Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life — Spring

Picture this, Winter ends, Dolly Parton sings a little, it’s 4:30 in the morning, and Netflix gives you 15 seconds to process all the feelings you had before auto-playing Spring and launching you into a whole new set of feelings. You grab some more red vines and a pop-tart, wiggle around to find a perfect place on the couch and get your head in the game because mama didn’t raise a quitter.

If you haven’t read our Winter recap, go do that here and then come back to Spring.  Proceed with caution, there will be spoilers under the cut, you’ve been warned!

So, I tried to write this as a scene by scene recap, but I wrote 1000 words before making it to the halfway point of the episode. So I scrapped that essay and we’re gonna go through it in broad strokes and cute moments.

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

Stars Hollow

International Food Festival

• Taylor and Kirk are frantic because 127 countries never even got back to them about attending. They got 15 booths though which is pretty impressive, I’m actually impressed there are people of 15 different nationalities in this tiny white town.
  
• Rory hangs out in Korea with Lane & Mrs. Kim AND MR. KIM! GUYS! MR. KIM IS REAL! He was just casually there, eating and waving.
  
• In an adorable nostalgic moment that I can’t glaze over, Luke & Lorelai – mostly Lorelai – bid on a basket to remember the early days of their romance! *heart eyes* #TBT #AllTheFeels
  

Town Meeting

• Taylor wants to customize the town fire hydrants;
• He also wants to round up the gays for a Pride Parade, but only a few people volunteered.
• Then he complains about only the B-list starts of a Hollywood movie (being shot in a neighbouring town) staying at the Dragonfly. He wants to get the big names like Jessica Chastain to spend money in the Hollow so they can increase the tax base and pay for GAZEBO UPKEEP & TWINKLE LIGHTS

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

The Dragonfly Inn

• Michel is getting restless, he wants the inn to expand so he can spread his wings. Lorelai doesn’t know what to do to make him happy, she can sense that he wants to leave and she’s stuck.
• Sookie is off developing super foods and saving the world so they keep bringing pop-up chefs into her kitchen. Lorelai hates and fires literally all of them, including Rachael Ray! Even after Rachel gives some pretty decent advice about the Michel stuff. Actors don’t eat sammies, there’s nothing we can do

Black, White & Read Movie Theatre

• Kirk debuts his second short film & it’s beautiful
• Babette & Marty are literally grilling sausages as Kirk asks that people not bring in outside food
• Emily calls LUKE!

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

Hartford

Gilmore Mansion

• That phone call was to invite Luke to dinner, he assumed Lorelai was also invited but apparently it was a “just Luke” situation.
• Rory is also there but I’m not sure she was invited either.
• Emily takes Luke into Richard’s study to tell him that Richard (RIP) set aside money for him so he could franchise the diner. Luke is totally flabbergasted and doesn’t know what to do.
• He’s so confused in fact that one day Emily just shows up and takes him to see properties and he goes along with it, not telling Lorelai.

Chilton

• Rory & Paris are at an alumni event where they speak to the students about the real world.
• They spend some time chatting with the headmaster, which would’ve terrified me, but I’m not Rory Gilmore.
• He praises her work and offers
• Paris basically terrifies all of them while Rory tries to be inspirational.
• After the event, they spot Tristan (not Chad Michael Murray) and grown-ass Paris has a full on meltdown in the bathroom. It’s about more than her persisting crush on him though, the divorce with Doyle is messy and her kids like the nanny better and the New York apartment has too many stairs.
• There’s also an adorable little reunion with Francie where it’s clear no one ever grows out of High School.

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

Therapy

• Throughout the episode, Lorelai and Emily are in therapy together, trying to work out their issues.
• The first session is full of silence and them running out the clock;
• In the second session, Emily brings up everything Lorelai has ever done wrong, starting with leaving when she got pregnant ages ago and ending with a nasty letter she once received on her birthday from her daughter.
• Lorelai is totally confused by this letter, has no idea what her mom is talking about and repeatedly promises/insists that she didn’t write it.
• This is clearly something that Emily has held onto for a long-ass time and it definitely shaped their relationship so I’m over here wondering who actually wrote it and did they frame Lorelai AND WHY IS IT NEVER ADDRESSED AGAIN IN ALL THE HOURS WE HAVE?!
• The last joint appointment involves Emily really letting Lorelai know how she feels about the fact that Luke & her still aren’t married. It totally strikes a nerve with Lorelai who is on the verge of tears when she storms out.
• The following week, Emily announces that she’s not going to therapy anymore, but Lorelai stays and starts to work on her shit. BUT SHE DOESN’T TELL LUKE WHY ARE WE LYING TO EACH OTHER SMHHHHH.

