90s and 2000s dramas have a way of always resurfacing on the internet, and this is no different to the popular drama Gilmore Girls. If you grew up in the 2000s or have been on tiktok since 2019, you must definitely have heard of the iconic mother-daughter duo of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore. As a matter of fact, the two main characters, Rory and Lorelai, have been romanticized a lot on tiktok, with fall and studying motivation being centered around Rory Gilmore.
Although it’s a show people watch yearly and more and more people are getting exposed to Gilmore Girls, it’s safe to say Gilmore girls serves as a Fall staple aesthetic.
After the original show ended in 2006, 10 years later in 2016, the show furthered on to be a limited Netflix series called A year in the Life, which served as a portrayal of the characters’ lives a decade after.
With all the love, emotions and positivity from the shows, with more generations watching and getting exposed to Gilmore girls, it also caused a lot of controversial opinions as well as hate towards the characters. There are a lot of opinions on Rory’s boyfriends with people having teams for about whom they love the most. ‘#TeamLogan #TeamDean #Team Jess’. More recently, there’s been a lot of backlash against Rory Gilmore as a person as well as her downfall. In this article, we’ll be looking through Rory’s life and where everything went downhill.
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♬ original sound - N
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Growing up In Stars Hollow
In the earlier seasons of Gilmore Girls, the viewers are introduced to the dainty, quirky town of Stars Hollow. As seen on screen, it’s a very small town, so everybody knows everybody. Also, Lorelai didn’t grow up in Stars Hollow, but she brought Rory there, where she spent most of her childhood.
It’s easy to say the entire neighborhood had a part in raising Rory. She was also very smart, pretty and well-mannered, which made the entire town love her. Lorelai tried her best to shield her from the life she grew up with, as she felt her parents’ (Richard and Emily) lavish toxic life shouldn’t be something Rory has to deal with. Eventually, Rory ends up spending a lot of time with her grandparents, as an agreement to pay Rory's tuition fees.
I guess you could say the whole of Stars Hollow glorified Rory a lot, especially when she moved to Chilton then got accepted into the Big three: Princeton, Harvard and Yale. If she was so talented academically and had so much support, where did it all go wrong?
Lorelai
Everyone loved Lorelai. She’s a cool, relatable mom who has pop culture references at the tip of her fingers, and she’s generally a fun-loving person to be around. Now, from the background history of Lorelai and her own mother, Emily Gilmore, the viewers see they had a toxic relationship and bickered half of the time when they’re around each other.
When Lorelai ran away from home, she did it with the intention of protecting her daughter from the toxic lifestyle of the Gilmore household and wanting to start afresh with her child. Like Lorelai said countless times in the early seasons, she was blessed to have a child like Rory. Rory grew up very respectful, responsible and disciplined on her own, so that Lorelai didn’t have to do much in terms of parenting and correction. Based on this, Lorelai treated her daughter more as a friend than a daughter.
Like friends do, they gave each other advice and ensured to take care of one another in different situations. Until Rory got older, Lorelai was doing most of the talking and Rory engaged in listening and advising her mom. As a matter-of-fact, Rory saw through all of Lorelai’s relationships and consoled her during breakups (e.g., Christopher, Max Medina, Luke), which made her grow up faster than the average teen.
Stereotypically, most people rebel in their teenage years and grow up to be more mature, but that was the exact opposite for Rory. Rory had a clean slate from childhood to her teenage years, and she started visibly acting up as soon as she became an adult. Because Lorelai had no experience with a badly behaved child, she had no idea about what to do or how to properly advise or correct her, especially since she still related with her on a friendship level.
Rory also looked up to Lorelai a lot, even during the times they had misunderstandings. It’s safe to say Lorelai’s dating habits in terms of lack of commitment and indecisiveness crept up on Rory as she got older, which is why she cheated in all her relationships (except Jess) and didn’t accept Logan’s proposal (Season 7, Episode 21). Also, in AYITL, she cheated on her boyfriend Paul and became Logan’s mistress.
