Oy with the poodles already!

I received Gilmore Girls, Season 7, for Christmas this year, but I put off watching it until this past month because my watching it back in 2006-07 was so painful. Originally, my plan was to start watching with Season 1 and work my way to 7, but I decided that I needed to give Season 7 a chance to catch up with my multiple viewings of Seasons 1-6 (mostly 1-3, though). As I started to watch Season 7, I remembered how poorly it was written compared to the beginning of the series and how I constantly compared it to the caliber the show was in its early days. I spent a lot of time comparing the Rory we see in Seasons 5-7 with Seasons 1 & 2 Rory. When the show was on, I just couldn't reconcile the high maintenance Rory of the later seasons with the over-sized sweater wearing Rory in the beginning.

When Season 7 first came out on DVD, I told my friend Andrea that I didn't even want to own it because of the bad memories of being disappointed week after week. She told me that it was much better the second time through, because you're not expecting as much. There are a lot of things that I still don't like about Season 7. I still wonder what Amy Sherman-Palladino would have done with the Season 6 cliffhanger. Mostly, though, Andrea was right. It is better the second time. I think one of the reasons is because it's been so long since I've watched a lot of Gilmore Girls, so seeing any of my good friends in Stars Hollow was very nostalgic.

On Friday, I got to the series finale. I've been wishing for a movie to sum things all up for a couple of years. I don't need that anymore. I think that the last episode (even if it was written as the last episode) ended the show respectfully. I gave up missing the Rory of the earlier seasons because I didn't want her to grow up and change. When the show started she was a sophomore in high school and ended with her graduating from college. Of course she changed! She had to!

I also found myself crying at several points in the episode. There are so many moments that define what this show is about. The moment with Lane and Rory on the swing is so sweet. And Lorelai telling her parents that they would definitely stay for after dinner drinks shows how much the characters have changed even in the last couple of seasons. I love the final scene of the show. It is so fitting that it ends exactly where it started, with Lorelai and Rory in Luke's Diner.

No words that I write could adequately express my delight in this show. The characters make mistakes, repeatedly. However, I still love them because they are true to themselves. And My Luke is just going to have to deal with the constant Gilmore references and random episode watching (we went to a debutant ball, off course we had to watch Rory's coming out party!) with the same gruff manor the Lorelai's Luke would watch the show.