Gilmore Girls is one of my favorite shows, but I haven’t been watching it as long as most people. What really drew me into the series in the first place was news of the revival going around social media. I fell in love with the characters and the quirky little town pretty quickly. By the time I finished binge-watching the original series, the revival was going to be released in less than six months.
Even though I haven’t been invested in the show as long as most fans have, Rory Gilmore is important to me. I was rooting for her. I wanted to see her become a successful writer for a daily newspaper, just like she dreamed of in college. Her life in the revival was not what I expected from her.
I’ll be honest, I can understand why most people are upset about how Rory turned out in the revival. I was too, at first. How did the Rory Gilmore turn into this? How could the writers do this? She was cheating on her boyfriend – who she forgot even existed the majority of the time – with an engaged man. She ruined the one job opportunity she had by not being prepared for the interview. That was not the Rory Gilmore I knew and loved in the original series. After watching for a few hours I realized, that’s exactly who she was. She is still our precious Rory Gilmore. I realized that as fans of the show, we hold Rory Gilmore to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. I think that’s because Rory Gilmore is who all young girls growing up with the show aspired to be. I mean, I was 19 years old when I watched the series for the first time, and even I wanted to be just like her.
Gilmore Girls is filled with realistic characters. That, along with the postcard-like town of Stars Hollow, is why the show is so charming. Rory would not be realistic if she had a picture-perfect life. In the end of the original series, she had a perfect job lined up. As nice as it would have been to see her still working at her dream job, that’s not how life works for most people. Rory faced a lot of ups and downs while growing up during the original series, and I don’t think anyone really expected that to change. She’s in her thirties, still a young adult in every sense of the word. She’s allowed to make mistakes, just like when she was a teenager. The ten-year gap between the two series isn’t that long in the big scheme of things. Our Rory still has time to grow.
When I first turned on A Year in the Life and realized that Rory wasn’t doing so well, I was afraid for my own future. As a current college student, I can only hope that I have a job for the rest of my life. I’m realizing that too is not realistic. However, since my mom and I are just as close as Lorelei and Rory, I think I’ll be okay.
