Gilmore Girls’ best boyfriend debate was obvious until the Netflix revival

I will start this essay by acknowledging my own bias in this conversation: I’m Zosha, and Logan is the best Rory boyfriend on Gilmore Girls.

This show is about families, class and how they influence our lives. However, there was also boys and women who brought out their unique talents in the extremely close mother-daughter pair of Lorelei (Lauren Graham), and Rory [Alexis Bledel]. It was inevitable that teams would form around pairings, particularly for Rory, and although it drove creator Amy Sherman-Palladino a little crazy, she acknowledged that “people love romance.”

Of the three relationships in Rory’s life, there was no contest who was the best. Really, the “versus” rivalry is a false one. Gilmore Girls could be greater than their men. Gilmore Girls more than its love stories, but in the end, we’re all just pawns in Sherman-Palladino’s sick, sick game.

Do you belong to Team Dean?

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Fans of long-standing Gilmore GirlsIt will surprise you to learn that Rory was a victim of three different boyfriends over the course of his history: Jess (Logan), and Dean (Dean). But the game of “Best Rory boyfriend” is not a three-man race, so much as it is two men and a very tall baby. These games are less about Dean and more about Dean being the batter-infested pancake that you test to see if the temperature is right, but then suddenly lose your virginity years later.

Time and again Dean disappoints, whether it’s pressuring Rory to say she’s in love before she feels it or cheating on his wife. When he and Rory break up he acts sweet to her all while threatening Jess behind the scenes, explicitly because he knows Jess can’t do anything about it. By the time Dean makes his final appearance on the show he’s only there to be a jerk and get in Luke’s head. He’s either sweet and innocent, or dopey and possessive; either way he’s played himself out of a win here.

Jess

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Let’s go to the tape: Jess and Rory had an instant heat to it, as two reserved nerds who love books. She was a marvel to him and she reacted by calling him on the bullshit. Their cutest moments would happen when she was dating boyfriend-at-the-time Dean, The margin notes, the conversations, the bringing her a feast of Luke’s completely unbidden. The chemistry between them was strong enough that they chose to stay together. HoweverTo act upon their feelings for each other was becoming rude, it was even getting to Dean, who is a human wet saltine).

However, once Dean is gone Jesss and Rory will finally be able to have a normal relationship without any restrictions. In fact, it’s bad! There’s simply no way around this.

Whatever spark they had seemed confined to their shared interests, and season 3’s Jess is actively uninterested in expanding their connection beyond that. Their relationship is dominated by one of these three things: talking or strained talk, but not making out. Rory tries to get him to do something, like meeting his grandmother. He complies, but is not happy about the whole thing. Jess worries about Dean, and Rory tries to get him to remember that she’s trying to be friendly with her ex and his furrowed brow.

It’s not that anything Jess does is unforgivable — he’s 17! He’s definitely not a strong communicator as a boyfriend, and is even less interested in ever being vulnerable. But it’s certainly not fun to be around, particularly as a girlfriend. In season 3’s “Face Off,” their communication falls apart, leaving both of them sullen and unable (or unwilling) to broach any of the obvious cracks under their feet. They instead hide their concerns and continue to dig into their hearts. This pattern will define their short relationship.

It’s true of almost any love triangle that your OTP says a lot more about you than it does about the people within the relationship. Jess is likely to appeal to people who are attracted to a tough guy, someone trying to do their best in a world that seems unfair. Rory and Jess clearly show a deep love for one another. I don’t begrudge the kid. But unlike Riverdale, I don’t think anyone should be doomed to date the people they dated in high school for the rest of their lives.

You can chalk it up to circumstances — almost as soon as Rory and Jess were together and WB announced a spinoff for his character to go get to know his estranged father. His character was probably destroyed by the powers-that-be to allow him to go for his (disastrous) spin-off. Either way, the text just doesn’t support Jess being a good boyfriend.

Logan team

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Like I said, I get the appeal of Jess among the constellation of Rory’s boyfriends (and certainly we can all join hands in judging those who root for Dean). In many respects Logan’s and Jess’ characters overlapped: Both were incredibly intelligent, even sharper when they felt threatened; they challenged Rory to grow beyond the bounds of what she thought she was capable of and dream bigger; they were prone to being assholes when the vibes were off.

However, the seven seasons are a part of Gilmore GirlsLogan does the hard work of being a partner. While him and Rory have a rocky start — an early prototype of the now much-more-common “casual” relationship that one side secretly hopes is more — even their fights are more productive than her and Jess’. The most egregious strike leveled against him by fans was their painful fight (after Logan gets jealous at a dinner with Jess) in “Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out,” after which they don’t talk for a few weeks. The first argument was nasty and neither side is at its best. He assumes they’d broken up, she thinks of it as a “hiatus” (at least, until she hears that he believes otherwise). Once they’re back together and Rory finds out he slept with his sister’s friends during their break, she accuses him of cheating on her.

Logan disagrees, but he doesn’t shy away from the conflict: he understands why the information would wound her (it’s why he didn’t play it up!), but in his mind it’s truly not cheating — he genuinely thought they were broken up, so he was just depressed and rebounding. He makes space for her feelings in a way she won’t, and is unable to until he’s in the hospital recuperating from a near-fatal Life and Death Brigade stunt. (If this article is how you’re choosing to enter the Gilmore Girls fandom just know it’s not as strange as it reads.)

