I was vehemently opposed to Gilmore Girls from day one. Back in the days when Buffy was still on the WB and high school afforded me even more time to devote to the tube, I was pretty much down with any new series. But not the Girls. Something about the original promo of a single mother fighting with her teenage daughter over whose boobs were bigger did not sit well with me. So I avoided the show like the plague for six of its seven years.
Then last summer I found myself inexplicably drawn to these fast-talking sirens and watched the entire first six seasons in less than two months. But just as fast as I’d fallen in love, I was out of it. The seventh season was largely a chore to watch, and I started to hate characters I had thought could do no wrong. Poor decisions were made – decisions I couldn’t see our girls ever making. This is unquestionably the fault of Amy Sherman-Palladino for jumping ship and leaving new series helmsman David S. Rosenthal stuck between a rock and the hardest of places. But this season was not without its bright spots, and in last night’s finale, everyone ended up more or less where they belonged.
How “Bon Voyage” could ever have been billed as anything but a swan song is beyond me. Everything that could have – came full circle, and each moment of the episode dripped with finality. In the opening scene Rory meets her long-forgotten idol, Christiana Amanpour in the last of Gilmore Girls’ awesomely random cameos. Lorelai and her mother share a moment that could have easily been schmaltzy but was instead exactly what it needed to be. Luke and Lorelai, though far from married, are back on the right track and share a heart-melting smooch. And in an almost unprecedented move, everyone in Stars Hollow got some screen time, with Mrs. Kim and the town troubadour the only notable exceptions.
Rory’s dismissal of Logan the week before the finale didn’t float well with a lot of people, but pairing her off for life seems a little unfair for a 23-year-old with so much potential. Gilmore Girls was one of those shows that was all about the ladies, so while it might be her mother’s time to finally get her knight in shining armor, Rory just doesn’t need one. What Rory got in the finale wasn’t a definitive conclusion but a whole lot of hope and possibilities. Giving the protagonists a choice of how to live their lives without us, and us the chance to imagine their future that suits us best, is one of the nicest notes you can end a series on.
There’s long been talk of Sherman-Palladino’s proposed end to the series – four words (most likely spoken by Lorelai to Rory) that she’d known would be the last line of the final episode from the inception of the series. Obviously, we did not get them. Instead, we’re left with a moment almost identical to the last scene of the pilot: a fade-out of Luke’s diner, the girls off on a quintessential, non-descript rant. In a lot of ways, this is better than any fabled last words. In true form, Lorelai and Rory are off in their own little world that we were never meant to fully understand but fortunate enough to be a part of for at least a little while.
