With Valentine’s Day on the horizon and Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction of better weather coming soon, it’s time for us “Gilmore Girls” fans to turn off our yearly rewatch. Winter is on the way out. Please proceed to all emergency exits out of Stars Hollow. Cancel your Netflix subscription if you have to. It’s tempting, I know, to binge and live in the stunning warmth of Lorelai Gilmore’s charm and wit, but at this time of year, being exposed to her daughter’s tumultuous relationships can only hurt your state of mind. Rory Gilmore is no role model in matters of the heart. In fact, she may be the only heroine I’ve ever known to make every wrong decision put in front of her.
Rory holds a hard grip on her viewers, all of us fighting over which love interest she should’ve chosen: the reliable Dean, the edgy Jess, the exciting Logan, or even the naked guy Marty. I will admit that the last one is a stretch, but all ships are valid. Some (me) would argue that Marty is the only guy with whom she had something in common, never making her feel like garbage, and someone she never had to change to be with — but you guys can keep fighting over Dean and Jess.
Look, I enjoy a comfort show as much as the next person. But we need to come together as a collective and admit that the only lessons learned at Chilton (Rory’s high school) were “how to screw things up big time” and “extreme codependency issues.” I’m not saying characters in fictional stories need to make all the right decisions — however, if they’re going to make all the wrong decisions, they should at least not be self-righteous and feign constant innocence. I may come across as a “Gilmore Girls” hater, but I’m something much worse. A true fan. I’ve done the work of detailing what’s wrong with every one of Rory’s relationships so you don’t have to.
Let’s take a look at Rory’s time with Dean. Somehow too short yet never ending — because they break up three times — this relationship is chaotic and confusing. We meet Dean in the pilot as an edgy city boy from Chicago who becomes obsessed with a girl who can read so intensely that she ignores everything around her. To which she responds: “Maybe I didn’t look up because I’m unbelievably self-centered.” And there you go! Dean’s given a clear chance to cut and run. If anything, that was the best piece of foreshadowing showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino put on paper.
Dean was supposed to be Jess. He was going to be the hot, dark city boy interested in her intellect — the living embodiment of Kerouac that Jess oversold. How did he become the townie boy with bad grades and a complex to settle? Well, I’ll be sending a tersely worded letter to the Palladino compound to find out.
Rory not only cheats on Dean with her second boyfriend Jess, but she cheats with him just for something fun to do. When her life proves guys don’t just walk up and pursue you based on your irresistible coquettish nature, her solution is to find solace in the comforts of Jess or Dean — the only two idiots who loved her before spending any real time with her.
With Jess, we have to let go of everyone’s favorite sound bite: “WHY did you DROP out of YALE?” It comes six seasons into a three-season rollercoaster with this guy, and although viewers champion this moment, they forget when he showed up at the end of Rory’s first year at Yale and asked her to run away with him. This is where he tells Rory that he loves her for the second time with complete intent to bail the minute he thinks there’s a possibility of rejection. He cries and bellyaches that they need to be away from “this world” to make it work. “This world” being college at the age of nineteen. Do you honestly think he assumed she’d return to Yale in the fall after a summer of sleeping on the floor with him in New York? Or in that attic in Philly?
Last, and totally least, we have Logan Huntzberger. A totally ridiculous name to pair with an utterly unsatisfactory love interest following the powerful hits of both Dean and Jess. If you’re a person who believes Rory should’ve married Logan in the end, I truly hope you sue the show for your pain and suffering. Logan is the equivalent to who Rory’s father, Christopher Hayden, was for Lorelai. The show almost beats you over the head with the reality that this is who Chris would’ve been if he and Lorelai never had Rory.
Logan is a selfish, condescending, whiny brat whose only true gift is his ability to sweet-talk his way out of trouble. Rory loses all sense of herself in that relationship. She was at his beck and call and influenced so heavily by his moods that she kept her mom in the dark about the relationship. Lorelai and Rory’s intense, albeit co-dependent, relationship is at the center of the show. But instead of going to her mother for her legendary sage advice, she just waits by the phone. I could forgive all of this if it weren’t for Logan’s complete complacency when Rory dropped out of Yale. It shows you who Logan truly is: someone who doesn’t care about your wants and your needs.
There are a lot of lessons to learn from Rory’s failures in love. But please, I beg you to just save those lessons for the first snow of next December. Save it for the start of cuffing season, when we are all more likely to settle for the first person to volunteer to keep us warm. This is the time of year for giving real relationships a try. The spring is no time to suffer through watching Rory being dumped because she couldn’t say “I love you” or letting a twenty-five-year-old man get away with cheating on her with a baker’s dozen of his sister’s best friends because he thought you were broken up for a whole five minutes. As you can see, she ultimately ends up alone because she has terrible taste in men — well, let’s be honest, boys.
So Happy Valentine’s Day. Don’t let Aunt Totsy touch you. Never drink the Founder’s Day punch. If you ever stay at the Dragonfly Inn, steer clear of room number six. Make good choices or at least better choices than Rory.