Rory: failing at holding flowers
January 1, 2017 4:49 PM   Subscribe

Cracked.com offers a fan theory for why Rory Gilmore is so terrible in "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life." (SLYT)

(For those who don't want to watch the video: the theory is that the "A Year in the Life" version of Gilmore Girls is the "real" one, and the original 1-7 seasons are actually the version in the book Rory wrote. Also, either Alexis Bledel has trouble holding things, or someone is not great at photoshop).
posted by lunasol (22 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is certainly an excellent example of why fans are fans and pros are pros. (at least from 15 secs viewing)
posted by sammyo at 5:01 PM on January 1, 2017


Aww. I like it but it makes me sad.
posted by Wretch729 at 5:14 PM on January 1, 2017


Now it all makes sense.
posted by kadmilos at 5:16 PM on January 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


Headcanon accepted.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 5:38 PM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


More important question regarding the promotional photo for A Year in the Life...whose hand is that on Rory's shoulder?!?!
posted by crashlanding at 6:04 PM on January 1, 2017


Amazing. Given that GG Rory is such a perfect little Mary Sue that everyone thinks is wonderful, this makes YITL Rory even more terrible, which I didn't think was possible.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:10 PM on January 1, 2017 [4 favorites]


...sooo the last episode of Roseanne?
posted by littlesq at 6:10 PM on January 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


Counter-theory: Rory was always terrible, it's just easier to see when she's in her early 30s.
posted by aaronetc at 6:27 PM on January 1, 2017 [54 favorites]


Rory is a cautionary tale about how you can take a basically good natured but passive kid and turn her into a self-absorbed friendless loser by never making her be accountable or suffer for anything she does, ever. See also Jess, the OG friendless loser who always skates by. I always wondered what Rory saw in him, maybe it was her future.

She should have ended up with Tristan, he wouldn't have let her life go by in a daze.
posted by fshgrl at 7:09 PM on January 1, 2017 [11 favorites]


I agree with "Rory was always terrible" (though I would charitably just say "believably flawed.")

She's terrible in YitL because she sleeps with an engaged man? In the show she sleeps with a married man. She's terrible in YitL for feeling entitled to a job at a website she looks down on? She felt entitled to a New York Times internship at the end if the show. She didn't even make a back up plan. (And Yale was her barely-acceptable back up to Harvard...) She's terrible because of how she treats Paul? Think of poor Marty.

I think Rory was always Paris-lite. But she (and Paris) are not without redeeming qualities to offset that enormous sense of entitlement. Witty, with a keen sense of the absurd. Hard working, when they choose. Loyal. Willing to take on quixotic quests. All of that remains true of 32 year old Rory (I like that she takes over the Stars Hollow newspaper).

She's awful in ways I can imagine people being awful. I'm reading "The Princess Diarist" right now, and Carrie Fisher's account of her affair with married Harrison Ford (in London) reminds me a bit of Rory. Just too wrapped up in wanting to make the guy love her because she craves that approval, to rationally evaluate the situation. (I think in Rory's case she also feels entitled because Logan, like Dean, was hers first...)

I like Rory in spite of her flaws and because of them, and really don't think she's any different in YitL, though you could argue she should be, at 32. I'm not sure she's more terrible than the average human. I manage to sympathize pretty well with Walter White, so I can sympathize with Rory in spite of her more ordinary immoralities
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:11 PM on January 1, 2017 [15 favorites]


I always wondered what Rory saw in him

A very pretty face with not much behind it, like looking in a mirror (or looking at her dad)? but poor Rory, the world just isn't set up for people whose one true love is their mom. I swear to god I honestly thought in the rose petal alice in wonderland wedding sequence where Luke kind of falls back and fades out for a bit so the Gilmore women can prance through the moonlight in dreamy dresses, I thought they were going to go full weird and marry each other. and god damn it would have been great.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:15 PM on January 1, 2017 [5 favorites]


That clip of Rory telling Paris she's a "pop-up book from hell" made me burst out laughing. Classic.

