Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Gilmore Girls

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Brew yourself a giant pot of Luke's coffee because we’re diving deep into the fast-talking world of Stars Hollow. That’s right, the cult Gilmore Girls. We know what you're thinking! It's just a TV show! It'a not a cult! Relax! But hear us out: From the intense rituals (hello, annual re-watch), patron saints (looking at you, Luke Danes), and fan behaviors that border on worship, your favorite mother-daughter duo has evolved from a quaint fictional series into a full-fledged lifestyle and pseudo-religion. To help us take a closer look at how Lorelai and Rory have become the unofficial God and Jesus of fall, Tara & Haley of the Gilmore To Say Podcast join the pod. Whether you're Team Jess, Team Logan, Team Dean (really?), or don't even care because you think Rory is actually just the worst, we hope you enjoy this cozy episode. Oy with the poodles already!! Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell @reesaronii @chelseaxcharles Watch the new season of Sounds Like A Cult on YouTube! To subscribe to Amanda's new Magical Overthinkers podcast, click here :) Thank you to our sponsors!  Go to squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at MINTMOBILE.com/cult.  Go to joinbilt.com/CULT to start earning points on your rent. Get up to $100 off Litter-Robot bundles and an additional $50 off when you go to stopscooping.com/SLAC.

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This podcast is for entertainment purposes only." I think some of that Gilmore Girls Kefabe, it's going too far. And people think that what is happening in that writer's room and then of course on screen is happening to them. I also think there is room to love a show and want to preserve all the things you love about the show while also recognizing where it's problematic and where it may not have been problematic at the time, it should have been. But today we can recognize why it is and still have love for it.

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montel, author of the books Cultish and The Age of Magical Overthinking. Every week on this show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from Amazon to Wine Moms, to try and answer the big question, this group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live-your-life? A watch your back?

Or a get-the-fuck-out? After all, cultishness pops up kinda everywhere these days, not only on satanic compounds, but in your corporate offices, in your fitness studios, on your social media feeds, on your Netflix homepage, in your fitness studios, on your social media feeds, on your Netflix homepage, in your fan forums, honey. Today, we are diving into the fascinating, cult-followed phenomenon that is Gilmore Girls. Indeed, your favorite rapid-fire dialogue spewing, pop-culture-obsessed mother-daughter duo

who totally captured our hearts in the early 2000s on the WB, and now have captured the hearts of so many more because of hashtag rewatch culture on Netflix. We're going to get into it with our very special guests. We have covered several cult followed TV phenomena and sounds like a cult before from The Bachelor to The Real Housewives to Love is Blind to most recently Dance Moms. Though I think that this might actually be our first ever fictional TV cult. That's an interesting distinction there

because while I can more easily see, honestly, getting into the cult of a reality program, seeing as the people portrayed on screen are at least ostensibly real people, as far as Gilmore Girls is concerned, these are completely made up characters that we all at a certain point start to treat as real so the cult is very special in that way. Gilmore Girls is not just a show. It has evolved into an entire lifestyle, a pseudo religion of sorts with us versus them dynamics, teams, rituals, patron saints, specialized

vocabulary and some delulu fan behaviors that truly border on worship. Every year, as summer quietly hands the baton to fall, we see an avalanche of Gilmore Girls, memes, and solo rewatch parties ignite in full force. It is almost as if Lorelei and Rory Gilmore have become the television harbingers of autumn. They are our autumnal saints. But before we get into a little bit of background about the TV show, the fan culture, I know some of you might be thinking Gilmore Girls as a cult, that's a bit of a stretch. And maybe you're right. That's what we're here to find out today.

Now, there was one topic that we weren't able to get to today, a very important ingredient in the recipe of the cult of Gilmore Girls. And it is known as, and it is known as the Rory Problem. If you wanna hear me, Tara, and Hailey discuss the Rory problem, well, you're just going to have to tune in to the episode on their show, Gilmore to Say podcast, where I was lucky enough to appear as a guest and unpack the cult surrounding the Gilmore Girls

protagonist Rory, her lovers, her haters, and everyone in between. Just want to shout that out. Now we're going to get into the nitty gritty, including the culty extremes of this TV universe. But first I wanted to introduce my very special guests who I have been itching to chat with for quite some time. Tara and Hailey from the Gilmore to Say podcast. Welcome to Sounds Like a Cult. Thank you. We're so happy to be here. We've been talking about this since what, February, March?

Oh my God, we've been plotting and planning for a while. Yeah. Did I slide into your DMS? I think this is how it happened. Someone vehemently, like with the fury of Christ or Satan or I don't even know who. Yes. The fury of Lorelei Jonesing for her morning cup of Java slid into the sounds like a cult DMS and was like, okay, I have a very specific request. You have to do the cult of Gilmore Girls and you have to have the hosts of Gilmore to say on the show. And I was like, I am as loyal to the culties as they are to me, I have to make it happen.

I love that. Well, shout out to that listener. Cause I mean, honestly, it wasn't until you slid into our DMs that we were like, wow, this is a perfect, perfect collaboration. Maybe we are members of a cult. Are we members of a cult? Yeah.

And this is when you know that a pair of guests or a single guest will be the perfect fit for the show, when I lovingly suggest that you're members of a cult. And you're like, oh my God, we so are. We can't wait to talk about it. Let's hashtag attack ourselves. It's masochistic, but it's loving. It made me read your book, Cultish, and immediately I was like, I'm not full cult, never, but like I'm a Swifty, I'm a huge Gamer Girls fan, so I'm like, I behave cultishly.

Yeah, you're swimming in those watch yourback waters. It's hard to avoid these days with how religious our secular culture, our pop culture communities have become. Before we get into the analysis, the background, the whole rigamarole, I just wanted to ask if you two could introduce yourselves and your personal connection to the Cult of Gilmore Girls. I'm Hayley. We actually very cultishly met on Gilmore Girls TikTok because we were posting separately in the year of 2021 pandemic TikTok. We were just talking about very similar things and people kept commenting like, oh, have

you ever seen this person Tara? Have you seen this person Hailey? The time I went by Gilmore Girly Girl, I had a very specific nickname on TikTok that people didn't even know my real name most of the time. But we actually both were working on Broadway before the pandemic and we kind of connected over that. And it was that like stranger danger, like wall down that we like had this like sort of mutual background

that we were like, okay, we can actually connect. And one day Tara was like, are we missing an opportunity by not starting a podcast? And that's where it all started. And starting on TikTok does really lend itself to the cultish nature because it, I think has kind of inflamed how culty Gilmore Girls is because we discovered in talking

about very specific content, specifically when it comes to the boyfriends on this show, that a lot of people have very, very strong opinions about the relationships, not just romantic, but familial relationships, because they tend to really attach them and tether them to their own experiences. And that really gets them riled up in the comments. So the fact that we met

on TikTok is actually kind of perfect for this episode that we're about to do together because we became exposed to the cool teenager of Gilmore Girls through the way that we met. We've both been watching the show for a really long time. I mean, since we were like 12. Yeah, like I started watching this in 2005. Yeah, I started probably around 2004. And the interesting part is that I really tethered myself to the early seasons, the ABC family reruns were on. That's how I found it. Whereas Haley entered right at the time when like season five was airing, she became a Logan Huntsberger girly. And like those later seasons are really more of her comfort food. So we kind of come from two very different angles

when it comes to the show. Two different denominations. Yeah, two different denominations of it's a lifestyle, it's a religion as that is the tagline of Gilmore Girls itself. You know, the TikTok of it all is fascinating because I generally conceive of TikTok as this like non-denominational mega church where fanatics of all stripes come to worship, to infight,

to out-preach, to preach, 100% to recruit. And I'm 32. So I also started watching it when it was in ABC Family Re-runs. I did not fall in love with it right away. The rapid fire dialogue felt really contrived. I didn't understand that it was stylized. I was too young. I just didn't get it. I really fell in love with it when it hit Netflix streaming, when I was in college. But I noticed years later, specifically during COVID lockdown, so like 2020, 2021, this online fanaticism and not to bombard you with therapy speak,

but this like projection and displacement that people were engaging in with regard to the characters. I mean, nostalgia surged during the pandemic because the present was painful. People were looking to the past for comfort and people were just like over analyzing the living fuck out of all of these characters and storylines like religious scripture. So it's just the perfect storm of cultishness that you met on TikTok and started podcast during the pandemic about this phenomenon. Yeah, because we realized through that how many people really resonated with this show. And admittedly, I didn't really understand that until I started posting TikToks.

