Thank You For Your Service

I've been reading online nowadays a lot of hate on Gilmore Girls. Which I find surprising. 

Sure, nowadays if there was a show in that vein, Rory would be biracial, at least. 

But it premiered 20 years ago, and that doesn't seem so long ago to invoke "it was a different time." OK, yeah, there are lots of white people, and some are even privileged white people, but I still don't see how that is problematic. 

Han watched it for the first time recently, and through his observations I'm remembering how frustrating it was to see Rory's unspooling through various bad choices. First was handing in the good boyfriend for the jerk boyfriend, then having an affair with good boyfriend, allowing one unpleasant interview to completely undo her self-confidence and send her over the edge, then getting together with maybe not a 100% jerk, but he's still pretty irritating. 

Maybe that was the point. I've seen this sort of thing in real life, albeit not to such an extreme: Girl puts lots of pressure on herself to be perfect, and burns out by the time she's 21. But Rory becomes really unlikable and she doesn't improve in the follow up, A Year in the Life. 

But I found her more believable than her early goody-goodiness. Lorelai was usually the screw-up, and Rory was the adult in the relationship, until she decided to finally have a belated hedonistic teenagehood, which is not a good look on an actual adult. 

Han was complaining about Emily when he first began. "You'll see," I told him, "she'll become your favorite character." And she did. Some people on the forums grump that Lorelai was always saying how horrible her childhood was, but with no details; as I understand it, she could have simply felt "unseen" and misunderstood by her parents. That can be a lonely place to be. 

As we know in real life, sometimes two okay people can have such a bad dynamic that it can be toxic. It doesn't mean one is wrong and the other right. It just means that it's better if they don't spend a lot of time together. 

So, no, I'm not going to hate on Gilmore Girls now, the way a lot of other people are. It served its purpose in its time, and maybe it has become obsolete. In 20 years, lots of our current favorites will be burned at the stake, too.