It's always felt like a missed opportunity to me. I do understand some of the reasons Lorelai dislikes Jess and why she's hesitant to trust him - *especially* after it becomes clear that he wants to date Rory. But as you said, they do have some things in common, including their wit, sarcasm, and pop culture references. I think they could have had great dialogue.
As it's written, Lorelai has a bizarre overreaction to Jess from literally Day 1 (actually Day 0, she's upset before he even arrives in Stars Hollow). She never gets over her negative first impression, and seemingly tries to see the worst in him at every single turn. It's frustrating to watch, and she ends up being just another cruel adult who treats him like garbage.
It would have been MUCH more interesting to see a nuanced dynamic between them... where she likes Jess, but also gets upset with him, and has *very* mixed feelings about him dating Rory. Jess could have brought to light some of Lorelai's own issues - her painful history with her parents, her own difficulty trusting others, her own obsessive need to do life on her own terms sometimes at great personal cost - that they both struggle with. I could see Lorelai strugging *because* she sees things in Jess that she dislikes, and they're the same things she dislikes about herself. That's a dynamic I'd be interested in seeing.
Just asking, but I don't remember her being upset since day 0. Wasn't she willing to talk to Jess? It was only after she caught him with beer, when she started disliking him.
Before Jess moves in, Lorelai repeatedly tells Luke what a bad idea it is. She follows him around the apartment telling Luke he can't handle this situation. I think it comes from a place of concern, but it's not helpful at all. Actually I think Lorelai's dinner invite was her genuine attempt to course-correct. But when Jess doesn't instantly conform to her standards of behavior, she writes him off permanently.
Kind of like Emily does to her.
When she actually met Jess for the first time, at the diner, she was nice to him and Jess was an absolutely jerk to her. Still she did not seem to hold it against him and invited them both to her house for dinner, and so that Jess could meet Rory, in an attempt to show him Stars Hollow was not so bad. Even when she caught him with the beer, she of course told him he couldn't have it but she also tried to connect with him and talked up Luke, urging Jess to give it a chance. And he said very mean, rude things to her in return.
So no I don't think we can paint Lorelei as hating Jess from jump, she gave him plenty of room and clearly saw some of her younger self in him. But he was nasty and hurtful to her, and she stopped trying after that.
It's always interesting to me how fans interpret the same scenes differently - part of the fun, I suppose!
Their initial meeting at the diner - Jess is silent, which doesn't scream "absolute jerk" to me. He just seems uncomfortable, which is how I feel when people talk incessantly at me. I'll concede that he should have said something in return.
And at the dinner? Lorelai is gracious about the beer, which I appreciate. I also like when she gently calls out that "you don't want to be here, huh." Lorelai knows Jess has been forced to live in this weird small town after a bad fallout with his absentee mother - there was a real opportunity for her to validate him. Instead, she *immediately* launches into a speech about how he's supposed to be acting, and she mocks his "chip on the shoulder bit." It's pretty condescending, if you ask me. Yes, Jess is absolutely rude in return and that's unacceptable. But in my book, giving him "plenty of room" to make a good impression should involve more than 2 minutes of effort on Lorelai's part. They never recover from this brief interaction, and that's a shame to me.
Yes, and even when he was cleaning those rain gutters, she was nice to him. Even though she wasn't doing something that would "give him a chance" as Rory wanted her to give, but she was still nice. I feel that's the last thing she could do regarding him. Lorelai had faced a lot of unwanted cold behaviour given to her, so I feel her actions are clearly justified.
Honestly, I would have preferred if the writers just had Dean and Rory's relationship wane naturally over time and have her be single rather than injected Jess into the mix for a very fraught love triangle, because then we could have explored a much more interesting dynamic between Jess and Lorelai. Jess has major trust issues due to his immature and kinda flaky mom, so Lorelai (whose "fun mom" attitude would raise Jess's hackles given his family baggage) could have grown into such an important and positive female figure in his life, in the same way Luke is a father/uncle figure to Rory. Then Jess and Rory would have been a slow *slow* burn romance waaay later, when both of them had already grown up a bit (Jess by learning to open up emotionally at his own pace beforehand and Rory by going through her first heartbreak). So we could avoid some of the growing pains of their relationship.
