This post was written by Hatchet staff writer Jeanine Marie.
Oct. 3 may be the unofficial holiday celebrating the pervasiveness of “Mean Girls,” but this week, another lady-led pop culture marvel will upstage Tina Fey’s “plastics.”
“Gilmore Girls” premieres Wednesday on Netflix.
The show first debuted in 2000 on the WB and ran until 2007. In its pilot episode, producer Amy Sherman-Palladino introduced a cult-ish audience to the Gilmore girls: Lorelai, a quick-witted 32-year-old who runs The Independence Inn and her 16-year-old daughter Rory, a bookworm with the same blue eyes and keen, sarcastic sense of humor as her single mother.
The duo frequent Luke’s Diner in Stars Hollow, a fictional small town where they know every quirky resident.
Kirk, who has held 15,000 odd jobs, and Lane, Rory’s best friend and the owner of a rock n’ roll CD collection that would infuriate her strict Korean mother if she ever found it, are just two members of a dynamic cast that make the show worth indulging in whether it be for the first time or the fourth.
Here’s what to expect from the mother-daughter duo and their wacky friends.
Season 1
Essential episode: “Cinnamon’s Wake” packs everything funny, sweet and real about “Gilmore Girls” into 45 minutes. There’s a cat funeral for a neighborhood feline, two Lorelais dancing around each other’s feelings, a lot of pie and a Nazi joke told by the typically demure Emily Gilmore.
Season 2
Essential episode: “Red Light on the Wedding Night” will tug at your heart strings a thousand times as the logistics of Lorelai’s impending marriage are called into question. The episode also features Luke in all his grumpy, affectionate, plaid-wearing glory.
Season 3
Essential episode(s): “They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They?” followed by “Let the Games Begin” are 90 minutes that drastically change the course of “Gilmore Girls.” Lorelai is a staunch hater of Yale University and Jess, a local bad boy, but Rory has a change of heart about both. Stars Hollow holds the 24-hour dance marathon we all wish our hometowns had and the Gilmore grandparents appear in their most pretentiously fun form.
Season 4
Essential episode: “Raincoats and Recipes” is chock-full of typical Gilmore behavior: Lorelai locks Rory in her room when she catches her doing laundry in the middle of the night, Lane hides food under the floorboards from her roommates and the whole town shows up for the The Dragonfly Inn test-run weekend.
Season 5
Essential episode: In “Norman Mailer, I’m Pregnant!” Rory dishes some harsh advice to her estranged father and does some investigative work for the Yale newspaper. The episode involves a pizza pie, a gorilla mask and an excessive amount of iced tea drunk by author Norman Mailer, and serves as an excellent setup for the rest of the season.
Season 6
Essential episode: “The Prodigal Daughter Returns,” for which you will need Kleenex and your phone to call your mom as soon as the credits roll.
Season 7
Essential episode: Despite the awkwardness of the last two seasons without creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, “Bon Voyage” meaningfully wraps up the whole series as Lorelai finally realizes what’s most important in the man she marries, and Rory gets a job covering the political campaign of a senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.
