#sam rewatches gilmore girls 2022

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it always sits with me wrong when people say that mitchum was inherently right about rory in the long run, not because some of what he said can’t be argued bc it can. but bc it’s mostly done by people who hate rory and fail to see the implications of why mitchum is doing this or how. he’s not just her boss or just logan’s dad, he’s someone who actively offered himself up to be rory’s mentor and never followed through. he didn’t clear define her role to her and expects her to just jump into a conversation with the higher ups when she is lowest on the totem poll and doesn’t have as much of a leg to stand on. he even said himself that he’d been meaning to talk to her but hadn’t gotten around to it. i’n sure he’s a very busy man but this was the end of her internship, and it’s clear that he didn’t make teaching her an actual priority. and then he tells her, in what i perceive as deliberately harsh wording, “you don’t got it.”

i’m not a journalist. i don’t know whether she’s “got it” or not. but i do know that i don’t believe he can tell that based on a short internship (it lasts the span of a few episodes, it can’t be more than a few weeks) where he didn’t actually TRY to teach her or engage with her. which means he’s either just very harsh and so high up that he fails to see the nuance of her reality, that someone can be talented and driven but not yet in a position where they have the privilege to take the risks that he does. OR. he deliberately set her up to fail so she would assume it was because she got too distracted and break up with logan / or break her spirit so she doesn’t pursue her aspirations and instead be a trophy wife for logan.

now, the first is a lot more realistic and what i would bet. but i can’t help but wonder if there’s some truth to the second option. when mitchum said “i don’t bullshit” all i could hear was logan telling rory that mitchum hates double-talk but is amazing at it. there’s not a better disguise for a liar than a man who purports the value of honesty.

anyway. crtiticize rory all you want, she IS very flawed. but consider the possibility that even if mitchum is right or SOMEWHAT right, he’s still an asshole

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okay on the one hand i Do Not like that lorelai acts like rory doesn’t have any right to be worried about the house in 2.11 because like. she has to live there to. and it genuinely does seem pretty irresponsible to not take the one option she seems to have, regardless of her feelings about that option.

on the other hand, i think certain parts of the fandom often handwave lorelai’s concerns about her parents and act like she has no right to those concerns. but her whole fear about allowing emily to help her is that it will be used as leverage against her, and emily DOES do that. at the very end of the episode, she uses it as an excuse to have her dar meetings at lorelai’s inn in such a way that lorelai can’t protest without being guilt tripped. in the very next episode, along with chilton, emily throws the loan in lorelai’s face when she wants richard out of the house and is asking lorelai to take him. so lorelai’s fears are not like. irrational or unfounded.

don’t get me wrong, i love complex relationships and i think the show is at its best when examining the messy nature of the gilmore family. i LOVE not knowing who to root for. but the fandom often boils these things down to be so black and white when i just don’t think they are. i find it immensely frustrating.

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“i just want you to know... i really wanted you to be my step father”

“i just want you to know... i really wanted to be your step father”

ETERNAL SOBBING

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“you’re the man that i want to want”

god ;-;

i know i’m in the minority here but i don’t hate chris or lorelai x chris. i think they actually match each other’s energy and charisma and wit really well, and it sucks that their timing has never worked out. 

but i do love their last conversation before deciding to end their marriage because it reminds me that they’re not just husband or wife or lovers or even rory’s mom and dad. they’re also friends. like. their relationship is very much rooted in knowing someone knows you so well because of how old of friends you are. and it’s so so sad to me that people can’t see that regardless of the conflicts they get into, lorelai and chris will always care about each other. because even if they aren’t right to be together, They Are Friends.

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my controversial take is that jason SHOULD sue richard, even though i understand why it means lorelai feels like she can’t be in a relationship with him. but like. what richard did was awful. it probably would never work (it doesn’t seem like he and floyd did anything illegal, just dishonest and immoral), but - okay i guess should is maybe a strong word. i don’t blame him for wanting to. 

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WAIT. lorelai and rory just immediately coming in, seeing luke is stressed, and helping him serve food: sobs. they’re a fambily.

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i won’t act like dean’s initial reaction to rory not saying i love you back wasn’t immature and unncessarily meanspiriited because it was. but what i will ALSO say, IN ADDITION to that, is that saying you love someone always feels like a big deal, but when you’re a teenager especially. you’re so young, making it particularly hard to put yourself out there. i’m not saying that rory owed him an immediate response or that he didn’t act like a jerk - only that i understand why a teenage boy who just told his girlfriend that he loves her for the first time is feeling particularly overwhelmed, vulnerable, and hurt when he thinks he just put himself out there and that she doesn’t feel the same way.

on the other hand, i’m genuinely interested in what dean’s reaction says about how men are taught to react with acting out when expressing their vulnerable sides doesn’t go to plan and how that plays into toxic masculinity but i doubt the writers were thinking about it that deeply honestly.

