The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly is giving fans a look at the Gilmore Girls revival with photos straight from the set. But you may find yourself being too mesmerized by the cover featuring Lorelai and Rory Gilmore to even bother opening up the magazine. Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel look exactly like you remember them. Seriously, the Gilmore girls look almost exactly like they did nearly 10 years ago when they signed off from Luke's Diner. No, I don't know how that's possible, but would love for someone to tell me so I can start my new Gilmore Girls skin care regimen. With closer examination though, you also may notice that this new cover looks pretty similar to some of the duo's past magazine covers. Which might prove that the Gilmore Girls legacy has always been about believing these two women had a lasting relationship on and off the set.
In this new photo, Graham and Bledel are cuddled up with their white coffee mugs and navy blue tops, sharing a similar smile that truly makes them look like family. But they don't really have to act like they're a family since returning to the Gilmore Girls set was like a reunion. It's the sense you get from this cover, which looks like a photo any one of us could have taken with our best friend or our mom. Or in the case of the Gilmores, a woman who is one in the same.
They look casual, like two friends out for brunch, just hanging out, which makes sense. Lorelai and Rory were always relatable characters. Their problems weren't so different than your own, even if the world they lived in seemed too good to be true. The actresses who played those beloved characters also felt like your friends, two women who you could admire, but could also relate to. This is the kind of cover Lorelai and Rory would appreciate instead of mock when they finally found the issues sitting on their coffee table.
Then check out their last cover together, a 2002 issue of Seventeen, in which Graham and Bledel look like a mother/daughter duo having fun in some flared jeans and white tops. They look like they just came back from shopping at Express together. (It was 2002, so Express was totally in, believe me.) Rather fitting, since this was an issue dedicated to stars and their moms. Funny though, that they chose a fake mother/daughter duo celebrate that bond instead of a real mother/daughter duo. But, again, it makes sense, because the show felt so real to so many people, and the Gilmores would be the example in so many people's hearts and minds.
When you look at all of these covers, you notice that the more things change the more they stay the same. It's been nearly a decade since fans last saw Graham and Bledel as Lorelai and Rory, but seeing them once again brings it all back. The Friday night dinners. The boyfriends. The breakups. It's like looking at a photo of your old friends who always have a special place in your heart. You see it and you just go back to that place like muscle memory.
Gilmore Girls was always a fantasy about female friendship and the love between a mother and daughter that seemed almost too good to be true. But it's clearly a fantasy that continues outside of the show and onto the covers of magazines. It's there where this supposedly scripted bond between Lorelai and Rory just seems too real to ignore.
Images: Entertainment Weekly; Seventeen
