Television revivals highlight our need to retell familiar stories

At its peak, “Gilmore Girls” was something like the 160th most popular television show in America.
And yet, its fans have clamored for a revival of the show since it left the air in 2007. Last month, I joined millions of Americans in watching the four new episodes over just two days. The binge watching was a necessity, I told myself, because to wait too long would drastically expand the risk learning the ending from someone on social media, rather than being able to enjoy the buildup as it occurred on screen.
I remember loving the show a decade ago, when it was at its peak. I didn’t watch a ton of TV while I was in college – no money for cable and no time to dedicate to a weekly viewing anyway. But just after I graduated from college, my mom introduced me to the show and the first few seasons on DVD. I think I even bought her a season or two as a Christmas present, then borrowed them back as soon as I could.
The original show deserved the superfans’ praise – witty dialogue, obscure pop culture references, a town too quirky and adorable to be true. Rory’s love interests were perfectly symbolic, too, for the stages of real or hoped-for romance – the hometown boy who we’ll always view as a safe bet, the well-read rebel with a heart of gold, and the rich guy who can buy all of our problems away.
As I turned on the television and called up the episodes on Netflix, watched in the background while I cleaned and folded laundry on a Sunday afternoon, I felt myself return to 2005. This time, though, I was cleaning a house that I owned, not a tiny apartment in a sketchy complex. I was matching endless pairs of tiny white socks, trying to remember which ones are the smaller size, so I could put them in the right dressers. The wearers of those socks made loud noises all over the house, always ending up right next to me, something I definitely didn’t experience the last time I sat down to watch “Gilmore Girls.”
The thing is, as the story progressed, I felt a little let down. Don’t get me wrong – I was as happy as any other fangirl to hear some of my favorite characters spit out snappy, snarky dialogue. I laughed, loudly and often, during each episode.
But I think what struck me is how much I’ve changed since the show aired, and how hard it is to go back to characters that have been static for so long. It’s a little like picking up one of your favorite books from childhood, and realizing the story is far more stilted on paper than it was in your imagination, or unwrapping a favorite childhood candy and finding the flavor too sweet for your adult palate.
What seemed to me to be aspirational in my 20s – prep school and lots of reading and becoming a globe-trotting journalist – seems clichéd and silly to me now. Sure, people graduate from Ivy League schools and become freelance writers all the time, but that isn’t the life I want anymore. And it was weird to see the character I identified with a decade ago become the character I railed against now. Rory, the youngest of the three women who make up the titular Gilmore Girls, became unmoored, choosing a homeless lifestyle for a year while she tried to recover her lost writing career. The people I know who have had such career crises in their 30s have recovered much better, and with less whining, probably because they aren’t TV characters, and have actual bills to pay. The 30-somethings I know work hard and enjoy their lives, but we all must be a little nostalgic for the less encumbered days of our late teens and early 20s, or else this “Gilmore Girls” revival would never have had the audience that it does.
Watching the show and critiquing it gave me a chance to reflect on myself and the changes in my life in the last decade. I never became the international correspondent I thought I wanted to be in college, but I have lived and worked in four states since I graduated. My idea of success has moved away from the idea of bylines printed in multiple languages and articles being read by millions. I’ve learned to enjoy my life as it comes, one day at a time. I experience and appreciate each miracle – and there are many – without losing time worrying about wasted potential.
It also reminded me about how we love to tell and then retell the same story, with different details to emphasize different life lessons. That, more than anything else, was what made the new episodes satisfying.