Gilmore Girls: A Deep Dive

In this video I discuss all things Gilmore. I break down the show by looking at its themes, characters and storylines.

Timestamps:

00:00 Background & Intro
00:41 Themes: Timeline & Structure
03:18 Themes: Dialogue
05:19 Themes: Feminism
07:26 Themes: Food
10:03 Themes: Coffee
10:59 Themes: Romance
12:41 Themes: Family
15:03 Lorelai Gilmore
20:20 Rory Gilmore
28:40 Emily Gilmore
34:21 Richard Gilmore
38:53 Supporting Characters: Lane
41:34 Supporting Characters: Paris
44:28 Supporting Characters: Kirk
45:15 Supporting Characters: Sookie
46:40 Supporting Characters: Jackson
47:54 Supporting Characters: Michel
49:06 Supporting Characters: Taylor
50:39 Supporting Characters: Mrs. Kim
52:25 Supporting Characters: Babette and Miss Patty
53:33 Supporting Characters: Zack, Bryan & The Band
54:50 Lorelai's Love Interests: Max Medina
56:45 Lorelai's Love Interests: Jason Stiles
58:52 Lorelai's Love Interests: Christopher Hayden
01:03:45 Lorelai's Love Interests: Luke Danes
01:10:21 Rory's Love Interests: Dean
01:14:01 Rory's Love Interests: Jess
01:17:57 Rory's Love Interests: Logan
01:23:46 Season 1-3: High School Years
01:29:20 Season 4&5: The College Years
01:33:41 Season 6: The Beginning Of The End
01:36:29 Season 7: No more ASP
01:40:24 The Revival
01:48:28 Conclusion

[TheVhsTapeYT]

Note 1: Hey y’all! I would like to sincerely apologize to anyone who may have been hurt or offended with the food section of the video. The honest truth is that when I recorded that part, like many other parts of the video, it was after a long day of work and I was just being lazy. I’m not used to making long videos like this and I wanted to give up plenty of times because I wanted to address so many things and I didn’t want to post it if wasn’t good enough. It doesn’t change the fact that it is already out there but I would still like to apologize for the diabetic comment - I only used it because I was going to reference another movie that showed the darker sides of teenage parenting. Still, I messed up and should have been more careful and it won’t happen again.
In passing I would also like to apologize for using syndrome when talking about Paris. It also was never to offend or hurt anyone and I honestly had no idea up until the comments that this was no longer acceptable.

As I mentioned at the end of video, the comment section is open for educating, constructive criticisms and discussions. I am fully aware that this is the internet and people get mad about lots of dumb things but I can admit when I messed up and this is me saying that I’ve heard, I’ve understand and I’ve learned. Anyway to all those giving me love, thank you so much, I am looking forward to making many more of these and making them better as I go. ❤️🥰

[emmac]

okay PAUSE Rory getting the same hairstyle as Lindsey in season 4 is new information for me that’s mind blowing actually

[sylvianjoki]

It will always annoy me how they had Lane fight so hard for dreams only to get married and pregnant and stay in Stars Hollow. They couldn't give her a successful career as a music teacher at Chilton or something?? Also I really like the plotline where Rory dropped out of Yale- it was nice to see her relaxed and behaving like a typical 18 y/o. Her character was wildly insufferable towards the end though.

[whatismyadjectiveiconfused]

for kirk, he's more than just comedic relief. this guy have a hundreds different kind of job and his jobs always blue collar one. this makes me think that kirk is basically that everyday guy that's forgettable but actually very hardworking, talented, reliable, and surprisingly funny

[bobo-lzjm]

I highly disagree that Mrs. Kim did not engage in abusive parenting tactics with Lane. She controlled EVERY aspect of Lane's life, and Lane could not be herself for the first 18 or so years of her life. When Lane's secret life was revealed, she was shunned and kicked out. Lane wasn't allowed to eat normal food. She didn't get to go out to the things other kids did. She didn't get to choose a college she liked. Lane lived with so much more stress and fear than she needed to bc of how controlling Mrs. Kim was. Controlling every aspect of what a kid does, who she dates, what she eats, what she can watch and listen to, and reacting with extreme punishment whenever those rules are violated, so that the kid is living in constant fear, is abuse to me.