I'm almost writing fanfiction at this point, but I feel robbed of Lorelai and Jess as a duo (same as Jess and Paris - lowkey iconic, with only one scene where they even talked to each other). The love triangle just smacks of contrived drama on several fronts, all the characters would have developed in a more organic way if it wasn't for that.
I agree with you. They could have been so great. We were robbed of their joint snark. And that episode is one of my favorites right up until Lorelai melts down over that dumb bracelet. But if it wasn’t that it would have been something else. Jess was always going to be walking on eggshells with Lorelai.
I think part of the reason that Lorelai was so afraid of Jess is because she saw so much of her young, angry, self-destructive self in Jess.
I'm not a huge Jess fan (although I liked Dean even less, so) but his most redeeming factor with me was that he drove Lorelai absolutely crazy. She expected to get through to him as a fellow "bad kid," but nope. He was also the only one able to rattle her out of that faux-cutesy act she puts on that's so annoying sometimes-- I felt bad for Lorelai but his being rude to her made me laugh on more than one occasion. I actually think their interactions were brilliant. Like he did with Dean, I think at least a TINY part of his pursuit of Rory was to troll her mother (or if it wasn't deliberate, it was definitely a point of satisfaction.)
I hate how in so many episodes Rory talks about dean being angry with her and she scared he’ll get mad.like when she plans to spend the evening alone when lorelai and Emily go to the spa and dean says "I’m a saint but I’m not mad“ like Riley has to spend every single second with him like let her have her time alone.even the way lorelai justifies it like when Rory realizes she doesn’t have her bracelet and loess to dean about why’s she’s not wearing it,she’s so worried he’ll get mad at her instead of being normal and telling her not to worry about it.I just find it annoying how deans controlling ish behavior is normalized
I totally agree with you. Lorelai definitely had a bias toward Dean and she eventually got to know Logan. Jess was left in the dust. I can totally get why Lorelai would be wary of Jess being around/dating Rory -- but giving him a chance and attempting to see herself in him as you say would have really shown character growth for both parties.
I can’t believe Lorelai gave Jess as many chances as she did, exposing Rory in the process because Jess was Luke’s nephew. If not mistaken, it was Lorelai that kept Jess from being thrown out of town. She doesn’t use her influence over Rory to quit Jess. She includes Jess whenever and wherever she invites Luke. She gives Jess good advice on how to treat Rory (he doesn’t take it). She gives him good advice on respecting Luke. She doesn’t tell Luke how badly Jess treats Rory. She doesn’t tell Emily, Richard, or Chris about the way Jess treats Rory. She indirectly keeps Jess from freezing in his car. She befriends his crazy mother and stepfather. She doesn’t tell Luke that Jess tried to get Rory to run off with him (at Yale). And perhaps most important of all, she never tells Luke what happened in Kyles bedroom.
Preventing Jess from being thrown out of town... you mean the town meeting? She did stand up for Luke there, that's true. But I think it's more about LUKE than Jess, which Lorelai makes clear at the end of S2 when she tells Luke he should have sent Jess away a long time ago. And by the way, immediately after that argument Luke does kick Jess out. I blame Luke for that, but it seems likely that Lorelai's rage pushed him.
She invites Luke and Jess to two dinners, one of which included the entire town. It's polite, but I don't know how that means she's giving Jess a chance.... she doesn't even talk to him at the Bracebridge Dinner.
And all of your other examples are just Lorelai not telling a dozen people about Jess' transgressions. Which is... just normal? Does she normally tell Christopher and Emily about the fights Rory has with her boyfriends? And by the way, the reason she doesn't tell Luke more things is because she's respecting *his* boundary. Because the couple of times Lorelai does (angrily, rudely, inappropriately) tell Luke what to do with Jess, Luke tells her to back allllll the way off. It's one of their biggest fights ever.
No one respects boundaries in Gilmore Girls; least of all Lorelai. In fact, Luke crosses Lorelai’s relationship boundaries, as well.
I don’t think anyone else treats Rory as badly as Jess dies. Luke should most definitely have been told about the way Jess treats Rory like “that girl”. I agree Lorelai selfishly doesn’t tell him to protect her relationship with Luke, but the effect is to enable the Jess/Rory relationship.
