I attended Jessa Crispin’s reading at BookPeople on May 11. I’ve always been a fan of Crispin and had just finished Why I am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto that day.

The audience, mostly female and younger than I had expected, listened as Crispin read aloud some critiques of the book and responded. She then took questions, one of which essentially asked what entertainment do you find acceptable? (One of the more quotable quotes from the book calls modern feminism “a decade-long conversation about which television show is a good television show and which television show is a bad television show.” Which is hilarious.)

It came out that Jessa Crispin does not consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer feminist, mainly due to the savior complex that plagues every superhero movie. She then joked that she could feel the audience turning against her and quickly changed the subject.

Since I just finished watching Buffy in its entirety for the first time, I was part of the wave of support for the feminist reading, which I admit did not sit well with me until the Beer Bad episode. [Spoilers follow.]

I. Beer Bad

Everyone hates Beer Bad; I thought it was hilarious. Not gonna lie, what screamed “feminist” about this episode for me was the cave slayer clubbing a dude over the head. Up until this point (and this is Season Four) I hadn’t really gotten the feminist vibe from the show. Yes, Buffy was a female hero and kicked ass and did it all 20 years ago, but her movie counterpart had done the same thing five years earlier. (I was a huge fan of movie Buffy. I dressed as her for Halloween when I was 10 years old. I drew my girl power from Kristy Swanson.) I really enjoyed Sarah Michelle Gellar’s acting in this one, though. She always got to do a lot of physical stuff as Buffy, yes, but the body movement here was different and showcased her range.

Buffy’s first college relationship was a bad one. A shitty, stupid situation in which we have all unfortunately found ourselves at one time or another, made worse by the fact that she just couldn’t get over him. Parker’s douchebag behavior does give Riley an excuse to punch him, which is awesome. (I also like Riley. A lot. I cried when he helicoptered away from Buffy and I hate that people hate on him. He’s the Aiden–you haters realize that, right?)

But before Riley clocks Parker in Episode 4:7, Buffy gets a shot at him in Episode 4:5 and I don’t know why, it just worked for me. Must have appealed to my troglodyte instincts. Plus, there’s a craft beer theme (in 1999, no less). Foamy!

II. Power

Here’s the thing: wherever you are in your feminist journey, keep going. Some of us are further along than others. Case in point: I’m 34 and I just figured this out. Buffy was 20 years old when she learned that she was the one with the real power.

Power. I have it. They don’t.

This bothers them. It’s why they attack you and try to make you feel inadequate–because they are afraid you may realize that they need you more than you need them. And the day you figure that out, you’ll be free. It’s not the same as Buffy undergoing the council’s impossible review, but when you quit participating in the systems that oppress you, you’ll see how badly they needed to you to comply.

Bonus: “That’s Riley-speak.”

III. Every Girl

I cried so, so hard at this. And I hated all of the potential slayers. I hated them in the house, I really hated them when they kicked Buffy out of the house, and I was glad when the cockney one died. Still, when every potential slayer in the world got tapped at the same time, I cried like a baby, especially with the little girl at bat.

This is what destroys the savior complex of the show–the idea that it was all leading toward a dispersal of that power, that every one of us could be strong.

Gilmore Girls was never a great show. It was a good show, and I watched every episode, but it never cracked my Top Five, maybe not even the Top Ten. I was mainly excited about the reboot because it gave the creator a chance to end the story on her own terms.

The mythology around the show states that Amy Sherman-Palladino had always known the final four words that would be spoken in the series. She’d written the arc with that ending in mind. But contract negotiations fell through, so the seventh and final season went in a different direction. We saw Rory hopping on the campaign bus to cover the Obama candidacy, which seemed like a great ending in 2007 because HOPE.

Fast forward nine years and we find Rory floundering. Vogue had a surprisingly wry take on this, and a couple of other sites have pointed out how the prodigal daughter is just too damn spoiled and pumped full of praise to really make anything of herself. I’ve always wondered why Rory’s hero was Christiane Amanpour when Rory rarely showed any interest in current events, politics, or global affairs. I secretly agreed with Headmaster Charleston when he grilled Rory about her ambitions:

Headmaster : Why do you wish to be Christiane Amanpour?

