When news broke that Netflix would not renew One Day at a Time—the critically acclaimed, deeply loved, but not necessarily widely viewed reboot of Norman Lear's 1970s sitcom—fans were heartbroken, angry, and confused. After all, this was Netflix, home of literally billions of titles, many of which the streaming service seemed almost stubbornly unwilling to cancel.

The fact that it was a little show filling a big gap with its positive Latinx representation while we got another season of House of Cards and five seasons of Fuller House made the decision seem especially egregious. Meanwhile, has anyone even seen The Ranch? 'Cause it's 70 episodes deep.

In an age when there seems to be too much TV, the loss of one show shouldn't have felt so momentous. But because it did, Pop TV—the home of another beloved family comedy, Schitt's Creek–swept in at the last minute and saved One Day at a Time. The new season premieres in March 2020, but the cast reunited for the first time since wrapping its third, and what threatened to be its final, season this past weekend at New York magazine's Vulture Festival in Los Angeles.

In what was billed as "Sunday Dinner With the One Day at a Time Family," the Alvarezes invited the audience to nosh on boxes of delicious chicken empanadas, meat pies, and guava strudels from Porto's Bakery. Between laughter and tears, stars Justina Machado, Isabella Gomez, Marcel Ruiz, Stephen Tobolowsky, Todd Grinnell, and the incomparable Rita Moreno—along with executive producers Norman Lear and Brent Miller and showrunners Gloria Calderón Kellett and Mike Royce—dished the chisme on the show's return.

(L-R) Norman Lear, Brent Miller, Rita Moreno, Todd Grinnell, Justina Machado, Marcel Ruiz, Gloria Calderón Kellett, Stephen Tobolowsky, Mike Royce, and Isabella Gomez

Don't expect much to change with ODAAT's move to Pop—except for one noticeable shift: You won't be able to devour the new season in one glorious six-hour binge as soon as it drops. The show will instead have more room to breathe with a weekly rollout similar to what it enjoyed in its traditional broadcast, multi-cam days.

It's a natural fit for Calderón Kellett, who cut her comedic chops on How I Met Your Mother, and Royce, a producer on Everybody Loves Raymond. The news, however, came as a bit of a shock to Moreno, who reacted with a comically exaggerated "Coño."

Though the cast hadn't been in the same room for months, they say the old magic was still there and that it became evident the show meant just as much to the cast and creators as it did the fans. After the screening of a clip of Elena's (Gomez) coming-out scene in Season 1, Lear beamed at the show's writing and performances.

"I'm probably the oldest person in this room. Anybody older than 97 out there?" Lear asked. (No one was.) "I may have seen a little bit more of this thing we call 'life'… I was so touched by that. I think that it's such a fabulous, right performance. I know I can look at six minutes of that and it's added time to my life, because I've taken that much pleasure from it."

Elena's story line was based in part on Royce's daughter's coming out, but it was also informed by the experiences of queer Latinx writers Michelle Badillo and Rebecca Mann. And according to showbiz legend Moreno (a.k.a. feisty abuela Lydia), Gomez was excited to learn that Elena was going to be gay.

"When it came out to all of us, as actors, that her character was going to be gay, she came up to me and says, 'I'm going to be gay!'" Moreno recalled. "I said, 'Well, that's nice…'"

For Gomez, playing Elena was both a challenge and an honor, though she didn't know how big a deal the character and her story line would be to fans of the show.

"I was very privileged in that we made this first season in a bubble. I didn't realize what Elena was going to mean to people," she said. "Thank God, because I was already so terrified of this scene. I had so many conversations with Michelle Badillo. I just wanted to make sure that this was right. I didn't want anybody to look at this and feel I misrepresented or I took it lightly or anything like that."

Audiences were grateful and eagerly followed Elena's development: She was initially rejected by her estranged father, found solace in her family, and then found a nonbinary partner in Syd (Sheridan Pierce), who shared her political wokeness. The result was a complex and nuanced, but still very funny and entertaining, coming-of-queer-age story that was praised by fans and critics alike.

"There's so little representation for LGBTQ people, and even less accurate and positive representation," Gomez said. "Especially for lesbians, it's [often] through the male gaze and so sexualized. It's rarely ever about love. [Fans] are so excited that they get to see a story where it's just two teenagers falling in love."

But, as Machado, who plays Elena's mother Penelope, pointed out, Elena's story also benefits from having more than one perspective, incorporating not just the child's feelings but the parent's as well.

"You've seen other teenagers come out on television before, but you'd never really thought about what it's like for the parent," Machado said. "Not for the parent that freaks out and rejects the child, but the parent who really wants to do right by the child but is taken aback for a moment and needs to process. That was such a beautiful story."

We're lucky this series got a second chance. A lot of shows don't—especially those that aren't heavy on gimmicks or rooted in comic books or elaborate fantasy series. One Day at a Time is a very good show that tackles some very serious topics with a kind of elan and charm that is missing from a lot of TV today. That's why its fan base fought so ardently to bring it back, and why family dinner with the cast felt just like that: quality time with family.