In this time of peak social media, very few shows or films are truly underrated. Wherever something good exists, there is a group of fans willing to defend it. Even so, I will submit that Gilmore Girls remains underrated. Besides maybe Freaks and Geeks, Gilmore Girls is the most influential teen/family television show of the 21st and pretty much every dramedy owes the show a debt. It is on my personal top 10 of all time and I think that any proper "best of" television list would have it safely in the top 25.
A.S. Berman's "The Gilmore Girls Companion" hearkens back to another era of the internet, when episodic guides still made sense, before Vulture and AV Club recaps rendered them unnecessary. And while this book is full of passion, research, and solid journalism, we are reminded why the form of "episodic companion" has gone the way of the dodo.
The Gilmore Girls Companion goes through every single episode of the series one by one weaving in interviews, anecdotes, and analysis of the series. There is a decent-sized preface and a short afterward, but the bulk of the book is spent digging through the series piece by piece. Superior books like "Seinfeldia" and "Generations Friends" have proven that books about a series are better off broken down year by year or season by season than episode by episode. The reality of production is that episodes may be block shot or shot quickly and often there are no notable historical or creative differences in a group of consecutive episodes. As a result, a book that looks at a series episode by episode will get repetitive no matter how passionate or precise the writer may be.
The episodic structure of the book also leads itself to excesses, like tracking all the times Emily fires her maid, which, while funny is not the most economical use of word count. Telling the story more loosely would have allowed for flexibility. For example, a story about Seinfeld needs to focus more on the famously labored development process whereas the story of Friends ought to save ample time for the show's robust afterlife. Berman is forced to cut short some of his best material because of his structural commitments.
Though form handicaps The Gilmore Girls Companion, there is still plenty here for a Gilmore fan or an entertainment professional to enjoy. Berman actually visited the set and he seems to have a keener understanding of "how things work" than most civilians who write about television. For example, he interviews art and costume department personnel and is careful in breaking down the creative process of the show. He knows that not all producers are writers, that the director works for the showrunner, and that the writers assistant knows more about the story than almost anyone. His knowledge and attention to detail result in a book that will offer insight to any professional or aspiring professional wanting to learn more about TV and he ably avoids mistakes I routinely see from sloppier entertainment journalists.
While this book is imperfect, it made me nostalgic for a time we have lost. The cast and crew feel like a family, something that was more possible when shows routinely ran for 8 seasons at 22 episodes each. And the creation of an All-American town on a studio backlot is rarer and rarer in the age of runaway production. They literally don't make 'em like Gilmore Girls anymore. But just like a proper portrait of a family, Berman refuses to shy away from the realities of life on Gilmore Girls. The exacting dialogue came at a price, with routine overtime and stories of 20+ hour days. After all, it isn't fair to write about nostalgia without acknowledging that some things are better left in the past.
"The Gilmore Girls Companion" is not a perfect book, but its loving attention to detail reminds us just how special the series that inspired the book really was. And while I don't necessarily need a detailed analysis of every festival Stars Hollow ever held or every job Kirk ever held, I am glad it exists.