Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest (Smart Pop Series) (4 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Crusie,Leah Wilson

Tags: #Humor & Entertainment, #Television, #History & Criticism

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Luke, on the other hand, couldn’t even believe his long-lost daughter turned out super-smart—he bought
Geometry for Dummies
in an attempt to relate to her, only to find he didn’t even understand
that
. And, incidentally, that daughter came to him only so she could use his DNA in a science fair project; she and her mother wanted neither money nor contact with him. Fathers are curiously useless all around, in fact: Rory’s father, Christopher, stopped flaking on the Girls and started providing only after he inherited a huge fortune from his grandfather (thank goodness he didn’t actually have to work for it). And Rory’s best friend, Lane, apparently does have a father—but he’s literally invisible, never to be seen on screen. We’ve met only her outrageously overbearing mom.
 
In fact, the only solid father figure around is Lorelai’s father, Richard. He and Lorelai’s mother, Emily, stand for traditional gender values, with Richard unable to let go of his business even after retirement and Emily positively wallowing in frivolously “female” pursuits—organizing cocktail parties and trolling social registers. It just so happens that Lorelai’s relationship with her parents has always been strained—as has Logan’s with his traditional, still-married parents, as has Lane’s with her parents. A show that was borne from a partnership between its original network, the WB, and the Family Friendly Programming Forum has turned out to be one of the most subversively anti-marriage series around.
 
Heck, even upstanding Emily recognizes the downside of her traditionally proper life: “I’ve never done anything,” she said during a rare humble moment, after watching Lorelai take a business call. A few moments later, she explained to Rory, “I was just admiring your mother’s life” (“Scene in a Mall,” 4-15).
 
There is, of course, plenty to admire about Lorelai’s life—and that’s precisely the point. She’s gorgeous. She has a great daughter, with whom she’s had a (mostly) enviable relationship. She owns an inn, and she has no shortage of caring (if quirky) friends. And despite living in a tiny town, she’s enjoyed a fairly constant string of desirable suitors—not that she needs them, given everything else she has going for her.
 
That’s what trips her up with every romance, from Christopher (her star-crossed love since she conceived Rory at sixteen) to Max (the perfectly nice teacher she bailed on after accepting his proposal) to Luke: because she doesn’t
need
a man for anything, it’s impossible for her to settle on one she wants for good, forever. You could argue that she simply doesn’t want to put up with Luke’s crap—namely, his insistence on keeping Lorelai and his daughter in virtually separate worlds. You could argue that she’s simply meant to end up with Christopher. But I would argue that she’s a typical ultra-modern woman, just like me: when you’ve gotten everything—or even more than—you’ve ever wanted, it’s hard to figure where one decent-but-fallible guy fits in.
 
That’s why it can feel so wrong, even when it’s right: “I’ve never been married because it’s not easy and I usually freak out and screw everything up,” Lorelai told Rory after finishing all the planning for her wedding to Luke. “But I haven’t freaked out about Luke yet. Why haven’t I freaked out about Luke yet? . . . What if all the signs are saying things shouldn’t be this easy, that I shouldn’t get the guy I want?” (“The Perfect Dress,” 6-11).
 
Lorelai Gilmore is what’s wrong with so many modern relationships. And yet, like in so many modern relationships, it’s the guys who ultimately take the blame—or at least bring nothing but bad fortune to otherwise perfectly put-together girls—in Stars Hollow. Who wrecked Lane’s chances at rock stardom with her band, Hep Alien? Her guitarist boyfriend, Zack, who had an onstage meltdown (because he was emotional about a fight they’d had) when record scouts came to see them play. And how did Rory find herself in the biggest mess of her young life? Logan—at least according to Mama Gilmore. “Let’s take an inventory of all the delightful things that have happened since you waltzed into my daughter’s life,” Lorelai huffed when he asked her for help winning Rory back. “She was arrested, convicted, she’s on probation, she’ll have a criminal record unless we can get it expunged, she dropped out of school, moved out of my house, she didn’t speak to me for five months, three weeks, and sixteen days” (“Just Like Gwen and Gavin,” 6-12).
 
