At the Emmy Awards last month, Lauren Graham appeared with her former TV daughter, Alexis Bledel, to pay tribute to the show that brought them together.
“Twenty-five years ago a show called ‘Gilmore Girls’ premiered and apparently took the season of fall hostage,” Graham said.
“Gilmore Girls” debuted on Oct. 5, 2000, on the now defunct WB network, and signs of its 25th anniversary abound. A new documentary, titled “Drink Coffee, Talk Fast,” is in the works. Brands like Cotton On, Owala and Vera Bradley have new “Gilmore Girls” collections. (More than 85,000 people signed up for the Vera Bradley collection’s email list, and all the products sold out in five minutes.) The actors Jared Padalecki and Matt Czuchry — known to the “Gilmore” faithful as Dean and Logan, infamous boyfriends of Bledel’s character, Rory — recently appeared together in a commercial for Panera Bread.
It was a spot promoting the fast-casual chain’s fall menu, which speaks to the second half of Graham’s Emmys remark. It has been 18 years since “Gilmore Girls” ended, 11 years since it first arrived on Netflix — which led to a robust second life for the show as a streaming hit — and nine years since the revival mini-series, “A Year in the Life.” But every year, many fans still make a TV pilgrimage to the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Conn., as the weather cools and the leaves begin to change.
TikTok is filled with videos about autumn as “Gilmore Girls” rewatch season, and fans in Reddit forums or Facebook posts discuss whether they are starting the show on Sept. 1 or Oct. 1. Vanessa Marano, who played April Nardini on the show, posted her own fall countdown on Instagram to celebrate the anniversary.
“Literally the first shot of the theme song is just like a bunch of orange-leaf trees, and the color timing of the whole montage of the theme song is autumnal color,” said Kevin T. Porter, who hosted “Gilmore Guys,” a rewatch podcast. “So that’s inherent to it.”
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The post Why ‘Gilmore Girls’ Became a Fall Tradition appeared first on New York Times.
