When Netflix announced the Gilmore Girls reunion, a four-episode miniseries titled A Year in the Life, I was thrilled. The original series, about a thirtysomething single mother and her teenage daughter, was one of the defining shows of my coming of age. I had based an alarming number of my life decisions on Rory Gilmore, the daughter, over the years. I was ready to see our girl thriving, kicking goals as a journalist and living her best life.
But instead A Year in the Life served a depressing vision of thirtysomething Rory, who was now broke and living a life that can only be described as a hot mess, largely of her own making. I couldn’t decide – was Rory just a bad person, or was her fragility, lack of responsibility and poor decision-making a result of the world she grew up in? Or, was she just a millennial?
