Getting To Know the Gilmore Girls

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Sunday, May 8th, 2022 was the day people were frantically trying to find their mothers a gift to show their appreciation. This was also the day many mother-daughter relationships rewatched the comedic drama Gilmore Girls on Netflix. 

The show revolves around a mother, Lorelai, and her teenage daughter, Rory. The two face familial challenges with people like Lorelai’s mother and father. All while Rory is confronted with the hardships of school studies and social life. 

Both female leads throughout the seven seasons of the show experience personal hardships, but when one struggles, so does the other. Lorelai and Rory confide in each other because when it comes down to it, they only have one another.

Lorelai’s character especially highlights the idea of women’s independence. She is a single mother who has to deal with not only the prejudices of the community around her but her parents as well, who criticize their daughter’s every action. Lorelai’s parents are the embodiment of “I told you so.” They don’t understand the perspective of their daughter who ‒at the time she was pregnant with Rory– ran away due to her inability to fully process her emotions. Even so, Lorelai was able to raise and take care of Rory in a tight-knit community named Stars Hollow.

Because of the way Lorelai raised her, Rory developed solid values and morals. She became studious in school and aimed for one of the highest ivy league universities, Harvard. 

Along the way, Rory encounters numerous problems such as romantic relationships and friendships, as any teenager goes through in modern society. Rory represents the character people aspire to be: a disciplined and intelligent student with a goal, who also displays the physical and mental challenges of such an idea. 

Gilmore Girls aims to show the family of two and their struggles growing up together. It ended with seven seasons in 2007 but came back with a sequel, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, in 2016.

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This four-episode season shows the Gilmore girls nearly a decade later when Rory is in her 30s. She faces relationship problems with not only her romantic partner but her mother as well. It goes to show that people, no matter what age, will face the same problems they did when they were in high school or college. Not only that but both her mother and grandmother have to face the inevitable obstacle of death and learn how to move on. But can one really learn how to overcome grief?

What’s still prominent a decade later is the mother-daughter relationship the two still have. Rory is living on her own, without Lorelai, and vice versa. However, throughout the film, the two still display an eminent bond with each other. Both women are independent and have grown physically and mentally, but Rory and Lorelai know that this progression is because they are in each other’s lives. The two-member family archetype remains, as does the love they have for one another.