5 things I love even more about Gilmore Girls the second time around

This fall, Netflix announced the release of Gilmore Girls, to the glee of its female millenial subscribers everywhere. I loved Gilmore Girls the first time I watched it when it was on TV, but I never saw the last half of the final season (though I did get disappointed reports on the ending from my friends), so I couldn't wait to revisit Stars Hollow and pretend to be one of its crazy inhabitants, hanging out with Rory and Lorelai over lots of strong coffee. 

I've been in a more-or-less constant state of binge watching ever since and I've finally gotten to the part of the last season that I haven't seen yet. I still haven't finished (so no spoilers here), but I've loved Gilmore Girls even more the second time around. Here are 5 things I appreciate even more about this wonderful show after watching it all over again 10 years later:

1. The pop culture references. Oh, I thought I was super cool for understanding so many of the film, TV, music, and literature references the first time around, but those girls talk so fast, I had no idea how many references were just going over my naive head. Since the first time I watched the show, I've read a lot, embraced Led Zeppelin and other classic rock, and upped my Star Trek viewing, and those changes alone tripled my understanding and enjoyment of the show's many references, not to mention all the other random nods to pop culture I understand now that I couldn't have back then. Watching Gilmore Girls is a lot like winning at a family game of Trivial Pursuit -- you finally feel justified for storing all that random pop culture and literary stuff in your brain instead of learning "important" things like how to keep a consistently clean house or how to calculate a tip without using your cell-phone-calculator. Gilmore Girls makes all that random knowledge seem worth it.

2. The town of Stars Hollow. I think that watching Gilmore Girls from the comfort of my small-town-like college campus the first time around made it hard for me to appreciate how magical Stars Hollow is. Since trading the friendly walkability of my compact campus for the sprawling impersonality of a pedestrian-averse city, I've come to long for the kind of community on display in Stars Hollow, with its perfect town square, its strong small businesses, its centrally-located-everything, its proud Colonial heritage, and its feeling of familial frustration and love. And that's just the start of Stars Hollow's charms. The zany town meetings, the festivals of all shapes and sizes, and, of course, the crazy inhabitants all make Stars Hollow my dream town and my favorite TV land to escape in.

3. The people of Stars Hollow. While we're on the topic of the town, the people who live there warrant a bullet-point all their own. The first time around, I was so focused on the drama in the lives of the main characters that I didn't fully appreciate Kirk's ridiculous antics, Miss Patty's good-natured meddling, or the way the Christian pastor and the Jewish Rabbi like to hang out to discuss philosophy. One of the main reasons Stars Hollow is great is that the people in the town continue to put-up-with -- even love one another -- no matter how crazy or how different from one another they may be. 

4. The mother-daughter relationship theme. Looking back, it's obvious: Gilmore Girls is primarily about the mother-daughter relationship, as established by out main characters, Rory and Lorelai. But the mother-daughter theme is everywhere. Obviously it continues generationally with Lorelai's mother, Emily, but similar mother-daughter joys and struggles play out in the relationship between Lane and Mrs. Kim (and, later, we see, with Mrs. Kim's own mother). More broadly, the parent-child relationship is explored with Luke and Jess, Luke and April, and even with Kirk and his invisible-but-clingy mom. Michel's relationship with his mother is often a source of comedy, and parent-child relationships-gone-wrong are key for understanding poor-little-rich-kids like Logan and Paris who either struggle to maintain healthy relationships with parents or have almost no relationship with them at all. In short, the parent-child-relationship turns out to be the most important for character development and plot drama in Gilmore Girls, and the show handles the complexities of these relationships with emotional nuance and lots of humor.

5. The writing. Granted, I don't know what disasters await me as the show winds to a close, but up until the final season, I can safely say that Gilmore Girls is one of the best-written shows to grace my TV screen. This accolade is due not only to the much-lauded witty banter, but to the carefully developed character and story arcs, the way each episode deftly wraps up its own plot lines while leaving you wanting more (and more and more), and the way even the craziest of characters reflect some piece of someone you know or someone you are. Binge-watching Gilmore Girls has shown me how consistent and well-planned the show is -- what seemed like shocking plot twists the first time I watched revealed themselves as long, subtle, and inevitable trajectories based on well-established psychological motivation or continually building tension. I realize I could change my tune when I finally finish the last season, but since the show lost its main writers that season, it almost seems like that season shouldn't count. For the most part, Gilmore Girls is a model example of how to write about the simple parts of life in a way that you can't and don't want to stop watching.

I'll be sad when my Gilmore Girls re-watch is finally complete, but the beauty of Netflix is that I can return to Stars Hollow anytime I want.