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

London

Naomi Shropshire

• Rory wants to capitalize on the buzz around her New Yorker piece so she’s working on a book proposal with Naomi.
• They seem to get along great at first, but as time goes on, their meetings get more and more tense. Naomi doesn’t know what she wants and Rory is visibly annoyed by her all the time.
• This all ends with Naomi’s lawyer, Jason Mantzoukas in one of my favourite cameos ever, calling Rory to dissolve the entire partnership.
• Rory is incredibly startled when this falls apart and she feels like she has nothing to do, career wise.
• There’s is website that’s basically been begging her to work for them for over a year but she feels like she’s above it all so she ends up asking Logan’s dad to pull some strings with Condé Nast and gets them to commit to a real meeting with her.

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

Logan

• This is the episode in which we find out that bae is actually ENGAGED!
• Okay okay so, Logan is cheating on his fiancée and Rory is the other woman again and it all feels weird and wrong BUT! I’ve built a narrative where Odette is also cheating on Logan, they’re only getting married to make their dads happy, and they have this whole agreement worked out. IT HANGS BY A THREAD, BUT IT HANGS! I do the same thing with Paul (who?) Rory’s rando boyfriend who I’ve decided is an ass that makes even less effort than Rory to make time for the relationship.
• With my brain narrative in place, it gets easy to enjoy the time they have together and just be content with having Rory & Logan back in my life. The supportive Logan who wants what’s best for Rory, not the dude from season 7.
• ALSO; he calls her Ace a bunch of times and melts my heart.

New York City

Paris & Doyle

• Danny Strong plays Doyle as a douchey screenwriter perfectly, he and Paris immediately start fighting about letting the nanny go up the stairs with the kids – the 5 stories in their house are a real problem for everyone.
• Rory babysits the kids for a while and does a pretty good job. The scene is pretty weird given what we know about the ending. Did she know here? Had it already happened?
• If Fall ends in November and she’s 3 months along, the earliest it would have happened is August and this is just Spring so it hasn’t happened and it can’t be the rando from the next bullet point either.

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

Wookie Humping Loser

• Condé Nast finally meet with Rory and talk about doing a story on “lines” in New York. People will line up for anything and they want a perspective on why…or something.
• Rory calls up Lorelai and they hit the city together, lining up for sneakers and the newest pastry craze. Of course, Lore charms her way into these stores early and gets the thing everyone is patiently waiting to get
• The Mae Whitman cameo honestly makes the episode. Parenthood fans know her as Lauren Graham’s other daughter so seeing her next to Rory was a hoot. Lorelai sneaks her some of the pastry she got in advance and calls her “kid” and they have a bonding moment and Rory makes jealous eyes AND IT’S SO CUTE!
• Eventually Lorelai is tired of standing in lines so Rory goes it alone and ends up sleeping with a guy in a Wookie costume – and it’s implied that he keeps it on throughout.
• When Rory gets to the hotel, she’s tired and feeling lost and regretful. She finally comes clean to Lorelai about the Logan thing – and Lorelai is surprisingly cool about it.
• She encourages Rory to chill out, reminds her that she’s had a pretty charmed life thus far and convinces her to go work for Sandie Says for a while, where she’s wanted.

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

Sandie Says

• Rory shows up in her lucky outfit assuming that she already has the job.
• BUT this is a job interview, one she was soooo not prepared for. She doesn’t have a pitch prepared and doesn’t know the website well enough to sell them ideas that match their voice and hers
• Sandie cuts the meeting short, then calls her a few minutes later to tell her she didn’t get the job. Rory feels entitled to it because Sandie has been calling for so long. They get into a little fight and hang up the phone.
• Rory breaks her cell, dumps it in the trash, heads to Stars Hollow, barges in through her mom’s door and announces that she’s moving back home.

I loved the entire revival, my nostalgia and my love for these characters took over the moment I pressed play on Winter. That also put a rosy tint over everything, including the problematic and out of character bits. The revival delivered something long-time fans of the show had always felt was missing. Wether you liked the full circle story arc ending or wether you would’ve preferred more fan-service, we still got to go back to Stars Hollow for 6 hours and feel like everything was going to work out and maybe that’s the point of all of it anyway.

Source: Netflix // Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life

Keep reading our recaps of Summer & Fall, and check out our AYITL playlist for songs from the revival!