So, it’s Gilmore Girls season again : there’s nothing that makes you feel more like you’re in Stars Hollow than curling up with a book and a cup of coffee, watching as the leaves fall.
Gilmore Girls premiered before I was born, and yet it is still one of the most popular shows around and many watchers tune in every autumn. While there are a few notable reasons for the show’s enduring popularity (millennial nostalgia, Netflix owning the streaming rights and the reboot, the mourning of 40 minute 20+ episode seasons after the death of network TV), the most memorable thing about Gilmore Girls is the way it constructs its relationships.
Amy Sherman Palladino, the lead writer of the show, wanted to focus on small-scale drama in a tiny town in Connecticut; there are no murders or people coming back from the dead in Gilmore Girls. Most of the stories are relatively low-key and normalised, mirroring everyday life as we ourselves know it. The strength of the show always lay in its ability to keep you entertained even with relatively non-dramatic events and with its complex relationships between the characters, given that It is very much a show where character is more important than plot.
Palladino’s strength for character writing cannot be denied. The main characters in Gilmore Girls all feel like fully-developed and rounded people with real motivations and reasons behind each decision they make. There are no characters who are perfect and yet there aren’t really any villains within the main cast; when the main characters mess up (and they often do), you are invited to sympathise with them instead of reprimanding them mercilessly. Discussions between fans get heated frequently and there is always an ongoing argument on the internet over specific elements of the show, demonstrating the enduring value of the character-writing given that the premier of the show was 20 years ago.
The main driver of every character’s arc in the show is their relationship with others. Lorelai’s poor relationship with her mother and her determination to do better for her daughter is her main motivation and heavily influences her relationship with her parents and with Rory. Rory’s place between her mother’s world and the world of her grandparents is a huge part of her character arc and informs her relationship with two of her boyfriends, Dean and Logan. She finds herself very drawn to the world her mother escaped and the people in it. Emily’s desire for her daughter and granddaughter to play a part in her life after a lengthy separation is what opens the show, with the onset of the weekly ‘Friday night dinners’. The joy in watching these dinner scenes lies in the fascinating and complex relationships between the three Gilmore Girls : Emily, the matriarch who drove her daughter away from her world and desperately wants her back, yet is not willing to change her cold and judgemental ways ; Lorelai, a fast-talking businesswoman who is 90% caffeine at any given moment and who ran away as a pregnant teenager to escape the old money lifestyle in favour of a freer life ; and Rory, who finds herself perpetually somewhere in between these two – Rory is a bookish teenager who wants the education and status symbols of Emily’s life, but who loves Stars Hollow dearly and who wants a relationship with her grandparents. Richard, Emily’s husband and Rory’s grandfather is another interesting character, given that his relationships with Lorelai and Rory mostly mirror his wife Emily’s.
The central thesis of Gilmore Girls is that people always end up like their family members, even when they try to avoid such a fate ; it’s a story of generational cycles. We see this in the arcs of most characters, and it’s quite literally communicated in the theme music of the show, “Where you lead, I will follow..” The character of Lane rebels against her conservative mother, but ends up married with children. Paris in A Year In The Life becomes just like her neglectful parents. Palladino maintained that the ending of Gilmore Girls was always meant to be a re-emphasis of the cyclical nature of the show, with Rory becoming a single mother just as Lorelai was. As early as season 1 we see characters say Dean is similar to Rory’s father Christopher, and Logan often receives the same comparison. Gilmore Girls is therefore all about family cycles and our futile attempts to escape them.
The mother-daughter relationship between Lorelai and Rory is the emotional crux of the show with many of the show’s most emotional moments stemming from this relationship. Rory is a teenage girl whose mother is her best friend and Lorelai is a woman who gave up everything for her daughter and started afresh. Rory’s father Christopher is notably absent from the life they’ve created together in their town. He mostly only interacts with Rory if it will benefit his romantic pursuit of Lorelai, which provides an interesting opportunity for commentary on father-daughter relationships.
Lorelai and Rory’s friendships also form a huge part of their life and therefore of the show; Lorelai’s best friend and coworker Sookie is mostly a comedic relief character and part of the background of quirky characters who make up the fabric of Stars Hollow. She is still a very important part of the show and we see her life change over the course of the show like that of the main characters.
