Warning: Spoilers ahead — including the revival.
I briefly reviewed the Gilmore Girls revival shortly after it was released, and I certainly encountered an array of conflicting emotions as I tried to hash out my thoughts.
After a little under a month to mull it over — and many, many articles later (seriously, so many) — I have come to my ringing conclusion. Rory Gilmore is not a good person. She is not your role model. She is not someone to look up to. She is, rather, a lesson to learn from.
It would probably be slightly better if Rory Gilmore had some shred of self-sufficiency, and didn’t possess that all-consuming need for validation from others. But honestly? This girl peaked in high school — and maybe high school worked best for her because there was little autonomy; someone was always telling her what to do, and she thrived at that. (Taking home a report card, well, that’s the capital form of validation right?)
In "Summer," when talking to Jess, as she rants about her post-grad rut, Rory declares that people can “smell failure” on her. But I don't think that they actively detect it on her, or that she’s emanating it — it’s that she refused to try. How could she have gone to the Sandee Says interview without any ideas? It was obvious she didn’t want the job. Why would they go for her if she clearly walked in unprepared, apathetic, and pouty?
Rory has such a sense of entitlement, and maybe it’s not completely her fault since she grew up with people constantly telling her that she was so smart, so talented, so warm-hearted, so perfect, basically. Yeah, that’s gonna go to your head at least a little bit.
But there comes a point where you have to ground yourself. Just because your friends and family think you hung the moon, doesn’t mean everyone else will.
I’m not going to fault the show runners for my dislike of Rory, or even Rory’s character. To some extent, maybe the way she turned out is realistic. I remember my sister complaining to me, a couple seasons in, that Rory is not a realistic character, that no one could possibly be that perfect and successful and accomplished. How could everything come so easy to her?
The failures Rory encounters, and her inability to pick herself back up and barrel on, her tendency to falter and shut down at the slightest setback (think: Mr. Huntzberger's "You don't have it"), are perhaps the most realistic components of her character. It’s true — no one can be that perfect.
Rory is proof that natural-born smarts are not all that matter.
She might be nice to talk to. She’s quick, she’s witty, she’s sweet. But you get too deep in, too long-term? Honestly, it seems like she needs way too much coddling and patience to deal with — at least for me. Then again, I guess she never asked me.
