Headscratchers / Gilmore Girls

Technical Issues

• Two questions:
  1. Why does the picture in Season 7 seem so grainy, washed out, and fuzzy? I would say that it was an artistic choice to make the atmosphere more depressing, but the same thing happened to every other CW show that year.
  2. This is more minor, but starting in Season 5, there seems to be something wrong with the shutter speed. Every time someone walks or moves, there's this weird herky-jerky effect, like something you would see in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.
  • Has anyone else noticed this, and does anyone know technically what was going on with these things?
    • Everything in the CW's first season that survived from the WB took a budget cut. Remember that somehow, the UPN executives ended up pretty much running the CW with most of the WB's top executives departing, and UPN was famously run on a horrendously cheap budget where they let Smackdown have most of the promotional juice after wringing the Star Trek well dry (witness the years of "green slime" green branding). Of course, the high-definition transition meant that all television shows in the mid-2000s were basically an unsaid beta test for how to shoot and frame in the format. Finally, add to that most CW affiliates having absolutely horrible analog transmitter facilities, and being stuck on a digital subchannel in some markets which was thrown on with little quality control meant that many times, it was better to wait for a CW show to come out on DVD to watch it as the creator intended than suffer through a minimum quality presentation of the network. It took years for CW shows to have a lighter look again, and that took most of the ex-UPN'ers being fired or quitting the network before saner people (mainly of course, Greg Berlanti and his consistent 'high-concept film' look) were able to run the network with a sunnier and less shaky shooting style.
    • Also, Amy Sherman-Palladino was gone, and with it, every single note and cue she took about filming the series. So outside the actors and past crew knowing her exact filming style, it was up to the new production team to figure out how to emulate her style, and it just couldn't be easily done.

What's wrong with a drama major?

• This might actually be a bit of Fridge Brilliance depending on the answer. When Paris goes to a speed dating session after Asher dies, the second guy she talks to tells her he's a drama major and she leaves immediately. I really couldn't make sense of her reaction at first, but later I realized that in an earlier episode when Paris and Asher first get together, Doyle informs Rory that Asher dates a new student every year and the last one "rebounded with a drama major" after their break-up. So my question is: Was Paris' later reaction a reference to this? Or is there something else I don't understand, like a reference to the actress' real life or a stereotype about drama majors?
  • I think it might just be because she considers drama majors as beneath her.
    • Ok, but why?
    • Paris is super-practical and doesn't seem to have any right-brained aspects at all, so she could see any sort of an artsy major as both impractical (less likely to lead to employment) and one who would have one as incompatible with her.
  • It could also be Paris's general impatience. The first guy she spoke to asked for her major (a question she openly mocked, as she viewed it as a terrible opener), the second guy opened with his major and Paris, probably not wanting to repeat the exact same conversation she had just had with the first guy, left immediately.

Busy inn in small town

• I don't understand how Independence Inn and later the Dragonfly can be so busy all the time. Stars Hollow doesn't seem to have many tourist attractions, and even if it's interesting for being a cute small town in the East Coast, I imagine that would be a trait it shares with a hundred other towns in the region. I don't really know how tourism works in the US, so is it really plausible that Lorelai's inns would be bustling all the time?
  • It has a ton of festivals, doesn't it? Those draw in TONS of tourists. (I am speaking from experience here.) Also if you live near any sort of highway or border or place nearby somewhere there's work, it gets busy.
  • The inns seem to be used for quite a large variety of different purposes, probably much like in real life. The townspeople semed to be regulars, even if they weren't staying in rooms. A lot of weddings were held there over the series, which I'm sure drew a lot of out-of-town business.
  • Going by a combination of location theories, Stars Hollow is conveniently right between Hartford and New Haven and a half-day trip to New York or Mohegan Sun, so it would be probable that it would get a whole bunch of different people going in and out depending on events or how much someone really doesn't want to be stuck at an airport Residence Inn.
  • This troper's 1400 people town in the middle of nowhere has two hotels next door to each other, and a motel. We have a lot of festivals. (And temporary work people.)
  • It's also mentioned that the Dragonfly only has 10 rooms, so it's even less of a stretch to imagine them having too much of a struggle filling them up.

Logan becoming Rory's boyfriend

• As much as I like Rory's character, it always seemed silly that Logan would pick her as his girlfriend. Yes, she's pretty and smart, but they would hardly be an uncommon combination at Yale. In fact she could be awkward and geeky at times, why would Logan - with almost every girl on campus after him - go for a wall flower like her? It was just weird and seemed to be another attempt to show us how 'perfect' Rory was.
  • Agreed. There's clear justification and logic in both Dean/Rory and Jess/Rory. Dean was the Nice Guy, and the type to be impressed by Rory's 'goodness'. Jess was uninterested, until they bonded over books and music and its obvious they have plenty of shared issues. But Logan....?
  • I tended to think it was her innocent, sort of naive, "good girl" air. Rory in some ways gives the impression of a fairy tale princess, (as Paris also noted in an earlier season, "she looks like little birds help her get dressed in the morning"), which is even today something some men are attracted to. I also think that's the kind of personality a rich heir like Logan might look for in a wife, because of an aristocratic feeling of necessity (whether conscious or unconscious) to have a "ladylike" wife. I think it's kind of telling that he expected her to marry him as soon as she graduates. I know this may seem quite far-fetched, but might still have been a factor.
  • I think part of it was that Rory was probably one of the few girls at Yale that wasn't falling over themselves to be with him (well at least at first), so naturally she was a challenge to him. It definitely reeks of Rory's "perfectness" which was becoming overused at that point. Logan is just a relationship sue-type character: someone who the writers thought was a perfect match for Rory. He was good-looking (more stereotypically good-looking than Dean and Jess. How many times were his looks talked about by other characters, particularly Emily and Richard?), he was part of New England upper class, and his father conveniently happened to be involved in the field that Rory is interested in. Not to mention it seems like every character wanted them to be together, except Lorelai. She was the only sane woman in that romantic plotline.
  • While it makes sense if she was "just his type" of fairy tale princess and took it as a challenge when she first broke up with him (from their polygamous relationship) to then enter a monogamous relationship with her, I always kind of took it for granted that he fed off her insecurities. The rich girls he dates up to and between his relationships with Rory were totally confident in their status and social value as ridiculously wealthy people, and Rory had more vulnerability, especially emotionally, and she believes her value is rooted in her ethics (presumably) and that is something a guy like Logan probably feels he can control.

