Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life Review: "Winter"

Be sure to read Paste’s full coverage of Gilmore Girls, including our rankings of every single episode, the 100 greatest moments in Gilmore Girlshistory, the 100 greatest Gilmore Girlsquotations and our video reviews of “Spring,” “Summer” and “Fall.”

Let the Gilmore Girls mania begin!

Stars Hollow looks exactly the same, yet completely updated, and Rory is home for one day visiting. Of course, as updated as the place is, there’s no cell reception except at Doose’s Market, and while there, Rory runs into her bestie, Lane.

Caesar is still working at Luke’s.

Of course, Luke is still running his diner and Lorelai still smells snow.

Rory had so much promise when she left to live her life, and she’s had some success, including an article in The New Yorker, which Luke has added to the menu.

But she’s struggling, in a way that anyone who writes or produces videos can relate to. She wants a job at Conde Nast, but nothing is happening. She has no place to live. She’s just wandering from place to place.

She has a boyfriend, Paul, whose name (or anything about him) no one can remember.

She’s supposedly been with him for a year, but this makes no sense. No Gilmore girl would be with a man this forgettable or annoying.

Rory would, however, take up stress tap dancing, and Luke and Lorelai would have serious conversations about the Lifetime Movie Network.

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Of course, the first episode, “Winter,” has to deal with the loss of Richard, since actor Edward Hermann tragically passed away in real life in 2014. Emily has dealt with it by hiring a family of new servants and commissioning a huge painting for Richard for the wall.

The family living in the house with Emily is so odd. It’s like all she wanted was perfection while Richard was living, and now she doesn’t care.

He’s just glaring down judging from the great beyond.

Of course, Emily is upset with Lorelai. Because some things really never change.

But this time it’s with good reason. Apparently, Lorelai couldn’t come up with a good story about her dad at the funeral, when they were all drunk and reminiscing, and Emily hasn’t seen her in 4 months because of it.

Also at the funeral, Jason Styles comes back. I always thought Digger was super hot.

At the Friday night dinner, Luke shows up because Kirk’s Uber failed, and Emily tells Lorelai that she’s too pushy and that maybe Luke wanted to have kids.

At which point we realize we haven’t seen one character from the past, Luke’s daughter. Where is she?

Also, they keep trying to explain away Sookie… It just falls flat. The back story there is really unbelievable.

Back to Lorelai and Luke having a baby, they discuss that she is too old, and so they go to a surrogacy center, run by none other than attorney-slash-doctor Paris Gellar. She’s married to Doyle and he’s now behind famous TV shows—just like actor Danny Strong (Empire) is in real life.

Of course, Rory has Paul, but when she goes to London to work on a book pitch, it turns out that she’s not staying with “Dee Dee,” she’s staying with Logan.

She’s sleeping with him in a weird “what happens in London stays in London” scenario. It’s sad. She started her sex life by cheating with a married Dean, and now she’s sleeping with Logan while still in a relationship with boring Paul, and lying to her mother about it.

Rory, get it together!

Luke and Lorelai decide not to have a baby, but Lorelai inadvertently agrees to therapy with her mother. Of course, this is what they’ve always needed, especially now that Emily’s wearing jeans and Candie’s T-shirt.

There are a few bumps in the road in this episode, but fans of Gilmore Girls should not be disappointed.

Keri is a professional chatterbox who loves watching TV & movies, reading about pop culture, and gawking at any craziness on the internet. You can follow Keri on Twitter.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life Review: “Winter”