The Gilmore Girls are simply too busy, too driven, too perfect to allow themselves to be messed up by mere mortal men. As characters, they don’t realize it, and they’re susceptible to masculine charms like the rest of us, but that’s what it comes down to, and—go figure—it’s a male character who finally figured it out. “Let’s just stop fighting it, okay?” Luke said to Lorelai during a profoundly sad post-breakup grocery store run-in. “You go back to being Lorelai Gilmore, and I’ll go back to being the guy in the diner who pours your coffee” (“That’s What You Get, Folks, For Makin’ Whoopee,” 7-2).
 
It’s hard to decide these days, when so much of the world is ours to conquer: Do we just want a guy in the diner to pour our coffee, or do we have room for more from the men in our lives?
 
Jennifer Armstrong
is a staff writer at
Entertainment Weekly
and the co-founder of alternative online women’s magazine
SirensMag.com
.
 
 
References
 
Press, Joy. “The Sunshine Girls.”
Village Voice
. 25 Oct. 2004. <
http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/0443,tv,57816,27.html
>.
 
Marklein, Mary Beth. “College Gender Gap Widens.”
USA Today
. 19 Oct. 2005. <
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-10-19-male-college-cover_x.htm
>.
 
Stephanie Whiteside
When Paris Met Rory
 
PARIS: We’re friends?
 
RORY: I’m not sure if there is an exact definition for what we are, but I do think it falls somewhere in the bizarro friends-ish realm. Come on, stay.
 
PARIS: Okay. But if you’re doing all this so you can freeze my bra, I’ll kill you. (“There’s the Rub,” 2-16)
 
 
 
They fight, they bicker, they banter, they break up and get back together again, they’re a great couple, says Stephanie Whiteside. Lorelai and Luke? Nope, Rory and Paris, one of the most problematical relationships ever to grace a television series.
 
F
OR A SMALL, PEACEFUL TOWN in New England, there sure are a lot of complicated relationships in Stars Hollow. Luke and Lorelai. Rory and Dean. Rory and Jess. And those are just the romantic relationships. Let’s not forget the strained peace between Lorelai and her parents. Or Lane and Mrs. Kim. Not to mention how Lorelai and Rory’s mother-daughter bond, while occasionally idyllic, is anything but traditional. Yet none of those quite live up to the fascinating dynamic of the often uneasy and always entertaining relationship between Paris Gellar and Rory Gilmore.
 
At first glance, Paris and Rory appear to be an unlikely pair. From their first meeting at Chilton to their rocky roommate relationship, they spend almost as much time fighting as they do friends. But in many ways, Rory and Paris are two sides of the same coin. Both are extremely intelligent, motivated girls with big dreams. While they excel in the academic areas of life, and are very mature for their ages, neither one has the greatest social skills. Paris’s caustic wit and competitive nature offend nearly everyone she comes in contact with and Rory prefers the company of her books to that of her classmates. And while both girls do have relationships, they seem to stumble into them more than actively pursue them, at least in the earlier seasons. Dean was the one to approach Rory, who was clearly astonished by the move, and Paris didn’t even realize that Jamie had asked her out until Rory pointed it out to her. The similarities, however, end there—Rory comes across as being well-adjusted, if somewhat quirky, and is the perfect image of the girl next door. Paris, on the other hand, is often rude, mean, and more than a little bit neurotic. She is, in fact, what Rory could easily have become, had she been raised in Hartford, in the way her grandparents would have approved of. But Paris Gellar is more than a cautionary tale. Rory might not see it, but Paris may be the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
 
Paris vs. Rory
 
But let’s start at the beginning: Chilton. Paris and Rory’s first meeting was filled with unexpected mishaps—and it was far from love at first sight. Paris immediately identified Rory as someone to be intimidated; Paris was number one at Chilton and she wasn’t going to take the risk of anyone jeopardizing that. Rory’s reaction was to be expected—after Paris’s welcome, she wanted nothing more than to avoid her. But fate clearly wasn’t going to let that happen. The two girls were thrown together in almost every class, and when Rory accidentally destroyed Paris’s history project, the stage was set for major competition.
 
