I Drank the TV Coffee and Now I'm a 'Gilmore Girls' Ad
Mmm! Java!
Did you hear? A television program was giving away free coffee today.
Netflix temporarily turned a bunch of storefronts in the U.S. and Canada into pop-up Luke’s diners to promote their new season of “Gilmore Girls.” So from 7 a.m. to noon, the first 300 people who showed up to those locations got a free cup of coffee authentically branded with Luke’s logos.
I learned about the promotion the other day, when my buddy Marina sent me a link to the announcement, remembering that I’d watched the show for the first time along with her and a lot of my coworkers when it dropped on Netflix a couple years ago. My relationship with the program during that viewing experience could be best described as… tenuous.
For one thing, the characters are forever saying, “I just want to talk,” to people while they’re in the middle of having a conversation with them.
“Let’s just talk.”
“We need to talk.”
It’s hard to explain, but something about the show’s linguistics was like having poop smeared on the front of my shirt by someone who was smiling and maintaining eye contact with me the whole time. Brazenly bad.
And yet I watched the whole thing! Like a good consumer! Pissed off and comfortable and Instagramming between bites of whatever bad after-work dinner I’d thrown together. Let’s say spaghetti.
God did I not like these characters. And god did I not have the wherewithal to replace them with something else. Better to sit in this one, tepid bath than go through the hassle of getting out and filling the tub with new water, right?
Who knows.
Anyway, I woke up this morning and saw that today was the big day. I went into my texts, re-clicked the link Marina had sent me, and—lo! One of the locations was a mere ten-minute walk from my door.
I decided to get the TV coffee.
The Brooklyn location I went to wasn’t full of many deal-knowers, at least to my eye. It mostly looked like regulars in there enjoying their morning routines, and then me and a clutch of women outside, standing in a semicircle, taking turns snapping photos with the storefront sign.
Inside the coffee shop itself, a cardboard cutout of Luke greeted you with regional humor. As a Brooklyn-living javahead, it was important for me not to have a man bun or wear my headphones. I was, in fact, wearing headphones, but I left them on. Suck it, Luke.
Telling the barista, “I’m here for the Netflix coffee!” got me one cup that I’d call a medium. For free! It tasted good and normal. My formal review of the drink would be: There it was!
The coffee cup was a really complex piece of paper art. Just when I thought I’d experienced everything, it’d reveal some new facet of piping hot content for me to engage with. I noticed the Luke’s logo on the cardboard sleeve immediately, but by the time I was on my doorstep, I’d discovered a hidden Snap QR code. Back at my apartment, I noticed the quote from certified javahead Lorelai Gilmore in that iconic not-quite-Papyrus, not-quite-Garamond font. I would like to send +10 respect to whoever designed the shit out of this cup. I hope you got one million Netflix dollars.
If you let your camera hover over the QR code with Snapchat open, it unlocks a custom Luke’s filter that you get to use for exactly one hour. Here I have chosen to pair it with the ho filter a.k.a. the dog that gives you good skin, but the sky is truly the limit possibilities-wise.
And that was it!
Overall, we really cannot ask for more from a television program. The characters love coffee, I got a free coffee, and you know what, fam? I’m probably going to watch the entire four-part event when it drops November 25. The joke is truly on me.