S1. Episode 16: Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers

The milestone three-month anniversary

Sometimes I blink and its three months later. For example, I posted my last Gilmore Girlie meditation three months ago, and it feels like three seconds have passed. I say this not only to passively excuse such inconsistency, but to also point out that a three-month anniversary celebration is absurd. Even when you’re sixteen years old and it’s your first boyfriend. One year? Yes, an actual, legitimate milestone. Six months? Okay, half a year, I’ll give you that. When you’re young, especially, that seems like a long time. But three months? No one does that. The only thing we measure in months is baby age!

192-month-old babies Rory and Dean go out to a fancy dinner to celebrate their 12-week dating anniversary, and Rory eats a lot of food, gets an extra to-go meatball (“it’s a mother/daughter thing.” What???), and then is gifted a junkyard car that Dean intends to fix up real good. Regarding the car, I’d like to say the props department went a little too far in the direction of “beat up,” because in any realistic situation this thing is scrap metal. Dean’s like, “I love you,” as the car door falls off and Rory’s like “Thanks????” and then he gets mad and they break up. I have a lot of feelings about other people’s feelings about how this all plays out. People love to hate on Dean and therefore refuse to have empathy for him even when the situation warrants it. From his perspective, he has shown Rory he loves her through various acts of generosity—remembering and planning their 3-month (lol) anniversary, seeing her need (lack of car) and trying to remedy it (by building her one)—and when he tells her he loves her and she does not reciprocate it, he is crushed. He doesn’t take it well, unsurprisingly, and people love to roast him for it. Red flag! He wants to control her! He’s trying to buy her love! (Aside: the episode begins with Dean complaining about reading Anna Karenina. Sure, maybe he doesn’t have such refined tastes, but guys, he is reading that tome FOR Rory. Remember this moment in like two seasons when they make him brain dead) Okay, simmer down people. If I was sixteen and told someone I love them, and then they said thank you and admitted they couldn’t say it back, I, too, would be upset. And I see why he would break up with her. “I love you” is not something you can think your way through. It’s a feeling that you either have or you don’t, and if she couldn’t say I love you when their relationship is at its best possible iteration, then more time wouldn’t fix that.

But, from Rory’s side of this, she doesn’t need more time to figure out if she loves him. She needed more time to identify the feeling itself of love and be brave enough to articulate it. Like, if it’s your first time being in love, how do you know what it feels like? But, unfortunately, Rory is also sixteen and probably doesn’t have the emotional maturity to express this to her boyfriend, who is presently in a freefall spiral. Her response of “thank you” is one born from panic and a desire to keep the peace, both key personality traits of our girl. If I just say thank you politely, everything will be okay, right?! Before all of you lose your minds, I’m not saying Rory should say I love you if she isn’t ready yet. I’m just saying Dean is allowed to be upset and emotionally decimated that she doesn’t, and that doesn’t make him a bad kid. There are plenty of other things about him that suck, but can we please stop being so sanctimonious and let someone feel like shit literally 2 seconds after having their heart broken?

Both of their reactions are 100% totally relatable. No one is at fault, and yet, everyone is at fault at the same time. I’d like to give the Gilmore Girls writers credit for good writing, but honestly, the I-love-you-thank-you is a common trope that tv shows love because it is so cringe and simultaneously so believable, because really, what do you say to someone who says they love you before you can say it back? I literally rewatched a New Girl episode the other day (the Christmas ep. from season 1 where Justin Long tells Jess he loves her after they exchange gifts and she says through her teeth thaankkk youuu?). I am pretty sure we could name like twenty shows that have an episode devoted to this because saying “I love you” for the first time is truly a feat of good timing, riddled with risks, and possibly a universal struggle among anyone who has been in a relationship.

Another thing we all expected has come to pass as well: the ex-girlfriend has returned to Luke’s Diner! Rachel shows up with her canvas duffle and her leather jacket and Lorelai is forced to wrestle with a jealousy she never thought would rear its ugly head. And then she goes to FND without Rory (who is on her 91.25 day anniversary dinner date) where Emily blindsides her with a blind date. Connecticut Ken, Lorelai calls him, which is frankly being too generous to this guy because I personally feel Ken would be a lot hotter. He talks endlessly about his job and offers to predict Emily’s date of death, an offer so hilarious it might make him attractive, except he has no self-awareness and therefore no notion of his comedic timing.

Because Connecticut Ken has no real future with our beloved protagonist, this entire blind date serves as an opportunity to rebuild Lorelai and Richard’s relationship after the brutal beating it took last episode, in which Richard yells at Straub in defense of his daughter, and Lorelai deeply misunderstands his motivation for doing this. There is a gap in understanding between them that may never change: Richard acts to protect the family name, and in turn, expects for family members to also act with the same M.O., even if it means sacrificing self or happiness; Lorelai believes protecting family is to preserve your loved one’s right to be themselves and choose what they want. That’s not to say Richard doesn’t love his family, its only that their motivations to protect family come from different places. Collective family name and reputation vs. Individual happiness and self-fulfillment. Taken to extremes, both have their flaws. In Richard’s zealous wish to make sure the whole family is safe, sometimes the people who populate this family are left unhappy. And for Lorelai, the danger of making selfish decisions in service of individual joy is ever-present. Despite having this valley between them, full of tension from their last family dinner, the thing that brings them together is how woefully dull Connecticut Ken is. Nothing worse for a Gilmore than a tedious converastion partner, and after all, Richard did not ask for this man to attend dinner. This was purely the scheming of Emily Gilmore.

So when Lorelai pretends to go to the bathroom, but then Richard finds her with one leg out her childhood bedroom window, ready to shimmy down the side of the house to escape without saying goodbye, Lorelai begs him to let her go. He pauses for a moment and then yells down the stairs that Lorelai isn’t up there, allowing her to disappear rudely into the night. There is something so touching about this exchange—perhaps that Lorelai says Thanks, Daddy, and somehow we’re able to see her as a little kid again. To be entirely honest, I get a little verklempt these days when I see this episode because it makes me miss my own father terribly. There is something in that interaction that is reflected in a lot of father-daughter relationships if you’re lucky enough, a soft-spot dads have for their girls and the kind of mischievousnous, a thick-as-thieves quality that moms and daughters often don’t have between them.

Not to give you emotional whiplash but I have to talk about how rude it is that Lorelai does this. The show treats it as a fun thing, like ha ha, look at how wacky and rebellious Lorelai is! But like, she hated this man so much she couldn’t endure the entire visit to her parents house? This dinner has to be what, a four hour affair? Show up at 6 or 7 p.m. and leave at 11 p.m. at the latest. Or even just leave after dinner through the actual front door. It would be entirely acceptable for her to say she has to go home when dinner concludes! Unless he’s spewing hate speech, I really don’t see how any person could think the best fight-or-flight response is to jump out the window. The only person who has real reason to jump out of a window from pure horror at her circumstances is Rory after Dean says he loves her. Unfortunately the piece of junk car Dean bought her has no windows.