I posted my first TikTok that went viral about Dean and how I think that Dean is the most toxic relationship where he had on the show. I was in my pajamas, no makeup on, two in the morning, like upstairs in my grandma's spare bedroom, because I was living with her at the time, because it was pandemic. And I did not realize that people were gonna latch

onto this and have opinions, and that people were gonna agree, people were gonna vehemently disagree. How did that feel? I mean, a viral moment, onto this and have opinions and that people were going to agree. People were going to vehemently disagree. How did that feel? I mean, a viral moment, I've never had a piece of content go viral ever, which is really, I feel great about that. I feel great about that too, honestly.

I do too because it can be really scary. But as I continue to make content, I started to really realize that regardless of whether it went viral or didn't, the people who really, really loved the show were in the comments with their opinions no matter what. Like people have really intense opinions about this show. And a lot of my experiences with the show are gonna be different than the person that's in the comments. It was really interesting to navigate.

And then I think by the time Hailey came on the scene, she was kind of prepared for it already. She kind of went into it already observing TikTok creators around her who were talking about Gilmore Girls, myself included. So when I went into it, I did not go in with this expectation that anything was going to become a conversation until it did. Whereas I think Hailey kind of went in knowing it was going to be a conversation and how to attack that from a very different perspective, which I thought was really cool. The thing that I noticed a lot on TikTok was that people were making really grand statements

about the show from rewatches they had, but they weren't talking specifically about things. They were talking very broad scope. And so what I would do is I would mention something, show a clip from the show to show them that they were wrong. This is actually what happened in the show and let me explain to you why. And then it was like the conversation

then became about the specificity of what we were talking about. And then that became toxic too, because then it became too entrenched and too detail oriented that some people were like hard pressed to pull back on. Dude, it is literally like violently arguing over some semantic thing in a piece of biblical scripture. Yes, exactly. And your interpretation of that scripture.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. And just like with you not having ever gone viral before, I really wish that was me because it creates the sense of like artificial inflation of dopamine of like, oh my God, this is so fun. But then as the comments that start disagreeing with you roll in, you get entrenched in it.

But the thing that I had to do at some point was be like, okay, I'm not building a platform. I'm building a community around this one thing that we all love. And if someone's going to disagree with me, I'm going to say, great, I love that we love the show and like back up from there because like it was ruining my mental health and love of the show to fight for it. When we like, we're fighting about the same thing. We both love Come More Girls, but back up and touch grass. I'm having, yes. Thank you

for saying that. Yeah. No, like let me be clear. Being online is terrible for my mental health, regardless of whether I've had a viral video or not. Again, I'm so grateful for it. I've never attempted to have a viral video. I'll also put it that way because I've seen what that looks like. And I don't want that, but I'm also having this realization now that I think part of the reason why all of the cult followed TV shows that we've covered on the show previously have been reality TV and not fictional television is because in a way it offers more to talk about because there's the cult of the fandom. And then even more sort of intensely, there's the cult of the fandom. And then even more sort of intensely, there's the cult of the production

and the personas that are created on screen that are like uncanny because they're kind of real people, but also not. And all those people are like clawing for fame, but they may or may not have any like talents. And like, there might be like a reality show setup that's really culty. Like the bachelor or love is blind where you're like depriving real people of necessary resources

and like there are so many angles to examine it from. With Gilmore Girls, there's just the viewership and it's not just fans, it's Gilmore Girls influencers. I mean, there's a whole podcast surrounding Gilmore Girls and y'all are doing so well. So like that really says something. And I wanna definitely get to what differentiates Gilmore Girls from other fictional shows that do not have a cult followed fandom surrounding them

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I don't even know when it's going. In fact, sometimes I'm like, did someone break into my home and steal my Litter Robot? But no, it's still there. It's just really, really quiet. It works amazing. It's changed my life and my cats freaking love it. As a special holiday offer, Whiskr is offering up to $100 off Litter Robot bundles. And as a special offer to listeners, you can get an additional $50 off

when you go to stopscooping.com slash SLAC. This is Litter-Robot's best offer yet. Up to $100 off Litter-Robot bundles and an additional $50 off when you go to stopscooping.com slash SLAC. Stopscooping.com slash SLAC. First, just for those who might be tuning in and don't have the full 411,

I wanna give a teensy bit of background to get you in the mood. So, Gilmore Girls, for those who are in a very different algorithm on TikTok, is an American dramedy television series created by the one, the only, Amy Sherman Palladino. It first aired, as we mentioned, on the WB network in the year 2000. The show follows the lives of, famously, fictional characters, Lorelai Gilmore, a single mother, who's a teen mom, and her daughter, who's only 16 years younger than her, Rory,

in the quaint and cozy, just girly things, fall vibes town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. Not a real town. Feels like one. Not real. Good to remind you of that at every turn. The show went on for seven seasons and recently had a Netflix four episode mini series reboot in 2016. The show was also available for streaming on Netflix and I credit that with the emergence of this cult following in many ways. The show is known for its witty dialogue. I would almost call it Sorkin-esque, rapid fire, extreme deep cut pop culture references.

The show is known for its quirky characters, for its strong emphasis on family and relationships. And the series has garnered new generational waves of fans over the years, some of whom discovered the show maybe in its WB days, maybe in its ABC Family rerun days, maybe in its Netflix rewatch days. There are new fans of all ages discovering it all the time and increasingly use it, I find, as a kind of socio-spiritual framework to understand themselves, their morality, American culture, their place in the world, their place within the landscape of Millennials versus Gen Z, etc. et cetera. And so I was wondering if you two could start us off with some of your first impressions of the cultiest observations you've noticed about the Gilmore Girls fandom. Like when I reached out to you and was like you should do

the cult of Gilmore Girls. What are some examples that popped to mind that made you think yeah that would be appropriate? A lot of people use Gilmore Girls in like a therapeutic way. In terms of us having people who break it down, it's either you've watched it once, you watch it in the fall, or you watch it every night fall asleep. And that's where people kind of fall into it. We'll have people be like, oh, yeah, I just moved,

so I've been on a Gilmore Girls binge. Or our graphic designer, she was doing graphic designs for a therapist who says that over the 20-plus years she's been working, the amount of young women who come to her and say that they watch Gilmore Girls as a form of therapy that she started watching it because she wanted to know what it was all about. So I feel like that in itself is like regardless of what area of our life we're working in, whether it's in our community or in our business itself, we find people who use Gilmore Girls for therapy. It's beyond a comfort watch. It's a therapeutic watch. Yeah.

