I consider watching Gilmore Girls one of the finer moments of my quarantine, and given the difficult and isolating nature of the pandemic, I could not have picked a better time to watch this tender and comforting show. Gilmore Girls is a series premised on single mother Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her teenage daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), living in Stars Hollow, a close-knit small Connecticut town. Lorelai, having estranged herself from her parents after falling pregnant as a teen, has to ask her rich parents for monetary help when Rory gets accepted into a prestigious and expensive private school. A lot unravels over the course of seven seasons, but despite that, it’s inevitable to find ourselves relating to these raw characters and getting invested in their lives. At least once throughout the series, we’re destined to understand where both Lorelai and her mother Emily (Kelly Bishop) are coming from, although their stances were always diametrically opposed.
Despite my connection to this series, I never seemed to fully understand Rory’s volatile character development, especially in the recent revival season on Netflix. Almost a decade since the original series, Rory, now the same age her mother was in the first season, is unlike anything we envisioned for her when we first met the 16-year old small-town sweetheart. She’s thirty-two, jobless with a one-hit-wonder piece, living with her mother, and dating a boyfriend that she doesn’t respect enough to let go of while she sleeps with her engaged ex. So, what happened between the two series?
While my initial impression was that Rory’s behaviour was out of character in the revival, I realized it is actually a natural progression of her previous actions. Rory was pretty much what you would call “a textbook gifted kid.” “Gifted kid” is the idea that when certain children are highly achieving from a very young age, which puts them at an advantage compared to their peers, they end up having burnout later in life because they can’t keep up the same level of perfection. Rory fits all of these criteria: she was much more achieving than her classmates at Stars Hollow High, she was always reading, she caught up pretty fast after she moved to Chilton and even became valedictorian, and then she graduated from Yale on time despite missing a semester. All of these occurrences would rightfully give anyone in her place a sense of achievement, but the problem with Rory is that she felt that everything would always come easy to her and that she deserves special treatment and forgiveness for every bad thing she would do.
As someone who was an overachiever in school, and now a 21-year-old college senior and journalism major who is as lost as Rory was about her career path, I can see where she’s coming from. I see a lot of myself in Rory, especially in the earlier seasons. Growing up as an overachiever in school, you’re most likely to be burnt out by the time you’re in your twenties. For a lot of us, it wasn’t that difficult to work hard and get good grades in school, but when you go to university or when you join the workforce, things aren’t as easy anymore. There’s so much more competition and struggle than you would initially think because everyone is working towards similar goals in the same field, thus creating demand for the best, unconventional jobs.
Consequently, just like in the revival when Rory refused her Chilton headmaster’s job offer to get her Ph.D. and work as a teacher there, deep down most of us don’t really want to settle for a “normal job” despite how prestigious they are because you grow up being told you should do more as an exceptional being. It is certainly depressing when you realize you cannot physically achieve what you thought you’ve been on the path for years.
The only character who seemed to understand this is Rory’s Chilton and Yale friend, Paris Geller (Liza Weil). Rory meets Paris on her first day at Chilton, and Paris is very competitive and hardworking, as she feels that Rory’s existence is a new hurdle towards her goal to be valedictorian. We’re later shown that she works so hard because of her strict upbringing, but nonetheless, her behavior was constantly mocked by her circle. Paris was made to be somewhat less smart than Rory because of her lack of emotional intelligence, but between the both of them, Paris has had a much better understanding of the real world than Rory. She worked hard throughout school and college, encouraged Rory to do the same extracurriculars, making her running mate for student council, and starting “Operation Finish Line” to maximize both their chances past graduation, and much more. So, although Rory works hard, she always looks down on Paris for being realistic and actually working on her goals, despite the fact that Paris helped Rory get to where she wanted to be.
That’s why I can’t condone Rory, but I can certainly see that while growing up, she’s only ever been a vessel for the hopes and dreams of her elders; all Lorelai wanted for Rory is for her not to end up like her, and all her grandparents wanted for her is to be who Lorelai could not be. Paradoxically, Rory was always praised for who she intrinsically is, and never for her actions. So when she grew up and the real world did not treat her like the special person the town told her she was, she short-circuited.
All these expectations have definitely gotten to Rory, making her reluctant to accept even the most constructive of criticism, which came very rarely from Lorelai who often walked on eggshells with her. Rory completely lashes out and isolates herself, falling apart at even the slightest deviation from universal praise, even when, to the viewer, she’s very obviously in the wrong. Stealing a boat, mistreating her family, declining jobs that she deems herself too good for while having no backup plan, cheating on her boyfriends repeatedly, breaking up a marriage; at some point, it became overwhelmingly painful to watch her sabotage and hinder her own development.
The only people who dared to defy Rory on the show were Mitchum Huntzberger (Gregg Henry), newspaper mogul and her college boyfriend’s father, when he told her she doesn’t have what it takes to be a journalist after giving her an internship, and the judge who sentences her to 300 hours of community service for stealing a boat. Even then everyone, especially Rory’s family, was incredulous and justified the latter incident to be a direct result of the former one. When you don’t suffer consequences for anything you do, it is natural you’ll grow up refusing to accept personal responsibility. Don’t we all steal boats when we’re humiliated?
Despite this, I saw myself in Rory. Her arc made me realize that being a gifted kid is not an advantage nor a guarantee for your future once you let it dictate your life. It was scary seeing where she ended up at the beginning of the revival and how realistic it was, and just how many of the same sentiments and anxieties we share. I understood the panic of not knowing what to do once you deviate from where you always thought you would end up because you simply saw no other way — and considering any other way but the one you set for yourself was an utter failure on your part.
Fast forward to the revival’s last scene where Rory announces that she’s pregnant, which I could not help but be shocked at — there was no buildup to that plot twist in Rory’s characterisation throughout the revival. I didn’t understand the writers’ decision then, and even months later, I still don’t. But after some reflection, I began to see the significance of that decision regarding Rory’s future and how it connected to her past. Up to that point, Rory’s selfishness and disregard for other people had reached a high point, whether in the revival or the late seasons of the original series. She was lost, confused, and defeated, with no way to move any aspect of her life forward.
Consequently, if there was one reason for this plot point, it is that Rory’s child will be what grounds her, not because it is an effective grounding method, but because it would be the first time she has to care for someone else. Just like Lorelai, many moons ago, this will change the trajectory of Rory’s life, professionally and romantically. I would love to see how this would affect Rory in the future, maybe five years forward, but whether or not we witnessed the last of the Gilmores, this ending, despite not being the most satisfying, is probably the most realistic one we could have.
