhood homes in Stars Hollow, having failed at their endeavors.
That and she's continuing a relationship with Logan who has a fiancee, she has to see that ending soon. She needs something to fill the void, thus the book.

The last episode had my least favorite introduction and a conclusion that was prefect, until the final four words.
The first scene is rough. Lorelai is at a hotel packing her bag for a hike and calls Luke. It's a rough scene in acting and execution. Every part of the scene leaves something to be desired. We then get a Rory sequence that  I wondered, even after it concluded, whether it was a dream. It's inexplicable. Logan and his friends are dressed up in something resembling Victorian England garb. They prance around Stars Hollow, stealing golf clubs to drive balls on the roof, buy a nightclub, and break into convenience stores while leaving wads of cash. It's bizarre, and yet it isn't a dream. This concludes the Logan plot, who is getting married.  He's been engaged the entire time while continuing a fling with Rory.
Also, Lorelai's hiking trip didn't pan out, but she got the clarity she sought.

Lorelai and Rory.

The final episode does a great job of tying up all the loose plot points. Lorelai and Emily reconcile, with Lorelai finally recalling a good memory about her father.
Rory will write the book with Lorelai's blessing, and Luke and Lorelai will get married. There's a great final sequence of the wedding decorations and the marriage, but I knew this show would try to ruin it by including one more teaser scene. It does that and how. It's so pointless because you don't continue a mini-series, and yet this is primed for an additional chapter.

You could have cut this before the final scene or at least before the last four words and it would have been perfectly fine. Instead the show forgoes a neat conclusion, forcing ardent fans to beg for more.