Well, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life has finally come. It was a day we fans have been waiting for since the ending of the last episode in season seven. This was going to bring us closure, show us where our favorite mother/daughter team were all these years down the road. I didn’t really know what I was expecting when I sat down early Friday morning, starting my all day binge. All I knew was that I was excited. I grew up with this show. I didn’t watch it when it first aired, but I watched on ABC Family every day at five o’clock for about six years. Then it came on Netflix and it was like the greatest gift had been given to me. I could now watch my favorite show whenever I wanted. I could start from the beginning or jump around to my favorite episodes, but it was there, always a source of comfort when I needed it the most. So, although I didn’t have any concrete expectations, I expected it to be magical and incredible. And it delivered, but not until the very end. The magic and closure I was looking for didn’t really appear until the last hour of the last episode. And it was worth it because it was, in my mind, perfect. But throughout the whole revival, one storyline continued to gnaw at me; it was one of the hardest story arcs to watch: Rory’s.

For the last seven seasons, Rory has been smart, motivated, hard-working, goal-driven, and focused. The Rory we see in the revival is a shadow of who she once was. At the base of her character, she is still all of those things, but she is lost. She is bouncing around doing articles here and there, trying to find something that actually inspires her. It was hard to watch this character that I knew so well and from whom I expected such great things fail. I have always seen a bit of myself in Rory. We share a love of books and literature, writing and journalism, a sense of adventure that is, unfortunately, bogged down by our own practical natures. So when I saw Rory - confident, witty, Yale graduate, editor of the newspaper - begin to fail, I thought, there is no hope for me.

While I understand that this is a fictional world and the purpose of Rory’s failure was to create a conflict and a storyline, it still hit close to home. So as I was sitting on my couch, starting to rethink my life, I realized that the Rory we had watched for seven seasons really had everything handed to her. Yes, she worked very hard and was very smart, but it’s easy to grow and cultivate those skills when you are loved and supported and in the safe structured world of high school and college. Once she got into the real world, she realized that people don’t really care where you’ve been, only what you’re doing now. And she doesn’t know. She has no idea what she really wants. She had her mind set on one thing for so much of her life that when she realized that it wasn’t really working and that she wasn’t enjoying it, it was hard to let go. I realized I had unfair expectations for Rory. Yes, it would have been nice to watch her be successful and killing it as the editor of a major publication, but it wouldn’t have been interesting or realistic in any way.

The world has a very mean way of chewing you up and spitting you out, but it’s ok as long as you keep going and keep searching. Rory had so many people who loved her that she was able to lean on. So, although this may have been the most difficult storyline to watch, it was undoubtedly the one I learned the most from. It’s ok to be lost. It’s ok to not always have everything planned as long as you keep trying, learning from your failures, and have people around you to love and support you. Everything has a way of working out in the end, it just may not be in a way you expected.