Gilmore Girls is the closest television comes to comfort. The American dramedy features a cast of developed characters who spout witticisms and media references at a mile a minute, pausing only to take in astronomical amounts of coffee. Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, the titular Gilmore girls, spend the better part of the show’s seven seasons roaming around their place of residence, Stars Hollow, pursuing their passions, and becoming entangled in romantic attachments with a variety of men. There are moments of bitterness—breakups, fights, lost bracelets and Easter eggs—but rarely do the characters encounter the sort of consuming, unresolvable issue that so often threatens to upend the lives of real people.
This is the heart of the show. Rory, Lorelai, and the people around them are deeply flawed. Over the course of the show’s run, they make a slew of mistakes, hurt those they care about, and worsen old issues through a refusal to communicate. The incident, at least in the world of Stars Hollow, is not as important as what comes after it. This is why so much of the show’s best material is found in the fallout rather than during an actual event. We aren’t shown Richard Gilmore’s heart attack, just the reactions of his family. Rory stealing a yacht isn’t depicted on camera, but we do watch her community service. In doing so, Gilmore Girls constructs a universe oriented around the concept of redemption.
It is a comforting escape to find a world where nothing bad can happen. It is something warmer to find a show that says: yes, you can make mistakes; yes, you will make mistakes; yes, you will be forgiven. We watch Lorelai and Rory forgive each other again and again, and this ripple effect spreads to many of the show’s most prominent relationships (Lorelai and her parents are a notable example). Life doesn’t always make it possible for us to atone, and we cannot expect forgiveness from everyone we wrong, but television provides an outlet to assure us of past grievances being inevitably righted.
The world of Stars Hollow is a fantasy, but it’s not one that comes without work. Relationships must be maintained, apologies must be issued, and those who leave must return. Justifications are not always accepted at first, but the influence of time (and the burgeoning conclusions of forty-five minute episodes) provide the comfort viewers come to the show to seek. The way the show is designed makes it impossible for misery to overstay its welcome. And really, it’s not surprising that Gilmore Girls is such a typical escapist show, because the construction is not for bombastic revelations or heart wrenching television. It’s a show about warmth, and love, and is guided by these principles through each season, even when it loses its way.
Lorelai and Rory grow as people facing challenges, and their ever-present banter gives the show a golden tone. (Perhaps this is why the first half of season six feels so narratively barren; the story has been stripped of its signature style.) We watch as Rory grows from a high school sophomore to a young woman, graduating private school and then Yale while dealing with romantic tribulations. Lorelai goes from managing an inn to running one of her very own—and no one can deny that the Dragonfly is one of the show’s most inspired settings, beautiful both in its design and the sense of fulfilling a major character’s long held dream. Another method through which the show sells its escapist fantasy is that of constant achievement, growing more, wanting more, and being willing to work to get there.
More than anything, Gilmore Girls holds the promise that things will be better through love. “I will follow where you lead,” sings Carole King in the show’s familiar intro (King also appears in several episodes as the owner of a music store), promising a world where the connection between mothers and daughters is enough to overcome any divide that might present itself. Nearly twenty-two years after the show first aired, that suggestion is still solace.