I Have Issues With "Gilmore Girls"

"Where you lead, I will follow, anywhere that you tell me to!"

Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel in “Gilmore Girls”

Of all of the soapy TV series to come out during my coming-of-age, no show topped “Gilmore Girls.” It takes place in an idyllic (aka fictional) New England town, where a mom in her 30s (Lorelai, played by Lauren Graham) and her brilliant teenage daughter (Rory, played by Alexis Bledel) live in a house surrounded by quirky but lovable neighbors. Lorelai had Rory when she was 16, but instead of getting judged like any other subject of “Teen Mom,” millennial viewers admired her for cultivating a relationship with her daughter that resembled more of a best friend than a parent. The series opens with Rory getting accepted to an exclusive private high school. Later she graduates as valedictorian and matriculates at Yale, which was her safety school. She also seems to do it all completely effortlessly, as if she didn’t actually come from a financially strapped single-parent household.

The following element of the show is crucial: Lorelai came from a wealthy background, but voluntarily eschewed that life after giving birth to Rory. Her parents Richard (a Yale alum) and Emily (a Smith alum) live in a nearby mansion and have tons of old money, which comes in handy when Rory gets accepted to expensive schools where tuition needed to be paid. Richard and Emily happily paid for Rory’s education at prep school and then at Yale in exchange for her showing up to their weekly family dinners. When Rory took time off from Yale during an existential crisis, Emily housed her in the adjoining pool house and redecorated it for her.

“Gilmore Girls” is annoying because it portrays an extremely unrealistic mother-daughter relationship, which no doubt irritated an entire generation of mothers who could not live up to the Lorelai ideal for their millennial daughters. All of Lorelai and Rory’s conversations follow this childish-but-clever banter (“Rory, I need to know how to say ‘does Antonio Banderas live here?’ in Spanish for when we go on our backpacking trip to Spain!”). There are no mother-daughter arguments in the show during which they call each other “bitch” or tell each other to shut up.

There is a fact that I think got lost among the show’s target audience: Lorelai and Rory are not real.

Rory basically embodied the millennial that the target viewer could see herself in, but could never actually live up to. In short, her character was aspirational. She’s pretty, but not in a sexually suggestive way. She talks with a clever intonation in her voice that no teen could match unless she were reading from a script written by seasoned screenwriters in their 30s and 40s. Nothing about high school ever bothers her, and becoming valedictorian was a stress-free experience that she achieved by just being herself. In other words, her character was pure fantasy.

Even the most mundane characteristics of Rory’s life are met with fascination from those around her. One episode featured an entire plot arc where she calls Lorelai to tell her about a tree that she liked to sit against at Yale to get away from her roommates. She dubbed it her “study tree.” When she returns the following day to see that one of her classmates was sitting at “her” tree, which was located on a public lawn, she decides to bribe him to move so that she can have the tree all to herself. I suppose we can just chalk that up to millennial entitlement.

There is one redeeming quality of the show though, and that is the character Emily Gilmore. I actually thought that Emily was the most complex and interesting character of the series. Whenever Emily makes an earnest attempt to do right by her daughter and granddaughter, she gets shut down. While she appears in command of her wealthy lifestyle on the surface, she betrays a deep insecurity throughout the series and is clearly jealous of the relationship between her daughter and granddaughter. Emily and Richard appear as a great team in public, yet her husband either ignores or quietly disrespects her behind closed doors.

I would totally support a prequel telling her backstory: Emily Pre-Gilmore: Coming of Age in High Society New England. In my version, Emily enrolls at a finishing school for young Daughters of the Revolution, transfers to Smith College after an intellectual/sexual awakening, dates some of her Smithie classmates, and ultimately decides to marry Richard the Yalie to please her traditional WASP parents. Get on it, Netflix!

So by all means, go ahead and re-watch (or in my case, hate-watch) “Gilmore Girls.” Just keep in mind that nothing about the show is real.

---

Thanks for reading! If you liked what you read and wish to support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a one-time donation.