We the Write stuff.

Gilmore Girls effectively ended two years ago. However, thanks to the fact that it doesn’t seem to air in India (except for a while at an abysmal hour on Zee Café) and erratic Abu Dhabi visits (when a season would never be on air) I only got to catch up with the last two seasons now.

It was heartrending, all the memories that show brought up. Ive been watching Gilmore Girls since I was in High School, back in the good old days, when Wednesday nights were primetime viewing because Thursday/Friday still constituted a weekend. It was a mommy and me tradition and we never missed an episode.

I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a mother-daughter (those that get along as well as those who don’t) who don’t fall hook, line and sinker for this show. Yes, the characters talk too fast, yes, Stars Hollow doesn’t even exist (and a town as awesome as that really should), but a show as warm and as intelligent as that deserved to run for years and years and years.

One of the main reasons I loved this show was an inherent theme that ran throughout the show from episode 1 to the Bon Voyage episode in Season 7 – Books. The writers of Gilmore Girls (the Palladino’s are GODS) made sure that every other sentence had a cultural/literary reference. They understood, how underrated books were in American teenage television. In the O.C, in 90210 – it’s all about sex, breaking up and hooking up. In the Gilmore Girls however, a book is a symbol of your identity, an understanding of whom you are as a person as well as whom you want to be. “ I live in a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina, and strolled down Swann’s Way” – Rory’s High School Graduation Speech. There have been at least a dozen books Rory Gilmore has introduced me to, that will remain favorites forever.

For the Gilmore Girls, unlike the characters of The O.C/90210 etc, high heels and handbags aren’t the ultimate accessory. Books are. In the first episode, Rory meets her first boyfriend, Dean (Jared Padalecki), when he spots her reading Madame Bovary and later Moby Dick under a tree: "I thought, 'I have never seen someone read so intensely before in my life. I have to meet that girl.' " In a later season, Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) borrows Rory's copy of Allen Ginsberg's* Howl and returns it with notes scribbled in the margins. The two soon embark on a typically angst-ridden romance, where the exchange of books plays a large role.

Season 7, the final season of Gilmore Girls plainly showed the absence of the Palladino’s. As soon as I watched the first episode of the season, I knew something was wrong. The dialogue was as wordy as ever, but no longer witty. Overall, it was a disappointing season – made up for by the last episode. I didn’t just cry, I blubbered. I wept and wept till I ran out of tissues. Once I got another box of tissues, I wept some more. It was beautiful, because the Gilmore Girls themselves, didn’t cry once, despite the fact that they would be separated for months, if not years. They ironed tshirts, they shopped, they didn’t talk, they talked, and the show ended the same way the show began 7 years ago – at Luke’s diner, in the early hours of the morning, just before Rory Gilmore takes off to be a political reporter on the trail of Obama’s presidential campaign.
Cliché, though it may seem, I always felt prettier, and wittier and wiser after watching Gilmore Girls. Not only do I talk (much) faster than normal, I’m chirpier and wiser. Ask Harry. He has spoken to me pre-Gilmore Girls viewing and post-Gilmore Girls viewing and can tell the difference by now. It wasn’t just about the books, or the addiction to coffee, or the compulsive eating, or even the witty dialogues. It was them. You fell in love with the Gilmore Girls, because they were awesome. End of story. They were funny, and smart and brave and had pretty much no-one else but each other. And I, for one, am a better person for knowing them intimately for seven years.