When most of the Gilmore Girls cast came together for a reunion at the ATX Festival in June, talks of a movie or a Netflix season resurfaced.
And now, it looks like all of our wildest dreams may finally be coming true: check it.
So now that my beloved show is in the spotlight once again, I've decided to do the most worthwhile thing I can think of...which is to lay the smackdown on the hottest debate in Gilmore Girls history: Which of Rory's beaus was best?
And so what follows is a totally unbiased and purely scientific breakdown of why Rory and Jess should have ended up together.
So my husband got me the series set for Christmas several years ago, because that's just the kind of man he is, and up until last year I hadn't ever watched through the entire show. (Since then I've watched it through twice. Because you know, priorities.) I was late to the Gilmore Girls party, having never watched an episode until my freshman year of college in 2006 (what can I say, we never had cable). I tuned in during the show's dreaded final season, and even though that season is denounced and reviled by fans worldwide (and deservedly so), it still managed to hook me enough that I made sure I caught the reruns on ABC Family every day when I got home that summer.
A lot of people blame the failures of Season 7 on the fact that the original writers had left the show, but here's the thing: Season 6 is just as hard for me to get through as Season 7. Nothing that happens is believable or true-to-character, and if there's one thing I can't stand, it's needless drama for drama's sake. People hiding stuff from other people for dumb reasons is basically this entire season. Frankly, the only bright spot in the the sixth season is the reappearance of Jess Mariano, book aficionado and bad-boy extraordinaire.
But first things first: let's take a second to examine each of Rory's boyfriends in turn.
DEAN
Dean is Rory's first (and third?) boyfriend. Initially, Dean is a decent boyfriend. He's sweet to Rory, he works hard, and he even gets along with Lorelai. But he's also about as interesting as a cinder block, has nothing in common with Rory, he's a little bit sexist, and is also kinda dumb. Also, hello butt cut.
But bad hair and grumpy Paul Bunyan looks aside, Dean also has some unsettling personality traits that negate any of his good qualities in my book. For one thing, his anger issues. Dude's fuse is about as long as a freshly clipped baby toenail, and he takes every problem out on Rory by yelling at her and treating her like an idiot. To me he sometimes even felt borderline abusive. I mean, Dean seriously breaks up with Rory when she doesn't immediately reciprocate his "I love you", and when the bracelet he made her goes missing (thanks to Jess), she's genuinely terrified for him to find out because he'll be so mad. (A normal boyfriend would be understanding in this situation, especially when his girlfriend is hysterical and clearly feels awful for losing it, amiright?) And when Jess moves to town Dean develops a disturbing jealous streak, becoming extremely possessive of Rory and a little bit stalkerish. Granted, Rory treats him really unfairly during that time, but still. He could tell something was happening between Rory and Jess (he even talked to Lorelai about it, surprise surprise), but instead of kicking her to the curb like she deserved, he hung around pathetically and let her walk all over him. Also it really bugged me how he would talk to Lorelai about Rory, like he and Lorelai were equals and Rory was this naive, helpless little girl, and I think it was really out of character that Lorelai, my-daughter-is-her-own-person-she-makes-her-own-decisions Lorelai, was so okay with that.
And then a few years later, when she's at Yale, Rory and Dean date AGAIN. By then he's married to a girl who's just as dumb and boring as he is, so he and Rory end up having an affair (of all possible situations, this is when she decides to lose her virginity...to a married Dean...slow clap, Rory, slow clap), and I glare in the general direction of that incredibly stupid relationship and the bad decisions that were made all around. In the end, Dean winds up dumping Rory publicly (again), blaming her for everything bad in his life, and resenting her for her socioeconomic status. Yeah Dean is a real winner.
(Which is why it drives me crazy that Dean is repeatedly lauded by both Lorelai and Rory throughout the show as "the perfect boyfriend". He's not! He wasn't! He may have seemed nice in the beginning, but he turned out to be explosive, unforgiving, and bitter. GTFO Dean.)
I think most of us can agree that Dean plainly sucks. This quote (from Jess of all people) sums him up nicely in my mind:
"I guess it started as a joke, just to bug him, but then he just got so mad, you know. Like he is so tall, and I just was looking at him and he's standing there all tall and mad, and I don't know. It was just really funny."
Yep, tall and mad, that's our Dean-o.
