Gilmore Girls Might Just Have Saved My 2020
“And if eating cake is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”
2020 probably wasn’t the best year for any of us. Just like everybody else, I’ve had the very essence of my existence taken away from me. What is a competitive dancer without competitions? What is a teacher without students?
I’m sure many people have had it a million times worse. I still have a job, a roof over my head, and enough coffee in my cupboard. So who am I to complain?
But 2020 has forced me to reconsider my life choices, to find out what is truly important to me. I’m not quite there yet, but there is one thing that helped me keep at least a tiny little bit of my optimism:
Gilmore Girls.
As ridiculous as it may sound, Lorelai, Rory, and Emily Gilmore might just have saved my life this year. I started watching the show right when the pandemic hit – what else was I to do with all the empty time on my hands?
“I can be flexible. As long as everything is exactly the way I want it, I’m totally flexible.”
— Lorelai Gilmore
Being a 90es-kid, I have no idea why I had never watched this legendary series before. I watched Parenthood in 2019 and fell in love with Lauren Graham, so I jumped into Gilmore Girls just because I wanted more from her.
Maybe this is how it was always meant to be. Maybe the show was silently sitting there all the time, waiting to come in and save me at the time I needed it the most.
I have since engaged in the most fangirlish behavior of my life. I have read and watched every single interview with the actors and set a wallpaper of Lorelai and Rory on my phone. Now that it’s over and I’ve devoured every single episode including the remake, I am wondering why these characters — Lorelai especially — have come to mean so much to me.
I think I found my answer:
Lorelai Gilmore is such a perfectly imperfect character who is struggling and struggling and struggling her way through life and yet never loses her optimism. Yes, she wallows, she is frustrated and tired at times, but she always…
