Stars Hollow, Conn., would make a great \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d setting.<\/span><\/p>\n There is something unearthly about the adorable little town. The people are eccentric and hale and smiley \u2014 maybe too smiley. It feels cut off from the world \u2014 you can barely even get a cellular signal \u2014 as if, in the words of Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), \u201cThe entire town was constructed in a giant snow globe.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But \u201cGilmore Girls,\u201d being revived with a four-part mini-series on Netflix on Friday, is the opposite of a horror story. It\u2019s a comfort story. For seven seasons, then an afterlife in syndication and streaming, it poured its audience bottomless refills of small-town quirk and the highly caffeinated repartee of Lorelai and her daughter and best friend, Rory (Alexis Bledel).<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s always the danger, with cultural nostalgia, that sweetness can tip over into something uncanny and eerie. There\u2019s a fine line between celebrating the past and exhuming it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGilmore Girls: A Year in the Life\u201d stays, mostly, on the good side of that line. So many things are much like we remember them: Miss Patty\u2019s ballet studio, the Sam Phillips \u201cla la la\u201ds on the soundtrack, the troubadour in the town square. But it really works because, for all its winks and callbacks and Netflix-y weaponized nostalgia, it also recognizes that things have changed.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA Year in the Life\u201d was conceived as a kind of do-over. The creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, left the original series after six seasons (along with her husband and writing partner, Daniel Palladino) in a contract dispute. \u201cGilmore Girls\u201d sputtered on for one tongue-tied final season, but Ms. Sherman-Palladino wasn\u2019t there to execute the ending that she had planned down to the series\u2019 last four words.<\/span><\/p>\n Though the mini-series does end on those four words, \u201cA Year in the Life\u201d is not, and can\u2019t be, the final season we never got.<\/span><\/p>\n The biggest reminder is a change forced on the show: Edward Herrmann, who played the patriarch Richard Gilmore, died in 2014. His loss becomes the emotional engine of the mini-series, just as the original series was driven by the strain between Lorelai and her grande dame mother, Emily (Kelly Bishop), lingering from when Lorelai became pregnant with Rory at 16.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA Year in the Life\u201d begins in early 2016, four months after Richard\u2019s death, which has resurfaced bitter feelings between Lorelai and Emily. Rory, now a peripatetic journalist, comes home to figure herself out, see old friends and walk and talk with her mother through the town\u2019s tourism-brochure-perfect snowscape.<\/span><\/p>\n On the surface, little has changed. Luke Danes (Scott Patterson), Lorelai\u2019s old squeeze, is still haranguing the customers at his diner, though now over Wi-Fi abuse rather than cellphone use. The pop-culture references still fly, updated to include \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d \u201cOutlander\u201d and man buns.<\/span><\/p>\n But Rory is 32 now, the same age as Lorelai when the series began in 2000. (On one level, the entire mini-series is a \u201cWanna Feel Old?\u201d listicle.) This is a time-conscious story, down to the structure \u2014 four feature-length episodes, one for each season. Rory is feeling her age; Lorelai is feeling her mortality; Emily is feeling both heartbreak and the opportunity to change.<\/span><\/p>\n The mini-series is sentimental but not maudlin, and Ms. Graham and Ms. Bledel quickly fall back into their Tracy-Hepburn comedic rhythm. \u201cWow. I\u2019m winded,\u201d Rory says after their first verbal tap dance. \u201cHaven\u2019t done that for a while,\u201d Lorelai answers.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s more of that self-consciousness, and a parade of \u201cWell hello, you!\u201d cameos. You will likely be indulged no matter whom you consider the best supporting character. (The correct answer, by the way, is Paris Geller, Rory\u2019s former classmate played by Liza Weil, who gets an update that shows off her brittle imperiousness.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA Year in the Life\u201d plays like a six-hour movie in four acts. The format establishes it, like Netflix\u2019s \u201cArrested Development,\u201d as something different from the series\u2019 network-TV seasons.<\/span><\/p>\n But there\u2019s some bloat, including a \u201cWaiting for Guffman\u201d-like community musical interlude, featuring Christian Borle and Sutton Foster, that runs 10 minutes and would have been better at 10 seconds. And elements of Rory\u2019s plot feel like they were intended more for a character in her early 20s \u2014 as Ms. Sherman-Palladino originally planned \u2014 than one in her early 30s.<\/span><\/p>\n Mostly, though, \u201cA Year in the Life\u201d succeeds at recreating the voice of \u201cGilmore Girls,\u201d which is what creates the world of \u201cGilmore Girls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Like Lake Wobegon or Mayberry, Stars Hollow is a wish in the shape of a town, an idyll where everything is low stakes. Townspeople argue, but mostly over things like an international food fair or a proposed sewer system. They have decent, not overly demanding jobs, blue collar and white. Young adults who fail to launch can come home to their parents\u2019 cozy houses (a running joke in one episode). Stars Hollow is not just a safety net, it\u2019s a giant, fluffy featherbed.<\/span><\/p>\n This is an eternal fantasy, but it\u2019s well timed for the Thanksgiving weekend after an election that has made fractious Emilys and Lorelais of many relatives. (There are few political references beyond a quick allusion to \u201cBrexit,\u201d but it\u2019s noteworthy that the story wraps in the fall, just as real America is about to head off to the polls.)<\/span><\/p>\n In that sense, there is something sinister hiding, \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d-style, behind its facade of quirky comity: our world. Call \u201cGilmore Girls\u201d a bubble or, if you\u2019re a romantic, a snow globe. It\u2019s not a horror story, though, except that in the end the characters get to stay, and the rest of us have to leave.<\/span><\/p>\n Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/23\/arts\/television\/review-gilmore-girls-a-year-in-the-life-netflix.html?_r=0<\/span><\/p>\n