Rory's so-called success in getting into Chilton

• Okay, I think this is a point which bugs many people and I'm surprised it's not mentioned here. Rory is supposed to be a really smart and successful student to get accepted to Chilton, right? But she doesn't earn any funding, so Lorelai has to go to her parents, that's the whole premise of the show. Okay, maybe Chilton is a kind of school that takes only the best students and then still makes them pay fees. But as soon as Rory starts school we meet Madeline and Louise, two total airheads who seem hopeless academically, which means Chilton *doesn't* only accept the best students. In fact, if those two could get accepted probably anyone who could pay would. So what's the deal here, other than Rory's apparent Sue qualities of course?
  • I seem to remember that she first qualifies for a scholarship that seems to be means based, and then during the registration paperwork and all that they discover Lorelai's savings she has for opening her own inn, making it on paper look like they can afford the fees. Plenty of private schools operate a means based scholarship system for bright kids who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford private education - the wealthy kids don't need to pass entrance exams whilst the scholarship students do.
• I wouldn't call Madeline and Louise complete airheads. They seem intelligent enough (they get above average grades in some episodes). I think they just don't apply themselves as much as Rory or Paris. I'm sure plenty of kids as smart as Rory apply to Chilton and possibly even get accepted but don't have the funds to be able to go. An early episode where Lorelai goes to a PTA meeting at Chilton shows that Rory is derided by the other parents for being a "scholarship student" and she is treated like an outsider for being from a small town. It seems like most of the kids at Chilton are wealthy upper-class kids like Paris, Tristan, Madeline, and Louise.
  • So what you mean is that Rory does get a scholarship but it's not enough to pay all the fees? That seems reasonable, I must have missed that episode. Still, pretty stupid policy on Chilton's part!
  • Or, on the second thoughts, maybe it's another indication that Rory isn't actually such a sweepingly brilliant student, just a pretty good one, so she gets fifty percent scholarship or something like that.
    • It's possible that she only got some kind of partial scholarship, and even then, it could have been too expensive for Lorelai either way. But the comments from the parents sort of imply that Chilton does have some kind of scholarship program.
    • Chilton had already started when Rory was accepted. It's possible that someone dropped out last minute, opening up a spot for her, but that by that point the scholarship money had already been distributed. Since Rory's grandparents were paying her tuition (something Charleston knew for a fact) she may not have been considered for scholarships for future years.
    • Not brilliant? I'd say the fact that she was valedictorian speaks for itself.
    • My question was why it's considered such a huge success for her to simply go to Chilton when she obviously has to pay fees and other fee-paying students aren't all so extremely brilliant or successful. How she fared as a student after she started there is another matter. But now that you've made me think about it, what kind of a school is Chilton that even the Valedictorian can't get a full scholarship (when her single parent is obviously in a position to appreciate such an offer)?
    • As Rory says when she gets her first essay back: an A in Stars Hollow High is a D in Chilton. So in Stars Hollow High, Madeline and Louise would be A-students.
    • In the script for the pilot, it says that Lorelai has been trying to get Rory into Chilton for two years, so since Rory was in seventh or eighth grade. It must have felt like a success to her.
• Presumably, money and connections get you quite far. They probably come from really prestigious families who are at the same golf club as someone on the board, or they donated generously to the school... we all like to imagine that it's hard work that gets you into such places, but let's not kid ourselves, there are other ways. The kinder alternative: just because you're a bit of a ditz doesn't mean you have to be a bad student. Some people ace their classes because they are smart, others because they work hard, and others because they are just good at doing what's required.
  • Lorelai pays them back with seventy-five thousand dollars, so assuming she didn't pay interest (an advantage with borrowing from your parents), the tuition was 25000 a year.
• While we're on the subject of success, I feel like I missed something in The Deer Hunters: Lorelai appears to be in the absolute right when it comes to Chilton's draconian rules when it comes to grading and tests-that the Headmaster and the school itself are, by their nature, empowering competitive students and a hurtful mindset for teachers and protocol...a argument which the Headmaster wins? I'm sorry, I must have missed something here-why wasn't he brought down to taste the Karma on this one? He even admits to the failings of his own school, and the narrative calls him in the right.
  • Maybe he was trying to freeze her out. He didn't want to seem unprofessional, so he just insisted that he was right until everyone gave up. Or, kinder interpretation: he wanted to teach Rory that whining wouldn't work. And to be fair, she did get her shit together.
• And no matter how good the school is, someone has to get those Cs and Ds. If they grade on a curve – as Paris implies in her first scene – half the students will be getting low grades. As for effort, forget Madeline (who is probably just absent-minded) – what about Tristan?