I so agree. I also think it's a way for people to connect in a similar way to how some people connect over religion. Like, oh, you're Christian, so am I. I think it's like when you find out that someone has watched Gilmore Girls, when another woman talks to another woman,

they're like, yeah, I love Gilmore Girls. I love Gilmore Girls, too. It's like this instant connection. What team are you on? It's just one of those things where it makes it really easy for you to connect. It gives you something to talk about. And so it kind of gives you a point of conversation to start with to make friends, which is what we've found.

You know, the community aspect of it that Haley was talking about earlier in building the community that she did on TikTok that we have with the podcast is kind of, not to put a negative connotation of it, but a little culty. And this is the distinction, right, that we try to make on this show.

This is the reason why our live your life, watch your back and get the fuck out categories exist because there are some qualities that make a community culty at first blush. You know, there are these aphorisms like, a cult is like porn, you know it when you see it, which is like both, you know it when you see it, which is both true and untrue. It's both a relatable cliche and also not specific enough and can be a license

to judge other people needlessly. Now, with Gilmore Girls, some of the cult-y but not necessarily destructive symptoms, beige flags, if you will, are like, yes, that sense of ritual, that sense of rewatching it every fall, the immediate communion and solidarity when you meet someone who's also a fan of the show, the sort of like categorizing yourself on a team or in a bucket of belief, depending on which of Rory's love interests you think was right for her or that you really think was right for her or that you really think was right for you. Yes. You know, like all of these things are odd.

It's a little much for a TV show, but not necessarily bad. Like it's important to have connective tissue in an ever isolated society, especially during the pandemic. I think that's probably why the show felt so meaningful during that time or when people are moving or going through these big life changes. Like it's important not only to have like a comfort watch,

something you know will always be the same, but a reason to connect with other people. And it reminds me of astrology and also Taylor Swift's discography in this way that like, and I say this with love, I adore the show. There is an almost neutered quality to Gilmore Girls. It was nostalgic already when it was on. You know what I mean? Like it has this sort of wistful quality

and there's like a comforting blandness to that. It's not an especially like challenging show. It goes down real easy. And thus we are able to project so much onto it. like challenging show, it goes down real easy. And thus we are able to project so much onto it. Like you can't project a ton onto a really, really complicated challenging show, like Severance, you know?

Like truly. You know, the first thing that came to mind, I was like, can't connect with Severance. I'm not watching that every fall. No, exactly, exactly. And I say that with respect for the show and I say that with respect for Taylor Swift's discography.

But the reason why you're able to say, I'm in my reputation era or I'm in my speak now era or like, oh my God, she's being such a Scorpio right now is because there's a little bit of fodder there. There's like a little bit of culture there, but it's ultimately kind of bland. Well, yeah, it just gives you a really good framework for, like you said, for you to be able to kind of project your own interests or situations or circumstances onto you, which I think is what makes it so palatable. That's why Taylor Swift is so popular because what

one lyric means to one person is going to mean something completely different to the next person. But it is like that connective tissue. Right? And we've always said that this plot, the plot of Gilmore Girls and different from a show like Severance, which is so funny that you said that because that's always what I think of when I'm comparing it up against like modern TV.

Stop that. Because I love that show. We do. It's so different, but like watching that show is such a prime example of what television has turned into today, where you are on the edge of your seat every moment, but at the, like the last moment of every episode

to propel you to the next one. Gilmore Girls didn't do that. And I don't know that we'll ever get another show like this again, where it really is just like a slice of life show. And yes, there are complications, there are challenges. But part of the reason that I think people love it is because like you said, it goes down easy. When you're watching it before bed, you're not going to have nightmares.

You're going to move through this show in a way that feels very easy paced. And I just think that there's something so comforting to that. And I don't know that we'll ever get something like that again again in this era of television and entertainment because of the way that it's so fast paced streaming. Just they want you to like pump out these seasons that are 10 episodes, not 22. And that's why it also feels nostalgic is because it reminds you of a time in television and entertainment where we weren't so tethered to what's happening next. Well, because there wasn't this pressure to stand out in an algorithm and be like hyper

engaging, keep you on the platform. Exactly. We actually had a live show recently in LA and we talked to series writer Shira Lawrence who did two, three and four in terms of seasons. And she said that the TV is just not like that anymore because it was so stretched out for like a 22 episode order that where an entire episode can be focused on the fact that Rory lost her bracelet. And that was like the whole plot that everyone was working with and working around. And like TV just doesn't move like that anymore. So there's this

ability to like breathe that exists in it where I think in that you can insert yourself in it really easily. Totally. Because it's like, here's kind of a theater-y music reference. The show is moving at an Andante pace. It's moving at the pace of walking. It's moving at the pace of life. And so you can kind of just slot into it, no matter where you are in your life, and feel like it matches. Yeah.

Because what we call it on our re-watch, when we watch an episode where it doesn't contribute to the overall arc of the season, we'll say no plot, just vibes. Nothing happened here, but we were major vibes. And sometimes there's plot and no vibes, but that's because we gotta move things along and it's near the end of the season.

Yeah, some of it's just set up, but the vibiest episodes are like the town sleepover. Nothing really happens. It doesn't necessarily change anything. There are little moments, little droplets of plot that are going to be kind of unfolded more and unpackaged more as the series goes on. But for the most part, this is just an episode about how they were supposed to host this event and they couldn't because they got snowed in. So now the whole town has to have a sleepover. That is a place I want to be, especially in today's world.

In 2024, where everything's so complicated and we never know what's going to happen next. And our generation specifically is millennials. Not to get super, super doomsday and deep, but we've just experienced trauma after trauma after trauma. If you think about the scope of our lives, we're all around the same age, right? In our early 30s, it's like 9-11. Then all of these different things that have happened since then that just make it feel like we're never able to come up for air. And the fact that you can sit down at the end of the day

and watch a show that makes you feel like for a second you live in this very small town where everybody just knows everybody's business and the vibes are chill. That's a world I wanna live in. You could be the hottest person in town with a flip phone. Yes, yes, I've actually, I'm in the cult of podcasting and thus I have not one but two

and on my other show, Magical Overthinkers, I have an episode called Overthinking about Millennial Cringe. And it's like really unpacking this juxtaposition that defines our generation, I think, of being sort of like infantilized and not having the tools to hashtag adult because we were just sort

of like set up to fail in terms of so many destructive impediments to success as an adult. But also like we were forced to accommodate to a hyper digital world overnight. And like a lot of these contributing factors have made our generation more prone to nostalgia because we feel like we're not a girl, not yet a woman at all times. We were like forced to contend with you know like such fierce struggles financially and psychologically and yet we were not like given the same tools that like our parents were, the same promises but not the same tools. And I think Gilmore Girls is kind of like, it's millennial medicine. It really is. Oh my God, I love that.

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to provide some further background and exposition. So I wanna quote from a New York Times piece titled, why Gilmore Girls Endures in 2020. So this piece is a few years old, but I think it still applies. It says, quote, few would have predicted in 2000 that Gilmore Girls would be so enduring. It was never a breakout hit during its seven year run. It never found its way to a mass audience,

was never nominated for a major Emmy, never received the gotta watch it buzz of other shows that arrived around the same moment, but through word of mouth, DVD sales, oh well, millennial nostalgia and the power of Netflix, new fans, some of whom had not yet been born when the show premiered, discovered Lorelei and Rory. So what Gimbal Girls and I have in common is we've never had a viral moment.

