why did rory gilmore end up failing at life?

Spoilers from ‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life’ ahead:

This rant has been a long time coming. I watched Gilmore Girls a lot in middle school and high school, and I looked up to Rory Gilmore a lot as a kid — I remember being so happy when I found out we had the same birthday. I still think that young girls need intelligent and deeply-compassionate, driven, ambitious female characters in the media and on the screen to look up to, and for a while Rory Gilmore was that figure for me. At first, I saw her mindset, heart, strength, wisdom and educational level as well worth emulating. But I stopped watching in Season 5 after Rory made some questionable moral decisions (if you’ve watched up to that point you know the turning point I’m talking about which is so, so un-Rory — or so I thought), when I slowly realised she hadn’t had much character development since her Chilton days. Since then, I’ve been spoiled about the revival and have only heard disappointment from it — reading people’s reviews of it honestly makes me so, so sad that I can’t bring myself to watch it.

The consensus is, to be frank, that it seems like she stopped reading when she got to college and lost brain cells when she cut her hair, and I have to agree. But I don’t quite understand. Sure, a lot of people royally mess up at some point in their lives — it’s understandable and incredibly common to lose yourself and be adrift in your 20s. Yet the fact that Rory didn’t seem to learn her lessons from the original series and made the same moral mistakes in her 30s in the revival, on a much grander scale, and couldn’t see that they were mistakes, is so much sadder. She literally changed before our eyes. It’s not just academics and career-wise; her qualities of selflessness and compassion and determination that were once so central to her character slowly seem to fade. One of my least favourite feelings ever is when a character (be it in a TV show, a movie or a book) doesn’t get the arc and ending that gives them justice. It always leaves me with this terrible notion of waste — — this hollow feeling of what could have been and should have been — especially because of the finality of a final page before the acknowledgements or a final scene before the credits roll. Unfulfilled potential is one of the most common human-scale tragedies in this world — we can never be sure who someone will become. Maybe Rory losing her way is meant to teach us this.

I wonder what propelled the writers to subvert everyone’s expectations of grown Rory. It’s obviously a more real depiction of real life, but beyond that there’s a lot to be read into in the intentions, into what this could tell us about Life. Perhaps it’s a warning against treating life as a theoretical plan to be executed; a social commentary on what truly measures success, beyond smarts and privilege and prettiness and luck which do undoubtedly influence the course of daily life, but which are not as powerful as weapons such as grit through growth, adaptability, humility and a commitment to continuous improvement. This phenomenon that according to research, valedictorians rarely end up being the most successful in life. I’m reminded of that scene in Suddenly 30 where Jenna realises Chris Grandy, her high school crush and the most popular boy in school, is now a taxi driver. I guess it shows that you can’t predict how people are going to end up in the long term based on the person they were in high school. High school popularity, sports and drama accolades, academic awards fades and maybe the people who failed more and weren’t centre stage in high school have more determination to do something worthwhile with their lives.

I read a theory that the whole show is from the perspective of Rory’s novel that she writes, where her life and story are glamourised and idealised — how Rory sees herself and not how she actually is — and that the revival is the reality of their life. That kind of theory just ruins such a unique character. It’s a theory that is unnervingly and dishearteningly plausible, because golden girl Gilmore is so pure and quick-witted and exceedingly good that at times she doesn’t even seem real, does she? Almost no one talks like that. Don’t get me wrong, younger Rory was by no means perfect (I personally found her personality quite monotonous and boring — like, she just didn’t seem realistically human to me), but objectively, she was pretty damn close to the asymptote. But the alternative just doesn’t add up for me and leaves me deeply disappointed by who Rory turned out to be. This is simply not the ambitious and mature Chilton Rory we were introduced to in the early seasons. Of course people change all the time, especially from adolescence to adulthood, but it baffles me that someone could change this drastically. What I think — and this is harsh — is that perhaps Rory had these inherent flaws in her character all along that were only fully exposed when she left her cocoon.

Perhaps she was so mollycoddled by her mother and plush town, and so intensely perfectionistic and so often praised as special by everyone around her while growing up, that her view of herself was but an idealism; that she never had what it takes to balance her energy and ambition (which later develops into stubbornness and selfishness, and a gross sense of entitlement) with the strength, emotional intelligence and humility needed to cope with the criticism and imperfection and failure that is so rife in the real world. Think about what happens when she gets one bad journalism review (literally drops out of Yale, steals a yacht and gets arrested); how she shouts ‘But I’m a Gilmore!’ which encapsulates her white, wealthy privilege and princess complex; how she can’t handle getting one D in school. Granted, I used to be this thin-skinned when I got a ‘bad’ grade, which was an A instead of an A+ for teenage Angela. I’m not B-ngela, after all — just kidding, it never got that bad. But I’ve worked very hard for the resilience and ability to embrace imperfection I have now. It’s called growing up, which Rory has not seemed to do any of. It seems that Rory never learnt how to build that muscle. And that’s a damn shame.

But I really don’t want to think like that, because I believe young girls need characters like the original Rory Gilmore to look up to — girls with substance and strength of spirit; girls who are ambitious and independent and individualistic who value their education, yet also kind and compassionate and selfless. Head and heart girls; girls whose appearance bely their beautiful brains and fiery spirits. Forget the seemingly-bland and brainless beauties who are famous just for being famous and, like, ‘realising things’. So, in my mind, Rory Gilmore is still safe as the brilliant, admirable, independent Chilton valedictorian with big dreams of Ivy League, who hasn’t yet dropped out of college/had affairs with married men/become a homewrecker and yacht thief. Her future brims with immense potential and the vast possibility of all the fulfilled dreams and successes she has waiting for her. She’s going somewhere. And in my mind she’ll stay that way.

I will say that though I never got back into this show and probably never will, I still think the acerbic wit is second-to-none and it’s nice to pretend people actually talk like this in real life. I didn’t mean to write such a lengthy character analysis, but I think a lot of fans were left disillusioned by the reboot and left wondering, ‘Whatever happened to Rory Gilmore? I could honestly write a whole essay on this (well, I just did.), just like I did in Year 11 on what led to Macbeth’s downfall.

I’m still so sad, seriously. Rory, you had it all. You’re wasting yourself. You had so much potential. Why’d you have to let it go? But I know that wasted talent is one of the most common things in this life — the gap between who we are and who we could become if only…but beyond that, which would be a disappointing outcome as it is, if not a little or a lot realistic given your sheltered upbringing — here’s my real problem: Where’s your class and where are your morals? Did you just throw away your moral compass? Where’s the education embedded in you at Chilton and Yale that should have lasted you a lifetime? Where are you? You were once the tall poppy with so much more room to bloom; once the golden girl — and now you’re the other woman. You’re better than this. I wonder, would your mother Lorelai not recognise this and point out your blind spots as she’s done in the past to help you learn and grow? Logically, it just doesn’t add up. They don’t even seem like the same people.

You’re still 32, though. People rebuild their lives from rock bottom and get their act together much later than that, so there’s still time. Optimistically, the walk down memory lane while writing your book will make you realise who you used to be and who you are now, and discerning the divide between those two versions of yourself will set you back on track.

…And who could forget Lane? No no no. Lane deserved a better ending in the reboot than the one I was spoiled about. We saw her struggle SO much with the cultural divide between generations in her traditional Korean household; success for her character other than a life of domesticity would have been such a powerful message for people of colour. A lost opportunity.

A more positive post next time, I promise!