Rory's magical three-year graduation

• Okay, so I honestly can't remember if it was elaborated on, besides Rory taking "extra classes" to catch up for the lost time she spent out of Yale, but it seems like more of an ass pull that Rory was able to graduate alongside Paris at Yale. I get that the show was ending and they wanted Rory to move on to bigger things, but Gilmore Girls is usually better about these kinds of things.
  • She actually only missed half a semester.... Of course this is still ridiculous. Beyond the issue that Rory had missed all the enrollment and registration deadlines, a student can't just go up to some random professors halfway through a semester and ask to be in their classes. Especially not somewhere like Yale. (I gotta admit, I know of some situations at community colleges/for profits in which students have paid tuition and joined a class nearly halfway through a semester... but these are bottom of the barrel type schools where the administrations will do almost anything if they're getting paid.)
  • This troper did undergrad at Yale and can confirm that they'll let you "accelerate" using AP credits if you take a semester off and still want to graduate with your entering class. Most people I knew who did this went on leave to study abroad in Asia on Yale funding, but I don't think you have to be doing official Yale-ish things to be able to do that. The bit about coming back in the middle of a semester is weirder. Some people were allowed to do that after they were evacuated from their respective Egyptian study abroad programs in 2011. But— kind of special circumstances there.
    • Adding to the above point, there are a lot of AP courses available, and it would be extremely surprising if Chilton didn't offer AP courses. I went to high school with someone who had done 6 AP classes by the time she graduated. That's effectively entire semester. And I was in high school around the same time as Rory. I would be very surprised if Rory didn't have a number of AP classes under her belt from Chilton which filled out her transcript and helped her graduate on time.
  • Just watched the episodes where Rory comes back home/to Yale. Rory actually missed an entire semester; the conversation she has with Paris about coming back happens on Thanksgiving, which is only about a month before the end of most fall semesters, counting finals week. I doubt even community colleges would allow someone to enroll in a class THAT late. From what I could tell, she's begging teachers to allow her to enroll in their classes for the SPRING semester after the registration deadline has passed/classes are filled. Registration - at least at the college I went to - usually happens in October/March, and classes fill up quickly, particularly the popular and/or required classes. You can get what's called an override and be allowed in, but it's not a given. It's perfectly reasonable that Rory would have to make personal appeals to professors to be able to get into classes that are already full.
    • Seconded. I just rewatched the episodes, and Rory missed the fall semester of her junior year. She returns to Yale for the spring semester of her junior year. She's pestering professors because she wants to get into classes that were full - since she wasn't a student at Yale during the regular registration period for the spring semester, she wasn't able to enroll in high-demand classes because they filled up quickly. She also says she has to take a higher course load to graduate on time. It's possible that she had already taken a large enough number of credits to graduate in 3.5 years instead of 4. Let's say Yale requires 120 credits to graduate. To meet this minimum, she could take 15 credits for 8 semesters (4 years) or 17/18 credits for 7 semesters (3.5 years).
• Added to that how did she find the time to catch all of the work up, in addition to being editor of the paper AND working as an intern AND dating Logan? Rory's smart but if she had time to do all of that then the rest of her year must have been positively cruising through their classes. It's especially galling as this is YALE, where even the brightest of students are meant to be stretched. It just seems they gave her an easy way out of her mistakes, rather than showing the real consequences of her dropping out.
• And what about her second year exams? The end of Season 5 showed her basically flunking a whole exam because of Mitchum's comments, but this is naturally forgotten when she enrolls again.
  • If she did well the rest of the semester, it is possible that she still passed the class depending on how much the final counted toward her final grade (I had classes where my final was worth as little as 20%). Plus, even if she failed one class there is no reason not to let her return given her previous academic success.
• It could be that Rory was already slightly ahead when she started at Yale; she did seem to be taking some pretty advanced English classes for a freshman. Between AP classes/tests and CLEP tests she may have had a semester's worth of credits under her belt already.
• This is really weird. Especially when one considers the episode where she has a major breakdown because she doesn't excel in all of her classes and the professor basically says that she tries to do too much at once and that she should re-consider her schedule. It doesn't suggest that she would be able to catch up a missed semester.
  • As far as that goes, that happened her first semester. Part of what you learn in college is how to manage a larger workload than you did in high school, and this would be especially true at Yale. It's not that odd that by then she would have gained the skills to handle extra classes.

Madeline and Louise's Intelligence

• Are Madeline and Louise Obfuscating Stupidity or Book Dumb? Someone brought up a very valid point: just how intelligent are Madeline and Louise? And what does that say about the standards at Chilton? At the beginning of the series, both girls were shown to have pretty decent grades when Rory was struggling at Chilton. Louise in particular is shown to be somewhat sharp, at least when the series let her grow a little apart from being Paris's lackey. Madeline is something of an airhead compared to the other girls.
  • I'm re-watching the first season these days, and as far as I can see they aren't really stupid, but they seem to be much more interested in boys and clothes than academics, and in most of the scenes that actually show them doing any sort of homework they have Paris who's pushing them to do it. Maybe it's thanks to Paris that they keep up. Otherwise there's no explanation as to how they continue at Chilton, since the principal seemed very strict about their academic expectations in the earlier episodes, remember the "Failure is a part of life but not a part of Chilton" bit? Well it sure looks like academic failure would be a part of Madeline and Louise's lives if they were left on their own. Actually, Paris helping them might even be Fridge Brilliance as to how girls with such different (even opposing) personalities became best friends.

The Boat Incident

• So Rory and Logan steal a boat, and it finally feels like a real problem for Rory and the Gilmores occurs. Rory does something wrong, she has an argument with her mother over it and she has to face consequences. My question is — what about Logan? How come he escaped the punishment? Why didn't he have to do the community work as well? Was it ever explained in-universe?
  • Rory most likely had a different judge from Logan. Her judge seemed intent making a point with her punishment of Rory and Mitchum probably had a lot more experience pulling strings there than the Gilmores.
  • Thanks, that sounds actually very plausible, and I can sleep well now. Rory must be an angel of a girl as she was never bitter enough about it to bring it up. It really was not fair that only one of them was legally punished for the same thing.

Erika Hilson Palmer

• Ok so in Season 2, Rory and Lorelei take a road trip to Harvard and Lorelei gets emotional while staring at a picture of some graduate called Erika Hilson Palmer. What's that about??
  • Erika Hilson Palmer was the Valedictorian of the 1990 class of Harvard graduates, which is the year that Lorelai would have finished university if she had gone.

How much Time passed between the first two episodes of Season 6?

• Episode 1 ends on June 3, the day of Rory's court date. Episode 2, Rory is starting her orientation for community service, indicating it's taking place shortly after. However, Lorelei mentions having seen Bewitched "months ago". Bewitched came out June 24, so that indicates the episode is taking place months later.
  • Lorelai could have been talking about the figurative "months ago". Alternatively, since Rory was given six months to do her community service, she could have been spending most of the summer chilling. Barring that, maybe the scenes weren't shown in chronological order. Or maybe the script writers just forgot when the movie premiered.

Rory/Dean Breakup

• I'm a little unclear what exactly happened. Dean tells Rory he loves her, Rory doesn't say it back, and he gets pissy. Cue Rory telling Lorelai that they broke up. Dean was upset, but he didn't say onscreen that he wanted to end it. And with Rory's evasiveness when questioned by Lorelai, she doesn't say that Dean broke up with her. Yet, did she break up with him? They didn't show that either, and if she just let word circulate to him through the grapevine, you'd think he'd call asking if it was true. I dunno, I'm on the episode immediately after where she goes all manic and drags Lorelai out of bed at 6 am to do errands, and it still seems confusing. Couldn't they have shown one of them saying it was over?
  • I think it was pretty obvious from the way the whole scene was executed that Dean asked to break it. His hostile, passive-aggressive manner when he says "Whatever, I'll just take you home" and his body language (preventing Rory from touching him) makes it clear that he doesn't want to have anything to do with her anymore, because he's so angry and disappointed that he wasn't able to hear the precious "I love you." Supposedly, the argument continued on the way home and he wanted to break up. They just kept the actual word to the end of the episode for the shock value. Rory was being apologetic and conciliatory, so it's highly unlikely that she's the one who broke it. (On an unrelated note, watching this scene again made me realize how much like a douche Dean behaved even before Jess turned up.)