Though Logan was initially set up as a spoiled heir, it’s those incredible communication skills and a big heart that make him different. To find out that they are actually in a relationship, he pushes past his trepidation. DoesWant one? He joyfully puts in all his efforts whenever possible. Whether it’s acknowledging she’s having a hard time processing family stuff at a work party he’s throwing or jumping into action to help her get the college paper out, he’s a dream partner for the day-to-day stuff. Although he is Huntzberger, there are some blind spots that he can get into, Rory Gilmore has the same.

Ultimately, Logan benefits in the main way Jess was held back: Logan’s not a brash 17-year-old kid, he’s a reckless 20-something on the precipice of coming into his own. The couple can now make adult decisions, such as moving in together or sleeping together. Over time, he has lived up to his promise and proved to be considerate, smart, and mature. He is exactly the sort of boyfriend character I like to see in the world: part of a dynamic relationship, not perfect but always making sure his partner’s needs are being met. Logan earned the mantle of not only Rory’s best boyfriend, but also being able to sneak a penis joke into the WB in the 2000s (depending on how you interpret Matt Czuchry’s line reading there).

No matter who wins … we lose

But then again, what did Logan’s two years of character growth have when pitted against One Year of the Life?

This started off as something sweet.Continue reading Gilmore Girls!) quickly soured into … actually watching Gilmore Girls The Year of a Life. Netflix’s revival doesn’t do it justice. They struggle to recapture what they lost in the original episodes. Gilmore Girls magic. While Amy Sherman-Palladino said the controversial seventh season of the show would be canon, she didn’t watch it. And much of the show’s timeline reflects a creator uninterested in diving into where the characters were then, with Luke and Lorelei still idling down the aisle, and Rory being published in The New Yorker without having figured much out professionally since we last saw her.

Logan was the only character to show growth. Having broken up with Rory in the penultimate episode, he’s apparently spent the last few years deteriorating: In One Year of the Life, he’s a busy professional who still parties with his Life and Death Brigade friends when he’s able, and cheats on his fianceé with Rory. He’s still clever and full of banter, but (like much of the revival) it all takes on an air of tragedy. This isn’t the match we once knew, but rather a bad plot dressed up like a media heir.

You can take this as you wish, but I felt it like character assassination. And worse yet was the way my rejection of this new character made me feel. Here we are now ItWhen it came to choosing my boyfriend, I was the one that used selective memory. This text did not support a beautiful and loving relationship. It was now doomed to fail and stripped of everything that made it so fascinating. It’s a devastation not unique to Gilmore GirlsTelevision reboots can be a rare commodity. Jess Fans were the only group that understood what I was experiencing.

Photo: Saeed Adyani/Netflix

Photo: Saeed Adyani/Netflix

One Year of the Life is the sort of revival that’s so odiously bad it makes it hard to revisit the sweetness of the original. It forces us to recognize the way that the Palladinos always filtered the information. Gilmore GirlsThey are narratives for themselves, not characters, but echos of the past. Amy Sherman-Palladino stated that there are four words she envisioned as the ending to her show. What was the ending of The Luminary? One Year of the Life finally showed us them — “Mom?” “Yeah?” “I’m pregnant.” — it solidified the guardrails Gilmore GirlsAlways been there. This was always going to be a show about how Rory’s choices mirrored her mother’s, from the final pregnancy beat back to the types of men she’d choose between.

It’s impossible to unsee the way the show is constantly setting her up with her own version of Christopher and Luke’s class differentials: Tristan and Dean, then Jess and Logan. And you start to see this play out across all of the Palladinos’ shows. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel can’t let Midge be vulnerable, so it instead makes her impenetrable. BunheadsWould rather torpedo toward a Woody’s Roundup Conclusion. Give the story closure. When big changes are needed, Gilmore GirlsThey happen when a character is weak. Jess was wanted for another show so he suddenly doesn’t care about taking care of Rory; Logan was Rory’s version of Christopher so he regresses into a life of privilege; even Luke has to do a total 180 and doubt his and Lorelei’s relationship once he finds out he has a daughter.

Using this lens, you can see the issues of Gilmore GirlsThese changes are a sharp reminder of the importance of their relationship and go beyond being good boyfriends or season 7 swap-ups. The truth is, both Jess and Logan could likely make ideal partners, were they not hamstrung by Sherman-Palladino’s larger machinations on what they needed to be, and instead were allowed to just be true to the characters they became. This is one bright spot of all of it. One Year of the Life is Jess’ seemingly very-real glow-up, coming across as a man who has led an unorthodox but much more caring life than the ne’er-do-well teenager he once was. Logan, like Christopher, has a lot more options to make a contribution in the finale.

It’s time both sides came together, acknowledging that if Gilmore Girls feels worth revisiting at all, it’s because it’s worth more than its boyfriends or endgames. It was an excellent example of imperfect characters trying to be kind and loving in spite. It can be criticized for portraying protagonists as unthinking, selfish, childish and spoiled.

However, when? Gilmore Girls is peaking it’s in exploring how these choices are informed by a characters’ past; the entire premise of the show is characters challenging themselves (and, yes, often failing) to deal with hard situations to the best of their abilities. Almost every relationship is messy and flawed, but unlike other shows it doesn’t think flawed love is worth giving up on. Jess, Logan, Rory, Emily, Richard, Lorelei — they’re all marvelously consistent and contradictory, all at once. As they bounce off each other at Luke’s or Friday night dinners, it’s not a question of simple misunderstandings so much as it is deep-rooted differences in how they show that love. For some, that’s Jess and his cool street smarts; for others (me), it’s Logan and his constant caring. Either way, I think it’s a pull strong enough to return to Stars Hollow again — and to blot the revival out from my life entirely. Your heart will do what you want!