The Netflix revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is finally here, and Nerdette co-hosts Greta Johnsen and Tricia Bobeda have a lot of feelings about it. Nerdette challenged Gilmore Girls newbies (and Dinner Party Download co-hosts) Brendan Francis Newnam and Rico Gagliano to watch the first episode of the new series. Here are some of their takeaways.
Brendan and Rico on their first impressions
Rico: The episode actually starts over the credits, where you hear all these snippets from, I’m guessing, previous episodes. Basically, every single one of them is an inside joke, so it made me hyper aware that I’m being bombarded with inside jokes and catchphrases about which I am clueless. This is clearly not a welcoming episode for people who have never watched the show before.
Brendan: I also didn’t know they were mother and daughter until about 15 minutes into the show.
Brendan and Rico on Luke’s baseball hat
Brendan: At some point, can we talk about the blue baseball cap, which I think captures everything wrong with the acting.
Rico: I was thinking the same thing. It’s like a signifier. I don’t know, it’s almost like old Greek tragedy—
Brendan: — It’s like someone from The King of Queens walked into this weird town. Like, what is going on?
Rico: He’s the baseball cap guy!
Brendan: But it’s always brand new and perfectly backwards! Like the performances!
Brendan and Rico rate the show on a scale of 1-10
Rico: I tend not to be a hater, and I give points for trying, and there were moments where I laughed, so I’m going to give it a 5, but I don’t think I’m going to continue watching.
Brendan: I could see myself hate watching this again. But would I ever just hit play? No, never. And I’m starting to think it contributed to why this country is the way it is at the moment. If so many people are watching this show thinking it’s good for so many years, then what else is going on in pop culture that I’m not aware of? And I’m really scared for my blind spots now, because especially if this is someone’s idea of what America is like, man are they wrong. It’s so narcissistic and distorted that it makes me more worried about things than I already am. So, 1 to 10? I mean, I guess I’d have to go negative because I want people to go back in time and not watch it. So, I would say -4.
The above conversations were edited for clarity.