LOGAN
See, at least Dean started out as a good person...Logan, not so much. When Rory meets Logan, he is about the crappiest, most arrogant, douchetastic and stereotypical rich boy you can imagine. (Who, oddly enough, seems to have a lot of trouble finding suits that actually fit. My husband watched the last few seasons with me, and he said that more than anything else, Logan's ill-fitting suits were what broke the suspension of disbelief for him. I mean, Logan is supposed to be this impeccable, debonair ladies' man, yet he constantly looks like a little boy in daddy's suit. #lol) Sure he's cute with his perfectly intentional I-woke-up-this-way hair and his little scrunchy-eyed smile, but he's also insufferably conceited and a real jerk most of the time. Plus his best friends are a couple of weird rich kids who we're supposed to find funny because they shamelessly cater to their demographic by being namby-pamby womanizers and drunks, but really they're just outstandingly annoying.
Logan is wrong for Rory because she dates him at a time in her life when she is at her worst and least Rory-like. He's reckless and cocky and he doesn't take anything seriously. I feel like I know Rory well enough to say that there is no way on earth she would've been interested in someone like him, especially not after he treats her friend Marty like dirt and then seriously tries to rationalize it later (and correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think he ever apologizes for that or even admits he was wrong?). And yet for some reason she spends almost three years of her life with this guy. She makes so many excuses for Logan and his crappy treatment of her and others around her, so much so that by the time Logan's dad tells her she's not cut out for journalism, she's forgotten who she is and is apparently lost enough to let that one critique (which wasn't even that devastating and was obviously contrived because of her involvement with Logan) derail her life for a year. Seriously?
And then during Rory's dark days that follow, when she's acting like such a pathetic baby, Logan does nothing to snap her out of it or help her at all. Instead he HELPS HER STEAL A YACHT and buys her Birkin bags and parties a lot and whines about how Daddy Huntzberger's making him act like a responsible adult (funny, we're supposed to hate Mitchum Huntzberger but a lot of the time I totally agree with him...), and in general acts as an enabler because now Rory's acting as childishly as he usually does.
The thing is, Logan never truly gets Rory, her dreams, her ambitions. It's why he is perfectly fine with, and even supportive of, her acting so unlike herself. I mean he pops the question and then just arrogantly expects things to go his way: she'll marry him and move across the country with him and then just find some random newspaper to write for out there; forget about her dreams of writing for the New York Times or becoming the next Christiane Amanpour. Plus, a public proposal, really Logan? At a fancy party in front of all her grandparents' rich friends, no less. Does he know Rory at all!?
No, as far as I'm concerned, Logan's only good qualities are his smarts, his ability to keep up, and the fact that he's apparently a great writer. It's really too bad all that talent is wasted on such a petulant child. I would give him some credit for growing up a little on his London trip, but then he makes one bad business decision and he's back to partying with his idiot buddies. It drives me crazy that Rory is so willing to overlook his immature, irresponsible behavior so. many. times. Her excuse is always the same: "I'm in love with him, I can't help it." Give me a freakin' break. She rejects Jess in Season 4 (even though she clearly still has feelings for him) when he pleads with her to leave Yale with him because (gasp) it's a reckless, irresponsible idea. And she's smart to do so (we'll get into that more in the Jess section) because Jess was a pretty terrible boyfriend. (It still hurts my soul to see Jess so wounded, but she made the right decision.) And yet she sticks around for Logan, whose behavior is not all that different from Jess's...why, exactly? Ughhhhh.
And now, the pièce de résistance:
JESS
Jess is Luke's nephew. He arrives in Stars Hollow with a bad attitude, a pack of cigarettes, and the world's hugest chip on his shoulder. He has a crappy mom and an even crappier dad and as a result, homeboy carries around more baggage than a Delta flight. We hate him so good. I mean somehow in the midst of finding him a world-class jerk we still just can't get enough of him. We love to hate him! We hate to love him? Oh but he's funny and terrible and smart and quippy and he can keep up with the best of the fast-talking Gilmores, which I suppose he gets from his uncle. The dynamic between Jess and Luke is one of my favorites on the show; the two of them share some really great quintessential GG banter. The two actors were made for each other, really, I mean I can't even.
Exhibit A:
View this video on YouTube
"Jess are you a gigolo?" I mean, lolololol.