[lightningfurystrike]

Rory, Lorelai, and Emily I think are a good example of generational trauma. Literally the saying "I won't mess my kids up the way my parents did me....I'll mess them up in new and different ways." Lorelai was too lacks in disciplining Rory because she was too busy giving her daughter all the love and affection she craved but never got. Emily was raised in a distant way very firmly and had what she saw as a successful life ignoring the fact that many of her friends did the same only to suffer under cruel, cheating husbands so she tried to mold Lorelai in her image thinking it would afford her the same success only to get a daughter as strong willed as both her parents. It'd be interesting in a few years to see what kind of parent Rory turns out to be. Given how we see her with Paris' children my money would be on a distracted narcissistic one who thinks she's giving her child the space she didn't really get with a mother who was constantly in her life when she's really neglecting them leaving her mother to step in with affection the same way Rory's grandparents stepped in with discipline.

[sofiaarmendariz]

While Lorelai and Rory are both semi-equally flawed characters, I think Lorelai’s more likeable because she is more self aware about her mistakes and flaws, Rory just thinks she’s perfect and never apologizes for anything she does, she hurt so many people that loved her like her mom and Dean and sometimes her grandparents and she just didn’t care. Even Emily and Paris are more likeable because they know they can be abrasive and strict and whatever, Rory’s just very stuck up.

[fifimimikiki]

I agree, Jess became too good for Rory. That "why did you drop out of Yale" was probably my favorite scene in the show and was a great reality check for Rory. Also, I knew Rory wouldn't be a good journalist after that ballet review. As a journalism major, I don't have a problem with what she wrote but a good journalist sticks to their instincts, and Mitchum (and Doyle) knew she didn't have that.

[WannabeDancer]

I'm so glad somebody else clocked the transformation of Dean.

He went from someone who was not as academically intelligent as Rory but still fairly smart, somewhat well read and clearly possessing a lot of mechanical and practical intelligence (because he re-built a car at 16 years old) to a blithering incoherent idiot just to have us root for Rory to gaslight him and get with Jesse.

[chifuchi]

I totally agree with the Lane bit! I thnk Rory's whole arc was already a groundbreaking "life doesnt turn out as you would have liked" to be and crushing expectations in the audience minds, but Lane should've been the very realistic example of a lot of very opressed kids that escape from their houses and finally gets their dreams in a realistic way. Of course she probably wouldn't have become a rockstar, but probably a succesful producer or something related to music. But something.

[RadicalCrazyness]

I wish you had put the Michele scene where he is delivering the CD to Lane. He runs around the block way more times than he was meant to and idk that scene always made me think Michele’s lack of wanting to help people was a front.

[paula-wpsh]

There was another scene like the not rectifying paris' sexual activity after not getting into Harvard. It really bothered me that lane's first time Was such a bad experience and she got pregnant and then hated and gave up on sex. They didn't rectify that either as far as I can remember. The just smoothed into the pregnancy plot and it's a really weird message to send.

[ennuiblue]

I never forgave Rory for not setting people straight *WHY* Jess crashed the car. He swerved to not hit an animal, wow, what a monster 😒

[trinaq]

I was always annoyed by how Rory treated her boyfriend Paul in the revival, when he seemed to be a perfectly nice guy. Then I realised that Rory was so used to being fawned all over by everyone in her small town, and when she wasn't doing well with her journalism career, she used Paul as a crutch to boost her own spirits.

[Marielusi]

I don't think Richard was neutral or layed back as a father. Lorelai said herself that he demanded something from her and if she didn't come up to his standard he dropped her and lost interest because poor him was sooo disappointed. That's emotional blackmail, gaslighting and neglect. And even after all this years he hadn't changed towards his daughter. They weren't even able to have a real fight or argument because he didn't want to deal with Lorelai's different opinion. Like when the fight broke out between Richard and Straub, Lorelai thought finally, there is her father standing up for her, siding with her. She wanted to thank him for it and what did he do? He told her he did it for the Gilmore name - for his pride, his ego to tell the truth. Nice dad.

