Photo via Forbes.com
If you have television, any interest in witty banter, the endless entertaining complications of a relationship between a mother and daughter, or if you are just a fan of a good ol’ fashioned Netflix & chill kind of night, then you might have heard the good news: the much-awaited Gilmore Girls revival is right around the corner. Lorelei and Rory are storming back into our lives and hearts in four upcoming episodes, or mini-movies, as each installment will be ninety minutes long.
If you watched the show as I did, thinking it of greater importance than the events of your own adolescent life, then you will be pleased to hear that all of our favorite ex-boyfriends are coming back: Dean (Jared Padelecki of Supernatural), Logan (Matt Czuchry, now a series regular on The Good Wife), and yes, yes, yes, Jess (Milo Ventimiglia, not doing much of anything these days). Everyone is set to reprise their roles, it seems, except for Melissa McCarthy as Suki St. James, who alleges that she was never asked to return—more updates on that as they roll in, I hope.
Obviously this is extremely exciting news, though not entirely surprising; Netflix has clearly picked up on the immense benefits of nostalgia-mining. Gilmore Girls is only the most recent in a long string of oldie-but-goodie television classics that have seen revivals on the binge-watching, hookup-facilitating platform in the last few years. Think Boy Meets World (now Girl Meets World), Wet Hot American Summer, Fuller House (a sequel series to Full House, more than twenty years after the original show went off the air); Arrested Development; the list will continue to go on.
Of course, this new trend begs the question that we have been asking since the millionth Spiderman movie came out: what ever happened to original content? In the case of a superhero origin story that has been beaten to death so many times, it can be problematic. Let us get some creative juices flowing and start producing new content again.
When it comes to Netflix, however, we see a different side of things. Take this latest revival, Gilmore Girls, for example: original writers Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino took no part in the seventh and last season of the show while it was on the air due to contract disputes with Warner Bros. They have signed on, however, for the revival—meaning that they have been given a golden opportunity to finally write the ending they have always wanted for the show that they created. The on-air ending of the seventh season, in the absence of the Palladinos, left innumerable fans unsatisfied and frustrated for a lack of character and plot resolution. The creators have been gifted the chance to put their characters to bed in the way they had always intended—with regard to Rory Gilmore, let us hope that bed has Jess Mariano in it.
Netflix is still producing original content—and amazing content at that. Orange is the New Black, Narcos, and House of Cards are staples of popular television culture today, the sort that you do not want to miss out on for water-cooler conversations at the office (do those conversations actually exist? I do not have a job). Basically, the entertainment platform has found an instrumental way to enrich our lives with two-dimensionality, bringing original and inventive stories right to our laptop screens, and reviving the long gone-but-not-forgotten stories that still hold real estate in our hearts.