Analyzing Rory from the Guys' Perspective

This is a video analyzing whether Rory Gilmore is a good partner to her love interests. The Gilmore Girls fandom has developed teams with many fans being Team Jess or Team Logan, but I think it's also important to ask the question, who is team Rory?

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
1:14 Dean Forester
21:22 Jess Mariano
32:11 Logan Huntzberger
46:19 Who is right for Rory?

[maxinesteuer]

I feel like Rory is just…very much a self absorbed teenage girl. Not evil, but not the saint the narrative and side characters try to treat her as.

[rhinestcowby]

Wow, I completely missed that Rory faces exactly what her past boyfriends felt during her relationship with Logan. A taste of her own medicine.

[audaciousaldc]

I’ve always felt that Rory and Logan’s relationship was by far the least toxic (although still somewhat toxic). This is for a multitude of reasons (especially the fact that they were both adults), but i think one of the main reasons was that logan felt secure in their relationship. dean and jess both seemed to feel inferior to rory, they idolized her and felt like they weren’t good enough to be with someone like her. this insecurity showed in different ways. dean responded to it by being extremely clingy and overbearing while jess would ghost and ignore her whenever he felt insecure.

[lclfreeze]

It's about dang time someone considers the guys' experience of Rory rather than just what they can do for her. I've always been team Nice work.

[Hexgirl]

I am team Logan. I think he's the best suited to Rory because he idolised her the least out of her boyfriends and saw her for exactly what she was - which was his counterpart in privilege and entitlement as well as her drive. He doesn't idolise her in the same way that Dean and Jess did

[Tory]

Rory 100% led Jess on in Philly! She even says she intended to cheat on Logan but ultimately couldn't. Jess tells her he doesn't deserve to be treated like that.

[myoldusernamewastaken]

I personally always felt really bad for Dean since he was a super sweet and dedicated boyfriend until Rory cheated on him. THAT breaking of trust was what ended up making him crazy. He was literally traumatized. He married a girl that he had only been dating for a few months because he was terrified of being betrayed/abandoned again. And although I can’t excuse his behavior in the later seasons when they got back together, Rory continued to be really not good for him. I have so much respect for the way that the writers managed to show flaws and trauma in believable (if not occasionally extremely frustrating) ways

[kuukki]

I don't understand the " Dean shouldn't have broken up with Rory in public" argument. She's been literally humiliating him by flirting with Jess, which was also in public by the way... So what should he have done?

[lourdessaso]

The only reason Rory told Dean about the car accident was because she knew he was going to find out even if she didn't tell him.

[OcyTaviAh]

I’m going to be real… as much as the show does frame Jess and later Dean as not being good enough for Rory… they’re actually too good for her. Logan is really the only good match for her in background and personality. I’m not team Logan, but I’m also not Team Rory. I’m honestly Team Moving On because all these men can’t seem to move on from her very well… also she has cheated on everyone she’s dated except Jess, and I honestly think that part of why she didn’t cheat on Jess was because he didn’t stick around long enough… but she did use Jess to cheat which is also a pretty bad way to start their relationship… Rory was honestly a pretty bad girlfriend to all of them, and way to much work for the only real reward of having a special Main Character Girlfriend

[tanyamoretz]

i rewatch this show now and honestly, i'm amazed at how horrible Rory treated Dean. She literally kissed Tristan the night after Dean told her he loved her and started dating Jess a couple of weeks after Dean gifted her a car. No wonder he turned into obsessive stalker. I'm glad they give him a closure and a happy life in the mini-series, he deserved it

[kerriethompson]

Rory was somewhat of a decent girlfriend to Logan, but that went all out the window during the revival. Her problem is that she gets very possessive over her exes. When she had an affair with Dean she excised it as “my Dean.” Flash forward to the revival she had a full on affair with Logan even though he’s engaged and she’s with someone else all because she was with Logan first. She never takes responsibility for her actions. It drove me crazy! 😊

[sneakaboo]

I’m team season 1 Dean and post-Rory Jess, because the Dean we got for the rest of the series is the sad clone they replaced him with after they assassinated his character 😭

S1 Dean was charming, a reader, and a movie buff who could keep up with Rory. They had to dumb him down to make Jess seem smarter bc “oh Jess reads!” but so did Dean? that’s why he was interested in Rory in the first place, he saw her reading and would ask her about her books. he even recommended her a few. degrading one character to make another look better isn’t that impressive writing-wise, especially since Jess’s intelligence never came up after he got with Rory. Jess developed into a great character, but he was more fun as a friend than a love interest.

instead of Jess being attractive because he’s ‘smarter’, he should have genuinely just been Rory’s friend. Dean is still smart, but emotionally immature, and they break up because he was too jealous and possessive. S1 Dean could be rash too( aka the “I love you” breakup) so I think it would have been believable and less frustrating. Plus, it would’ve created an opportunity for Jess supporting Rory post-breakup, which probably would have been adorable. they could have still gotten together, they just dragged us through a poorly written love triangle to get there and massacred my boy ☹️

[daks]

Rory treated all of her boyfriends similarly to the way Loreali did even Luke, disposable and she could just pick them up whenever she wanted.

[nedquark]

27:15 I doubt Jess ever asked a single thing of Rory. He didn’t have any other friends in Stars Hollow, so there were no social events to drag her to. He was a bit of a lone wolf with an independent streak. He worked at Walmart instead of taking a loan. And if he wasn’t with Rory, he usually seemed to be reading or working.

[MermaidWannabe-xf]

Could you do this with Lorelia and her boyfriends?

[Ethia]

Only 11 mins in but regarding Rory’s lack of remorse: that’s definitely in her character. She wasn’t a good friend to Lane and was quick to drop her as soon as she got a bf. Their friendship was already in shambles when Rory started going to Chilton, only it’s hard to notice because as OP says, we see the story through Rory’s gaze.

[MarnieGolde]

Rory was always quick to recognize privilege in others but never herself.

[outspoken]

I think Loagn is the best for Rory, even if he is not my favorite of the boys. Dean matched Rory morally, but he was not a match for her intellectually. Jess matched Rory intellectually, but not socially. Logan matched Rory morally, socially, and intellectually. Rory needs someone who matches her so that they challenge her to be their equal, if she thinks (subconciously) that she has something her partner doesn't, she will likely disrespect them and that's when it seems she walks all over them. Because her and Logan are on such equal footing, they develop a mutual partnership.

[elycassandra]

I just don’t understand team Jess. Their relationship was terrible and then when Jess finally matured, Rory became a mess. I always felt that they were never on the same page and that they are best as friends. And by the time the revival came around, Jess became too good for Rory.

With Logan it’s totally different. For me it always felt like they suit each other best. They’ve had a mostly mature relationship and are on the same wavelength.