Rory : I don’t wish to be her, exactly. I just want to do what she does.

Headmaster : Which is?

Rory : Travel, see the world up close, report on what’s really going on, and to be part of something big.

Headmaster : And to be a part of something big you have to be on TV? Why not lead the police on a high speed chase, it’s a quicker way to achieve this goal.

We used to get this sort of applicant when I worked at the newspaper; the blank slate English major who just wants to be a writer. Even in publishing, you get a lot of wannabe writers. Alexis Bledel plays a similar character in 2009’s Post Grad:

Ryden: Well, I guess what I’m getting at is that books are all I know…and everything I love, and…I want this job because…well, because I can’t imagine ever doing anything else.

Interviewer: Alright. Good. Thank you for coming in.

Say that in a job interview and be prepared for the eye rolls. It’s not about what the job can do for you and your career; it’s about what you bring to the job. The fact that she gets the job at the end of the movie is just more Rory Gilmore level entitlement–that, and the fact that she’s dating Matt Saracen. (Fun fact: I’ve always though Alexis Bledel looked like Macaulay Culkin in a brown wig.)

It’s frustrating because we all see ourselves in Rory. Every bookish girl can relate to that character. It’s why there’s a Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. The thing is, though, not everyone had rich, connected grandparents to fund prep school tuition and provide introductions at Yale. And the amount of free shit she accepts from Logan? Sweetie, there’s a word for that. Countless people have asked how the fuck she can jet back and forth to London every other week when she doesn’t have a job. We’re supposed to be entertained by the juxtaposition of Stars Hollow and the rest of Rory’s world, but it’s only worthwhile if she escapes on her own merit. Like Lorelai.

And that scene where Rory is “on the beat” to write her story about people waiting in line? Blech. Almost as bad as the doubly derivative and anti-climatic Across the Universe “With a Little Help From My Friends” scene (I guess it’s easier/cheaper to get rights to a Beatles cover) which ends in a tango club with a close-up on Logan and Rory, WHO DON’T DANCE. Compared to these two, it was huge letdown:

Maybe the whole point of the show is that Lorelai worked real hard to raise a real cool daughter and the kid turned out to be a real shit head. I know people complain about not enough flawed-but-strong female characters, and I do think Lorelai and Rory helped move us forward on that front, but the show is just annoying. Always has been. They drop storylines and never pick them up. (Who left Emily that nasty letter? My money is on one of the maids.) The only people who are intrigued by THE LAST FOUR WORDS® are the dupes who think there are going to be more episodes.

So let’s talk about those last four words. Spoiler alert, obvs.

I’d heard the term “the last four words” before, but only really started paying attention just before the Black Friday release of A Year in the Life. Somewhere I read that it was “the last four words spoken by a character,” and I assumed one character would say all four words. So I was confused and had to rewind the final scene, trying to squeeze an extra three words out of the contraction. But it turns out the final four words were actually split between mother and daughter:

Rory: Mom?

Lorelai: Yeah?

Rory: I’m pregnant.

What the absolute fuck. I’m glad I wasn’t a huge fan of the show because I might have rioted. People have noted that this ending was intended for the original show, when Rory was younger. (But what if it had been cancelled in the first season? Would Dean have knocked her up in high school? Is that why she had to have a rapid succession of boyfriends?) People think the last four words would have packed a different emotional punch if the seventh season hadn’t gone off the rails.

I’m not buying it. AS-P knew what ending she wanted and she worked backward to get us there. The entire four-episode arc of A Year in the Life is designed to get Rory back to a place where those words would hit the same way–she’s preparing to having a great life, when oh no, an unexpected pregnancy! There’s even a symmetry with the age of 32: Rory was 16 when the show started, which was the same age Lorelai was when she had her, and Lorelai was exactly twice as old as Rory at 32, and now Rory is 32 and pregnant. (Wait, I just realized no one had a birthday in the Year in the Life, not even Rory’s 4:03 AM wakeup call from Lorelai. Strange.)

