‘I… am an autumn’
This is the phrase that clung to me from Gilmore Girls. Thoughtfully, I reimagined this to mean one being transformative – the way autumn is: inflicting change and being the change itself. As a season enriched with transformation, I instantly remembered the trees turning into powerful red and orange, appearing like grand silhouettes of creatures breathing and moving over us. As the wind passes through them, stroking their precarious scales, falling, and tinting the path floors – altogether painting our sights – we, students, are just the same. Maybe we are creatures of our own, and maybe we are reminded of that.
Gilmore Girls is a coming-of-age series from the 2000s – warm, slow-paced and fast spoken. As its tagline goes, ‘Life’s short. Talk fast.’ From this, we get a feel of the flow the series takes, as though to remind us, ‘Hurry! Speak your thoughts, speak your feelings!’
Gilmore Girls follows a teenage girl, who is presented as a source of knowledge and quick wit, and her young single mother navigating life in the charmingly quirky town by the name of Stars Hollow.
Her mother, Lorelai, is constantly trying to get to grips with a gentle approach to parenting, but struggles with this. Often, when dealing with Rory’s stubborn, innocent, and witty character, Lorelai ends up slipping up. The parent-child centerpoint narrative is a bold one, considering young audiences look for fun, mischief, and sparks in drama series – which you usually get from friends, siblings, or romantic interests. It urges the question – who’s going to watch a mother and daughter trying to make a way in life for 7 seasons?
80 million people, through all platforms, over 6 months.
So what is the catch? Or rather, the hold?
I think for many it is the nostalgia that autumn breathes into us, that catches us. Watching Gilmore Girls as a Fresher brings this feeling into sharp focus. We suddenly become aware of how the wind strokes our hair when we walk; we listen to the crunching of dry, fallen leaves intently, and the aromas of cinnamon and coffee become distinct and craved. The show mirrors our own rhythm of university life in September: quiet moments in bookish corners, new routines, bustling libraries, and the subtle thrill of forming friendships while navigating unfamiliar corridors. The combination of fast-paced dialogue and slow, reflective moments parallels the balance of exhilaration and introspection that comes with starting university. Alongside that, the peppered pop-culture references throughout the show create a real sense of belonging to a larger cultural conversation.
On the other hand, inside its beautiful wrapping, Gilmore Girls is deeply about female ambition. This show tells stories that are matter-of-fact, feminine, but also unapologetically so.
Rory has big dreams: Harvard, the perfect romance, and a successful career in journalism. But these don’t always line up with reality. The series shows us the uncomfortable shift from the idealism of youth into the complications of adulthood. It plays into a very common trope in literature and film – female ambition versus the romantic ideal. Rory represents this tension, torn between her intellectual drive (her studies, her writing, her vision of a journalism career) and her romantic entanglements, while to Lorelai love feels cheap next to the price of her independence. We see a similar theme in movies like Little Women, with Jo March caught between her love for writing and society’s pressure to marry, or in La La Land, where ambition ultimately demands sacrifice in love. Even in Pretty Woman, the tension between independence and romance is at the core of the story. (Is it just me, or do you notice a pattern with the names, too?) This balance is so difficult because ambition asks for focus, sacrifice, and independence. Young women may resonate with the invisible weight of trying to give themselves fully to both. This includes the struggle between the independence of ambition and the dependence on love, as well as the challenge of denying love when achieving independence comes at a high cost. And that is perhaps what holds.
Ultimately, the show’s attention to ambition, learning, and love makes it a compelling guide for imagining and performing one’s own identity and growth in a new space. It encourages reflection on both personal and social aspirations, while the layered character dynamics offer comfort and insight into our own. Gilmore Girls does, after all, remind us – we are ‘autumn’ – fleeting, transformative, and liminal.