Just over a month ago, every other person on my Facebook feed started freaking out about the news that all 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls were now available on Netflix Instant. I myself was pretty excited by this news, as I remembered watching the first couple of seasons and finding it quirky and charming, the television equivalent of Mac and Cheese: tasty and filling but having no nutritional value.

“Okay, I’ve got some downtime,” I said to myself. “And I’ve got some cosplay projects I need to work on, that’ll be fun for background noise.”

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Week One: I Miss My Mom

In the pilot episode, we met Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, a young mother and daughter living in the too-adorable-for-life town of Stars Hollow, CT. Stars Hollow is in some kind of pocket dimension where it is perpetually fall except for those two snow episodes and the one about the 4th of July.

Foliage! Foliage! Foliage!

Rory, exceptional student and freakishly-fast reader, has just been accepted to a very prestigious private school. Lorelai is thrilled but concerned about how she is going to pay the tuition. She bucks up and does the only thing she can do: she asks for help from her estranged, well-to-do parents.

Here is where it started getting spooky.

I became convinced that Amy Sherman-Palladino had somehow been spying on me my whole life and had rebranded my formative years for the WB. Like Lorelai Gilmore, my mom got pregnant at 16. We grew up together the way Lorelai and Rory did. My mom was my best friend and I could tell her anything. She also had to work her ass off to send me to private school, sometimes going to her parents (whom she had a rocky relationship with) for help. We may not have been able to work in as many pop culture zingers and she REALLY didn’t understand my Marilyn Manson phase, but as I reacquainted myself with Lorelai and Rory’s relationship I felt an enormous amount of gratitude for my mom. We even shared a love for coffee!

So when Rory met a BOY who has just moved to Stars Hollow and changes her mind about the fancy private school, I wanted to reach through the screen and shake some sense into her. Do you realize how humbling it is to ask for help as an adult, you little shit?!?

THAT’S MORE LIKE IT.

Was I ever so bratty and selfish? Of course I was, I was a teenage girl. I was unsurprised when Rory and Lorelai reconcile, because this is a family dramedy from the WB and they always resolve those little plot points don’t they?

In fact, they do not. I realized this around episode 19 “Emily in Wonderland,” when Lorelai’s mother saw the converted tool shed where her daughter and granddaughter once lived and quite literally ran away. Later, when Emily confronted her daughter about it by saying, “You’d rather live in a shack in the woods than with your own family,” it became clear that this is a pain point that wouldn’t be so easily resolved. It’s the kind of hurt that doesn’t just go away or wrap up at the end of an episode. This is the kind of pain that gets in you and clings for years, and I was reminded again of my own mother’s relationship with her parents.

What the hell is going on here? Why am I feeling so many things?!?

Week Two: The Perfect Man

Can I just say Luke Danes? LUKE. DANES. Okay, the baseball cap is infuriating but otherwise why is he not real?

Luke is a cynical, cranky bastard who shows up to give Lorelai longing looks (or on occasion give Rory fatherly looks) and spout wisdom. He cooks, he fixes things, he even takes in his troubled teenaged nephew, Jess, in the hopes of giving him a better shot at a good life.

It’s pretty obvious from the first episode that Luke is not-so-secretly in love with Lorelai and has been for years. When Lorelai became engaged to a teacher from Rory’s school (another A+ guy played by long-time crush Scott Cohen) Luke didn’t mope or protest. Luke built her a fucking chuppah, proving that he doesn’t love selfishly. He wants Lorelai to be happy, even if that means it’s not with him.

A little on the nose, guys.

Later seasons would prove that Luke is not, in fact, perfect although he is still so goddamned good that every time I pass an adorable little coffee shop I peek my head in the door hoping for a glimpse of plaid. If Lorelai and Rory are based on real people (my mother and myself, as I’ve already established) then Luke must be based on a real person too, right? Right???

Just two professional actors with zero chemistry.

Week 3: People are starting to worry about me

I started telling people I want to try this dish that Sookie was talking about. I listened to the Go-Go’s more than usual. I referred to Guardians of the Galaxy as, “that movie with Kirk in it,” and found myself saying, “Oy with the poodles already,” on a regular basis. I hear “la-la-la-la” everywhere I go. Sometime during week 3 I started getting messages like these:

My friend knew enough about my recent obsession to address two of the characters as if they were real, and yet still advised me to go outside. OUTSIDE?!? Do you KNOW how many episodes there are per season???

Week Four: I just can’t anymore

Right around the first Luke & Lorelai breakup, I started getting depressed. Not even the weirdness of Sebastian Bach “acting” could stir me. I know part of it is my vitamin D deficiency that always starts kicking me in the ass this time of year, but it felt as real as any depression I’ve been through.  Lorelai lies in bed and cries and has an incredibly sad dream and I realize I’ve spent 12 hours on the couch.

For the sake of my own sanity I stopped before the show could get into Luke and Lorelai’s second breakup. Stars Hollow is great to visit, but if I’d stayed much longer I never would have left.

So I take a break. I listen to my friends, go outside, and hey, would you look at that!

It’s autumn.