Netflix has had a variety of new series hit the schedule in the last year. Some of the have satisfied critically, but some of them have not. With Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life set to hit the schedule next week, we've taken a look at what the early critic reviews are saying about the 4-part series, which will bring Lorelei, Rory and all of Stars Hollow together one more time. It should be noted that each of these four parts will last 90 minutes, so they are more like movies than a standard season of television. But like Sherlock before it, the Gilmore Girls revival will be viewed as a series than as standalone parts that make up a whole.
So what did they think? You can check out a sampling, below.
To begin, a lot of people who have caught the Gilmore Girls revival have been lucky enough to like it at least to some degree. There are a lot of reviews out there talking about how the nostalgia factor mostly works. Jeff Jensen's review in EW was pretty positive and provided an emotional argument for the series. I like to imagine this review being spoken very quickly, much like the Gilmore gals themselves. He noted:
It provides a welcome dose of hilarious and humane escapism that satisfies like a nostalgia trip even while subverting it. It tells a story about grief and change, rootlessness and restlessness. The show is basically a reboot about the struggle of rebooting.
Uproxx's Alan Sepinwall seems to praise the "self-awareness" of the show and is happy the Netflix series is a project that exists, but he clearly has some problems with some of the other things that Gilmore Girls is trying to do:
Because of that fundamental shift in the dynamic, because the Palladinos are trying to squeeze nearly every significant Gilmore character --- not to mention exposition about what they've been up to since we last saw them --- into four double-sized episodes that each cover an entire season of the calendar, and because TV reunions almost always feel out of sync from the shows that spawned them, it's not a surprise that A Year in the Life is frequently a mess.
Overall, critical reception for Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life has overwhelmingly been positive---it's running at 100% positive on Rotten Tomatoes with only a few reviews up, but even within the good reviews there are things that are turning the critics off. Vulture's Jen Chaney mostly likes the series, but does have some clear ideas about what she doesn't enjoy in the revival.
But even mother and daughter, at times, come across as more judgmental and petty than they did before. (They make some unnecessary fat jokes, for example, that should be beneath their characters.)
You can tune in and decide if Gilmore Girls is one for the TV ages or if it's a total wreck when A Year in the Life hits the schedule on Friday, November 25 at 12:01 a.m. PT. To find out what else the subscription streaming service has coming up on its schedule, check out our Netflix TV premiere schedule. And as a lot of these reviews also noted, a lot of characters are making a comeback from the original series. If you'd like to know more before you start your own personal binge-watch, check out our what we know guide.