Rory's conception

• We learn that Rory was conceived on Lorelai's balcony. Now, given that Rory was born in early October and Lorelai says that she was born "nine months and 26 hours later" making Rory's conception around New Year's. Who in their right mind would have sex on a balcony in New Haven in January?
  • No one in their right minds would. However it does sound the sort of thing horny teenagers might do. Never underestimate horny teens' ability to overlook discomfort in pursuit of sex.
  • Where do you get that it was on the balcony? I remember the Season 1 episode where Lorelai and Christopher have sex out there (not sure what time of year it was, but it seems terribly uncomfortable no matter what the temperature), and there was a mention that they were near where Rory had been conceived. I took that to mean the bedroom, which the balcony adjoins.
    • Chris is standing on the balcony when he says, "And to further chronicle this balcony's history, we are now in the immediate vicinity of the spot upon which was Rory's initial emanation." And then they proceed to re-enact the scene on the balcony.
  • He might have been simply misremembering, or distorting the facts for the sake of a joke. Do many couples actually remember the exact time and place of their kids' conception, especially if it was unplanned? Moreover, if Lorelai discovered her pregnancy somewhat late as another troper suggested on the main page, that might mean it was nearer springtime by the time Christopher found out, thus he may have associated the beginning of Lorelai's pregnancy with the spring. In any case, Christopher doesn't seem like the guy to dwell on details.
  • According to flashbacks (Season 3 Episode 13), they had the house all to themselves when they had that particular sex, so there was no reason to not use the bed.

Lane?

• Given Mrs. Kim's disdain for American culture and extremely traditional and conservative attitude, why would she give her daughter a modern, American name?
  • There is always Mr Kim to consider. According to the other wiki, Lane's full name is "Lane Hyun-kyung Kim." It looks to me that there was a compromise between Mr and Mrs Kim to give her an "American" first name, but keep the Korean tradition for the middle name.
  • Most (all that I've met) East Asians who travel to the western world - either for studies or emigrate permanently - take on a western name, I'm unsure if this is given to them or if it's something they pick themselves, but this could be the case for Lane too, that her official name is entirely Korean but she is known by her western name.

Dave's research skills

• When Dave asks Mrs. Kim if he can take Lane to the prom, she responds with a quote that he assumes is from the Bible. Rather than admit that he was confused, he stayed up the entire night reading the Bible, futilely trying to figure it out, only to find out the next day that it was a quote from Shakespeare. This was in 2002, when a Google search would have identified the quote in seconds. Was Dave just too clueless to use the internet?
  • Even as Google existed in 2002, the internet wasn't such an integral part of people's everyday lives to the extent it is today (at least not where I live). So in universe, Dave may not have had immediate access to a computer or the internet. Out of universe, the writers probably didn't realize this scenario would play out differently in 2002 than it would have in their own teens.
    • I just watched the episode again, and he did mention looking online, but seeing as how it was 2002, the internet wasn't quite as filled with information as it is now, and Google wasn't running as well, it's possible he really wouldn't have been able to find it.
• The show kind of makes it clear that the writing team was not the most technologically up to date. As evidence by the fact Rory carries a beeper in seasons 1 and 2, and Jess explicitly uses Yahoo as a search engine long after they'd become obsolete. It probably would have been quite easy to find either a Bible or Shakespeare quote online even in in those days, those being very famous works of literature, but the writers either didn't know that or it's a handwave to continue the joke.

The Fellowship

• In the Season 7 episode "Hay Bale Maze", Rory gets a writing job at a newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island, so she spends the episode deciding whether or not to take the job or go for this fellowship she really wants. She claims that if she took the job, she'd be giving up the opportunity to take the fellowship. My question is why didn't she just take the job, then quit if she got the fellowship. That way she'd have security if she didn't get the fellowship. That was never even considered as an option.
  • I think with many full time jobs you have to sign a contract that is legally binding for a specific amount of time—generally one or two years. I have no idea what happens if you were to break the contract, though. Presumably you'd have to pay a compensation and your professional reputation would suffer.
    • Agree. The reputation thing alone is enough, even if there isn't a contract. Bad form.

The oddly placed bedroom of Rory

• I thought about this while I was reading the "Friends" Rent Control trope page, and then saw the issue raised here. As you know, Rory's bedroom at Lorelai's is on the ground floor and accessed through the kitchen, while Lorelai's bedroom is upstairs. Why is this the case when the above floor looks almost as large as the ground floor, and must surely contain more than one bedroom and one bathroom? Is there an in-universe reason for this, and what is the out-of-universe reason?
  • Perhaps it was simply easier to carry bookshelves in on the ground floor? I'm not sure if there was more room for books, or if Lorelai just wanted the biggest closet. Normally, if there's a choice, the parents sleep on the ground floor in case of burglars. Best guess: when they moved in, 11-year-old Rory called it.
  • Or perhaps it wasn't in great condition when they moved in? Lorelai bought the house as a 20-something working as a maid with a child to support—it's unlikely the house looked as nice when they bought it as it did during the series run 5-10 years later. It's possible that when they moved in, Rory's bedroom may have been more habitable than the ones upstairs, and she stayed there.
• Perhaps the architect intended it as the room where you put washing machines and driers and whatnot, but Rory liked it and wanted to live there and the washing machine ended up in the garage.
  • Given the age of the house, and the fact the room is directly off the kitchen and separated from the rest of the house, it's more likely it was a maid's bedroom when it was first built.

Could Christopher not be Rory's father?

• During the funeral scene, Lorelai shares a couple of inappropriate memories she has of her relationship with Richard. One of them is him walking in on her having sex when she was 15. She doesn't say it's Christopher (I don't think) and if it had been, she probably would have mentioned him by name. Rory was conceived when Lorelai was about 15 and 3/4 and she'd been (if I recall correctly) dating Christopher since she was fourteen. Could he not be the father or was Lorelai cheating on Christopher?
  • Possible, but unlikely. Lorelai and her daughter both have some odd ideas about cheating, and maybe she and whoever that boy was didn't have sex, but just made out, as you'd expect more of a reaction from Richard than the one described if he walked in on his underage daughter doing that.
  • Lorelai probably never had sex with anyone but Christopher as a teenager, and just made out with a guy her age. Or they were doing something more platonic, like talking in bed, but Richard mistook it for something more "romantic". I definitely don't think this is proof that Christopher isn't Rory's father, as the show established plenty of times that Rory's father (at least biologically) is Christopher.