Lorelai evokes the circle of life in two separate discussions with her mother. The first is during Winter when they are arguing about Richard’s funeral and Lorelai storms out the door but not before turning around and hissing “Full. Freaking. Circle.” which did not make any sense to me and I tried to find the context for that and it wouldn’t come to me so I gave up, which pretty much summarizes all of my experiences watching Gilmore Girls. The next instance makes more sense, in Fall, when Lorelai returns to her parents’ house to ask for money (can they not see how this would get tedious?) and Emily negotiates annual summer vacations and a Christmas holiday together. Because, as we all know, that’s where the show started, with Lorelai asking for money and Emily using it as a bargaining chip for Friday dinners. Nothing says independent woman like applying for a loan at the Bank of Mom and Dad.

When I sat down to watch the reboot, it had been years since I’d visited Stars Hollow (although I have since decided that Salado, Texas, is a real-life Stars Hollow). I didn’t even rewatch the original series in the days/weeks/months leading up to A Year in the Life, although I did stop halfway through to watch A Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving because the holiday had reminded me and Melissa McCarthy really earns her paycheck in that one. (It’s like they let her off her leash and allowed her to improvise, because it’s truly funny. Not Gilmore Girls OMG-Kirk-is-so-quirky funny; legitimately funny. I’ve always thought Kirk was just someone’s school chum who’d been promised a role.)

It only took the first scene of 2016 to get me back into the groove, and Lorelai says something that made me think I knew what the last four words would be. Keep in mind, I still thought it would be one character saying a four-word sentence. But with the Year in the Life structure (Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall. All you have to do is call…) I thought it would be Lorelai asking Rory, “Do you smell snow?” Or, in light of the actual last four words, maybe Rory saying, “Mom, I smell snow.” Since the last episode was Fall, I thought Rory might finally inherit her mother’s magical ability to predict snowfall, and that would somehow signal that she had finally become a Gilmore woman. And honestly, I would have liked that ending better.

Rory’s decision to ruin/enhance/preempt her mother’s wedding day by announcing her own pregnancy is, of course, typical shit head Rory. It’s also terrible storytelling: clichéd, hackneyed, boring, what have you. Like Rory’s decision to write a book entitled (The) Gilmore Girls, this is indulgent, sophomoric, and ludicrous. All those bookish girls who related to Rory and watched the show to see where it would take them? Full. Freaking. Circle. Read a lot and study hard and let people make sacrifices for your education so you too can write a self-centered memoir. Really, it’s the only thing you were ever meant to do. It’s what scares me so much about working in education: you read a lot and study hard and make sacrifices for your education so you can turn around and tell other people to read a lot and study hard and make sacrifices for their education. Sigh. If you have a fictional universe in which to escape that cycle, why not do it? Is it because there is no escape?

I hate this. I do. I read a book once in the sixth grade where a girl goes to live in space after we destroy Earth and everyone is only allowed to bring one possession and she chooses a blank journal, then the space-colonists decide they need a bunch of blank paper for some reason (I think they’d started bartering?) and they ask the girl to use her book but they can’t because it turns out it’s no longer blank and she has filled it with the story of the space-colonists WHICH TURNS OUT TO BE THE VERY BOOK YOU’RE READING. And I thought that was so clever…when I was eleven years old.

Rory writes a memoir (at Jess’s suggestion, which is why I can never be Team Jess) about the Gilmore Girls which becomes a TV show about the Gilmore Girls which becomes a Netflix miniseries about the Gilmore Girls which is what you spent Black Friday watching. OMG! Isn’t that just so meta? No. It’s ridiculous. The idea that Rory will have a daughter named Lori (or a son named Richard Gilmore Huntzberger) and perpetuate this full freaking circle just makes me cringe.

Would I hate it as much if the last four words hadn’t been hyped as the entire reason for the series? I don’t know. But I’m really grateful I’m not pregnant.

I think we can all agree with Patti’s reaction in Episode 10, after Jane has finally gotten on board and even evokes karma for the cause.

Good Girls Revolt isn’t the greatest show ever made, but it was entertaining enough for me to binge the whole season on Amazon this weekend. Patti is a fun, charming character, Anna Camp is on-point as the exquisite Jane, and Cindy is super annoying–I guess there always has to be one of those girls in every ensemble cast because it gives her the most room for growth (looking at you, Charlotte York MacDougal Goldenblatt).

