(Gilmore Girls fan site)This is my first blog on this site. Lets see how it goes.
It always amuses me when people claim that Rory is perfect. Or, rather that she was perfect before sleeping with Dean or taking up with Logan -take your pick. I may be anal retentive here, and people don’t mean literally. But, if Rory was a perfect child, so was I. Actually I have Rory beat in some ways. I never talked back to a teacher and certainly not a principal. I never ran away from home, even if it was just to my grandparents, like Rory did. The only thing I ever stole was a chip out of a fellow students bag during a field trip. And, I felt guilty about that. That doesn’t mean I was perfect. I fought with my brother, talked back to my mom on occasion. I could be mean (still can be) but I can safely say that I would have been described as a good kid. I was very much like Rory. And, even if they don’t mean it literally, the view of Rory is still skewed, in my opinion.
Besides the ones I alluded to earlier, Rory has had her share of wrong doings. Lorelai wasn’t a disciplinarian, but Rory has rebelled against the few rules that Lorelai set up for her and has deliberately misunderstood the boundaries between their identity as best friends and as mother/daughter. To be fair, Lorelai has done that at least once, in Kiss and Tell. But, Rory was quick to point out that Lorelai would not be a friend hanging out with her and Dean. In that situation, she’d be a mother. So, Rory is not completely unable to separate the two relationships, and the times when she acts like it, I believe she knows just what she’s doing. She’s also been mean to various people throughout the run of the show, including Lane, Dean, Jess, Shane, and others.
Still, there’s no denying that Rory was a good kid. She’s a good woman, but I’m speaking of her childhood years up to age 16. We heard about the earlier years and got to see Rory for the first time at 16. Rory was well mannered (excluding a few times mouthing off to Lorelai), a good and conscientious student, friendly, responsible. She has a lot of admirable qualities. But, does that make Rory special or noteworthy? And, compared to who? Kids on television? Is it just so much more common to see teens getting into serious trouble? Were all the other kids in Stars Hollow running wild? Sure, Lane had her whole secret life, but Lane was also a very good kid. Since the show isn’t Kim Girls, I can understand why the entire town wasn’t praising Lane, but why haven’t viewers sent some kudos her way? Or at least mentioned that Rory was no better than Lane. I’m sure some Chilton girls were also just as well behaved. Paris for one. Paris may have been an antagonist for Rory, but aside from that she was a good student, and wasn’t wild like Madeline or Louise. Or, are people comparing Rory to real life kids? Yes, there are kids who get into really bad trouble. But, even in this age, I’m sure there are a fair share of kids like the one I used to be. I don’t find myself that unique.
The show itself does lead people to view Rory with rose colored glasses. There have been various lines and scenes that have read false to me on the show. The one that fits here is when Lorelai was talking to Luke about Rory stealing a yacht. She said Rory never shoplifted. That in itself was a lie. There’s a box of cornstarch that tells a different story. But, I can accept that Lorelai might have forgotten that incident. Stealing is stealing, but there is a difference between inadvertently running out of a store after your very first kiss, not realizing that you had it (and even keeping it, although that is much less excusable) and willingly and deliberately going to take a yacht out “to sea” knowing that it’s not yours, and not caring. And, the shock of Rory being arrested could have driven the early incident out of Lorelai’s mind, if it wasn’t already a dim memory. But, the thing that took me right out of the story with a hearty “Oh, puhleeeze!” was Lorelai mentioning that Rory was so guilty about keeping a library book out past its due date that she grounded herself. “Nobody will get to read the Iliad this week because of me!” I’m sorry, but that read as deliberately trying to give the impression that this was the first wrong thing Rory had ever done, and that’s why it was so shocking. I don’t believe anyone who felt that guilty over a minor transgression like that would have done some of the things Rory did. Or done them without much more guilt than we’ve seen on the show. Wouldn’t the Rory Lorelai described have noticed the cornstarch in her hand, recoiled in horror, and race back to Doosey’s Market, full of apologies and offers to stock shelves to make up for it? Would somebody that conscientious about an oversight, not even deliberately keeping the book out, really talk back to Headmaster Charleston when he caught her along with the Puffs and Paris? Would someone like that even be in a situation like that? It was shocking enough for Rory, your basically good kid, to steal a yacht. Maybe not quite as shocking pre sleeping with a married man, but still not the expected thing. I didn’t need the overkill.
Some people have talked about how Rory was too perfect in the early years and how it was boring. Well, I know that people can enjoy a show despite the leads, not because of them (I can say right now that some people hate both Lorelai and Rory and watch the show for the townies) But, going over the first season’s episodes, I would assign at least ten, out of the twenty-one, as being Rory episodes. And, the rest, Rory had a pretty substantial B plot. I can only think of a few episodes where Lorelai had a larger share of the storyline. This is all subjective, of course, and others might disagree. Still, if my take is generally accepted, that meant there were a lot of episodes that were dull. Had people fallen for the townies all in the first season? Were they all there for the Lorelai parts of the story? Or for Richard and Emily? Did people doze off when that little goody two shoes Rory came on screen? They must have been well rested, considering the amount of screen time she had.
To me, Rory has never been a paragon of virtue of an angel corrupted in the 5th and 6th seasons (funny, people have raised more fuss over her sleeping with Logan, either casually or in a committed relationship than they ever did when she slept with Dean. With a few exceptions, of which I was one -one exception). Rory was better than some kids on tv, only as good as some others. She’s not and never has been perfect.
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