What Paris found when she met Rory was something unexpected—an equal adversary. Paris may have been low on Chilton’s social hierarchy, but she was at the top of the academic world, and she knew it. Most of the other students already knew to steer clear of her temper, and from their first meeting she clearly expected Rory to crumble in the face of intimidation. Rory was also used to being number one—but she wasn’t used to being challenged on it. Given what we’ve seen of Stars Hollow, it’s easy to assume that Rory didn’t have much in the way of academic competition at Stars Hollow High. Intimidation isn’t Rory’s style, but she was clearly thrown at being faced with someone whose drive and intelligence rivaled her own, and she didn’t handle it much better than Paris.
 
The other striking similarity between them that first season was the maturity they displayed, much of which could be attributed to them being raised in a world consisting primarily of adults. Paris was clearly very attached to her nanny, and, from the impressive list of extracurriculars that she lorded over Rory, it appeared that most of her free time was taken up with school and résumé-building activities. Her only friends were Madeline and Louise, who hung out with Paris, one imagines, largely from habit. It certainly wasn’t shared interests; Madeline and Louise were more concerned with the latest lipstick color or potential boyfriend to pay much attention to what was going on in Paris’s life. Rory’s situation wasn’t that much different. At her birthday party in the first season, Lane Kim was the only other teenager present. Rory’s friendship with Lane was, and some might say is, very close (much closer than Paris’s with Madeline and Louise) but limited by Mrs. Kim and her many rules. The rest of the guests were the Stars Hollow residents with whom Rory spent most of her time. Her best friend, after all, is her mother—an adult. It’s not surprising then, that both Rory and Paris ended up as bookish teens who related better to adults than their peers.
 
So how did Rory and Paris end up so different? Part of it must be attributed to the types of the adults they were surrounded by. The residents of Stars Hollow are far removed from the pressure-filled world of upper-class Hartford. Rory, unlike Paris, didn’t need to earn the love of Stars Hollow. She had it, simply for being Rory. Paris was constantly trying to measure up, to be number one in everything she did. The standards Hartford society sets are, according to Chilton’s Headmaster Charleston in “The Deer Hunters” (1-4), impossible to meet, but Paris tried anyway.
 
Paris also learned to be self-sufficient in a way that Rory didn’t. Stars Hollow provided a support system that Rory could rely on in any situation. Even if she was fighting with Lorelai, she had Luke, Miss Patty, Sookie, and even Taylor looking out for her. She didn’t have to develop the tough exterior Paris did, and so shows her emotions much more easily, whether over a missed test or failed Puffs initiation.
 
In later seasons, the extent of their similarities became obvious: after Rory dropped out of Yale, she and Paris went through a startling role reversal. All of a sudden Rory was face to face with Hartford society pressure, while Paris, suddenly broke, became the one who was working and spending her free time in Stars Hollow with Lorelai. From the Huntzbergers to the DAR, Rory finally stepped fully into the world Lorelai was so desperate to shield her from, the world Rory had been flirting with since the show’s beginning—the world Paris grew up in. Estranged from her mother, Rory’s steadiest sources of support were her grandparents, whose indulgence lasted only so long as they could control and mold Rory into the girl they wanted her to be, the girl Lorelai should have been, and Logan, whose family let her know in no uncertain terms that she didn’t measure up, socially or professionally.
 
The first real fissures in her relationship with her grandparents came when Richard discovered she hadn’t been reading at all, but rather focusing her energies on planning DAR social functions, in part (though not only) to make Emily happy. Rory, given her desire to please, would have suffered being raised under her grandparents’ conflicting expectations; though she eventually returned to Yale as Richard wanted, it was a stubbornness and rebellious self-direction inherited from Lorelai that allowed her to break away from the life she was living and return to the one she’d wanted for herself. It’s easy to imagine a Rory without Lorelai’s influence—one who might have turned out little different than Paris, internalizing parental expectations she was bright enough to almost meet, but never truly satisfy.

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