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For Lauren Graham, stepping back into her "Gilmore Girls" role as Lorelai was like putting on comfortable clothes.

"It was literally like no time had passed," she said. "It was not difficult. It was easy. It was joyous. It was fun. It was exhilarating. It was the old show.

"I mean, there was no sense of having to resuscitate something. It was just like it was meant to continue."

Alexis Bledel, who stars as Lorelai's daughter, Rory, agreed that the reunion felt "as if no time had passed. It's all on the page. Amy's writing just informs you right away."

Creator/writer/executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino leapt back into the Gilmores with the same gusto as always. The show had the reputation of having the thickest scripts in television because the characters talked a lot. They talked fast. They talked over each other. They talked and talked and talked.

That continues in the four-part, six-hour "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life."

Maybe the fact that the Gilmores guzzled coffee had something to do with it. More likely, it's because Lorelai and Rory sound just like the woman who created them.

"It's my favorite part of this show," Graham said. "I was actually kind of craving this structured, slightly more theatrical, elevated [dialogue]."

"Gilmore Girls," which aired from 2000 to 2007, tells the story of Lorelai — a smart, funny, attractive, 32-year-old woman who gave birth out of wedlock at age 16. That caused a major rift with her wealthy parents, so Lorelai raised Rory on her own. She built a great life for both of them in the small, idyllic town of Stars Hollow.

We followed Rory from high school through college — Yale — and Lorelai through relationships with Rory's father, Christopher (David Sutcliffe), and, of course, the cantankerous Luke (Scott Patterson), among others. Now, 9½ years after the show went off the air, Sherman-Palladino, Graham, Bledel and almost the entire original cast return.

Lorelai's imperious mother, Emily (Kelly Bishop), remains a force, and all three are mourning the loss of Lorelai's father, Richard (Edward Herrmann, who died in 2014).

Richard's presence is clearly felt in "A Year in the Life."

"Everyone is sort of recovering," Graham said. "That gave the show a depth and a sort of emotional complexity."

And the characters who populated Stars Hollow are back in force, including Michel (Yanic Truesdale), Paris (Liza Weil), Lane (Keiko Agena), Zack (Todd Lowe), Mrs. Kim (Emily Kuroda), Kirk (Sean Gunn), Babette (Sally Struthers), Miss Patty (Liz Torres), Taylor (Michael Winters) and Gil (Sebastian Bach) — just to name a few.

"It felt like we got to sit and say, 'Do we want to go on this journey together?' " Sherman-Palladino said. "Do we want to band together and kind of, like, Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland this [expletive]?' "

Even Melissa McCarthy shows up (briefly) as Sookie.

"It was amazing," Sherman-Palladino said. "I haven't seen her for years, but she and Lauren have a weird Lucy-and-Ethel thing that you kind of have to just see it to understand it."

"But that's how it was with everything," Graham said. "Everything was like, 'Oh, here's the chemistry we had from the very first day we met.' And it was just a joy to revisit."

All 153 episodes of the original series can be streamed on Netflix, and the series has found fans who either missed it the first time around or weren't born when the show premiered.

It's a show that's easy to fall in love with. "It's about relationships and love in a non-preachy way," Sherman-Palladino said. Graham called it "extremely comforting in a world that is lacking comfort."

And Patterson hit the nail on the head: "It's almost like characters over plot."

That virtually the entire original cast returned to make at least brief appearances is a clear indication the show was as special to those who made it as it was to those who watched it. And Sherman-Palladino is giving the fans what they want — including the return of all of Rory's significant boyfriends from the series' seven-year run — Dean (Jared Padalecki, "Supernatural"), Jess (Milo Ventimiglia, "This Is Us") and Logan (Matt Czuchry).

"People like love," she said.

"I guess people do get excited about the romantic storyline," Bledel agreed. "But there is so much more to [Rory's] character," including "her ambition and her accomplishments and her goals."

(That said, "I think people's questions are answered by the end of it," Bledel said.)

There's also considerable time devoted to Lorelai's love life. But it's not all about the men in the "Gilmore Girls' " lives.

"Yeah, we definitely pass the Bechdel test," said executive producer Daniel Palladino.

The Bechdel test looks at whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. That was never, ever a problem on "Gilmore Girls."

And "A Year in the Life" reunites one of the most remarkable families in TV history — the Gilmores and the people who surrounded them.

"It's not a story about a little girl anymore who's in high school," Graham said. "It's a story about a young woman and kind of the struggles she faces."

But the dynamics among Lorelai, Rory and Emily remain.

"They've grown up, but they're the same," Graham said. "And that kind of foundation of here-are-the-people-you-have-to-rely-on can take you through any age. I think that's what this show continues to tell us about family."

"Family is great because it is, for a writer, the gift that keeps on giving," Sherman-Palladino said.

Twitter @ScottDPierce —

On Netflix

The four 90-minute episodes of "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" begin streaming on Netflix at 1 a.m. MST on Friday, Nov. 25.