Age Issues

• Why does everyone think Lorelai ran away at sixteen? Emily comments in a flashback that she had been telling her daughter to move Rory's stroller from the hallway for at least a year. I don't know when you start strolling babies, but this comment alone means Rory was at least a year (though probably less than two) when Lorelai left, meaning that Lorelai was at least seventeen and probably eighteen. Otherwise it would probably have been fine and legal for Emily to haul her back. It's not like they couldn't afford private investigators.
  • Yes, I thought this was common knowledge. Maybe people are simply rounding "She got pregnant at 16 and then ran away from her parents a couple of years later" down to "She got pregnant at 16 and ran away from her parents".
  • Season one states explicitly that Lorelai ran away at seventeen. (And if you do the math, technically she got pregnant at fifteen, but we don't have to talk about that.)

So, what has Rory been doing for ten years?

• Between the finale of the original show and the beginning of the revival, what exactly has she been doing? She hasn't been living in Stars Hallow or pursuing a postgraduate degree, so she must have been active in her career. She obviously hasn't been struggling all throughout this period either, because at the beginning of the revival everybody is treating her like a hotshot burgeoning journalist whose career is expected to take off hugely. However, if she had been consistently successful for ten years (or even if she hasn't, as long as she persisted in journalism) wouldn't she have an established career already?
  • Maybe the job she had didn't last long (company closed or they downsized and she got laid off) or maybe she really didn't have what it took and everyone got sick of her arrogance and fired her?
  • In season six, Richard mentions that Rory has a trust fund that she will get access to when she turns twenty-five. She could have been working for three years then slacked off a bit because of the financial freedom.
    • The trust fund first comes up in season one, episode eighteen, when Trix considers making it available to Rory nine years ahead of schedule.

The Dean/Lindsay Storyline

• Well... where to begin? So Dean gets into a fist-fight with Jess because of Rory, which clearly implies he's not over her (he didn't know the exact details, all he needed as a trigger was to see her cry). So, what does he do? He proposes to his girlfriend. Worse even - she accepts. Worse even: their parents seem not to mind two eighteen year old kids who haven't still graduated from secondary school getting engaged... But it gets worse ... look at how the whole marriage falls apart: Rory phones Dean on his mobile, Lindsay picks up (no Caller ID?), Rory hangs up; seven weeks later, Rory sends Dean a letter (rather than an e-mail) from Europe (though she's returning to Stars Hollow the very next day), and he leaves it in his jacket, which then Lindsay inexplicably peruses just when it's dramatically convenient for the show that she does so.
  • I think it all started with Dean and Rory's breakup, and maybe he rushed into a new relationship a bit because Rory already had a new boyfriend.

Rory's job at the Stamford Eagle-Gazette

• In the 'Prodigal Daughter Returns', there is a pretty strong emphasis on the importance of Rory getting a job at the Stamford Eagle-Gazette, and then... it's just never mentioned again? What gives?
  • She must not have gotten the job after all.
  • Or simply, the editor refused to take her back on both because of a criminal record, and because he had enough of Mitchum and Logan in the office the year before and didn't want to deal with having to give her 'girlfriend favors' and have Rory not find out about said arrangement.

Christopher and Princeton

• In a late Season 1 episode, Rory meets her paternal grandparents with her dad at Richard and Emily's house. The evening is tense and eventually breaks out into an argument in which Christopher's father basically blames Rory for ruining her father's future; he was supposed to attend Princeton. But Lorelai took Rory and raised her in Stars Hollow without him, and it's discussed in the episode that Christopher wasn't exactly a consistent fixture in Rory's life—he flitted in an out as he pleased, and had never been to Stars Hollow before this. What exactly was stopping Christopher from going to Princeton?
  • Knowing Christopher, he probably didn't want to go to Princeton. Rory was just a convenient scapegoat.
  • Straub was just being an asshole. He and Francine never cared about their granddaughter the way Richard and Emily did.
  • You could see where maybe the whole thing messed with his head to the point where he coped by slacking off at school, even cutting class, and he tanked his chances of being accepted to Princeton. An alternative explanation is that he dropped out of high school entirely. Christopher seemed to feel that he had to strike it rich and become a big shot to have anything to contribute as far as Rory was concerned. Being a dad was something that was deferred until he achieved his dreams, while Lorelai was willing to be a maid and live in a shed if that was what it took to take care of Rory. So Christopher might have quit school to chase whatever get-rich-quick scheme caught his eye.

Where do they get all the money for those weird festivals and rituals?

• I'm just wondering.
  • We see Taylor beg coffee, hot cocoa, and other hot food off of Luke on several occasions (Luke grumbles at him over it, but usually gives in). It seems like the events happen through volunteer work and donations, and the events themselves bring in money to fund various projects in the town (bridge reconstruction, gazebo repair, maybe some of the other festivals?)

Luke's Dark Day

• In season six, Patty tells Lorelai about Luke's Dark Day, one day a year when he disappears and no one knows why and the whole town knows about it. Later in the episode, it's revealed that this day is the anniversary of Luke's father's death. Luke has lived in Star's Hollow his whole life and his father was extremely well regarded. Presumably, his death was not a mystery. So how come not one person in town put together that his mysterious dark day just so happened to coincide with his dad's death?
  • They've always been kind of slow at making connections. Alternatively, and this is a bit of a stretch, they were just respecting his privacy until they collectively forgot about it.

Why didn't Emily and Richard have more kids?

• Emily OBSESSES over every detail in Lorelai's life and is always comparing themselves to famous families like the Kennedys, etc. If it was so important to here to have a successful family and to have lots of interaction with her child why wouldn't she have more children? This would increase her chances at both having a good relationship with one of them and having one of them being successful in her view of success.
  • Maybe she couldn't have any more or maybe she miscarried before or after Lorelai and this made her fixate on Lorelai because she couldn't have anymore.

