I don't like the Gilmore Girls, there I said it.

Lorelai has a very avoidant communication style. She just avoids her problems instead of facing them head on.

The most annoying thing about Lorelei and Christopher getting back together was that Christopher obviously didn't care for Rory at all. He left when she was a baby, in the dictionary episode it's established that for 14 years he didn't visit his daughter in her own town, and they didn't get back together until she was an adult and therefore, out of their lives. He only wanted Lorelei, I don't know how she could date someone who doesn't love her daughter, ESPECIALLY when said daughter is also HIS.

i knew i did NOT like lorelai when she was serious about beefing with a 16 year old who comes from a troubled background (jess). like that boy was trouble yes but he was a kid??? i hate how she refused to stop handling rory with kid gloves even at 18 but was ready to treat jess like he was a 30 year old who refuses to get his life together. shes a weirdo for that fr

Rory is the most entitled, self-centered person yet who grew up incredibly privileged, yes I acknowledge her mom has had it hard but they have literally been raised by the entire community, taken under their wing, never been without anything. Rory and Lorelai have been wrong SO MANY TIMES, and no one ever called them out on it.

just wait until rorys college years in the later seasons 😭

Emily Glimore - Gaslight Lorelai Gilmore - Gatekeep Rory Gilmore - Girlboss

I would argue Rory's depth comes in the later seasons, which is when most people start hating her character and wishing they had the old Rory back. I think your criticisms of her character being too "perfect" or unrealistic is very interesting considering that is part of what eventually leads to her "downfall". Many will say they became disappointed in how Rory turns out but I think, regardless of if she is likeable or not, she is one of the most realistic depictions of gifted kid burnout ever. I would be interested to see a follow up on this if you finish the show.

I have always hated Rory when watching this show. Without spoiling anything I will say that throughout the ENTIRE series Rory does a lot of terrible things and tries to defend them. The town and her mom usually back her up even when she's wrong and enforced that mindset. By the reboot Rory isn't even trying to justify her horrible behavior she just doesn't care as long as she gets what she wants. I've always been shocked to hear people defend her because the comment is always "everyone makes mistakes" but Rory does a lot of these bad things as an adult and continues to do them in the reboot.

Lorelai is also a narcissistic controlling mother; she just has a cool girl style. She named Rory after herself and mapped out her whole life for her, just like Emily. She has a tantrum whenever Rory makes her own decisions, even about who to sleep with. She’s also weirdly controlling in her own romances, which is why Luke feels perfect to her. He’s like a prison boyfriend she gets to visit on her own terms at the diner, but he’s mostly trapped there and she just goes to see him when it’s convenient for her. The show is actually very well written that way as a character study of all these people; it’s just that it’s constantly hand-waving away what it’s showing as “this is awesome actually” and most people can’t see past the cozy lifestyle stuff and the overt supposed baddies and good guys. The dialogue and actors are awesome though.

This is why I always say I enjoy the characters, I don't like them. But to expand (rant incoming): My main beef with Lorelei is her relationship with Rory and how toxic they are while being painted as aspirational. She’s not that different to Emily. Harvard was Lorelei’s dream, not Rory’s, just like Yale was Emily’s dream for Lorelei. Lorelei’s overbearing immaturity forced out Rory’s perfectionism, hyper independence and shyness, so she doesn’t have any natural personality traits, and she’s constantly playing mom to Lorelei who, despite pushing her dreams onto her daughter, has almost no regard for Rory’s hard work and success, so there's no time or space for Rory's emotional growth. Look at how Lorelei showed up to Chilton on Rory's first day and then dated Rory’s teacher, knowing it would likely fail, and then moved onto Rory’s dad when it did. All of this after Rory had just switched schools, already a major change for an introvert, and was low-key bullied from day one while facing added pressure to succeed from her grandparents because of their financial help. Add to that the fact no one really sees her except through the lens of “like mother, like daughter” aka for the mere fact that she’s Lorelei’s child or due to her perfectionism, which is a trauma response caused by Lorelei’s bad parenting. There’s no room to find herself or become her own person because all the adults in her life insist she should be just like her mother, and so she does, just a watered down version, adopting all Lorelei’s worst habits while losing most of her own because she never got to grow up outside of the Lorelei bubble and because trauma looks different in adulthood

That is why the show (in my opinion) is so good! The main characters are realistic and very complex. They have great character development, even though sometimes is not for the best.

as a longtime Gilmore Girls & Lorelai fan, I love this! Most of the shows I watched I’m fully in support of a favorite character’s heroic (or antiheroic) actions, but Gilmore Girls is that rare show where I’m like, “Now what in the hell… is you doin….??” I think it’s because the stakes are so much lower, it feels safer to watch them get up to their various shenans. My only complaint right now is I wish this was absolutely longer! I love hearing people dissect shows/characters/motives/etc

I know the characters are deeper than that, but I hate how the show's writers made Rory's relationships parallel to Lorelai's. Rory saw her marriage to Logan in such a negative way, but unlike Lorelai she didn't choose to run away, she looked him in the eye and said no. Lorelai viewed relationships as a mess, and I believe this influenced Rory's decision. Ironically, Rory ended the show having an affair with the father of her child who was engaged to someone else, like Lorelai and Cristopher in season two. (let's face it, we know that Rory's baby's father is Logan).

Stars Hollow seems to have some kind of festival every month, which is more than any town I've ever lived in. (We do have a lot of amateur theatre here, though, so there's that.)

I've watched Gilmore Girls frrom start to end and a lot of your character assessments are really accurate for the show continuing down the line in later seasons!! without putting in spoilers the best I can, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that s1 is probably Loralei and Rory at their best tbh, s1 and s2 are the only ones I truly ever watch anymore. I can't wait to see your next commentary videos on gilmore girls and PLEASE do Ginny and Georgia it's kinda like watching a train crash imo

I think Rory seems so bland because she literally has no idea who she actually is. She was always the hardworking overachiever and Lorelai’s daughter. There was always this master plan of going to Harvard, studying journalism, and eventually becoming a foreign correspondent, but even in season one it’s sort of hinted that this is more Lorelai’s plan than it is Rory’s. And while she does deviate from the plan slightly, for the most part she is very much on the path that has been laid out for her. But starting with her leaving for college, I think we start to see her begin to falter a bit. She has no idea who she is outside of being good at school and all the interests she’s kind of inherited from Lorelai, and there is, I think, a decent story in there about her having to figure out who she actually is and what she wants. But I don’t think the person writing the story is able to really handle those storylines (or is even interested in them). It’s sad really.

These are the things I love about it, the aesthetic, the motivation of Rory and Paris with their education earlier in seasons, and Tristan, and Lori’s ability to be a single mother badass, and the mother daughter relationship.

The thing is that none of the characters in the show is perfect and they're not supposed to be. They're supposed to be like real people, so of course they do dumb shit

I don’t like Gilmore Girls either. The reason I don’t like it is because it reminds me too much of my relationship with my own mother, which is actually a bad thing because my mom gave me PTSD from treating me like her best friend instead of her child, which made me what psychologists call a “parentified” child, except that I was that scenario that you said where we actually lived with my grandma, and so I got both generations of trauma. This show is a study in generational trauma, which is important, but for some people, this show hits way too close to home. 💔

I have some of the same opinions, but for Emily Gilmore, I think she does begin to realize her mistakes & actions and we get to see how damaged she is because of how she thinks she has to live. She sort of starts understanding Lorelei and Rory. I’ve only watched up until season 5 and that’s all I’ve seen of Emily Gilmore’s “character development”.