Return to Stars Hollow: A Gilmore Girls Podcast

Love Gilmore Girls and this podcast. I can’t get past how annoyed I get though when playing listener feedback and Megan says Sookies name. It really bothers me for some reason. Thanks for all the work you’ve done on this podcast.

It’s really hard listening to a podcast about a tv show by hosts who don’t understand how TV works. They really said “it’s unrealistic they overheard them talking when they were 3 rows back” like do you not understand set staging?? “Why are there so many family guy references” because the show runner worked on that show?? “Oh we never look at who wrote it” then maybe be quiet about things you didn’t take 3 extra seconds to understand. The contact victim blaming of Lorelai is disgusting, ultimately I stopped listening because of it. Man, what a disappointment

I came across this podcast this past summer and have been hooked ever since! I love how each episode is analyzed with such depth and I am so glad every episode is so long and full of details and feedback. I wish I had heard of this podcast years ago so that I could have written in with my own Gilmore Girls origin story. But just in case Cordia and Celeste read their reviews, here it goes... I started watching Gilmore Girls with my mom on DVD when I was only 8 years old. Despite being so young, I immediately identified with Rory, especially because I was an only child of a single mom, and I had just started at a new school. Unfortunately, Rory wasn’t always the best role model. There’s that early episode in season 1 where Rory blows up and yells at her entire class, especially at Tristan who calls her “Mary.” I was called “New Girl” at my school, and one day I stood up in class and screamed at my classmates just like Rory. I got a very low score in “works well with others” that school year! Growing up, I always compared my life and achievements to Rory’s at the same age. She inspired me to be a dedicated student, and to aspire to go to a good college. I was also introverted and bookish and a writer and best friends with my mom. When I came home from a school trip once, my mom met me at Bradley International Airport with “Hartford Connecticut” shirts, keychains, and other things that Lorelai bought for Rory. When I turned 16, my mom came into my room and told me the story of the day I was born, just like Lorelai did for Rory. When I started my senior year, my mom said it was my last first day of high school. She also gave me a list of all of the money I had cost her through the years. Watching Gilmore Girls is like looking into a mirror for me and my mom, and I never know whether we love Gilmore Girls because we are close, or if we are close because of Gilmore Girls. Now I’m living far away from home but I still watch Gilmore Girls regularly, and it is such a treat to listen to a podcast that speaks my language. Thank you Cordia and Celeste for the countless hours you put into creating this immersive, thoughtful, thoroughly enjoyable podcast!

This podcast does two things very well. First, it gives detailed explanations of the references which are well-researched and insightful. The second thing this podcast is good for is it doesn’t skip episodes, and gives you a summary as a companion to the show. Don’t expect this podcast to give you a new or valuable view of Gilmore Girls. Cordia and Celeste have two compulsive tics that Amy Sherman-Paladino would be yelling threw the phone at them for. First of all, having never worked in tv they develop elaborate theories and criticism of conventions of tv, character choices, pacing of the show, writing choices that are “no duh” moments but they talk about them like they are unearthing some interesting perspective on tv. Even if they do acknowledge that this choice is made because of x, y, or z they decide to take us on a 10-minute revisionist history trip that could have lasted a minute at best. Secondly, We all have characters we don’t like, and things we disagree with on a show. I’m not a Dean, or Marty, or any type of character apologist, but their use of “abuse” and other feminist buzzwords to signal they don’t like most men on this show (or in real life frankly) undermine most of their analysis of them. This show throws Dean under the bus with abandon, while giving Jess a free pass at every juncture when they were exhibiting almost identical behaviors in seasons 1-4. We know your husband reminds you of Jess already, let’s move on. Yeah we can all agree Dean was tall and powerful, he did feel entitlement with Rory, and he wasn’t anything close to a great boyfriend. But he wasn’t “abusive”, he never put hands on Rory like Jess did in “Keg, Max!”, and he never really lowered her self-worth or insulted her in abusive ways. Rory chose him to have her first time with because he is safe to her, and has treated her better than Jess up to that point. Dean is the most boring, base, and least similar to Rory in the whole show. Amy-Sherman Paladino wrote him this way, to be a good first boyfriend that would never last. Wouldn’t you think if he was “abusive” Lorelei would have stepped in? Celeste and Cordia hate him, and brandish him with the “abuse” moniker. I mean come on, Paris was the main abusive and demeaning (I love Paris btw) character on this show, she gets a free pass because they like her. Logan, Jess, Dean, and Rory were four young adults figuring out love, constantly misstepping as young adults do. If you take Cordia and Celeste’s words at face value this show reads like Dean is Tony Soprano and Rory is Carmela or one of his goomars. Amy Sherman-Palladino isn’t the “model feminist” but these women have critiques that leave little room for mistakes, growth, character flaws. Frankly, they dehumanize characters they don’t like, and apologize for the ones they do. I assume they don’t really like how Amy and Dan write characters. Characters are complex ladies, life is complex. Cordia and Celeste do make a good amount of insightful critiques, feminist or otherwise, but they go and ruin them by digging too deep and uncovering a depth of analysis to which they are not equipped, I.e. their “friend zone” critiques. At a base level they are right, men have no right to feel entitled to a woman because they are nice. But they superimpose this concept on any man who is getting close to a woman on this show as friends or otherwise, and make many friendships look like a wolf stalking a sheep in a pasture. Frankly they make Rory seem like a fragile, meek girl unable to navigate relationships on her own without the wise words of two 30-something podcasters. This podcast is a fan podcast, and directs listeners to many of the finer details of the show. Even though my rating is low, I listened to the whole series along with them because I mastered how to tune out when they go down a rabbit hole and tune back in with they stick to the details. The idea of a critical podcast is intriguing, but only if the podcasters are able to step out of themselves a little to see multiple perspectives or to just accept that the writers wrote characters a certain way and that’s how they are. This is the fatal flaw of this podcast, Cordia and Celeste “know” tv but don’t “get” tv.