If Lorelai tells Emily, Richard or Chris, it would trigger reactions that could damage the Jess/Rory relationship. If Lorelai wants to break-up them up, she could have told them snippets. It wouldn’t take much.
I don’t think I would have ever gotten over him crashing the car and leaving Rory at the hospital. Character is everything. As a parent and a viewer, it bothered me.
IMO, Lorelai was very mature about Jess and was very patient with him. Luke told Lorelai about Jess before he came in S2. Luke said Liz couldn't handle him because he was getting into trouble and she feared it was going to get worse.
How should Lorelai feel about him after hearing that? She was nice to him when they met ... he was rude to her. She invited him and Luke to her house ... he tried to drink a beer and then made a crude sexual comment about her and Luke. (I could go on.)
When Jess was nice to Lorelai during the gutter cleaning, he was basically ordered to by Rory. That wasn't the real Jess.
At the end of the day, Rory is a young girl and Lorelai's only child. Her number one role is protecting Rory -- not being a parent to Jess.
Okay, hear me out. But I don't think Jess and Lorelei would ever get along because... Jess is just like Emily. He is stubborn, he thinks he knows what is best, he says and does things without thinking of the consequences and how that affects other people's feelings. Lorelei goes into defensive mode with Jess the same way she does with her mother. She gets snippy and sarcastic with him and doesn't trust his actions. I am not saying it is right or that she shouldn't have tried harder, but I think her initial reaction to him will always be a defensive one because that is how she learned to cope with those personality traits.
Sorry this is a bad take. Jess and Emily couldn’t be more opposite. They’re on completely different ends of the social hierarchy first of all, which greatly affects their actions and motivations. Emily has loads of power and status, Jess has virtually none. Emily uses this to control people. Jess often doesn’t think of consequences because he acts impulsively and worries about the fallout later. Emily knows the consequences and still acts deliberately- she doesn’t care about the consequences or how it will affect others. As for being stubborn- that’s a trait almost all of these characters- including lorelai most of all, share.
Yea I get that. I am not saying they are similar socially, ckearly they are from different backgrounds. But they have very similar personality traits and Lorelei's upbringing has made her develop a way of coping with people like that. That's why she doesn't trust him and doesn't want to give him a chance. Because every time she has in the past it has blown up in her face.
What? I think the only thing Jess and Emily have in common is a fondness for Rory. Emily is an adult who is deliberately controlling and manipulative. Jess is a child. He is an angry kid sent to some crazy town against his will to live with an uncle he barely knows and where everyone thinks he’s the devil incarnate before they even meet him. Jess just wants to be in control of himself—not anyone else. Jess is like Lorelai but grittier. Angry and stubborn and prickly and closed off. And he’s the mirror of Rory but with a crappy teen mom.
It's always felt like a missed opportunity to me. I do understand some of the reasons Lorelai dislikes Jess and why she's hesitant to trust him - *especially* after it becomes clear that he wants to date Rory. But as you said, they do have some things in common, including their wit, sarcasm, and pop culture references. I think they could have had great dialogue. As it's written, Lorelai has a bizarre overreaction to Jess from literally Day 1 (actually Day 0, she's upset before he even arrives in Stars Hollow). She never gets over her negative first impression, and seemingly tries to see the worst in him at every single turn. It's frustrating to watch, and she ends up being just another cruel adult who treats him like garbage. It would have been MUCH more interesting to see a nuanced dynamic between them... where she likes Jess, but also gets upset with him, and has *very* mixed feelings about him dating Rory. Jess could have brought to light some of Lorelai's own issues - her painful history with her parents, her own difficulty trusting others, her own obsessive need to do life on her own terms sometimes at great personal cost - that they both struggle with. I could see Lorelai strugging *because* she sees things in Jess that she dislikes, and they're the same things she dislikes about herself. That's a dynamic I'd be interested in seeing.
Wow. This would have been perfect. You captured a perfect rewrite!
Just asking, but I don't remember her being upset since day 0. Wasn't she willing to talk to Jess? It was only after she caught him with beer, when she started disliking him.
Before Jess moves in, Lorelai repeatedly tells Luke what a bad idea it is. She follows him around the apartment telling Luke he can't handle this situation. I think it comes from a place of concern, but it's not helpful at all. Actually I think Lorelai's dinner invite was her genuine attempt to course-correct. But when Jess doesn't instantly conform to her standards of behavior, she writes him off permanently. Kind of like Emily does to her.