Rory is a cautionary tale about how you can take a basically good natured but passive kid and turn her into a self-absorbed friendless loser by never making her be accountable or suffer for anything she does, ever. See also Jess, the OG friendless loser who always skates by. I always wondered what Rory saw in him, maybe it was her future.

She should have ended up with Tristan, he wouldn't have let her life go by in a daze.


I agree with all of this except the Tristan part. The person she should have ended up with was Marty, but he wouldn't have put up with her bullshit (and didn't, hence why they didn't end up together). I remember watching Rory blow off Marty not long after they'd had this perfect connection together while watching I Love Lucy, and my boyfriend sitting beside me going "Aw, come ON!" I'd never seen him get emotional about anything on Gilmore Girls until that moment.

Speaking of which, did anyone else here listen to the prologue of This American Life's Christmas Episode this year? About marines deployed in Iraq who watched Gilmore Girls there to pass the time and became huge fans? It put tears in my eyes. Also, I can't believe Ira thought Rory should have ended up with Logan.
posted by nightrecordings at 6:13 AM on January 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


She should have ended up with Tristan, he wouldn't have let her life go by in a daze.
I agree with all of this except the Tristan part. The person she should have ended up with was Marty

Okay but the person she should have ended up with was Paris. Definitely Paris.
posted by galaxy rise at 8:07 AM on January 2, 2017 [11 favorites]


Paris would straighten her shit out and never tolerate her whining. She would have demanded to know if she was prepared for that interview. Paris is the spouse Rory needs, although she doesn't deserve her
posted by emjaybee at 8:22 AM on January 2, 2017 [15 favorites]


See also Jess, the OG friendless loser who always skates by. I always wondered what Rory saw in him, maybe it was her future.

Jess' mom was a disaster who wasn't really capable of caring for him, which inflated his tendencies to be a difficult kid and an awful teenager, but over the course of the series he grows the hell up, recognizes that he's been a bad person, and takes steps to rectify it. He goes off, works, develops his own contacts in publishing, writes a novel and succeeds in the literary world on his own merits, as opposed to Rory, who's writing a book and just expects it to succeed because she's Rory Goddamn Gilmore.

Rory isn't one-tenth of Jess. Or, for that matter, Dean, who she condemned for not being as book-smart as she was, although he was obviously A) more than willing to read and B) obviously intellectually gifted in other respects.
posted by mightygodking at 8:45 AM on January 2, 2017 [6 favorites]


Counter-theory: Rory was always terrible, it's just easier to see when she's in her early 30s

Plus, adult Lorelai and now-adult Rory have been able to acknowledge it and reference it and even joke about it in a way you're not able to with your parents when you're still teenaged, or twenty-something and ambitious, or etc. Now it's just out there. Haha, oh, Rory, you're a genuinely bad person. Haha, yeah, Mom, it's true, but, hey, Stars Hollow has a pool with people who dare to be overweight, so.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 10:30 AM on January 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


I never wanted to watch it either but I got sucked into the original series this year. It's addictive. The characters (except Rory) are pretty well written and real-person-like.

And this thread hasn't touched on the real reason to watch the show which is Lane Kim and her wacky Mom. I went to school with a male Lane Kim and was his fake girlfriend for a while so he could date my friend all that sneaking around brings back some memories.
posted by fshgrl at 11:18 AM on January 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


I wrote about this a bit on Fanfare, but in my view, Rory has no drive. Everything she does on the show is prompted by someone else. Culturally, she's trying to keep up with her mom. Academically, there's always Paris. Even her supposed primary dreams in early life, to go to Harvard and become a journalist, are maintained by her mother. I haven't watched the first few seasons in a long time so I'm not sure where the journalism idea came from, but clearly Harvard's main draw is that it's not Yale, and the person who values that is her mom. Mitchum temporarily knocks her off course, Jess nudges her back on. Why did they need to bring Jess back to do that? Why couldn't Rory have figured it out on her own, the way Lorelai wanted her to? Because her pilot light is unlit. She cannot spark her own fire. I wonder if Rory could have found a vocation she'd actually be passionate about if she had been left to develop her own interests. Maybe she should have been an actress.