GGR is based on a book about the true story of the women at Newsweek, so there’s not much new to cover. There were a few smaller moments, though, that seemed both fresh and relatable:

1. Patti’s fear that she won’t be any good.

“Was your first article perfect? Huh? Or did some researcher catch all of your mistakes, proof-read you, make you look brilliant. And by the way, even if my copy had been perfect, I still wouldn’t have gotten a byline.”

Remember that scene in 30 Rock when high school age Liz Lemon completely botches a field goal for the football team, raises her arms victoriously, and yells “Feminism!”? She’s a female on the football team but sucks so hard that even her parents won’t watch her play. That’s the undercurrent of fear running through the women’s movement, albeit comedically illustrated.

When Patti completely misses the social services angle on her graffiti artist story, Doug steps in, saying “You can’t just write about what you want.” Later, in episode 10, he tells her, “You screwed that up and you know it.” She shoots back, “Was your first article perfect?”

It comes up again for Jane when another reporter, although female, is hired from outside the magazine to write the women’s movement story Jane pitched to Gregory (after stealing it from Patti). I think Cindy is the one who asks how they are supposed to get writing experience when they are working at a magazine that won’t let them write.

2. Cindy’s Love Story-inspired death fantasies.

Cindy and Jane share some girl talk over drinks, and since everybody appears to be reading Erich Segal’s Love Story in the early months of 1970, it becomes a segue into talking about the deaths they have imagined.

Cindy makes clear that she doesn’t want to see Lenny or Ned die, but can’t help thinking about the freedom it would give her. It has very little to do with the persons of Lenny and Ned; it is about removing them as factors in her life. Just taking them out of the equation entirely would make her life her own. Jane has similar thoughts about her parents.

3. Wick’s stake in News of the Week.

“You know I have a lot of respect for the institution that gave me my career.”

Wick comes out of nowhere in episode 10 to warn Finn about trouble brewing at the magazine. It was a red herring in the plot structure of the show since he wasn’t trying to tell Finn about the lawsuit. Instead, he explained something that had been alluded to with the Stingray rental and story on Ralph Nader: Gregory was selling favorable coverage to the Big Three.

Wick should be happy to see Finn and News of the Week implode, but he’s looking at the bigger picture: “You know, Finn, I got 30 years at News of the Week. Now, if this magazine goes down as a useless rag that sold its soul out for ad buys, people look at me differently, as if it was going on the whole time.”

It’s the same slightly self-serving rationale that gets me to donate money to my alma mater every year: it “adds value” to the pedigree. By making sure those institutions take care of their reputations, Wick and I ensure our own.

A note about Finn Woodhouse, Editor at Large

Evan Phinnaeus Woodhouse is portrayed by Chris Diamantopoulos, who, for me, can only ever be the Tres Commas Tequila guy from Silicon Valley. But forgetting his prior roles (also finally saw him in the last season of The Office) there is something about his character that is driving me absolutely insane.

Why on earth is Finn’s title “Editor at Large“??? It makes no sense. He’s clearly Editor in Chief. His responsibilities at the magazine are way too extensive for an at-large editor. He “dusts off” his press pass to write the ‘Nam story, but his day-to-day duties are concerned with running the magazine, which is not what an editor at large does.

It sounds so bizarre when he goes on a rant about how the staff should listen to him because he is EDITOR AT LARGE FOR NEWS OF THE WEEK. Just imagine a real editor at large gliding into the newsroom and telling people how to run things. That’s not how it works. Editors at large contribute to the content of a publication; they do not decide the editorial direction or concern themselves with advertisers.

I’m wondering if the nomenclature has shifted since the 70s or if the showrunners got something wrong because it is just too weird. As an example using fairly current magazine celebrities: André Leon Talley was an editor at large for Vogue and Anna Wintour was Editor in Chief. So just imagine that dynamic to understand how weird it is for Finn to scream his title at people when that title is so obviously wrong. This is really freaking me out.

*An earlier version of this post rendered Tres as Trés, in both the headline in the body of the text. While I think it’s funny that I accidentally substituted the French “very” for the Spanish “three,” it was entirely unintentional. This blog’s editor at large regrets the error.