When we found out that Up TV was bringing Gilmore Girls back to TV starting with a marathon of episodes yesterday, we went out to the biggest Gilmore Girls fans on our team, Tiff and Carrie Jo, and asked them to throw Gilmore-Girls themed parties in celebration. Fueled by snacks popular on the show and tissues handy for all the Rory and Lorelai moments, they gathered their friends together for east coast/west coastl Gilmore Girls parties!
Carrie Jo- Gilmore Girls the college years
I was a college freshman when Gilmore Girls first aired on the now-extinct WB. During the next seven years, I watched the show with college roommates, with my mom and sister, with my new husband, and talked about it with the middle school students I taught. In the eight years since the finale, I’ve revisited the quaint Connecticut town with its fast-talking mother-daughter duo at every opportunity.
Stars Hollow continues to be a fantastic fantasy world. It’s a place where everyone is quirky, friendly, and knows your name…and a whole lot of your business. Despite how tiny the town is, there’s always a festival or party going on. You don’t have to look any farther than the local diner for great food and a hot love interest. It’s so perfect that it’s a place where under-weight actresses can pretend to eat* mountains of junk food and never once gain an ounce.
Like any great fictional world, it created it’s own language. Is there a single Gilmore fan who hasn’t (at some point) been tempted to moan “Oy with the poodles already!” just to see if anyone caught the reference? Shouting “Copper boom!” might raise a few more eyebrows, as would spouting off the Latin catch phrase “in omnia paratus,” but most Gilmore fans would recognize any of these references. My personal favorite Lorelai quote is one I use often, mainly with my mom, (who gets my constant fictional references),
“I can be flexible. As long as everything is exactly the way I want it, I’m totally flexible.”
My Gilmore party was a little piece of fantasy, too. Two of my three sisters-in-law and I sent our husbands and five children to a play place. We had an empty (quiet!) house, mac & cheese, Red Vines, Pop Tarts, truffles, chocolate covered almonds, and pizza to eat– Lorelai and Rory would have been proud! So we settled down with yummy food and a few of our favorite episodes.
We debated all the important aspects of the show. Everyone was Team Luke (in our collective opinion, there isn’t another valid shipping option for Lorelai). Team Dean got half a vote, Team Jess got the other half vote, and Team Logan got one solid one (mine, for the record) and another tentative one.
We listed all our favorite episodes, but instead of reading a boring bunch of titles, suffice it to say they were mainly the big ones: when Luke did sweet things for Lorelai, when Rory kissed boys, when people got together/got married/got other life-changing news, and when Luke and Lorelai FINALLY got together. (And if you’re watching the show for the first time on UP, don’t whine to me about spoilers. The show’s been over for eight years and you can see Luke and Lorelai coming from the first episode.)
I have only one complaint regarding the whole experience. I now want to binge watch all seven seasons of GG–again! UPtv, can you somehow sponsor an extra 2-3 hours in each day in which I am allowed to do nothing but visit Stars Hollow?
Tiff- A Teen Obsession:
I was 17 years old when Gilmore Girls first aired and it has been a staple in my life since that time. I’ve seen every episode at least 4 times (most of them far more than that) and even own the entire series on DVD. It is one of the only shows that I never get bored of. I remember when it first was off the air and the dvd’s came out to purchase and I forced one of my good friends to sit through a marathon with me, I left my dvd’s with her that and went home. The next day she called me to tell me she had skipped her classes and called in sick to work because she stayed up all night watching Gilmore Girls. This was before #NetflixandChill the show is just that good you guys!
My friends and I have loved this show for over 15 years and all these years later I still find myself understanding pop culture references that I missed the first 5 times I watched a particular episode. My mom first discovered the show and loved it. Like Rory, I have a fun young mom, who was a teenager when she started having kids (although this was because she was a child bride). While watching the show my mom told me that my name was supposed to be Rory up until my grandmother, the real life (Italian version of) Emily Gilmore, told her that it was a ridiculous name. Eventually my parents ended up naming me after a character they liked on the soap opera, General Hospital. Apparently either way I was destined to have a stripper’s name!
During the Up Tv #gilMOREgirls marathon, I invited some friends over to have brunch, drink coffee and eat so much junk food we all might be diabetics now, just the way Lorelai and Rory would have wanted it to be. We talked about our favorite moments in the show (Life and Death Brigade episode) and how Lorelai Gilmore set unrealistic expectations on how our metabolism would respond to constantly eating take out and candy in our 30’s. We also had a crazy moment when most of us realized that when we started watching this show as 16 and 17 year olds, we were Rory’s (Alexis Bledel) age and now 15 years later we are as old or OLDER than Lorelai (Lauren Graham) when the show started!
We got through the majority of season one in sweat pants pigging out on food that will rot our insides, so basically it was the best day ever. If you’ve been living under a rock for the last 15 years and never got around to watching Gilmore Girls now’s your chance because UpTv is airing the whole series! You will be surprised to see how many super famous people have cameos on the series, including Jon Hamm and Nick Offerman! Not to mention both Adam Brody and Billy Burke aka Charlie Swan had brief stints on the show, because of course around here, #EGBTT.
Win a Gilmore Girls Prize Pack
Courtesy of UpTV, we are giving away a Gilmore Girls Prize Pack (as seen above). Just comment below with our favorite moment from Gilmore Girls to win!
