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Still watching Gilmore Girls
and still loving it

I admit, I like Jess. Or at least I sympathize with him. And in the end, I think he proved to be a better man than Dean.

This is what I was thinking while watching the recent episodes that are currently airing on ABC-Family, leading up to this week’s denouement (Friday afternoon) at the end of “They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They?” All along, Jess has been taunting Dean, making friendly with Rory, and flaunting his blonde girlfriend Shane, whom Rory now inexplicably hates.

How could I possibly sympathize with such a kid?

Jess: the loner, the outlaw, the flunk-out, the troubled kid. “Every girl has to fall for a bad boy. It’s the rule.” But Jess isn’t actually a bad kid, because he’s not so troubled as much as he is confused. The only thing he knows for sure is that everyone demands of him that which makes him miserable. But he doesn’t really know yet what will make him happy. He will need to search for that answer, and suffer and fail, and finally make it. And that’s inspiring, because even though that’s all in the future, I can already see that process in full swing.

Jess and Lorelai have more in common that she realizes, and maybe that’s what scares her, that he might turn Rory into a young Lorelai. Thoughtful, headstrong, and independent, she had a baby at 16, forsook her parents, and made it on her own.

And Jess is smart, like Lorelai—not with book-smarts, but with head-smarts. And he’s clever, like Lorelai. And he’s independent, like Lorelai. And besides that, he reads Ayn Rand and gets Björk. And this smart, clever, independent, reader-destined-to-become-a-writer— And that’s something else I sympathize with, because I’m a writer, too, and I know what it’s like to be a writer and to think like a writer and to feel like a writer. This Jess is the one that Rory sees, that excites her and challenges her, that she is falling in love with.

I had my own Jess once, or rather, my own Lorelai. That’s another reason I sympathize with Jess.

When Luke—in a future episode—finally gives Jess an ultimatum, to repeat his Senior year and graduate, or else to get out and live or die on his own…

These are the moments that define a person’s life. No matter how he chooses, he will have grown. That doesn’t mean he’ll succeed. He may fail, and in fact will fail, miserably. Remember the episode with Liz’s wedding, in which Luke finds him sharing a cramped apartment (probably illegally) with several other guys, and delivering packages for pocket change?

But that’s all part of the process. Jess needs to find himself. And before he will do that, he needs to look. And that’s what he’s doing now, looking for himself, searching for purpose and meaning.

In the process, he’s going to make lots of idiotic mistakes, and he will no doubt regret some of them. Especially the ones where he hurts Rory. I know I made similar mistakes. (See the Love-Idiot book.) I think we all have, any of us who have found meaning in life.

But eventually he does find himself. He never becomes rich, as far as we know, never finishes high school, never goes to college. But he finds purpose, and confidence, and satisfaction, and inner peace. And he doesn’t have to destroy a marriage to do it.

That’s what finally gets me about Dean. Yeah, as a teenager, he comes off as tall and handsome and confident and responsible, and he is. “The Deans of the world always get the Lindsays.” But Dean didn’t really have to make a life-changing decision until his marriage hit the rocks. And I feel bad for Lindsay, because she would have done almost anything for her husband. (Anything except share him with a mistress.) And Dean should have reciprocated, because that’s what love is all about. (Again, see Love-Idiot book.)

But that’s all in the future. For now, it’s hard to sympathize with Jess, despite the way Rory feels about him. But I still do. And hopefully now you understand a little better why I do.

-TimK