Rory's Obama job

• In the second to last episode, Rory gets a job as a political correspondent following the Obama campaign. It's still only a year or less after her felony which hasn't been expunged yet. Would the magazine not have done a background check and found out and would they really have hired her with a felony on record? And would the Obama campaign have allowed her to be with them with a felony on record?
  • It was two years after that (season 5 finale - season 7 finale). Not familiar enough with how Connecticut law works to answer the rest, but it's not like she was a dangerous criminal. This could be my tv-watching talking, but is a felony really that big of a deal?
    • Actually it wasn't a felony, but a "Third Degree Criminal Mischief" a misdemeanor, but still. Which if she hadn't plead guilty to, she would have been charged with a felony by a jury. You'd think they'd want someone with a completely clean record, not someone who's within two years of something like that.

Rory's success post-boat incident

• And following up on the above, after Rory steals a boat, gets a misdemeanor on record, things go very downhill. She's failed her finals once, but has trouble concentrating on her senior year English final after getting rejected for the Reston Fellowship too. But even after all that, she still graduates with honors and gets into Phi Beta Kappa, and the Obama job. Is this just because she is the Creator's Pet, since it doesn't seem at all realistic.

Rory being valedictorian

• Rory was valedictorian at Chilton when she graduated, but my question is: how? Sure she was academically gifted, and above average at Stars Hollow High, but that was a public school. What are the chances that she would be the most talented and smartest girl at the most prestigious prep school in all of Connecticut? Also, in season 2 I think, Rory has a crisis because Paris told her that grades aren't enough to get you into Harvard, that you need to have done extra curricular activities and volunteer work outside of school, and Paris says she's volunteered at children's hospitals, so Paris has done so much more than Rory, and I doubt she's the only one who did more, so again: how did Rory get into Harvard but Paris didn't, and how did she become valedictorian?
  • I think it's mostly that there is no way they were going to let Paris give another speech after the one where she told everyone that she lost her virginity. While other students may have done charity and/or gotten good grades, my impression was that most of the kids there expected to coast on their parents' money for the rest of their lives, so it's unlikely they did both like Rory or Paris.

Takeout every night

• This could just be played for laughs and shouldn't be looked into too much, but how could Lorelai, a single mother working at an Inn, afford takeout food every night? It's widely known by everyone in the show that Lorelai can't cook, and could barely manage to stir some sauce that Luke was cooking in her own kitchen, so she probably didn't cook when Rory was younger. As she worked her way up at the Inn, you could say that her salary is higher now as a manager, but how did she afford takeout every night when she was a young maid with a toddler? Every night?
  • They lived in the shed at the inn, so Lorelai didn't have to pay rent or a mortgage until they bought their house when Rory was about eleven, which was probably pretty cheap. And they seem to save some of it for the next day.
  • I feel like Sookie was happy to cook for them anytime, and before her, I bet Mia was the same way. Not to mention, it's not every night, it's once a week, and then they live on leftovers for a few days. They donspend a lot at Luke's, but it's implied Lorelai didn't start going there before she got the manager job and the house anyway. It's also hard to imagine they never got birthday money from Richard and Emily and everyone they knew.

Lorelai Giving Rory Up

• Something that has bugged me since I started watching the show: Why didn't Lorelai give Rory up for adoption. I could understand why she turned down abortion, but adoption? (Of course, there's the meta reason that if Lorelai gave her baby up for adoption, she wouldn't have needed to leave her parents to work as a maid, so there would be no show.)
  • Because she didn't want to. That is made clear in "Dear Emily and Richard" in season 3 and also whenever she discusses her Teen Pregnancy.
    • Even then, what prevented Lorelai from passing Rory off as her little sister or whatever?
    • Because, again, she didn't want to. Lorelai wanted Rory and wanted to parent her, that's why she left for Stars Hollow. She did not see Rory as a burden or something to be ashamed of. She vehemently rails against anyone who suggests she should regret having Rory or that Rory has ruined her life, like when Emily implies it in a moment of anger in "Rory's Dance" or when a Chilton mom tries to shame her for telling the class at Career Day such in "One's Got Class and the Other One Dyes."
    • Also, Rory was born in the 1980's, when single motherhood did not carry the same social stigma it did in decades prior. Emily and Richard's insistence that Christopher and Lorelai get married and raise Rory together is always portrayed as painfully old-fashioned and unnecessary.
  • It didn't matter whether Lorelai didn't regret having Rory or not. She still had to risk quitting school and not going to college. It's like someone losing all their limbs in an explosion and then refusing to get prosthetics because they didn't regret losing their limbs.
    • Lorelai did graduate from high school; this is discussed when she graduates from business school in season 3 and was the reason she and Rory lived with Emily and Richard after Rory was born. Attending college was her parents' plan for her, not really what she wanted to do. It's normal for characters to have different motivations than the audience watching the show.
  • The way I understood it, Lorelai got her GED and dropped out, or she dropped out and got her GED. She lived at home until Rory was one or two, so she would have had time.
    • Really, any point about Lorelai risking her high school education is moot, since we start the series when shes in her 30's and getting her associate's in business...which she would have needed a high school diploma or GED to enroll in.
  • As you said, out-of-universe the logic of all of Lorelai's early decisions basically come down to the fact that the show's whole premise and messaging are dependent on her having kept Rory. In-universe, Richard and Emily were probably a factor. I think because we're introduced to Lorelai as a stubbornly independent adult, it's easy to underestimate how much of her life must have been controlled by her parents throughout her pregnancy and Rory's infancy. Richard and Emily were aghast at the suggestion of abortion, and something tells me they're the sort of people who would've thought of adoption as "giving away their grandchild to strangers", as a mark of (further) shame. They may have also been clinging to the hope that Lorelai would come around to marrying Christopher eventually. And it wasn't as if the baby would have been a burden on them financially (they obviously never intended for Lorelai to run away and make it out on her own). In short, it's possible Lorelai never thought of adoption as an option because her parents wouldn't encourage or approve of it. And once she'd been caring for Rory for some time it would have been much more difficult to part from her, even after she ran away from home. Passing the child off as Lorelai's sister probably wouldn't have been feasible once Lorelai's pregnancy was known by people outside the family (assuming Richard and Emily would even have been willing to go that far).

Where's The Birth Control?