And yet we endure. Another more recent New York Times piece titled Gilmore Girls is an endless buffet of TV comfort food from 2024 says, quote, the show, which ended in 2000, was still one of the 10 most watched shows across major streaming platforms last year according to the research firm Nielsen. So that just goes to show that despite the fact it was never this massive hit in its heyday, it has these legs that continue to propel us forward. So I would love to hear your take on what you think sets Gilmore Girls apart from other shows of its day, but even

other shows that have come out since. Why aren't we sitting here talking about the cult of, I don't know, like Frasier? Why aren't we sitting here talking about the cult of Pretty Little Liars? I mean, that is- Oh my God, I'm in the middle of a Pretty Little Liars rewatch right now. That's so funny that you said that. I've actually never seen it. We're in sync, we're in sync. We're positively in sync. But like, yes, we're talking about this fast paced dialogue. We're talking about this like curious rediscovery

in years since. Why do you think this show is materially different in a cultish way from other fictional narrative series? I think part of it is the way that Amy Sherman Palladino came up in television as she was a writer on Roseanne and she was writing very sentimental sitcom at a time when, to quote Sheila Lawrence, other sitcoms were kind of stupid. And like not to like bring like Friends or other Seinfeld, as she said, into that mix, but they were kind of dumb. And I think that to transition from a 30 minute sitcom where she's having very

sentimental moments between mother and daughter to transition that to a long form show, I think that that was like the perfect segue for her into that. And I think that she never underestimated her audience. I don't think that she like pandered to them anyway. She expected them to be smart and she allowed them to be smart. And I think that maybe when you get one of the pop culture references, you're like, oh, I get it. I'm there. I've got it that you like kind of feel like you've risen to the occasion of the show sometimes. It is an unwittingly smart show.

I know I just called it bland, but like that's more the tone. I would say like the mechanics of the show are sophisticated as hell. Oh yeah. I mean, we can talk about how Taylor Swift is super palatable, but she's very smart and very intentional about what she does. And I think that to piggyback off of what Haley said, those scripts were so dense. There's so much to talk about in one episode, in one sentence, unpacking four different pop culture references in one single sentence speaks to everything that you can unpack about the show in a way that like Haley mentioned, at the time that wasn't

necessarily happening. You know, with friends, I could quote that show back to you up down sideways, but it's so different when it comes with the education of something I didn't know before, you know, there were like Haley said, there were so many things that maybe an audience member didn't know, but the delivery was so funny that you laughed. And then you would go and look it up. And Amy often got criticized while the show was airing for having references in there that people

probably didn't know. And she was like, then they'll look it up. And she was right. Teach them something. Yeah. Totally. I learned so much from this show. Whereas I don't know that I necessarily

learned a lot from a show like Friends. You know, I watched it in high school. I love that show. It's hilarious. I watch it for a very different feeling, but I wasn't learning. I mean, you're learning. And on top of that, you want to live in this world. And on top of that, it's like, the characters are aspirational. I wanted to be Laura like Elmore, you know? And I think that that's what makes it stand out and that's what makes it prevail is that while being nostalgic, I'm still learning things all the time, even at 32, that I maybe didn't catch when I was 12.

We have a rewatch on Patreon and we have favorite episodes in terms of plot, but some of the ones that sneak in are the ones that are so clever in the way that they deliver scenes that feel like they have nothing to do with the plot, but then later come in and like a little line that's dropped and you're like, Oh, fun. I made that little connection between them.

I do appreciate that in a show. And the reason that I actually blew up on TikTok, fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, was because I was finding parallels within the show from like season to season or episode to episode where things were like, either the dialogue was exactly the same because I was at the age of 15 memorizing the entire script of Gilmore Girls from one to seven as you do. So as an adult rewatching it, I'm like, oh, that's exactly what Logan said in season five episode whatever that parallels what Lorelei said in season two.

And I could make those connections, which is like, I can see it in your eyes. You're like, yeah, she definitely is in this cult. No, but I completely understand it. Because even though my relationship to Gilmore Girls is not quite this extreme, I do have, I do have an extreme relationship with my absolute favorite show of all time. And I, God, I wish that there was like an intense fandom surrounding it. And maybe there is, I've been begging to find it for years. It's the show, Six Feet Under. It's-

Oh my gosh. I've heard so many good things about this show, but I've never watched it. It's such a deeply, deeply important show for humanity. And like, I've said for years since I was 16 years old that that show is my religion. When I don't know what to do, I look to the show. My cats are named after characters in the show. I'm rewatching it with my partner who's watching it for the first time actually.

I've seen it 15 times all the way through. It's a show that confronts death, so it's not exactly a light watch, but I see something new in it every time I watch it, every time I age. And I don't know if you feel this way, and maybe this is like a little existential, but like when you rewatch a show from beginning to end so many times, and you know what's gonna happen,

nothing changes no matter how many times you watch it. You might notice new things, depending on where you are in your life, or depending on whether or not you've taken an edible. I don't know. You might notice new things, but the show is the same. It does not, however, impact your enjoyment of it. It's still fun and lovely to watch, even though you know what's going to happen. And this kind of reminds me of like the fabric of space time. Like, you know how Albert Einstein positive that like the past, the present and the future all exist

at once at the exact same time. And like my favorite movie is the movie Arrival starring Amy Adams as a linguist who talks to aliens. And like the aliens that she talks to, they perceive all of time happening at once. And like, I feel like it can tap in to all of time or like that notion of experiencing all of time at the same time and not having a lack of free will affect your enjoyment of life.

I feel like I can tap into that when I rewatch Six Feet Under. No, I totally agree. I've never been able to articulate it that way because I feel like when I watch an episode, I can watch it from the perspective of 15-year-old me who printed out a picture of Matsukuri because there were no Logan Huntsberger posters available, but also from the perspective of 15-year-old me who printed out a picture of Matsukuri because there were no Logan Huntsberger posters available, but also from the perspective of me who was watching this to talk about it for an episode, but also me overarching who's going to just enjoy this

and laugh like this is the first time I've ever seen it. Yeah, yeah. I also think it's so contingent on the company that you keep when you're watching the show. If your partner's watching it with you for the first time, you've seen it like 15 times, that there's gonna be a completely new perspective sitting right next to you,

and that energy is so different than you watching it by yourself, or you watching it with somebody who knows that show just as well as you do. I'm watching Gilmore Girls for the first time with my partner, and the amount of things that I have to write down that we kind of discover together as we're watching is very different than when I'm watching it with Hailey or when I'm watching it to note it for the podcast.

It's so interesting how the environment that surrounds you, I think, can also have a grave impact on the way that you rewatch a show that you've seen a thousand times. Totally. Yeah. I also kind of noticed that there's like a protectiveness over the show that Tara has sometimes when she's watching it with Brett, her partner, that like doesn't exist when we watch it together.

Yeah, because you are its custodian when an outsider is in the mix, which that is some culty shit right there. Like you're like, as an insider, when I'm in the presence of the outsider, I have to assume this official role. But when I'm with a fellow of the outsider, I have to assume this official role. But when I'm with a fellow Gilmore Girls accolade, I can sort of let my hair down a little bit. Very classy.