And this classic fan favorite:
And this one isn't Luke and Jess, it's actually Jess with his biological father, but I just love this scene and Jess's earnestness and desperation in it...some really great acting right here:
And one of my favorite Jess moments of all time (the part I like starts around 2:30 but you gotta watch all of it for it to make sense):
I know that video is terrible quality, but I just love that scene. The lighting is beautiful and the music is perfect and good gosh could Rory's eyes be any bluer.
I mean seriously though:
I love that tender, real moment between the two of them. No sarcastic jabs, no wisecracks, no verbal sparring; their walls are down and they're seeing each other and Jess is being so sincere and sweet to Rory. This is how I know they would have worked out in the end, because this is Jess in his truest form. This is Jess distilled, who he is when he drops the sarcastic, hardened front he usually keeps up. He cares about Rory and he cares about letting Rory be Rory; he encourages her and wants her to chase her dreams even if it means he gets left behind.
Anyway, so Jess and Rory become friends soon after he moves to Stars Hollow, bonding over their mutual love of great and obscure literature, and it quickly becomes obvious that Jess likes Rory since she's the only person he'll have a real conversation with and is not a complete a-hole towards. Unfortunately, Rory is still knee-deep in the throes of Deandom at this point. So obviously, she decides to pretend like she doesn't have feelings for Jess, does a terrible job of it, and starts treating Dean like dirt in the process because she is too chicken to just break up with him. Which is frustrating, but works for a TV show I guess, because hello unresolved sexual tension.
Long story short, Rory and Jess finally get together about a third of the way into Season 3. It's pretty crappy the way it happens, and it all could've been avoided if Rory would've just treated the Dean situation with a modicum of maturity, but what's a TV show without a little drama I suppose. Also, I guess we should keep in mind that they are only teenagers. ;)
But even though their relationship is fraught with drama and punctuated by Dean's lame threats and bad comebacks, Rory and Jess have insane chemistry as a couple. There's a spark between the two of them that just wasn't there with Dean and isn't there later, with Logan. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the actors were dating in real life, or that Alexis Bledel isn't always the best actress but since they were a real couple she didn't have to fake anything, but whatever it was, it worked. Their kisses are without question the best. The steamiest, oh-baby-est, gotta-have-you-est, best. Witness:
Sadly, throughout their relationship, Jess's emotional baggage always seems to get in the way. He has no concept of how to verbalize his feelings or appreciate Rory or really communicate at all, and as a result, he's rarely there when she needs him. Though he does seem to feel conflicted about how he treats her and he tries to make up for it, it's always too little too late. It's clear that Rory cares about him deeply (she even considers losing her virginity to him), and Jess is simultaneously smitten with and confused by her. But Jess's modus operandi when something goes wrong is to shut down, which of course doesn't fly with Rory, and his inability to let people in is what eventually leads to their relationship's downfall.
So he ends up dumping her unceremoniously a few days before her graduation. He'd found out he wasn't graduating high school on account of never showing up, he gets in the fight with Dean (finally!) after misguidedly putting the moves on Rory at a party, and then his biological father Jimmy shows up at the diner, introduces himself, and promptly leaves. Jess is bewildered and lost and so he decides to skip town and follow Jimmy to California to figure things out. Oh and by the way, he doesn't tell Rory any of this. He calls her after graduation, doesn't say anything but she knows it's him, and she tells him she thinks she might have loved him, but it's over. Sad face for daaaaays.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about their relationship is that we never really got to see any of the good parts, which was super unfair of the writers. I mean we got to see Dean and Rory just hanging out and "being cute"...I wanted to see Jess and Rory watching a movie together, or eating crappy food together, or more of them bantering about books. But instead all we get is them either making out (which is fine), fighting with each other, or fighting with stupid Dean. I shake my fist at that.
Jess shows up again briefly in Season 4, tells Rory that he loves her, and then leaves before she can say anything. A few episodes later he's back again for his mom's wedding, where he's agreed to walk her down the aisle (ALL THE FEELS), and ends up reading this self-help book Luke has been reading about communication and being deserving of love...and then he and Luke share the tenderest moment in all of Gilmore-dom:
View this video on YouTube
(I may or may not have ugly-cried like a baby the first time I saw this scene…)
Immediately after this, Jess goes to Yale and tries to convince Rory to run away with him, but he goes from zero to desperate in approximately 0.3 seconds and Rory is completely taken aback. He tells her he knows they're meant to be together, but they can't do it here at Yale or in Stars Hollow, they have to go someplace away from everyone else. Umm hello crazy. Of course, Rory is on the fringes of Dory 2.0 by now (ugh, barf), plus she's obviously hesitant to be involved with Jess again since he was so flaky the first time around, and so she tells him no. Like literally, that's all she says (yells): "NO!" And even though that's the right answer, I just wish she would have been nicer about it and tried to explain things to him. But of course, nothing more is said. Jess gets this heartbreaking hurt look on his face and he leaves immediately.
