A ‘Gilmore Girls’ Summer Vacation Watching Guide

I try to avoid watching TV when I’m on vacation, preferring to, you know, read books. But this year, the no-TV house I was living in did have a DVD player, so I hauled along the complete Gilmore Girls DVD boxed set that’s been on a shelf for a few years, and every evening, my wife and I consumed a few episodes. I did so for two reasons: First, because the new, four-episode eighth season, titled Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, will premiere on Netflix on Nov. 25 (like the presidential election, it’s sooner than we think); and, second, because I wanted to see how the series holds up.

I’m back to report that Gilmore Girls — starring Lauren Graham as Lorelai, Alexis Bledel as her daughter, Rory, and created by Amy Sherman-Palladino — holds up very well indeed, especially if you’re willing to be ruthless about dropping storylines that don’t interest you and have a basic working knowledge of the Gilmore universe going in. I recommend a re-watch as pure pleasure and offer a few specific suggestions to streamline your experience.

Related: The Importance of the Return of ‘Gilmore Girls’

Watch every season premiere. Sherman-Palladino wrote and directed every season opener with the exception of the pilot, which she wrote and Lesli Linka Glatter directed. (Glatter has directed a helluva lotta great TV, including key episodes of Mad Men and Homeland.) Each season premiere sets the tone for what is to follow: It’s striking how coherently Sherman-Palladino (often in collaboration with her husband, producer-writer Daniel Palladino) lays the groundwork for a full season in each opening hour.

Rory’s boyfriends can guide your viewing. Essential viewing: Season 1’s “Kiss and Tell,” in which Rory and Dean kiss for the first time. It establishes just how great Jared Padalecki was in this role and also contains running jokes about Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and a pizza-and-candy movie night. The rented movie (A rental! From a video store!) is Willy Wonka. For me, the Jess romance gets tiresome fairly quickly, mostly because Milo Ventimiglia was a rather stiff presence, confined to the show’s concept of him as a modern-day Jack Kerouac/Rebel Without a Cause figure.

Chad Michael Murray’s Tristan is basically just a warm-up character to Matt Czuchry’s Logan Huntzberger — that is, a rich brat who taps into Rory’s fundamental disagreement with her mother, that wealth does not equal evil. For a key episode exploring all of this, watch Season 5’s great “Wedding Bell Blues,” in which Czuchry slumps through the hour as though the actor had been downing real liquor during Richard and Emily Gilmore’s vow-renewal ceremony party, and Rory’s dad, Christopher, tells her the story of his first kiss with Lorelai.

Almost every scene with Sookie or Paris is gold. We Gilmore fans knew Melissa McCarthy was a star way back from the start of this series. Her performance as chef Sookie is a marvel of great reaction shots and bits of kitchen-comedy business. Similarly, Liza Weil immediately grasped the poignance beneath Paris’s hard-shell exterior. Timely episode to watch: Season 2’s “I Can’t Get Started,” in which Paris actively courts comparisons to Hillary Clinton in running for class president. (“Started” also contains the Lorelai-and-Rory catch phrase, “Oy with the poodles already!”)

I’m realizing that I could go on and on. Like Lorelai talking about her favorite junk foods, your re-watch could be endless. Clearly, I’ll have to write more about the series as the Netflix revival gets closer. Here are a few bottom-line observations:

The high- and low-culture references for which the show became famous withstand the test of time, even if I’m sure there will be Netflix viewers who have to look up who Wallace Stevens is or why the movie They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was significant in its 1960s time. And note that I, like creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, declined to watch any of the seventh, Sherman-Palladino-less season. (You’ll recall that she stepped aside when the show moved from the WB to the CW due to reasons that remain various and murky.)

That said: Watch! Watch now! The whole series is on Netflix, and you can catch episodes daily on both the Freeform and Up cable networks.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life premieres Friday, Nov. 25, on Netflix.