Very true. Okay. I want to return to something that one of you said, calling the show aspirational. It is an aspirational show unwittingly, because at the end of the day, it is about a teen mom, which it's not like you're watching fucking Bridgerton, you know what I mean? Like it's not a fantasy show. And yet there is this incredible romance surrounding the characters as not only aspirational,

but also deeply relatable. And that cocktail is so intoxicating. Another trademark that we haven't mentioned yet of the show is the extreme amounts of coffee consumed by the mother-daughter duo, which creates this like cozy, cable-knit, coffee-loving army out of its viewership. We will unpack this next point further in a bit, but another trademark is that Lorelei and Rory, the two protagonists have these seemingly bottomless

appetites, they devour pizzas and junk food all the while staying perfectly svelte. This ability to like ingest limitless coffee and food is I think part of the aspiration. These figures are human because we're watching them eat and yet super human because they can eat everything. I found that some viewers, particularly young viewers, are driven to model themselves and their lives in the image of Gilmore Girls. And then in recent years, there has been an

even sometimes more vehement culture of unpacking, de-romanticizing, and even excoriating Rory and Lorelei for their choices, as well as the writers, you know, calling certain plot points irresponsible or morally reprehensible in one way or another. And both these cultures of worship, romance, and dethronement, excoriation, appear to go so extreme that it feels sometimes as if viewers forget that these characters are not real. So I'm wondering if you can call to mind any examples of when viewers disagreements in their interpretations

of the scripture or whatever, bordered on destructive, delusional to the point of like, this is not net positive anymore for you. One of the most polarizing topics when it comes to Gilmore Girls, I think are the teams of men that Rory finds herself dating along the way. But one of the most polarizing conversations

that we've kind of touched on, but we have steered clear of for the most part, is in season three, it's an episode called keg max. And it is when Jess takes Rory up to or Rory meets him upstairs at this party and they're in this very dark bedroom. And I'm sure you recall the scene where he they're starting to kiss and then things get taken a little too far. That is one of the most polarizing topics, I think, in Gilmore Girls. Because if you are Team Jazz, which I am, I've had people on TikTok be like,

oh, so you're fine with the fact that he sexually assaulted Rory? And I'm like, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. I don't particularly see, I understand why people feel that way. I didn't feel that way when I watched the scene the first time.

In revisiting it, I've had mixed feelings about it. I don't necessarily condone it. But for you to then make a very, very polarizing statement about me and who I am based on the team that I affiliate myself with because of this scene, I think that that can be really destructive to the way that we communicate with each other. And I think that that just goes hand in hand with how

we are as a society right now, especially when it comes to the way we we communicate with each other. And I think that that just goes hand in hand with how we are as a society right now, especially when it comes to the way we speak to each other on the internet. We can get really brave behind the screen and we can make some really bold statements about people that if we were having a conversation about something or if you wanna start a conversation with somebody about something,

that's not the way that you would start a conversation is with an accusation like that. But I do think that that's become one of the most destructive rhetorics that surrounds the characters on Gilmore Girls. I've also seen it in the opposite way. Again, one of my first TikTok was about how I think that Dean is Rory's most toxic partner on Gilmore Girls.

And if people then come into my comments in support of Dean, I've seen people be like, oh, so you support men who cheat on their wives. And it's like, oh, OK. Wow. All right. Let's like, let's again, like Hailey said, like let's go touch some grass a little bit.

That, I think, makes it really destructive. Because then we're characterizing people based on the way that we characterize these characters' choices. And similarly to what we were talking about earlier about reality television and how that has a cultish nature to it, because you're watching people in real time, real people in real time making real choices, versus this fictional show where we're watching fictional

characters make real choices that we maybe have been faced with in the past. I think that we didn't realize until earlier this summer how much reality television goes hand in hand with the way we watch Gilmore Girls because we treat these characters like real people because they're so relatable. Oh, that is fascinating.

Like the cult of reality TV and how uncanny and dramatic and just fucked up, my mom would say end of society, that world has shaped the way that we discuss even fictional television shows from the early 2000s. That's very interesting. Yeah. It's something that didn't really hit us

until earlier this year, honestly. Yeah. The other one that I wanted to bring up in terms of polarizing was, I think, one of the most viral reels we've ever posted was me, because I'm about to turn 32. So I was making a joke that I'm just a year off from having to go to my

parents and ask for thousands of dollars in exchange for martinis weekly that I will complain about. Just like a very offhand way to explain 32. And the way that that blew up and like sometimes we'll get notifications and I'll see a comment on there and I'll be like, the trauma that I faced from my stepdad and the medication that I now take, I'm like, whoa. And so sometimes I'll tap into the comments there. And at first, people were like, ha ha, this is funny. Or like, Lorelai, she was dealing with a lot more. Her parents' relationship is more complex than that.

But then the way that it dove into people seeing themselves in the situation, if they were a teen parent or the rejection that they had from their parents, the aggression that they experienced, or whatever their experience was, they decided to live it out in the comment section of this video that now has like 9 million views. Like thanks for the engagement y'all. But it was just like this level of like every time like a comment comes up on that and our notifications, I'm like, I'm just going to skip that one. Yeah.

Oh my God. It's really interesting. I just had a thought that I feel like I should have already had in my life before this moment, which is that like language has material power. It's performative. When we say things in comment sections, whether we're talking about politics or Gilmore girls or religion or the real housewives, no matter what we're talking about. First of all, I think it goes without saying that when we're scrolling on Tik Tok, we're

not necessarily in our most critical thinking state, right? We're often in a state where we want everything that we're seeing in our algorithm to reflect exactly our lived experience. And even if the stakes are not that high, like in the context of Gilmore Girls, if we see something that makes us feel unseen and thus betrayed, it's possible to get very reactive from there. And then when the internet provides a platform for us to say our most filterless, extreme opinions that we might have never otherwise voiced, I think it causes material change in the world, in our minds, it causes us to radicalize ourselves in a way

because the second we say something, our minds convince us that us to to radicalize ourselves in a way because the second we say something, our minds convince us that we need to defend it, that we need to justify it because we breathed it into existence. I don't mean all of this in like a woo woo way. I mean it in like internet linguistics way. Like when people are this fucking extreme with their language about something as not that deep as a fictional TV show, I think it's causing just more radicalized beliefs in our society in general. Totally.

And for a lot of that, we are grateful to have built the community that we did on TikTok, especially, where I do think a lot of what you just shared breeds itself. We're grateful for the fact that we were able to build community and then turn it into a podcast where we can then tap into that community and have these conversations and connect with them. But there's always another side to that, right? There's always another side to all of the

really wonderful conversations we can have that then leave us susceptible to exactly what you were just saying. Yeah. He's in point, the video, Hailey was just talking about that. It leaves room for not only criticism, but just these very wild personal comments that otherwise we wouldn't have given space to that if we didn't open that up to the community. And that's what makes it a blessing and a curse, right? More of a blessing, less a curse, but there is room for that.

I don't want to identify as a cult leader. There is like a constant reminder of like, this is fictional. We're just the hosts of the blessing, less a curse, but there is room for that. I don't want to identify as a cult leader. There is like a constant reminder of like, this is fictional. We're just the hosts of the show where we're endlessly talking about the thing that we all love. But just a reminder, everything that we talk about is not that serious. Even if we've just talked about this thing for an hour and a half, very seriously. Totally.

