This blog post is part of a blog tour organised by Virago for the release of Lauren Graham’s new book Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls and Everything In Between. Obviously I am very excited about this book, and the new Netflix series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, and the excuse to talk about Gilmore Girls.

Gilmore Girls used to be a guilty pleasure for me, until I realised how very much love there is for it, allowing me to stop hiding my love and full-on geek over it! It’s basically a really high quality soap opera. I’ve always related to both the main characters, Rory and Lorelai. Rory is a bookish nerd, as I was as a teen, but Lorelai is cool, capable and almost always cheerful, as I aspire to be now. I can never hope to be as beautiful as Lauren Graham or Alexis Bledel, but I can definitely learn a lot from how Lorelai is such a great friend and all-around person.

Which brings me to my favourite Lorelai moment. I suppose this includes some minor spoilers if you’ve not watched any Gilmore Girls, but most of these details aren’t intrinsic to the longer plotlines through the series.

In season 1 episode 13 “Concert Interruptus”, Lorelai has tickets for herself, Rory, Lane and Sookie to see the Bangles. When Lane can’t go, Lorelai invites three girls from Rory’s school who she is struggling to get on with: Paris, Madeline and Louise (sacrificing herself and Sookie to the whims of a ticket tout). It seems like a terrible idea, making Rory spend more time with these bitchy girls, but of course Lorelai has perfectly judged it. She is an effortlessly cool parent, helping to forge a friendship that will last many years. She and Sookie end up in the back row of the concert hall, with a terrible view, crying with laughter at how bad their new seats are. She has sacrificed something she really cared about for Rory.

(This scene always reminds me of my first concert with Tim. I had bought us Foo Fighters tickets for his birthday, but I was a student so I got the cheapest seats. It turns out the penultimate row in Wembley Arena is a long long way from the stage. I was really embarrassed at first, but we managed to laugh about it before too long. And we’ve seen the Foos several times since, generally much closer.)

But Lorelai’s truly cool moment in this episode is when she has to stop playing nice and pull the mom card. Madeline and Louise have run off with guys they met at the concert and Lorelai storms into their apartment, saying just the right thing to haul the girls out quickly and earning brownie points with Paris in the process (Paris has limited experience of actual parenting).

What’s your favourite Lorelai moment?