Jess
Everyone who has watched Gilmore girls either has a favorite Rory boyfriend or hates every boy she was with. A lot of fans, however, love to romanticize the book-reading bad boy Jess, who got introduced to Gilmore Girls in Season 2. Jess was known as the handsome bad boy, and a lot of fans (including Rory) loved that about him.
During the time Jess came onto the scene, Rory was in a relationship with her beau, Dean. Although their relationship had some questionable scenes, they were relatively happy together for a while until Jess came along. Dean had major insecurity issues, and Jess was an instigator, so he intentionally egged on bickers between himself and Dean to prove he would be a ‘better boyfriend.’ Long before this, Rory had already developed a crush on Jess which she tried to deny for quite some time.
The beginning of Rory’s character flaw probably began when she skipped her mom’s graduation to go meet Jess in New York (Season 2, Episode 21). She even ended up cheating on her boyfriend Dean at her mom's best friend's wedding!
Jess was the start of Rory’s ‘rebellion’ phase, and she ended up. Although he came back more ‘mature’ in the later seasons, he still had an impact on her downfall early on.
Logan and the Huntzberger Family
When the topic of Logan is brought up, people either love him, hate him or say he’s the ‘perfect match for Rory’. They don’t personally like him, but they feel he’s the only boyfriend who actually fits Rory’s personality and lifestyle. To many people, Logan was the rich, spoilt guy who had no responsibilities, and most people hate him because the major signs of Rory’s flaws show when she gets to Yale (the start of their relationship).
A lot of people believe Logan was a bad influence on Rory, but Rory’s character had already started showing great flaws, way before she met him. For example, Dean cheated on Lindsay with Rory in Season 4 (Episode 22) and when Lorelai found out and confronted her, she traveled to Europe with her grandmother as a way to escape the problem.
Logan definitely had his flaws as a person, some of which seeped into Rory’s life (as he was still trying to figure himself out), so he would sometimes encourage reckless behavior or just go along with it for Rory’s sake. It got so bad, that Logan and Rory ended up getting arrested after stealing a yacht (Season 5, Episode 21) and she had to do about 300 hours of community service as a punishment.
When Rory met Logan’s parents, it was far from what Rory, and even the viewers expected. The first family member of the Huntzberger family Rory met was Logan’s sister (Honor) and she was very accepting of their relationship. By the time Rory went for dinner to the Huntzberger residence, it was a whole different story.
Logan’s mom and grandfather did not like Rory, and they felt she wasn’t good enough for their son. Later on, we get to meet multimillionaire Mitchum Huntzberger (aka Logan’s dad). After hearing about his wife and father’s reaction to Rory, as a compensation, he offers Rory an internship. An internship which is probably the start of the crush on Rory’s dreams.
After the end of the internship, Rory expected to be praised for her hard work, but that was far from the case. Rory was told, “You don’t got it.” This was basically Mitchum telling her he didn’t think she had what to succeed in the career path she wanted.
Actually, a lot of viewers berated Mitchum’s character for being ‘harsh’, but we got to see that he was actually right about Rory not having what it took to be successful in journalism. All her life, she had been showered with positive feedback and praise for how wonderful she was, so she had no idea how to react to this situation, which led her to take a break away from college.
However, many viewers also thought it was out of place for Rory’s character, as in an earlier season of Gilmore Girls, she may have tried to prove him wrong and work extremely hard to show why she can excel in her career.
All in all, the case of Rory Gilmore depicts what happens when a shielded, extremely smart kid gets put into the real world (without being prepared for it) and suddenly feels very small and out of place. The writers vividly showed us that ‘perfect’ people can also have their flaws, and they can get burned out and make mistakes too.
Read more about Rory Gilmore on The Teen Magazine here: What Went Wrong with Rory Gilmore.