It's hard. It's hard for people to hold all of those truths in their mind at the same time, because there is an inherent power dynamic when we all have microphones, you know? Yes. So it can get a little cult leader in that way. But I do want to sort of talk about what all of this behavior might be symptomatic of through the lens of cultishness. So I think people's nostalgic cling to Gilmore Girls, I think people's over analysis and over attachment to these different teams of love interests, I think people's like projection of identity onto these characters might have to do with some kind

of lacking that exists in their life. For some people, I think it's not that serious and they can tap in and out. But for the people who go too far, I think there is this sort of baseline cult vulnerability where like there is an isolation, there is a seeking, there is a longing for identity. I want to quote a piece that was published in Feminism in India titled,

Rewatching Gilmore Girls W me up to its problematic truths. This piece talks about how the widespread influence of Gilmore Girls is evident as fans try to emulate Rory's preppy style and loralize pop culture savvy with some fans even going so far as to follow a WikiHow guide to physically transform into Rory by wearing blue contacts and dyeing their hair brown. A screen rant piece just titled 10 Gilmore Girls Moments that made viewers quit the show. This greener piece talked about how some storylines

provoked such strong and negative reactions as we've been referencing because fans are deeply committed to the show and emotionally invested in its characters. Watching Gilmore Girls can make viewers feel like they are residents of Stars Hollow, experiencing significant life events alongside the characters, a level of immersion that borders on cult like behavior. So the next thing I kind of want to talk about is not just the rewatch culture, but the sort of re-evaluation culture, because wherever there is worship,

there must be criticism. And as a result of the fanatical rewatch culture surrounding Gilmore Girls, many fans and viewers have decided to unpack some of its problematic tenets with fresh and critical eyes, which is something that we see with a lot of other hyper nostalgic media of the early aughts, including Friends and Sex in the City. That screen rant piece pointed out that many of the show's critics point to the disappointing letdown of some character storylines like when Lane, Rory's best friend, gets pregnant and essentially gives up on her dream of becoming a rock star or when Jackson, Suki aka Laura Lai's best friend, her husband, when Jackson doesn't get

a vasectomy and Suki ends up pregnant again. We mentioned before that folks have pointed out how problematic it might be to set the standard of these two women eating bottomless burgers and fries and never gaining weight, setting unrealistic expectations for young girls. And then the lack of diversity in the show has also been criticized.

There's anti-Asian rhetoric on the show. There are stereotypical portrayals. Lane's mom, Mrs. Kim, is portrayed as, you know, a quote unquote Asian tiger mom. I'm quoting here from a Wellesley News piece titled, Gilmore Girls Shouldn't Be Your Comfort Show. Not to mention, there's a Vice piece I read and I'll link it in our show notes,

pointing out that over seven seasons, the show features 58 maids because of course, Laura Lai's parents are hyper wealthy and have these live-in maids who work at their mansion. Most of these maids are Latinas and women of color who are quickly hired and fired by this matriarch figure, Emily Gilmore, whose harsh treatment of them is used as a comedic device and this raises questions about whether the show appropriately critiques high society or instead reflects a classist ignorance. What are your sort of interpretations of this vehement culture of re-evaluation of Gilmore Girls? Do you think you can ever get cultish?

I think that from what you said, I would split it first into two parts, because the first two moments that you mentioned are from season seven, which in the cultish nature of Gilmore Girls, we kind of discard it, we kind of deny it in general, because it's not Amy Sherman-Paladino. The storylines, they plummeted, like the writing quality severely decreased. Like, no one really accepts anything that happened in season seven as canon, nor do they accept it to like the lore of Amy Sherman Paladino within the show. For anybody who may not be familiar, Amy Sherman Paladino and her husband Dan led this show for six seasons and could not reach an agreement with the WB

when it came to getting a seventh and eighth season to bring the show to completion. Because of that, they were not a part of the seventh and what ended up being the final season of Gilmore Girls as it was on the WB slash the CW at the time. And because of that, other writers carried the torch of this show for a season, and we don't necessarily know. Actually, we're pretty confident that that was not the storylines for Emily, for Lorelai, for Lane, for Rory that Amy had planned. And so we call it very expensive fan fiction

because it wasn't her, it wasn't from her mind's eye. So it's really hard for us to get on board with some of the storylines, and subsequently, we understand the criticism of Lane getting pregnant. we understand the criticism of Layne getting pregnant. We understand the criticism around all of those other first two storylines that you mentioned because we don't consider them canon. But- Which doesn't completely remove all of the other things that you mentioned.

Exactly. When it comes to the others, there are certain aspects to it that I completely understand why people are criticizing them from a 2024 lens. We do the same. It's hard for us to not criticize the show in 2024. Well, like in our rewatch, we've also noticed patterns. Who wrote that particular episode? Is there an increased amount of body shaming or references to body image in this one? Can we identify who the writer was? And usually we can. And we note that. And even when, as far as in our book club, we read Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson's memoirs

because they're disparaged quite a bit on the show. So let's give them their time to give their side of the story sort of thing. I also think there is room to love a show and want to preserve all the things you love about the show while also recognizing where it's problematic. And where it may not have been problematic at the time time it should have been. But for the society and culture that we operated in and lived in, maybe it wasn't problematic, but today we can recognize why it is

and still have love for it. Yeah, because some of the writers we've even talked to, because we talked to Stan Zimmerman who wrote on season five and how he was pushing for Michelle to actually come out as being gay. but that was something that was not what they were going to do. And I guess this was season five, which was 2004, 2005. But when the revival came out in 2016, suddenly he has come out. There's no fanfare made around it. It's just snuck in there mentioned as if that was always the case.

And I think that that was their way of mending that storyline. But I think that all of the like body image criticism is definitely tied around the food because like, how did these girls not have IBS? I don't know. They're just constantly drinking coffee, eating popcorn. It's my tummy would hurt all the time being a gomongle. But as it relates to like also the actor nature of it, like they will take a tiny teeny bite of their hamburger and leave a table full of food.

And so people are like, wait, I thought that they ate a lot. Like that's how they say skinny they don't eat. I'm like, yeah, because that actor is going to do that take 17 times because Amy Sherman Palladino wants them word perfect. They're not going to eat 16 hamburgers today. And so I think that that aspect of it, the paper moon of it, if you will, that it's very false feeling to say that they eat a lot because we're watching them not eat a lot, but in dialogue they are.

I also don't think it's entirely harmful to the show to watch it through the lens of criticism because not to take this back a thousand times to my first TikTok, but I didn't realize that I felt like Dean was one of Rory's most toxic boyfriends until I watched it through the lens of a late 20 something, early 30 something woman and recognized traits in him that I hope girls who are watching this growing up don't think that that's the model, you know, first boyfriend,

first husband, et cetera. And so there are ways in which I don't think it's necessarily harmful to the show to critique it. Oh, definitely not. It's good for the show, you know, like let's complicate the show. If we're going to be returning to it, we have to, we have to bring our whole selves to that return. Yeah. It's just too funny though, because like, I think there's a difference between critiquing the writers for promoting a problematic standard of some kind and say lambasting Rory Gilmore for having insufferable quote, main character energy.

This is a real critique that I've seen as if she weren't literally the main character of a fictional TV show. I think of media where a man or a boy is the protagonist. It's like, are we like constantly returning to Catcher in the Rye being like, Holden Caulfield is so problematic. No, I think it's like,

it is reflective of the passionate girlhood that surrounds the show, that it is embraced so fanatically and also critiqued so fanatically. I also feel like you can draw the critique of it kind of into two categories because there's like the very real ones, body image, lack of diversity, inappropriate storylines that are made around particular characters as they relate to their race. But then we have the ones where people are like critical of the direction that Rory took and they don't like the nature of the boyfriends.

