To call myself a massive Gilmore Girls fan would be an understatement. I grew up with the Gilmores. I was a Gilmore. I was sixteen when Rory was sixteen. I was raised by a single mother who was my best friend. We were the goddamn Gilmore Girls.
Since the revival made its way to Netflix, there has been a lot of criticism surrounding the development of Rory as a human being. Many have said she's a brat and a mess, even a horrible person.
I, as always, must respectfully disagree.
While I understand the viewpoints of these loyal, but disgruntled viewers, I can't help but criticize their criticisms.
First and foremost, the thing you have to understand about Gilmore Girls as a whole is that it's very much rooted in fantasy. Stars Hollow is a fantasy town full of colorful characters, a town troubadour, a festival for every season and only one stop light. Everything is magical and relatively fantastical.
Rory Gilmore was a straight-A student. She transferred from a public school to the most prestigious private school in Connecticut. She somehow managed to look beautiful, have boyfriends, become more fashionable as the years went on, watch endless movies with Lorelai, go shopping, study until she wore herself thin and then went on to become Valedictorian with acceptance letters to Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
This is not a realistic expectation for any human being who requires sleep.
My point being that Rory Gilmore was an idealistic character from the beginning. The bar was set so high. Of course our girl was set up to falter.
I'm not saying that all of Rory's choices over the course of seven seasons or any of the revival were particularly great. She messed up a lot; she stole a yacht, she seems to have a pattern of finding herself with men who are taken, she neglected one of her boyfriends altogether, she rode the wave of one New Yorker piece with no real career plan. None of these really echo the Rory of season one, but they do echo some of the realities of life.
Rory was a character who always had a plan. She had pro/con lists and homework to do after her homework. She spent all of high school itemizing her time down to what she had to study for. She had to find time for extracurriculars for her transcripts. She worked on the school newspaper. It's no surprise that after college she waffled.
Yes, Rory Gilmore was given every opportunity. Her college and post-grad were paid for. She had a lot of help and a lot of luck on her road to what should've been great success.
But maybe the direction Rory took was a different definition of success... or better yet, an allowance for her to fail.
Rory never truly failed in her life.
Yeah, she got a D that one time.
Yeah, she was encouraged to drop a class at Yale.
Yeah, she went to jail for stealing a yacht.
Yeah, she dropped out of Yale for a semester or so. But we never really got to see Rory truly FAIL. To fall flat on her face and try to figure out life for herself.
This was how I saw "A Year in the Life" Rory Gilmore. Failing, flailing and figuring it out; much like her mother did at 16. Rory is following in her mother's footsteps 16 years later than her mother did.
Failure in life is normal and healthy. Being coddled and cradled and told you're perfect all the time is not.
So many Gilmore fans spent so long romanticizing the character of Rory Gilmore because she was written so perfectly. She was someone who was studious and smart, but still cool. She made you want to study for your test, not get wasted with your friends and throw up all over their parents' new carpet. She made you want to hang out with your mom - or wish you had a relationship with your mom more akin to Rory and Lorelai.
But all of the romanticized characteristics of Rory put her on a pedestal's pedestal. She was never able to really evolve as a human until she did stupid or thoughtless things in her life; until she experienced small failures.
Failure helps shape you as a human, for better or worse.
Failure teaches you the most valuable life lessons.
You learn more from failure than you learn from success.
To find your greatest passions in life, sometimes it takes failure. Sometimes that failure takes you down a road you never planned to explore.
We got to watch Rory fail in the reboot. We got to watch failure shape her as a human. And in the grand scheme of things, Rory's life is not over; just the show is.
She may never be the timid, sweet, thoughtful Rory we knew in seasons one and two and she may never be Christiane Amanpour either, but I like the direction ASP decided to take Rory Gilmore; reality.
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