Lorelai does stay out of Rory's love life, and look what happens there. Rory ends up only wanting what she can't have. Jess, when she's in a relationship. Dean, when he's married! The relationship with Logan is more Logan's doing than anything, and there, she won't commit when she has the legitimate chance, but becomes interested again once he is with someone else. She's not going to succeed in the relationship arena until she figures out how to want what is attainable, and keep wanting it after she's already got it.

So if the first seven seasons are Rory's idealized version of events, then at 32 she's still lacking the self-awareness to realize that her own primary character flaw is her lack of ability to chart her own course through life. Maybe there's another layer to this and the book idea is actually suggested to her by a therapist after she has a full nervous breakdown.

By the way, I can think of a real life parallel in Alexandra Fuller (minus the closeness with her mom). Fascinating but tumultuous upbringing, engaging personality, but her life wasn't really going anywhere in particular until she wrote about it, and it hasn't really been going anywhere since the hype over "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" died down. Passionate attraction to a married man, but her own marriage fizzled out. I hope she'll be able to find a new fount of inspiration as I'd love to read more and more from her.
posted by mantecol at 12:38 PM on January 2, 2017 [6 favorites]


And this thread hasn't touched on the real reason to watch the show which is Lane Kim and her wacky Mom.

Very much this. Although when watched through that lens, the show isn't particularly funny; it's tragedy masquerading as comedy.

You know poor Lane is doomed from the start, and despite being so clearly more deserving of success and victory over her mother's carefully circumscribed life plans, that it's just never going to be in the cards. Rory, on the other hand, is directionless — or, rather, is only given direction externally — and despite this combined with occasional stunning lapses in judgment when she does try to act independently, can't really help but succeed anyway. Moral of the story: meritocracy is a lie.

I'm particularly fond of this interpretation because it gives the otherwise gaggingly-saccharine world of Stars Hollow a more realistic, frankly sinister undertone: they can have all the town meetings they want and play-act at egalitarianism, but at the end of the day (or the show), the people who are born to go places and do things will go and do them, and those that won't, don't.
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:14 PM on January 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


I loved GG when it was on tv the first time. Recently rewatched, and I was surprised by how annoyed I got by it. I found myself doing that 1x fast forward looking for scenes with people that were not the primary protagonists around the end of season 4, I think. I gave up completely around the time Rory moved to the garden house, so never saw the last two? seasons, but I think I read the recaps back when that awesome recap site was alive. (Long day, the site name escapes me completely.)

I loved so many characters that deserved more screen time and better stories and endings than they got. There was no goddamn reason to write Lane into that cul de sac or turn Sookie into a Lorelei level lunatic, and I'd give up all of my bratty Rory screen time to weird Kirk storylines all day long.

I think I'm just experiencing cognitive dissonance because at the time the show aired, I remember thinking how funny it was, how bold the female characters were, how feminist it seemed, and now, watching it again, I'm just appalled by some of it. It's so much more tropey than I remembered. And the main characters are just terrible narcissist people. Funny, but gods, you wouldn't want to be close friends with them.

Edit to add, and that is why the fpp explanation of real GG makes perfect sense to me.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:16 PM on January 2, 2017


>(though I would charitably just say "believably flawed.")

That's about how I feel. Logan is unequivocably the worst, but he's still the kind of mistake someone her age would make. And regardless of how you feel about Dean (my wife's not a fan), he still ended his marriage for her, and was greeted with a, "nah, changed my mind."

So if this theory has any weight, then it's admirable that she's so honest about her mistakes - Lena Dunham-style. Having said that, though, I don't necessarily think that was AS-P's intention - I think what we saw is *sigh* canon.
posted by mgrichmond at 10:32 PM on January 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


OK I am mostly on board the Rory is objectively awful train, but Dean has no one to blame but Dean for the collapse of his marriage. Ugh. He's the most boring person in the world. And he has terrible hair.

Paris, of course and always Paris.
posted by Wretch729 at 6:06 PM on January 5, 2017


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