Like any good bookish, nerdy Rory Gilmore-wannabe, I’m excited for the Netflix “Gilmore Girls” revival. But I’m fed up with the ever-present question: “So are you Team Jess? Team Logan? Or Team Dean?”
For ye uninitiated, the hit TV show “Gilmore Girls” followed the lives of a close-knit, fast-talking mother-daughter duo, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, played by Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel. They navigated life, love and their adorably quirky home town, Stars Hollow (the New England village where it’s always autumn for some reason). In a much-ballyhooed revival, Netflix is bringing the Gilmore girls back to the small screen as a four-part reboot.
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So why did one of the freshest characters in sitcom history — a nerdy girl who loves books more than boys, really enjoys studying and who (presumably) grows up to be an award-winning journalist — become defined by her first three boyfriends? First came Dean, the “perfect” first boyfriend (until he cheats on his wife two seasons later); then Jess, Luke’s wayward nephew; then Logan, prep-school bad boy, Yale classmate and heir to a massive newspaper fortune. People happily recall Sookie’s high jinks and Lorelai’s slip-ups, but any affinity for Rory is simply distilled into one of these three men.
Even show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino rolled her eyes at the “teams.” “I have no allegiance to her love interests,” she said in June. “I’m Team Rory.”
Yeah, there were some romantic diversions on Rory’s quest to becoming a Christiane Amanpour-level journalism star — including a tryst with a married man (Dean), a car wreck (Jess) and an arrest record (Logan). But, in the mother-daughter dynamic that has endeared Gilmore Girls to so many viewers, there’s more than just patriarchy at play. Lorelai is a formidable figure, and her bond with Rory is deeper than any boyfriend can understand. In Season 2, Dean gives Lorelai’s then-fiance Max some advice on “how to deal with the girls”:
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Dean: Go with their bits.
Max: Their bits?
Dean: Yeah. Like, if you’re eating pizza with them, and Lorelai decides that the pepperoni is angry at the mushrooms because the mushrooms have an attitude, and then she holds up a pepperoni and the pepperoni asks for your opinion, don’t just laugh. Answer the pepperoni.
And I mean, the thing is, throughout the entire series — no boyfriends actually do this. Not even Dean. To be believable in the world of Gilmore regulars, you have to go with the bits. This is why standout characters like Sookie, Luke and even Michel are mainstays in the Gilmore universe. The guys Lorelai and Rory date — Jess, Dean, Logan, Max, Jason — don’t know how to answer the pepperoni. When you don’t know how to go with the bits, you don’t know how to understand a Gilmore girl.
Share this articleShareMaybe I’m so prickly to this notion of teams because I’ve always identified with the Rory aesthetic — study-minded, career-minded, nose-always-in-a-book, boyfriends were around, but they weren’t the whole story. There was getting into college, and working on the school paper, and (always) navigating family drama.
There’s this scene in the final season of “Gilmore Girls,” the moment every fan had been waiting for when Logan proposes to Rory. He’d even asked her mother, the most important person in Rory’s life, for her hand in marriage. I remember watching with my sisters. Rory takes off the ring. “I like the idea that it’s all just kind of wide open,” she says. “And if I married you, it wouldn’t be.” Logan walks away.
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I was 17, and as Alexis Bledel’s giant blue eyes welled up with tears for that beautiful, blonde newspaper brat, I also felt this deep feeling. I wasn’t sad or disappointed in Rory. I was proud.
And just before the series wrapped for forever (or so we assumed at the time, anyway), Rory gets a call for her dream job: following young presidential hopeful Barack Obama on the campaign trail, for an unnamed “online magazine” (jeez, 2007). She was headed to Iowa, starting her life as a real journalist. I was sitting on the couch watching as I contemplated my own college decision. Rory’s excitement at Friday night dinner, the way she ran back to the table to share the news with her grandparents, and the way she and her mom cheered, it felt like the perfect next step, better than any boy.
I want the same for Rory in the latest revival. I watched the teaser and crossed my fingers, hoping the appearances of Dean, Jess and Logan are just that — appearances in the midst of a bigger story line (they’re not as cute as Pushkin, after all), one about Rory’s future beyond Stars Hollow. In her life that was always books and planners and pro-con lists, I want her character to follow through on the same promise she made herself at the end of Season 7 when taking off that ring: more things wide open.
READ MORE:
Lorelai Gilmore is a single mom you actually want to be
“Gilmore Girls” on Netflix: A refresher (and ranking) on each season
“Gilmore Girls” revival: How a TV reboot goes from idea to reality
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