The sacred texts of 'Gilmore Girls'
Will contain spoilers for a series that first aired more than two decades ago
I first met Rory Gilmore on The WB back in the days when people still watched TV on TV (We never had cable and I really enjoyed channel flipping through all the commercials until I found something interesting).
She was like a cool older sister — who was also quiet and soft-spoken and smart and bookish and attended a school that required uniforms. I liked her. I looked up to her. I was Team Dean (I never got to the part in Season 4 when Dean cheats on his wife, Lindsay, to hook up with Rory, the high school ex that he never got over; and Rory, even knowing he was married and not to her, doesn’t say no to the affair).
Actually, I’m not sure if I ever watched a full episode of “Gilmore Girls” back when it aired once a week (Again: We never had cable and I really enjoyed channel flipping through all the commercials until I found something interesting).
If the “Gilmore Girls” time slot was competing with the boys on “One Tree Hill” or “The O.C.” or “Supernatural” or “Veronica Mars,” I was watching those instead. But “Gilmore Girls” TV trailers were like the original Facebook updates of strangers I’ve met. I followed Rory’s career and knew she eventually graduates from a private high school and goes to Yale instead of Harvard. I knew that she went to school for journalism and ends up working at her college paper (two things that I eventually did too, although I’m not sure if having early influences like Rory Gilmore played a factor in my decisions or if we can chalk it all up to coincidence). I knew of Jess and later, of Logan, the guy who called her “Ace” all the time. (I didn’t like Logan based on the trailers, but then again, I never gave him a chance or watched any of his episodes until quite recently.)
I knew I looked more like Rory’s BFF Lane Kim than Rory and Lane was in the band her boyfriend was in (although I had somehow forgotten that said boyfriend was played by Adam Brody). I didn’t remember any of Lorelai’s relationships prior to Luke. (Did I skip the Max Medina and Christopher Hayden and Jason Stiles years or maybe I didn’t care enough to remember the lives of the grown-ups?) I knew Lorelai eventually ends up with Luke even though back then, I didn’t know that he waited eight years for her to become available, saving a paper horoscope she had once given him in his wallet.
I didn’t know how the series ended. I had lost touch with the “Gilmore Girls” during Rory’s Yale years. But I still attended their 2016 “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” Netflix reunion because I was curious where these characters ended up. Once again, Rory Gilmore was part role model/trailblazer/fortune teller, reassuring me that it’s OK if my life isn’t the one I once imagined by the time I’m 30 — that it’s OK if you’re still single or homeless or unemployed or all of the above. That succeeding in life isn’t like climbing the steps of a ladder. It looks more like navigating a frustrating mess of tangled Christmas lights that won’t properly light up, looping back and forward and then retracing your steps to return from setbacks. I still see myself in Rory. And I remember crying. But I don’t remember why.
I’m telling you all this because I never hated Rory Gilmore back when the rest of the world who did follow her journey in 153 episodes did, penning listacles like “25 Times We Literally Couldn’t Stand Rory Gilmore”; all-caps Reddit threads like “RORY GILMORE IS SO ANNOYING”; and articles like “Rory Gilmore from ‘Gilmore Girls’ Is Actually The Worst” and “Reconsidering ‘Gilmore Girls’: Does Rory Gilmore deserve our hate?” I never saw Rory Gilmore as a villain. (But back then, I only knew high school Rory and I had never seen her break up a marriage. Her and Lorelai’s separation in Season 5 would have been unfathomable.)
I started watching “Gilmore Girls” — this time from the very very beginning, binging full episodes rather than fast-forwarding through snippets — after I saw this thread.
In some ways, it hits differently in 2020.
In other ways, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s show is still the same: Comforting, familiar and homey like re-discovering that an old pair of really stretchy sweatpants from middle school still fit you.
After reading Casper ter Kuile’s “The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices,” I’ve been seeing “Gilmore Girls” as a sacred text — a cozy quarantine ritual with a parable about a flawed, confused and human prodigal daughter and the mom who unconditionally loves her.
But to make these “texts” truly “sacred,” we should examine this “bible” from another lens, where we can think critically about themes and lessons and how they apply to our own lives. ter Kuile, co-founder of the podcast “Harry Potter and the Sacred Texts,” teaches lectio divina, which asks us the following questions after close “readings”:
What is happening?
What does it mean? Any symbolism or allegory?
What does this make you think of or remind you of in your own life?
What action does this passage/scene call upon you to do in your own life? What lesson have you learned?
So I’ll start with a scene from Season 6:
Episode: No. 8. “Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out.”
Summary: Jess, who just wrote and published a novella, visits Rory at her grandparents’ house, where she’s been temporarily living after taking time off from Yale. With an outside lens, he confronts Rory about her situation: “Living at your grandparents’ place, being in the D.A.R., no Yale — Why did you drop out of Yale?! …. It’s not complicated. This isn’t you. You going out with this jerk with the Porsche. We made fun of guys like this.”
Meaning: Unwittingly, Jess is the stand-in for Lorelai and the audience, telling Rory what we wish we could tell her. Unlike with Lorelai’s earlier intervention, Rory actually listens when Jess shakes her down and asks her to pull herself together and be herself. Sometimes you need someone who really knows you to tell you what you already know, deep down.
Life: I’m Rory, walking up way too late in her (grand)parents’ house and wandering around aimlessly after Mitchum Huntzberger told her she’s not good enough. OK, so maybe being one of the estimated 10.1 to 18.3 million unemployed Americans laid off through no fault of their own during a pandemic recession isn’t quite the same situation, but having a boss deliver a pink slip probably feels a bit like having a Mitchum Huntzberger telling you you’re not good enough even though you actually are good enough and any company would be lucky to have you. I needed a Jess — a figure from the past who has seen me succeed — to confront me and to remind me of who I am. Having a fictional character deliver this motivational soul-searching pep talk certainly counts.
Homework: Figure out who you are and what you want. Get it together. Or at least stop moping around on the couch/pool house1, binging “Gilmore Girls” episodes until Netflix checks in on you. If Rory Gilmore can send 125,000 resumes, re-enroll in Yale and land a writing job by the end of the next episode, so can you. You can’t quit or stop trying after a setback.
Recommendations (unrelated to “Gilmore Girls”):
Parts one and two of a four-part series on journalism as a coping mechanism, reporting on the story you’re living, survivor’s guilt, etc., during the aftermath of the 2018 Capital Gazette shooting
This sad story about a scared aggressive dog named Jack and the foster mom who loved him
This look into what it’s really like to work at Trump Hotel
As someone who loved meeting the dogs in “Breath of the Wild,” I loved petting the dog in this lovely interactive
Why you should aim for 100 rejections a year (even if each one hurts and scars)
I don’t have access to a pool house. My parents aren’t Emily and Richard Gilmore.