A Sense of Doubt blog post #3328 - Gilmore Girls: Top Ten on Netflix Years Running
I was so happy to find this article.
I am a huge Gilmore Girls fan.
I was a huge fan before I got married and my step-daughter and I bonded over both being fans.
Just this today.
Thanks for tuning in.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/arts/television/gilmore-girls-netflix-rewatch.html
‘Gilmore Girls’ Is an Endless Buffet of TV Comfort Food
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| Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, carrying our emotional health on their shoulders. Ron Batzdorff/Alamy Stock Photo |
Some things have inexplicable
staying power. The Hermès Birkin bag. Cheetos. Crocs.
And for nostalgic
millennials, there is “Gilmore Girls.” The show ended its seven-year run on the
WB and CW networks in 2007, yet viewers keep returning to the familiar comfort
of the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Conn., where the series was set.
Netflix recorded 500 million viewing hours for the show
from January to June of last year, surpassing hits like “Seinfeld” and
“Stranger Things,” and data released on Monday by the research firm
Nielsen showed that “Gilmore Girls” was among the Top 10 most-watched shows
across the major streaming platforms in 2023.
The show, which concluded the
month before the iPhone was introduced, is even finding a younger audience on
TikTok, where users post scenes they love and argue about their favorite
romantic partners for every character.
Yanic Truesdale, who played
the grumpy inn concierge Michel, lovingly called it “the show that will never
die.”
“I’ve had hundreds, if not thousands, over the years, of people saying, ‘I got a surgery, and your show kept me going,’” he said. “Or, ‘I lost my dad,’ or ‘I lost this person, and I would watch the show and I would feel better.’”
He added that he still meets
fans who offer testaments to its popularity: “I’m always amazed that
10-year-olds, 15-year-olds — kids — are watching it as if it just came out.”
What is it about this show
that makes it so comforting to rewatch?
“It has that heart that
touches people,” said Brenda Maben, the show’s costume designer.
“There’s no violence,” she
added. “It’s just small-town love, basically, and that’s why I think people
like it. It makes them feel safe and warm and cozy. It just brings up good
feelings.”
For Truesdale, the appeal
“probably more so now than ever is that it’s not a cynical show; it’s a show
about a bunch of different people that come together and find ways to like each
other and get along.”
There are no life-or-death dramas or unsolvable dilemmas in the show, only deeply intertwined relationships, quirky townsfolk and snappy dialogue.
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| For her 16th birthday, Rory Gilmore (Bledel) had two parties: a catered affair at her grandparents’ home, and a more laid-back party at home in Stars Hollow, where much of the town turned up.Randy Tepper/Alamy Stock Photo |
In a thread in the r/GilmoreGirls subreddit from 2021,
dozens of people shared why they turn back to the series so often: It’s an
emotional support show. It’s comfort food. It got me through a breakup. It
reminds me of my childhood. Winter is depressing, and “Gilmore Girls” makes it
better.
Rewatching is like “that same
feeling of remembering that you have a pint of your favorite ice cream in the
freezer,” said Tara Llewellyn, who hosts “Gilmore to Say,” a “Gilmore Girls” rewatch podcast,
with Haley McIntosh. “It’s so hard to pinpoint why that is. It could be because
of nostalgia; it could be because it reminds you of a relationship.”
Llewellyn and McIntosh
estimated that they each spend about five to 10 hours a week watching the show.
Rewatching a favorite show can also be a healthy coping mechanism for stressful times, said Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist and an assistant professor at Boston University.
“If predictability or
certainty is missing from your life, or if we’re reflecting on the larger
political landscape, or environmental uncertainty, even something like a TV
show can definitely act as a certainty anchor,” Dr. Hendriksen said.
A 2009 study published in The
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that rewatching our favorite TV
shows can reduce feelings of loneliness and mitigate drops
in self-esteem and mood.
And for some, the cold and
gloomy seasons can amplify the need for self-care.
“Life kind of slips away, the
trees are losing their leaves, and everything starts to be gray, so you need to
find some comfort somewhere,” Truesdale, who is from Montreal, said.
“Being from Canada, I
associate fall and winter with connecting with my friends and being more
introspective,” he added. “So, it kind of makes sense to me that you would want
to watch a show that conveys those emotions, because that’s kind of how you’re feeling.”
Over the years, fans have
come to associate “Gilmore Girls” with the colder months, and viewership data
supports the connection. Between late 2020 and the middle of 2023, streaming
viewership of “Gilmore Girls” was on average about 14 percent higher in the
fall and winter than in the spring and summer, according to Nielsen. The show had particularly
high engagement in January, according to Nielsen, as well as in October,
November and August.
McIntosh said that her podcast’s audience increases “tenfold” starting in the fall, matching when each season of “Gilmore Girls” begins with Rory’s new school year. “The colors that they’re wearing, the foods that they’re eating, the town events that are occurring” all feel like fall, McIntosh said.
And then there is winter:
What fan could forget Lorelai saying, “I smell snow,” moments before the
season’s first flurry?
“It’s my favorite time of
year,” Maben, the costume designer, said. “I love sweaters; I love layering; I
love being cozy, and hopefully I demonstrated my love for that in the show.”
A few quintessential winter
scenes from the series come to mind, like when Lorelai arrives home after a
long day to find that her boyfriend, Luke, has built an ice-skating rink in her
front yard.
Then there was the snowy dinner with sleigh rides that Lorelai hosted for the residents of Stars Hollow at her inn. The show’s creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, told Rolling Stone that filming that episode was “the greatest moment of my life, ever.”
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| The characters on “Gilmore Girls” “make you feel like you want to dive in and live in this small town where everybody knows each other’s business,” said Tara Llewellyn, who hosts the “Gilmore to Say” podcast.Mitchell Haddad/WB |
In each season, Stars Hollow hosts events that seem to draw everyone in town: the Autumn Festival, the Winter Carnival, the Firelight Festival, the Christmas pageant, the Stars Hollow Dance Marathon, the Knit-a-thon.
“The characters — the townies — just make you feel like you want to dive in and live in this small town where everybody knows each other’s business,” Llewellyn said.
Viewers “consider this their comfort food,” she added. “You know the ending, you know how it’s going to turn out. There’s something very soothing about that.”
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- Days ago = 3192 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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