Rory has two ‘best friends’ from different parts of her life. Lane is her best friend in Stars Hollow and is based on Palladino’s real-life best friend. Despite not having a major role, Lane is one of the most likeable characters in the show; her relationship with her mother is the antithesis of that shared between Lorelai and Rory, given that Lane and her mother are constantly at odds with each other in the show. Lane is extremely mistreated by her mother and her relationship with her mother acts almost as a foil to Rory’s free and open relationship with her mother. Lane almost lives vicariously through Rory and sees in Rory things she cannot have (a supportive mother, a normal dating life, being able to go to a normal college). Paris, Rory’s other close friend, is part of the old-money Gilmore world. Paris is Rory’s academic rival turned friend, and their friendship is often quite volatile. She represents the coldness of that world and is implied to have had the type of cold parents Lorelai resented so much growing up. She’s very different to any of the characters in Stars Hollow, so much so that she seems very out of place in the rare times she appears there or interacts with people from this tiny town. Rory is therefore constantly oscillating between these two worlds, as is equally shown in the nature of her relationship with her mother and grandmother. This is another aspect of how Gilmore Girls uses its relationships to explore the main themes of the show.
Lorelai’s relationship with Luke, a grumpy but loveable diner owner who is in many ways her total opposite, is also very interesting. Their friendship serves as a will-they-won’t-they romantic plot, frustrating viewers with the excessive amount of time they take to admit their feelings for one another. Luke is a significant presence in both Lorelai and Rory’s life, often acting as more of a father figure to Rory than Christopher does. When they do get together, their relationship is rife with communication issues, secrets and is often hindered by Emily’s meddling. Predictably, Lorelai’s love for Luke stems from the fact that he does not fit into Emily’s world. Their romance is very sweet to watch despite its many flaws.
Rory’s 3 boyfriends in the show are total opposites to one another, raising questions and vicious debate as to which one was the perfect fit for her character. Dean starts off as a bookish guy from Chicago who builds Rory a car and wins her over with his charm and unassuming nature. He is respectful of Lorelai, (mostly) kind to Rory and is essentially seen as the ideal first boyfriend for Lorelai’s teenage daughter, and for this reason he is widely beloved by the town. Dean could not be more different from Jess, the intellectual bad boy who causes mayhem in the town and tries very hard to win Rory over despite the fact that she is dating Dean at the time.
They both treat Rory very differently. Dean is extremely overbearing, calls Rory all the time, wants to spend all his time with her and puts her under immense pressure to return his ‘I love you’ at the end of the first season. He also spends a lot of time trying to go to town events with her and get to know her family. Jess is the total opposite. He doesn’t call, is indifferent and unbothered, and doesn’t care for the town or Lorelai. Jess and Rory bond over literature where her and Dean had few common interests. It should nonetheless be noted that Rory has her own issues which hinder her romantic relationships. She’s a good daughter and friend but she has very limited strengths as a girlfriend. Despite Dean’s flaws, watching Rory string him along for over a season is painful and Jess is the only boyfriend Rory has that she doesn’t cheat on. Rory’s romantic relationships are the main area where we see her flaws exposed, given that she is doted on by her family and the town and therefore does not often come under any form of scrutiny or criticism.
Both Jess and Dean are looked down upon by Emily and Richard, since both are tied to the Stars Hollow part of Rory’s life. Logan is the first boy she dates who is acceptable to her grandparents, since he hails from a very privileged background and shares their luxurious lifestyle. Logan doesn’t have an interest in the arts or literature like Jess or Dean, but is from a very wealthy family and attends college with Rory. The difference between Logan and Jess is that, despite the fact that both come from families who mistreat them, Jess is a troubled teenager who grew up in poverty whilst Logan is a privileged character who has the luxury to be able to spend most of his time taking part in secret societies rather than seriously concentrating on his studies.
Despite his flaws, being with Logan is the most adult relationship Rory has throughout the show. He’s the most mature of her boyfriends and they even live together, taking a step in the relationship which Rory had not previously dared to take with other boyfriends. Her relationship with him represents more distance between her and her Stars Hollow life, and shows how she has started to integrate herself further into her grandparents’ world. Logan will also be the father of Rory’s baby in A Year In The Life, yet their relationship is left on uncertain and ambiguous terms at the end of the show in a way that mirrors that of Lorelai and Christopher’s many years prior.
I could go on and on about the relationships in Gilmore Girls. Every relationship in the show is multi-layered and nuanced in a way that is often rare to see on TV, especially comedy TV. Almost 24 years after it’s airing, the portrayal of relationships on Gilmore Girls represents its most enduring legacy. I suspect people will be arguing over topics such as which of Rory’s boyfriends was the best, whether Lorelai is a good mother, whether Christopher is a deadbeat father, whether Emily or Lorelai was in the wrong and whether Rory was a good friend to Lane for another two decades at least.
WORDS: Leah Kelly
