A masterpiece of television with zero rewatch potential
Dynamic characters are what keep viewers returning to their favorite shows week after week. We enjoy watching charming characters grow, learn lessons, deepen relationships and laugh, and no show was more charming than Gilmore Girls. The early 2000s dramedy followed the titular mother/daughter duo of Lorelai and Rory as they dealt with family dynamics, work/school stress, friendships and relationships, all while talking a mile a minute and consuming a pot of coffee a day. Taking place in the beautifully quirky town of Stars Hollow, the show has maintained its popularity since it went off the air, even allowing a reboot to be picked up by Netflix several years ago. The show has a comfortable familiarity to it that keeps people coming back year after year, with many fans making it a yearly tradition to rewatch the show every autumn, and this used to include me. However, upon viewing the reboot and the initial series several times over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the show in retrospect ruins its own rewatchability by destroying the integrity of one of its main characters.
Rory Gilmore has become one of the most polarizing characters on television without any effort from the writers that created her. The writers of Gilmore Girls accidentally ruined their entire show by ruining their main character. Rory suffers from a character devolution instead of character development. Starting out as a quiet yet confident and incredibly intelligent teenage girl, by the end of the reboot Rory has been involved in several affairs, stolen a yacht, dropped out of college and proven she has zero work effort in the real world, all while continuing to be praised as perfect by her mother, grandparents, love interests and fellow townspeople. Additionally, keeping in mind the last lines of the reboot, rewatching the show has a sort of depressing energy to it knowing that Rory never truly lives up to her potential and is doomed to repeat all of her mother’s mistakes. All the optimism of the first couple of seasons is null and void knowing that this character, who seems to have everything going for her, will never amount to anything close to the pedestal the other characters put her on.
What is most sad about this character devolution is that the writers seemingly had no intention to tell the story they end up telling. It seems they felt that the character they set up for Rory in the first season was enough to keep viewers rooting for her for the entirety of the show. The writers created a deeply imperfect character but described her as perfect, creating a disconnect between the writer and the audience. The show could be interpreted as a cautionary tale about a gifted kid who burns out too young, but again the writers did not see the same flaws in Rory that the audience did and always expected them to celebrate her no matter what, just as the other characters in the show did.
Rory’s ultimate fate in Gilmore Girls and the painful massacre of her character throughout the original series and reboot make the show very difficult to rewatch without tinges of dread. Watching a character devolve over the course of several seasons can be thrilling and encapsulating, but when the writers see that same character as perfect, the show can become harrowing to get through, as is the case of Rory from Gilmore Girls. Amy Sherman-Palladino should have just watched season seven.