One of them is very valid and a lot of the writers that we have had have reflected on that as well. But the other side of it, it's more of like a, do you not like the show? Or have you inserted yourself so deeply into the narrative that you are now criticizing in that way? Everything you're talking about right now reminds me of this word that I learned recently

that is used in the wrestling world. It's the word kifabe. It is defined as the fact or convention of presenting staged performances as genuine or authentic. And so like, you know how in wrestling, it's all staged, it's all theater, but there are certain fans who sort of suspend their disbelief too much and sort of like, they've like lost the plot literally, like they think that what's going on in the ring is real. And I think in this ever disembodied age, when we're distancing ourselves from traditional religion, we are embracing pop culture and celebrities and media as the new religion. So many young people are just bed rotting and doom scrolling

on TikTok, on their phones, not touching grass. I think some of that, Gilmore Girls, Kefabe, it's going too far. And people are losing losing the plot literally and like think that what is happening in that writer's room and then of course on screen is happening to them. That's where some of the aggression as it manifests online stems from. So we've talked about loss of connection of reality, loss of identity, extreme arguing in comments sections that borders on the Lulu.

There's like conflict online where conflict needn't exist. And that conflict is in many ways most present when it comes to the teams surrounding love interests. So could you please explain the Gilmore Girls teams, what these teams mean, what they surround, and why they make people so upset? So they do, they really evoke some intense emotions from people.

So I actually find the teams are mostly in regards to Rory. When we talk about Lorelai's love interests, it's very fascinating. I don't feel like we use team jargon. I feel like we mostly use it towards Rory. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I feel like with Lorelai, it's more of like, do you think she should have ended up with Luke or Chris? And that's kind of the end of the discussion there most of the time.

So with Rory, in regards to her, she had three major love interests throughout the course of the show. There's Dean, who was her first boyfriend, Jess, who was her second boyfriend, who she left Dean for, and then Logan, who comes in at season five and is more like her college sweetheart and her partner throughout the rest of the original series. And a touch of it happens in the revival. There are people who fall into one of three buckets,

typically, it's either team Dean, Team Jess, or Team Logan. There are some people who kind of get on board more with her love interests, who were kind of thrown in there very sporadically, like Tristan in season one. Team Tristan kind of exists, I suppose. There is a friend of hers in season four and season five named Marty in college, who some people really adore and their team Marty, which I don't really think exists.

But then I would say like the secret fourth team of the three is team Rory. There are a lot of people who don't really think any of those guys are the right match for her, maybe wanted to see her end up by herself or really take time to be single and discover herself. And so that is the definition of the teams. I am team Jess. I've always been team Jess. I fell in love with him when I was 12.

I make a joke about this on our podcast all the time that when I was 12, 13 ish, I was in middle school and I remember we had portable DVD players for the car and I would like sneak it into my room. And overnight I would just watch that scene of their first kiss at Suki's wedding over and over and over again on a loop until like four in the morning. I was supposed to be sleeping. I was getting up in like a short two hours from that time to go to school and I didn't care.

I loved it. I loved him. I thought he was so mischievous and fun. And as I get older, I loved him. I thought he was so mischievous and fun. And as I get older, I realized that team definition can vary a little bit because I recognize now that Jess was not a good boyfriend. And especially doing this podcast with Haley, who is team Logan through and through,

I can understand why team Logan exists. And I understand why Logan was probably her best boyfriend. I have to interrupt for one second. Is the team's thing like, I guess I'm a little confused because, and maybe this is the key Fabi thing, but is what team you're on defined by who you would want to be with, who you think is the best fit for Rory or who you think was the best boyfriend just regardless of anything? Well, that was something I was going to mention is because like when you define a team, you

can define like the teams themselves, but the definition of what a team means is very individual and that is where a lot of the angry discourse comes from. I think that is where a lot of the discourse comes from. It's like, oh, so you thought so and so was her best boyfriend because people would be like, oh, your team Jess, you think Jess was her best boyfriend? Because people would be like, oh, your team, Jess, do you think Jess was her best boyfriend? I'm like, I don't. I actually think he was a terrible boyfriend.

I love him. And I thought he was a great fit for Rory when she needed him to be. I think all of the boyfriends kind of served their own purpose in her life when they needed to. I would choose Jess. So for me, that's kind of what that means. But I also have posed this question on TikTok.

I'm like, are we doing teams now based on who's best for Rory, who we want to end up with, who we want to end up with, which one is it? For me, usually across the board, it's Jess. I just don't think he was her best boyfriend. I understand why other teams exist because of that. But I love him. And I loved their time together.

So you're team Tara, and team Tara wants to be with Jess Murano. There you go. Because I say a lot of the times like the most popular team is team Logan for Rory team Jess for me is kind of like a lot of people end up because in the revival he suddenly Jess has been working out he's got really buff arms he's like guiding her in the right direction. He's longing for her. So you're like, OK, that's for me. Rory can go have her messy life. Yeah.

That's how I feel like a lot of people have ended up. Because a lot of people by the revival don't think that Rory has done the work that Jess has seemingly done in his life to be a better person. His character arc is arguably one of the strongest in the show based on when we meet him and where we meet him in the revival. It's like, wow, this guy has really evolved.

He published a book with an Indie press. She just has one talk of the town. I know. But also his relationship with Luke is really fascinating to watch because they were also very at odds and Luke tried really hard to get through to him and guide him in the right direction

and it just didn't work until it did. And their relationship is really beautiful. And so I think that a lot of the fandom roots for Jess because he arguably of the three boyfriends, I think had the most spectacular growth by the time we meet him in the revival. We do, we wanna see characters grow. That it's what makes them feel real.

We're rooting for growth and also really, really sexy arms. So I think he's just both boxers. Both're rooting for growth and also really, really sexy arms. So I think he checks both boxes. Totally. Looks great. Both two kinds of growth. I know. He put both kinds of work into that one. But I think that going back to a little bit of like, I guess, like the bland nature of it, with Jess, we don't see any of his growth. So we can like project a lot onto how he changed in the way that Rory did it. And I think that's why a lot of people end up on that, like just for me sort of thing and that like Rory's not good enough for him anymore. Cause we watched Rory live day to day and mess up things in the way that we

didn't quite for Jess. But I think when it really does come down to the definition of teams is why they get so angry, especially cause we criticized Dean a lot. We sell Dean sucks merch on our website, of course. Our first episode is Star-Crossed Livers and Other Reasons to Hate Dean Forrester. That's how Tara got viral on TikTok. We're using terminology like hate. Like we, yeah, we, we, we, but- Says me, I'm calling everything a cult.

Speaking of growth, we have like grown to appreciate what he was going through at the time, and our hate for him has turned into more of just dislike of this character. A criticism with an understanding of where he's coming from. We understand his feelings don't condone his reactions. But the thing of like- Like a cult game. It's just called what's cultier. I'm going to read a list of pairings of different fandoms.

And just to get a sense grading the Gilmore Girls cult on a curve, I'm going to ask you to name which of the two is cultier in your opinion. Allegedly. What's cultier in your opinion, allegedly. What's cultier? Gilmore Girls fans or K-pop fans? I would say K-pop. I would also say K-pop. They know how to organize.

My partner works for an audience coordination company and for summer stages in Central Park last year, they did a K-pop band. I don't remember which one it was, but they have never had a bigger turnout ever, ever. Thousands of people. Gilmore Girls fans are ultimately at home. They're literally at home. Was it the K-pop fans that bought out the tickets to like some rally of trumps? Yes, yes. Okay, what's cult here? Gilmore Girls fans or Swifties? Swifties. Swifties. Swifties.

Period. 100%. Okay. I have one of each in Haley and they're Swifties. She's like Jekyll and Hyde. Yeah, she is. Oh my God. Okay, what's cult here? Gilmore Girls fans or NFL fans?

