‘Gilmore Girls’: 3 Ways Season 7 Was a Huge Disappointment
Gilmore Girls is a series that continues to amass new fans every year, even though it went off the air in 2007. The series remains popular partially because of its replay value, but ardent fans often admit to skipping the entirety of the final season. The last season had some serious issues, argue fans. So, what were its biggest problems?
Lorelai Gilmore and Rory Gilmore seemed completely different in the show’s final season
Showrunner, Amy Sherman-Palladino, expertly crafted Rory and Lorelai Gilmore over six seasons. By the time fans got to the final season, they had expectations about how Rory and Lorelai would act and react to situations. Season 7 found both of them behaving completely out of character, and fans are not OK with it.
Take Rory turning down Logan Huntzberger’s proposal, for example. Rory pursued Logan. She wanted to be with him, and their relationship in the final season was better than it had ever been. Sure, Rory was dealing with uncertainty about her future, but fans don’t think she would have turned down Logan’s proposal so quickly. Lorelai’s marriage to Christopher Hayden is met with similar ire. It seems unlikely that someone who was so terrified of commitment would have married Christopher on a whim.
The side characters’ storylines were ridiculous, too, argue ‘Gilmore Girls’ fans
Rory and Lorelai weren’t the only characters who got a bad deal in the show’s final season. In previous seasons, the lives of Richard and Emily Gilmore and the residents of Stars Hollow were robust, interesting, and believable. Season 7, however, turned many of those beloved side characters into caricatures.
Sookie St. James and Lane Kim were the most negatively impacted. In season 7, Sookie finds out she’s pregnant because her husband lied about having a vasectomy. Similarly, Lane finds out she’s expecting twins after having sex for the first time. The use of a cheap condom explains her surprise pregnancy. Fans found both storylines extremely troubling and, frankly, a little icky.
Fans think the final season of ‘Gilmore Girls’ lacked the depth of previous seasons
Perhaps most importantly, season 7 and its off-the-wall storylines and odd subplots lacked the depth and charm of the first six seasons. Sure, many good things happened during the final season, but fans walked away from it mostly disappointed.
What would they have preferred? That depends on who you ask. Some fans would have liked to see a season 7 that didn’t include Lorelai’s marriage to Christopher. If Sherman-Palladino had it her way, fans would have walked away with Rory revealing she was pregnant as a recent college graduate. That feels like it could have been a good place to end. Instead, the same storyline was used in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
Why is season 7 so different than the other seasons?
Whether you love it or hate it, season 7 is markedly different from the show’s first six seasons. The reason for that is simple; a completely different showrunner crafted the show’s final season. When season 6 wrapped, Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino sat down with network executives to hammer out a new contract. The writing duo was hoping to get some help on the set and sign a two-year contract. When the network offered a one-year deal, the pair walked away.
The network turned over the show to David S. Rosenthal. Rosenthal was part of the team while Sherman-Palladino was at the helm. Still, his vision was different from the one Sherman-Palladino had. The famed showrunner sat down with TV Line ahead of the show’s Netflix revival and discussed the infamous season 7. Sherman-Palladino admitted that she couldn’t watch it because of the emotional toll it would have taken on her. She said, “any writer who was so emotionally connected to something and then pulled out of it is going to find it very hard to go back into that world and not feel like you either want to slit your own wrist and die slowly in a swimming pool or be angry or be jealous.”
