S1. Episode 4: The Deer Hunters

Il Duce strikes again

The episode brings the introduction of my least favorite Lorelai boyfriend: Max Medina. Besides the fact that his slicked back pompous hair (why is it so voluminous, and what is hiding beneath it) makes me want to punch him, he is bad at his job and is maybe a bad person. He’s worse than Digger, who I actually liked, and he’s worse than that one guy who likes coffee and goes fishing and then disappears without explanation. Of course, no one lives up to Luke Danes, but even without comparison, Max Medina sucks.

The epi starts with him handing back essays to the class. As he returns the essays, he has a little comment here and there. Nice work, great effort, not so great effort! Doing this makes it abundantly clear who did well and who didn’t. When he hands back Rory’s essay, he basically announces to the class that she got a D and did real, real bad. Like, can we please keep this shit private? Why do we need to humiliate this teenage girl, who JUST enrolled in your class two seconds ago, and who will clearly agonize over the fact that she nearly failed her first ever major assignment? He then reminds them all they have a test on Friday covering Shakespeare—everything to do with Shakespeare? Like, not focused on one work, just all of them? I have so many questions about the structure of this class—and that it is worth 20% of their grades!

I get that teachers do this. I had a few rotten teachers myself who did not bother to teach us, nor shield our graded work from the prying eyes of other students. We would sit alphabetically in my high school calculus class, and the teacher would stack the tests in order for each row and have us pass them back. I sat in the last row, so every person in the row could see my grade, which was mortifying. So, I know how Rory feels! I, too, have gotten a D, and everyone knew! My issue right now is not really with the fact that Chilton is full of incompetent teachers (although I do have plenty of complaints about that), but rather, that everyone acts like Max Medina is a good guy and a good teacher. Um, from the literal very first time we meet him, he shows us he is neither.

Rory has an existential crisis since her entire identity to this point has been tied to being a good student. This actually happens again when she goes to college, so we are well set up from the beginning to expect this recurring mental breakdown. Rory is a millenial archtype of white middle class privilege in the early aughts, and in this case, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s portrayal of collective millenial anxieties is accurate. (Her later attempts in the Gilmore Girls revival fail pretty badly in my opinion, but that’s a defensive rant for another day.) Millenials are a generation of people raised to overachieve and invest in the delusion of college’s ability to secure you a job, all while Luda’s “What’s Your Fantasy” plays in the background as part of the soundtrack of our lives. Was the Gifted program powered solely by the misplaced dreams of millenial children? I still remember the day when I got my first C on an algebra test (the beginning of a very humbling math journey for me) and I cried in class. I had felt like that C was an indictment, that I had been condemed to some undesirable category of person, the kind of person who gets Cs (!!!) on algebra tests. Add to that immigrant parents who expected As only, because my performance in school was a reflection of our family’s ability to thrive in America, a kind of challenge to prove people who thought we didn’t belong wrong. Those early failures wereimportant, of course, because I’m now much more well adjusted to disappointment. But many millenials, myself included, still feel we’re in the Gifted program, our identities tied to performance even as those past promises have proven false and the world continues to crumble around us.

Rory stays up all night studying with her mother. Their study session, I’d like to add, continues to bolster my claim that Chilton is literally teaching their students how to be good at trivia and nothing else. Rory spends all night memorizing random dates and facts about Shakespeare, nothing that would lead to interesting critical thought. It’s like, what year was Merchant of Venice published? That kind of question only matters if you’re putting it into historical context. But go on, Max Medina, with your stupid multiple choice test. They stay up all night, oversleep, and wake up in a panic. Rory has to drive herself to school and at a stop sign, inexplicably calls Lane to ask about her notes even though she has no time to do anything but drive directly to Chilton for her test. A deer headbutts the side of the car and runs away, and Rory gets to school ten minutes late. I personally feel Rory would’ve been late regardless of the deer situation since she was dilly dallying, but I don’t think time functions in the same way in Stars Hollow as it does in reality. Consider the rate at which coffee is drunk, food is eaten, errands are run, and work is completed as evidence to this claim.

And so continues the fuckery of Chilton and Headmaster Charleston. Lorelai’s comparison of Headmaster Charleston to fascist dictator, Mussolini, is fully deserved. (And, that is not the last Il Duce reference in Gilmore Girls, I promise you!) Not only is Rory not allowed to take the test, but no one does a wellness check on this girl to see if she’s okay after getting into a car accident with a deer. Rory loses it, and boy is it satisfying. She screams in Paris’s and Tristan’s faces! Who doesn’t love a public tantrum. Her anger was righteous, though. It’s insane that there are “no makeups” for tests at Chilton. What about if I’m in the hospital? Or my mom dies? Or I get into a gruesome highway pile up? What if I’m chronically ill? I know it’s like the year 2000, but schools were still governed by laws. This isn’t the wild west, people. When Lorelai goes in to talk to the headmaster and Mr. Medina, however, Headmaster Charleston opens the door to his office, dismissing Lorelai from the conversation before it is over. In fact, before any information about the situation is relayed at all? Forget blood boiling, this is frankly puzzling behavior. No one is going to explain to Lorelai, the parent of a girl who was in clear mental distress, what has happened? And then the headmaster is going to infantalize a grown woman by treating her like a student and dismissing her from his office? I frequently imagine myself in that situation and the outcome is never flattering for me. Not to beat a dead horse, but everyone at Chilton so damn unprofessional.

Speaking of unprofessional, Sookie St. James should not be hunting people down in their homes to force risotto upon them. A food reviewer calls her risotto “perfectly fine” in an otherwise rave review, and Sookie loses all grip on reality. I’m no fan of Sookie, but to be honest, this bit is pretty good. Harmless, ridiculous, and an amazingly quick way to communicate Sookie’s character to us. She’s the kind of person who fixates, obsesses, and perfects. She is clumsy but charming enough that people forgive her frequent social faux pas. This situation also showcases how completely self-involved every character is. Sookie is utterly devestated by this lukewarm reception of her risotto, and Lorelai, her best friend in the world, does not even notice for days. In fact, she doesn’t even notice until she’s blabbering on about her own life and Sookie fails to respond because she’s so caught up in her own misery about something that 100% does not matter. There are many moments throughout the series where the characters are oblivious to other people’s emotions, too busy thinking about their own lives. This is a pretty great lesson for real life. If I ever think someone cares about little old me, I just remember they’re actually only worried about themselves. At the end of the day, we’re all just a bunch of Gilmore girlies.