[sonyafernandes]

I used to hate Rory's character, especially how she was portrayed in the revival, but then I read "Bad Feminist" by Roxane Gay. She talks about how women in TV shows and movies are expected to be perfect, and if they have flaws and are "bad" people, we hate their character, but there are often male characters who are scumbags that we love despite their flaws because they're an interesting character. That made me realize that what I hated about Rory was that she wasn't perfect like she was supposed to be. From listening to your review, I think its a really good point for why viewers end up hating her. She's the "perfect girl", so ends up disappointing all of us when she's a flawed person who makes bad decisions and doesn't show growth. We can love Lorelai and Emily through their flaws because they were never portrayed as perfect people, so we appreciate their growth as signs that they are actually good or at least trying to be. Same with Jess: he's always been a jerk so when he becomes a decent person by the end we can say he's not so bad, but Rory almost regressed to be a worse person if we value her character based on how much growth she had.

[imanmadihah]

about paris and rory's relationship; YES. i thought i was the only one whi felt bad for paris that she was the only one who considered rory her best friend meanwhile rory didn't even consider paris near the best friend aspect at all. i think i remember in one of the episodes where someone referred to paris as rory's bestfriend and rory was just like "...yeah... i guess she's my best friend..." like i genuinely felt bad for paris 😭

[leslierae]

I don’t love the age difference between Paris and Asher, but their relationship made allot of sense to me. Think about it, Paris’s parents are almost completely absent from the show, we see her mom once in season 1 for a very brief scene and she’s actively criticizing Paris’s skin and overall appearance, we NEVER see her Dad, and we only hear about her parents a hand full of times throughout the course of the show after that. They don’t even show up for her high school graduation, remember how shocked and amazed she was after spending Christmas with Jamie and his family? She calls Lorelai “the closest thing I have to a mother outside of Nanny” in AYITL which is shocking to Lorelai because they really haven’t spent all that much time together. Paris is STARVED for parental love and approval, it makes perfect sense to me that she would fall in love with someone like Asher, who is 1) a parent 2) a teacher 3) an older individual who’s more mentally compatible with her. Asher was able to provide Paris with the emotional support, acceptance and approval that she never received from her own parents. Is the relationship inappropriate and low key/high key creepy? Sure. But we often seek in our partners all the things we got or never got from our parents, so parental love starved Paris dating a much older man makes 100% sense for her character, and I think in some ways, adds some depth to her character

[PhilospherDjPsychologist]

30:10 You gotta understand the that mansion for Lorelei was a Skinners box of torture

One of my favorite, and saddest, details of the show was when Emily, Rory, and Lorelei go to Mia's wedding, and they are standing outside the house and Lorelei lets herself in. Emily is aghast at the informality, but Lorelei says something like Mia wants people to feel at home. And then you remember that, in every single Friday night dinner, Lorelei Knocked and waited outside, as way to express that this house was no longer her home. Emily was surprised that Lorelei let herself into Mia's place, which means that Lorelei was telling Emily exactly how she felt every Friday and it went right over her head.

[veronicachandler]

People always argue that Dean suddenly became a bad boyfriend so the show could make room for Jess, but I think the writers did a good job in sowing the seeds of Dean's downfall early. Even taking Jess out of the equation, Dean was too clingy. Lorelai chalked it up to him being so in love, but it was a real problem. Like when he decided to ambush Rory after she told him she wanted a day to herself to do homework, and that was after she promised to go out tomorrow. Or how he would blow up or blame Rory for things outside of her control. Remember when Rory was terrified over losing Dean's bracelet, not because she loved it, but because she wanted to avoid another blow up fight. As soon as she started walking on eggshells, scared of his reaction to things like that it was rightly over. He was also irrationally mad at other characters down the line like Lindsey and Luke.