• Why does this show take place in a universe where condoms and other methods of birth control are either nonexistent or flimsy? The only time I've seen it get talked about was during a heated argument between Lorelai and several women.
  • Lorelai tells Rory she's going on the pill after falling asleep with Dean after the dance; several seasons later, condoms are explicitly discussed between her and Dean when he takes her virginity. Rory tries to use the fact that they were "safe" to assuage Lorelai's outrage.
  • Paris comes over to Rory's house to discuss sleeping with Jamie (and her freak-out that this is what caused her to get rejected from Harvard). Rory asks if she they were "safe," and Paris tells her they were.
  • Lane mentions using a condom on her wedding night.
  • The fact that most of the female characters are sexually active by the end of the series, and not all of them are pregnant should imply that birth control is being used, but not discussed.
  • Likely a whole lot of Executive Meddling; the show's genesis was as part of a family programming effort, The WB wasn't about to approve a plotline that would lose them conservative affiliates, so they had to keep details hush-hush.

Lorelai and Birth Control

• Slightly related to the above discussion: Lorelai is often shown to be rational, responsible and good at coming up with smart decisions. Why, then, did she not use birth control with Christopher? Except for the same reason why the people on Gilligan's Island didn't just abandon Gilligan or build a boat without him despite him screwing everything up — the show would have a less interesting storyline.
  • Two fifteen-year-olds who got into their parents' vodka stash after unexpectedly finding themselves with an unknown amount of unsupervised time? You can be smart and still believe in stuff like "safe days of your cycle" or whatever urban legends they touted in the seventies. And maybe she hadn't even gotten her period yet — it can happen, and that would make it harder to keep track. And she'd be too embarrassed or afraid to get morning after pills, assuming that was even a thing in '84. She must have known her parents would hear about it.
  • One: Who's sixteen-tear-old daughter (in the 80's at least) has not gotten her period yet? And two: condoms were still a thing in the 80's, and if they didn't want their parents finding condoms, they should've just not had sex anyways because Lorelai should at least know where babies come from and what bad things might happen if she got pregnant so soon.
  • It happens, but I agree it's unlikely that she hadn't gotten her period yet. Maybe she was too drunk to care? Too hungover to think of it? A single glass of vodka can be a lot when you're fifteen.
  • It's safe to assume that either they forgot because of some sort of insobriety, they did use it but it failed (to be fair, nothing says they absolutely didn't), or even both.
    • Just because you use birth control doesn't mean it'll always work. I had a friend whose teenage parents used a condom while her mother was on the pill and she was still conceived.

Lorelai and Christopher's Screwed Up Relationship

• Last headscratcher I'll do here for a while before I get carried away. Why the hell did Lorelai refuse to marry Christopher and even later cut contact with him? While the show does its best to demonize the whole idea that the two marry, there's also the fact that Lorelai and Christopher were in a committed relationship, are accepted by their lover's own parents, and have known each other since they were kids. Personally the whole situation would've made more sense if Lorelai conceived after Christopher tried to date rape her or something.
  • Because she didn't want to. This is addressed multiple times throughout the seasons, since it's a bone of contention between Lorelai and her parents, particularly Emily. Christopher was willing, but Lorelai felt they were too young and wouldn't have lasted. And even though he was willing, the show makes it clear that his commitment to the plan was out of obligation rather than any genuine feeling, that he's flighty, impulsive, and immature, and that Christopher and Lorelai are 100% not compatible as a couple; Lorelai's instincts were right.
  • Lorelai also didn't cut off Christopher's contact with Rory. Not only does the show imply that Christopher and Rory have regular phone contact and see each other at holidays, this point is addressed explicitly in "Haunted Leg" in season 3. Christopher crashes Friday Night Dinner after having left Lorelai to return to his pregnant girlfriend, which hurts both Lorelai and Rory. There's this exchange (and it should be noted that Chris's assumption is wrong, it's Rory who is angry with him and cut off contact):
    Christopher: And I'm sorry, but after all we've been through, especially over these last few months, you shutting me out is wrong. And you know what hits me the hardest, Lor?
    Lorelai: Apparently it isn't the door on your way out.
    Christopher: You keeping Rory from me.
    Lorelai: What?
    Christopher: I never, ever thought you'd do that.
    Lorelai: I'm not keeping Rory from you.
    Christopher: Oh really? Then why hasn't she called me back, huh? I mean, no matter where you and I have been in our lives, my daughter has always called me back, until now.
  • Even if she didn't actually cut contact with him, Lorelai still limited contact with him, as claimed in "Fall".
    • Christopher didn't claim that; in fact, when Rory asks him point blank if Lorelai pushed him away, he says she didn't. And "Fall" is pretty much the only time he ever puts the blame on Lorelai. His entire character arc in season 7 was about his guilt around being an absentee father. And every time in previous seasons, when Lorelai has pointed out that she has "left the door open" but he hasn't used it, he doesn't deny it, and the fact he states outright in his introductory episode it's "easier to be away" than to be around Rory, because he misses her too much when he sees her too often.
    • Tell me if this is just a bad case of mistaking Alternative Character Interpretation for actual Canon behavior, but the whole thing with this seems a bit too OOC. Christopher is flighty and less rational than his long-term ex-girlfriend Lorelai, yes, but he still cares so much for Rory and wants to be one of the biggest father figures (and probably THE biggest if it wasn't for Luke) for her, that him simply not raising Rory with Lorelai makes the whole situation seem like Lorelai is a slight control freak who subtly pushed him away so she could become the "cool hip single mom". Not to mention that Rory desperately wants her parents to be together.
    • This is, at best, a charitable Alternative Character Interpretation. At worst, it's retconning Christopher's Character Development. The show spends quite a bit of time setting up Christopher's status as a Disneyland Dad, and his good intentions, but poor follow-through. For context, in the pilot, he's in California, which he didn't tell Lorelai about, she finds out from her parents. In season one, it's stated he's never visited the girls in Stars Hollow, he isn't involved enough in Rory's life to know much about her hobbies or that Dean exists, much less that she's dating him. In season two, Lorelai calls him about escorting Rory to her debutante ball, and when he agrees, Rory and Lorelai have a discussion about how his promise to be there equates to only a 50/50 or 60/40 chance he'll actually show up—Rory is shocked he even agreed to go; a similar conversation is had when Rory and Lorelai discuss Christopher inviting Rory to spend Christmas with him later that season, which Lorelai is hesitant to agree to in part because she thinks it's insincere. Christopher also does not attend Rory's high school graduation with the excuse he's "out of town." He only starts showing a real interest in being involved in Rory's life when she's at Yale, mostly because he's become romantically involved with Lorelai. Christopher's absence is also brought up with Luke and Christopher come to blows in season 5's "Wedding Bell Blues," when Chris tries to assert his dominance as Rory's father, while Luke asks where Christopher was during Rory's life milestones, like having the chickenpox, graduating high school, starting college, or moving into her dorm room. This is not an aspect of Christopher's character that is unexplored, unacknowledged, or underappreciated by the writers, nor do they allow Christopher to abdicate responsibility for it. His Character Development in season 7 is kicked off by being around other dads at Yale, hearing them talk about being involved in the minutia of their children's lives, and realizing he never did that with Rory and he has no relationship with her.
    • Can I just use this as an opportunity to say Luke was a goddamn asshole for what he did to Chris? I get that the former was "more present" in Rory's life than the latter was, but that does not excuse him for rubbing it in his face that he is a "less suitable father figure" even though he, just like Lorelai, was only a teen when Rory was born and that debatably caused more problems than if they were adults when it happened. (And it didn't help that Lorelai was also a teen rebel)
    • And while Rory wants her dad to be more around more, it cannot be said she "desperately" wants Lorelai and Christopher together. In season one, it's a passing fancy and a means for Christopher to stay in Stars Hollow, but she accepts Lorelai's explanation that he isn't ready and she doesn't want to. In later seasons, if anything, it's Rory who realizes just how bad Christopher is for Lorelai and doesn't want them together at all. Like, in season 5, she specifically seeks him and tells him to leave Lorelai alone, because every time he comes back into her life, he messes it up and ends up hurting her mother. In season 7, she isn't happy at all they got married, is extremely wary but fakes enthusiasm for Lorelai's benefit, and when Christopher eventually begins to do his usual routine of bailing when things get tough, Rory explicitly tells her mother she "isn't Switzerland" with Chris and Lorelai and is firmly on Lorelai's side. In the revival, their brief small talk about Lorelai's upcoming wedding ends with Rory telling him to stay away from it. It could be argued that part of Rory's Character Development was the need for her to reconcile the dad she wanted Christopher to be, with the father—and person—he actually is.
    • Although it should be noted that the show kind of cements Christopher's disinterest in parenting in the revival, when not only does he try to be a Disneyland Dad to Rory again before she can even begin to get out that she's come just wanting to have a heart-to-heart talk (again being the "executive parent" he's discussed as in season 7), but it's revealed he's repeating the same pattern with GG that he did with Rory. He left the series proper with custody of GG, but now she lives with her mother in Paris, and Chris doesn't know anything about her except she's "got the whole baguette thing down." Given Sherri felt confident enough in Christopher's parenting to leave GG with him while she took off, it's unlikely she is deliberately keeping GG from him, as this headscratcher feels Lorelai did with Rory.
    • It feels sort of discomforting that a father showing disinterest and becoming distant towards his long-time lover and their daughter is considered "Character Development".
    • It isn't...the opposite is Christopher's Character Development in the series proper. The fact he doesn't retain this Character Development in the revival is probably technically Character Derailment, but since his motivation to do better was to be with Lorelai, who wants to be with Luke, and build a relationship with Rory, who doesn't appreciate his lackluster efforts to do so only after she's an adult and gotten what he wanted with Lorelai, it makes sense he'd go back to his old ways after they cut him loose.

