Gilmore Girls isn't even a sitcom. It has none of the classical features of a sitcom: no fixed multi-camera setup; not filmed in front of a live audience; continuous, over-arching story, instead of self-contained 25 minute episodes; a wide variety of scenery, instead of the same four or five studio backdrops over and over again. The show has a lot more in common with a classic screwball comedy than a sitcom: the witty, quip-filled, fast-paced dialogue; the strong female characters that the male characters have problems keeping up with; the comical upper class unfamiliarity with the real world; and of course, with Lorelai and Luke, the seemingly mismatched romantic couple in the middle of it all.

I found it to be pretty entertaining. I'm a big fan of the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s and the show did a good job of transporting some of that genre into the present and mixing it with pop culture references. It had fun characters, some played by fantastic actors like Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann. It also gave a home to a number of people that I liked on other shows, such as Sally Struthers from All in the Family, Danny Strong from Buffy or Sherilyn Fenn from Twin Peaks. Not to mention the host of guests they had like Sebastian Bach, Carole King or Michael York. Unfortunately the show lost some of its appeal for me with seasons five and six and eventually started to suck in season seven when Amy Sherman-Palladino left. But I still like the first four seasons.

They keep a sense of continuity, but that rarely reaches the point where you can't just jump into the show not knowing what happened before and still easily understand what is going on. A good indicator for this is that sitcoms rarely have a recap before the actual episode that reminds the audience of the events of the previous week (at least they don't have here, not so sure about the U.S.)

And I never claimed that all of those elements I mentioned are true for all sitcoms, just that Gilmore Girls not exhibiting a single one of them shows that it's not a sitcom. You could also make the point that not all sitcoms have a fixed multi-camera setup. Malcolm in the Middle or Scrubs are well known deviations from the norm. But in general the statement is still true, so much that that setup is considered the classical one for sitcoms.