But as awful as that moment is to watch, I think Rory's adamant rejection of him is the main catalyst for his transformation. He was starting to see how unreliable he'd been (hence the "I know you couldn't count on me then, but you can now, you can"), was realizing there's a better way to handle relationships (acknowledging that Luke has been the only force of stability in his life and showing gratitude for that), and he understands that he loves Rory, but he still wasn't ready for her.
Luckily for us, transform he does. He comes back in Season 6 to show Rory that he's written a book. A real published novel! And he has a real job at a real publishing house! He's going somewhere with his life and he's come back to tell Rory that he couldn't have done it without her.
OF COURSE this is during Rory's idiotic early-twenties crisis, so she's dropped out of Yale, is living with her grandparents, and has joined the DAR. She repeatedly tells Jess that her situation "is only temporary", but she is visibly embarrassed about her current state of affairs, and though she is proud of him, Jess's accomplishments only serve to deepen her self-consciousness. They're about to go to dinner together when Logan shows up, having returned early from one of his father's forced business trips, and crashes the party. Unsurprisingly, Logan is a complete douche and mocks Jess relentlessly, and they don't even make it through drinks before Jess leaves. Rory follows him out, and then Jess has what is in my opinion his strongest moment on the show, where he calls her out on how irresponsible, weak, and un-Rorylike she's being.
View this video on YouTube
(I love how he softens when he realizes he's really struck a nerve...oh gosh and then he even remembers her birthday, swoon.)
It's not long after this that she moves out of the Gilmore mansion, gets a job, repairs her relationship with her mom, and reenrolls at Yale, and it is so fitting and full-circle that Jess was the one to snap her out of that funk, just like Rory did for him years earlier. Later, she tries to cheat on Logan with Jess (to get back at Logan for cheating on her...this is a really mature relationship, people) but chickens out two kisses into it and confesses to Jess what she's up to. He is upset and tells her that he doesn't deserve this, but then he's still so nice to her about it ("If it makes you feel better, you can always tell him that we did something"), which kills me. Sometimes Rory is the worst.
And that's the last time we ever see Jess.
In conclusion...
To those who complain about how Jess was just as much of a douchebag as Logan, let's think about something for a second: Jess was an 18-year-old high schooler during his relationship with Rory...while Logan was a senior at an Ivy League college. Sooo basically, Logan, who is 24 when he starts dating Rory, suffers from behavior problems similar to those of a troubled 18-year-old kid? An 18-year-old kid who, by the way, has his act together by the time he's 21 while 24-year-old Logan's still acting the drunken fool with Rory. Wow, Logan's even more of a winner than I thought.
And to those who complain about how Jess was just as short-fused as Dean, let's consider the fact that Jess grew up with about 15 different stepfathers and a crazy, drug-addicted mom who shipped him off to his uncle when she couldn't handle him anymore...while Dean comes from an ideal, stable home with both parents and a squeaky little sister, all of whom are crazy about him. Jess has a bit of an excuse for being angry. What's Dean's?
I've just always felt that if Jess could just get his ish together, they could make it work. All that boy needed was to grow up a little, put his past in the past, and rise above. But one of the biggest tragedies of the show is that by the time he does, Rory's lost in Loganland (and in my opinion, she really doesn't deserve Jess at that point). She and Jess are just never ready for each other at the same time. But I do find some solace in the fact that Rory is single at the end of the show, and I have faith that she and Jess eventually find each other after she's had time to recenter and come back to herself. I mean if you want to get technical, here's what we know at the end of Season 7: First, that Rory is headed off to be a reporter on the Obama campaign, and second, that Jess lives in Philadelphia. And as we all know, Obama gave his "A More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia, which was instrumental in tipping the polls in his favor and helping him win the election...ergo, Rory would have spent a good amount of time in Philly, which is where Jess lives...obviously they hook back up. It's just a fact.
I rest my case. Smackdown laid. Smolder us out, Jess.
Share This Article