Who wrote that heinous letter?

It was brought up once, Emily was sure Lorelai wrote it, Lorelai denied, and they fought about it. It was never discussed again. What was the point of the letter and who wrote it?

• To me it looked like gaslighting on Emily's part. The only "letter" I remember her getting from Lorelai is the note that politely said she was out of there with Rory, and the only heinous letter I remember is the one from her mother-in-law to Richard begging him not to marry Emily. That one would also have been signed Lorelai. It's possible she got things mixed up.

Lorelai's date of birth vs. Rory's conception

• Rory was born in October of 1984, meaning that she must've been conceived on January of 1984. However, Lor was born on April of 1968, meaning that she was only fifteen when she and Chris did the taboo deed, even though the age of consent in Connecticut around that time was sixteen. Is there a possible explanation for this, like Rory being born prematurely, some form of statutory rape getting involved, or just a simple Writers Cannot Do Math?
  • Would it be statutory rape if two fifteen-year-olds had sex? Idk, just sounds weird. My guess is Doylist: WB probably didn't want to deal with the underage sex thing, or the Palladinos didn't, so they just glossed it over. It does not look like Lorelai was less than nine months pregnant when she went into labor, and I'm pretty sure Amy can do math. I actually think she deliberately fibs the ages, like in AYITL, when Rory and April were explicitly a year younger than they were in the original show.
  • I assumed that that fact was an error made by the writers, as they either put April instead of January or 1968 instead of 1967. I don't know, maybe that vodka stash was strong enough to fool the two into having drunken, unprotected sex despite still being barely legal.
  • Also, wouldn't underage sex make the whole show more unbearable to watch, considering that it has hints of the unfortunate message, "Having underage sex is okay! If you get pregnant as a young girl, do whatever the hell you want as long as you know you are going to grow up to be an independent woman!" And people who "can do math" are just as prone to silly mistakes as those who can't.

Timeline of Lindsay and Dean's Wedding

Rory and Dean broke up in episode 7 of season 3 - sometime in the Fall of 2002^note  Air date November 12, 2002. He and Lindsay get married in episode 6 of season 4 - sometime in the Fall of 2003^note  Air date October 14, 2002. While it makes for compelling drama, what parents are genuinely excited for their 18-year-old kid who has been with their partner for at most a year (and that's assuming Lindsay and Dean got together within days of Rory and Dean's breakup) to be getting married? And happy to bankroll a giant reception and 'frost the entire town'? Lindsay and Dean we can at least assume are dumb teenagers who haven't thought it through, but it's surprising that their parents seem so happy to go along with it.

• Based on what we know of their mothers, as I don't recall ever seeing their father: Dean's mom seems quite indulgent and with an "as long as Dean's happy" attitude, and Lindsay's mother seems all kinds of entitled and like she infantilizes her daughter. Why else would she call out Rory in public like she was yelling at a child who stole her kid's toy on the playground?

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