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“you got kicked out of camp”

“i tried to liberate the horses”

OBSESSED w lorelai gilmore in this moment

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something that’s always struck me (though i haven’t always had the words for it) is that lorelai seems, at times, to want richard’s approval more? like, they don’t have nearly as much friction in their dynamic, but i think it’s more due to an emotional distance (arguably on both their parts, though as the parent, i would guess richard the set tone.) and it makes lorelai more interested - not in seeking out his approval? because she doesn’t really - but in wanting it, even just a little.

whereas for all emily and lorelai’s screaming matches, i think they understand each other quite a bit better. they struggle at times, but part of the reason they fight so much is because they don’t like seeing themselves in each other. yes there’s fire and toxicity there, but it also verges on intimacy and being known a little too well

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reasons i think rory should have gotten to deal with jess breakup more in the narrative

cw mentions of sexual assault //

after they began dating, despite making his interest in and attraction to her VERY clear and basically acting like she was the only person in the world he really liked, once jess actually got together with her, he did not communicate, would go radio silent when he said he’d call, and just generally treated her worse than he did before they actually got together. the very epitome of “someone who’s only nice to you” isn’t that nice

this got to the point where she felt so ashamed that she felt like she had to lie to her mother about spending time with him after ghosting her when he said he’d call. rory literally admits it makes her hate the way she feels about herself in 3.20.

he also repeatedly lies or evades real communication about the struggle he’s having with school

because jess won’t communicate with her, this leads to their fight in kyle’s bedroom and what i would call his subsequent assault of her. as they’re making out, she repeatedly tells him to stop, becoming increasingly distressed, and trying to push him off until he eventually stops.

after this ^ and his fight with dean, he basically goes radio silent again.

he leaves without letting her know he’s going or saying goodbye and if she hadn’t run into him on the bus, she wouldn’t have even seen him one last time

she explained how important going to the prom with lane was to her and he ended up not taking her. i know he couldn’t but that was because of decisions HE made and didn’t ask for help. i know he was going through something but in the context of everything else, it really sucks that she missed her prom with her best friend because of him.

she has to deal with this very turbulent break up at an already really weird time in her life where she’s graduating high school and starting the adult chapter of her life. normal break ups during a transitory time like this are hard enough but this one is INCREDIBLY messy

again, normal breakups are somewhat public and embarassing no matter what, but the fact that she’s defended jess from so many people, alienating herself to some of them, isolating herself in some ways - him just bailing and her having to explain that to her loved ones or have her mother tell her he left and isn’t coming back must feel humiliating. 

also like he didn’t even GIVE her a proper breakup. the common courtesy of an explicit and clear “this is over” conversation is something i think rory, who values structure and rules, particularly would have appreciated instead of him just disappearing.

and then when she’s started settling in at yale after months and months of no communication he just shows up and tells her he loves her and demands she drop out of school to be with him? and like just expects her to be able to process that out of nowhere?

tldr; this breakup would literally be traumatic if it were in real life. the fact that the narrative barely spends any time letting rory deal with it sucks imho.

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it baffles me that lorelai sleeps with chris and plans to start a relationship after he tells her that he and sherry are on the rocks but knowing they haven’t actually broken up yet and i don’t see nearly as many people criticize her for this as they do for rory when she does it with dean in season five.

honestly i get it a little actually because the narrative frames lorelai as the wronged and heartbroken party in the first scenario but she really is doing something super similar? 

i can’t remember if i’m recalling correctly that rory makes the comparison and lorelai tells her it’s different because sherry and chris weren’t married? maybe i’m just conflating the show with discourse i’ve seen. but regardless, i hate that argument because it invalidates relationships between people who aren’t married, whether with intention or just because they haven’t gotten there yet. marriage isn’t the only way to have a meaningful and committed relationship.

ANYWAY. i actually understand lorelai doing this and then being so hard on rory in season five because it makes for an interesting character flaw, that cognitive disonnance and hypocritical nature and need for rory to be better than she sees herself. but it’s immensely frustrating when the fandom is basically covered wall to wall in rory criticism and lorelai can do something so similar and it not get talked about nearly as much?

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shhshshs okay i know this is the bare minimum but i do like that luke doesn’t take his anger with lorelai out on rory and still gives her coffee even though he wouldn’t have done the same for her mom in that moment. i stan one (1) one grumpy diner owner and his stressed overachieving daughter figure

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i’ve always had a bone to pick with lorelai telling emily that rory would never steal because rory literally tells lorelai she stole a towel from the club in season one (and the corn flour, but i’m not sure that one counts), but watching lorelai and dean hopelessly try to convince each other “rory wouldn’t lie” makes me realize the writers were really trying to emphasize lorelai’s squeaky clean perception of Good Girl Rory and how it’s slowly starting to be tarnished

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also lorelai and sookie laughing about how bad their seats at the concert are? top tier comedy djdhhdhs

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“it’s a long story... no, actually it’s short. i slept in a zuchinni patch!”

lorelai golmore i am in love with u

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lane’s storyline while pregnant about freaking out about her loss of agency and people treating her like an object now that she’s pregnant and her music dreams dying make me so sad. i mean. i feel like it’s played for laughs or like she’s being overdramatic but it’s just actually literally what happened. and she was so bright and just as ambitious as paris, just about different things, and she deserved better. god.