Oh. NFL. God. I mean, the NFL fandom is just bigger. Okay, what's cultier, Gilmore Girls fans or NFL fans? Oh, God. I mean, the NFL fandom is just bigger. It's just bigger. They punch each other sometimes. I was about to say, oh my gosh, I literally was about to say Gilmore Girls fans have never punched each other.

Never. Well, that we know of. Okay, on that note though, Gilmore Girls fans or Ray Dunn shoppers? Oh, probably Ray Dunn. Ray Dunn. Because they Oh, probably. Ray Dunn. Ray Dunn. Because there's matching sometimes. That is a cult. There too.

I know several Ray Dunn resellers, admittedly. Oh my God. Yeah, I agree with you. I just want to tell them there's a variety out there and you don't have to mark every single thing. That font is terrible. That font is horrifying. And I want to implore TJ Maxx to stop selling it.

Stop it. Oh my God. It's so funny to hear you Gilmore Girls freaks express such disdain for Rae Dunn. I'm like the irony. I take freaks like as an endearment. Oh, I mean it. I completely mean it as a term of endearment.

Regarding like Swiftie's Rae Dunn and Gilmore Girls honey, to quote Kamala Harris, there is a Venn diagram and I love it. Well, there's a big Venn diagram between Gilmore Girls fans and Swifties. We have built a lot of our podcast on, because Haley is such a diehard Swiftie, a lot of the lyricism of Taylor coming into the plot

of Gilmore Girls are easy to do. Oh wow. And we've found that the Venn diagram is there. We've also found that there are people who absolutely hate that we talk about Taylor Swift. Some of our worst reviews are actually that we talk about Taylor Swift. Oh, stop talking about Taylor Swift.

Okay, oh my God. It's in my bio on Instagram, actually. I put one of our bad reviews there because it felt like a compliment. Okay, a couple more. What's cultier, Gilmore Girls fans or Dance Moms fans? I think Gilmore Girls. I would say Gilmore Girls. I'm not very familiar with the Dance Moms fans, but I'm gonna say Gilmore Girls fans or Dance Moms fans? Ooh. I think Gilmore Girls.

I would say Gilmore Girls. I'm not very familiar with the Dance Moms fans, but I'm gonna say Gilmore Girls. I agree with you. Okay. What's called to your Gilmore Girls fans or Deadheads? Oh, Deadheads. I wanna say Deadheads

cause I feel like it's more of like a centralized sort of gathering point. I also feel like that fandom, because Grateful Dead has been around longer, it's like broader. Okay, it's a little more fleshed out. There's a patina to the Deadhead fandom. Yeah, we'll get there in time.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That reminds me that there actually is a Gilmore Girls convention, I noticed. Several, there are several Gilmore Girls fan conventions that have taken place long after the series aired and one small town in Connecticut that kind of inspired Stars Hollow sees fans flock to it every fall. So they do leave the house sometimes a little bit. We actually went last year and we led a conversation at the Fan Fest Society, which

took place in a gunquit Maine. They're in Guilford, Connecticut this year. But we used it as an opportunity to, I'm from Connecticut. So I'm from one of the towns that's south of a town that inspired Sars Hollow. So I used it as an opportunity for Haley and I to do a little road trip and see the sights and see the places that inspired Gilmore Girls.

And when we went to Washington Depot, which is honestly one of the main places that inspired Gilmore Girls, we were met with so much Stars Hollow content, Gilmore Girls content, like people, like bookstores that had, like they knew that we were coming. And so it was very cool to see. It was very exciting to experience. That's a cold at its best.

Yeah, that was when I felt there was a moment there where I was like, oh, I have entered in too scary territory in terms of being a Gilmore fan. Because we went to the Mayflower Inn, where Amy Schermer-Paladino was inspired for the Independence Inn. And we were at the bar, and we were just talking to the bartender who was so nice.

And she mentioned something about, oh, I'm watching this part of Gilmore Girls. And we're like, oh, we were just talking to the bartender who was so nice and she mentioned something about, oh, like, I'm watching this part of Gilmore Girls and we're like, oh, we're on a road trip. The next episode that you're going to watch, they're actually going to be on the road trip. And she was like, oh, okay. She looked at you like, oh, I'm going to back up slowly. Yeah. Yeah. They were so nice there.

They were really kind to us. But yeah, we were like, Oh, I let too much show. Oh, you know the show too well. That was an important moment for you, I think. Yeah. Okay. Last one. What's called here? Gilmore Girls fans or Bravo-holics? Oh man. I think Gilmore Girls fans. I would say Gilmore Girls fans. Yeah, because though the Bravo spectrum is so wide because

they have so many different shows, I don't know that everybody's necessarily locked in on every single one of them. Whereas Gilmore Girls, it's like you're locked in. It's more focused. Yeah. I keep coming back to the fall aspect of it when it comes to TV shows. I feel like people watch Gilmore Girls, like they watch Christmas movies to get into that spirit, to transition into the season, the spirit of the thing.

And I don't think people are doing that Bravo. I don't know what spirit they're getting into with that, but there's no season for that. I would question it. Just like, I don't know. What's the most inhospitable weather on planet earth? Like that's the Bravo weather. It's Bravo.

You're just like wearing one of those ponchos that you put on to go to Niagara Falls, but also maybe like some bright pink, lamby slippers, just like an unhinged outfit. They're wearing Crocs. Sheehan, yeah Crocs, thank you. That's it. Okay, I have a very, very important question for you both, Tara and Hailey. Out

of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. Which category do you think the cult of Gilmore Girls falls into? I think it's very live your life. Can you have one foot in both? Sure. There are no rules here. I think we've been diagrammed watch your back a little bit sometimes when we get a little bit too viral when it reaches the edges of the Colts, if you will. But I think for the most part, we're all just lightened pumpkin candles, obsessing over coffee. Yeah, not hurting anyone. I agree with that, that maybe we have one foot in the watcher back, depending on who you're talking to and what subject you're talking about. But I think for the most part, everybody's very live your life. We try to live your life, but we try to promote that,

but we don't know that everybody necessarily follows that. Yeah. I mean, we we've looked at the evidence here today. We've had a long conversation and we've explored the far corners of this culture, this fandom, this religion, this cult. And I've yet to find even an equivalent of someone pushing someone over in a TJ Maxx aisle to snag a raid on Birdcage. There's not even that. It's psychological warfare, but if you just log offline, you will be cleansed. And I think, you know, that's not true of every cult that radicalizes online. Some of them really do transition

into something a lot scarier. And I don't think we've seen that yet. Because, you know, and I think one of the reasons is that there is no unifying leader. There is no one charismatic leader, like guiding people into the woods necessarily. So yeah, I think it's maybe a live your life with a pinch of watch your back spice on top of that little latte.

Yes, exactly. Very true. Holy shit. Thank you both so much for joining this episode of Sounds Like a Cult. Thank you for having us. My pleasure. If folks want to keep up with you and your cult, where can they do that? Find us on Instagram at Gilmore to Say Podcast. Also you can watch our episodes on YouTube. It's also Gilmore to Say Podcast. Basically Gilmore to Say Podcast.

Type that in, you'll find us. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. Sounds Like a Cult is hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of the PodCabin. Our theme music is by Casey Cold. This episode was co-produced by Reese Oliver. Thank you as well to Katie Epperson. And if you like the show, please feel free to check out my books,

Word Slut, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, and The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality. If you're a fan of Sounds Like a Cult, I'd really appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts.