Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life finally hits Netflix TODAY, and our Gilmore-obsessed office could not be more stoked. You're damn right we wrote about it!

"Meet Me in Stars Hollow: My Mom, Gilmore Girls, and Me" by Ciara Dolan:

Every Tuesday night, we’d repeat the same ritual: I’d scoop myself a big bowl of ice cream, settle into my dad’s ugly green couch, and wait for the phone to ring before turning on the TV.

“Are you watching? Okay, good. Me too.”

My mom called it “simul-casting,” i.e., simultaneously broadcasting new episodes from miles apart. We began the practice during Gilmore Girls’ fifth season, after stumbling upon some old reruns on the WB. My parents divorced when I was two, and ever since, Tuesdays had been my dad’s. So my mom and I would call each other from our distant couches, wondering if the Gilmores really drank dozens of cups of caffeinated coffee and if that had any correlation to the show’s chipmunk chatter dialogue.

"In Praise of TV’s Smart Girls: Rory Gilmore and Our Hope for the Future" by Megan Burbank:

Smart girls everywhere on TV now, but they weren’t in the early ’00s, when conventionally beautiful American “teens,” the audiovisual parallel to high school mean girls with proper makeup technique who’d make fun of you for having a good vocabulary, populated our celluloid psyche. Where were the smart girls?

In the early ’90s, there was only one: Angela Chase, played by a 14-year-old Claire Danes in Winnie Holtzman’s quietly wonderful short-lived series My So-Called Life. Angela was the first TV character I ever identified with, even though I didn’t see the full series until my 20s. When I did, it was, as Angela says, like “when someone says something really small, and it just fits into this empty place in your heart.”

"It’s Not Too Late to Watch Gilmore Girls! Notes on Gilmore Girls, from a Gilmore Woman" by Bri Brey:

As an only child, I missed out on some of the seminal television trends that would’ve been introduced by an older sibling. No Dawson’s Creek, no Buffy, no Saved By the Bell. It wasn’t until last winter that I was told I was missing another generational touchstone, Gilmore Girls.

Praise Netflix, I took to the task of digesting all seven seasons at age 26—eight years after the show’s final airdate. It was delightful. A rollercoaster of emotion carried on the back of reference-laden dialogue delivered at light speed. Twists! Turns! Mother-daughter relationships! Romance! Watching the show at an age smack-dab between the ages of Lorelai and Rory allowed me to relate to both—and crush on both their romantic interests, Luke and Jess (fuck Dean and Logan), without feeling like too much of a creep. Ideal!

The fact Bri "Creepy" Brey missed out on Buffy just breaks my goddamn heart. In other words, once we're done watching the new Gilmore Girls, rest assured we'll be planning our very special Buffy-themed issue of the Mercury.