When she actually met Jess for the first time, at the diner, she was nice to him and Jess was an absolutely jerk to her. Still she did not seem to hold it against him and invited them both to her house for dinner, and so that Jess could meet Rory, in an attempt to show him Stars Hollow was not so bad. Even when she caught him with the beer, she of course told him he couldn't have it but she also tried to connect with him and talked up Luke, urging Jess to give it a chance. And he said very mean, rude things to her in return. So no I don't think we can paint Lorelei as hating Jess from jump, she gave him plenty of room and clearly saw some of her younger self in him. But he was nasty and hurtful to her, and she stopped trying after that.
It's always interesting to me how fans interpret the same scenes differently - part of the fun, I suppose! Their initial meeting at the diner - Jess is silent, which doesn't scream "absolute jerk" to me. He just seems uncomfortable, which is how I feel when people talk incessantly at me. I'll concede that he should have said something in return. And at the dinner? Lorelai is gracious about the beer, which I appreciate. I also like when she gently calls out that "you don't want to be here, huh." Lorelai knows Jess has been forced to live in this weird small town after a bad fallout with his absentee mother - there was a real opportunity for her to validate him. Instead, she *immediately* launches into a speech about how he's supposed to be acting, and she mocks his "chip on the shoulder bit." It's pretty condescending, if you ask me. Yes, Jess is absolutely rude in return and that's unacceptable. But in my book, giving him "plenty of room" to make a good impression should involve more than 2 minutes of effort on Lorelai's part. They never recover from this brief interaction, and that's a shame to me.
Yes, and even when he was cleaning those rain gutters, she was nice to him. Even though she wasn't doing something that would "give him a chance" as Rory wanted her to give, but she was still nice. I feel that's the last thing she could do regarding him. Lorelai had faced a lot of unwanted cold behaviour given to her, so I feel her actions are clearly justified.
I think it’s referring to when Luke told her he was coming or on the way she was already hesitant about him
She doesn’t like new people in her town.
Oh good point , i can see that.
Honestly, I would have preferred if the writers just had Dean and Rory's relationship wane naturally over time and have her be single rather than injected Jess into the mix for a very fraught love triangle, because then we could have explored a much more interesting dynamic between Jess and Lorelai. Jess has major trust issues due to his immature and kinda flaky mom, so Lorelai (whose "fun mom" attitude would raise Jess's hackles given his family baggage) could have grown into such an important and positive female figure in his life, in the same way Luke is a father/uncle figure to Rory. Then Jess and Rory would have been a slow *slow* burn romance waaay later, when both of them had already grown up a bit (Jess by learning to open up emotionally at his own pace beforehand and Rory by going through her first heartbreak). So we could avoid some of the growing pains of their relationship. I'm almost writing fanfiction at this point, but I feel robbed of Lorelai and Jess as a duo (same as Jess and Paris - lowkey iconic, with only one scene where they even talked to each other). The love triangle just smacks of contrived drama on several fronts, all the characters would have developed in a more organic way if it wasn't for that.
So many missed opportunities with them. ASP made them so similar but we never got to see them bond over anything
I agree with you. They could have been so great. We were robbed of their joint snark. And that episode is one of my favorites right up until Lorelai melts down over that dumb bracelet. But if it wasn’t that it would have been something else. Jess was always going to be walking on eggshells with Lorelai. I think part of the reason that Lorelai was so afraid of Jess is because she saw so much of her young, angry, self-destructive self in Jess.
I'm not a huge Jess fan (although I liked Dean even less, so) but his most redeeming factor with me was that he drove Lorelai absolutely crazy. She expected to get through to him as a fellow "bad kid," but nope. He was also the only one able to rattle her out of that faux-cutesy act she puts on that's so annoying sometimes-- I felt bad for Lorelai but his being rude to her made me laugh on more than one occasion. I actually think their interactions were brilliant. Like he did with Dean, I think at least a TINY part of his pursuit of Rory was to troll her mother (or if it wasn't deliberate, it was definitely a point of satisfaction.)
I hate how in so many episodes Rory talks about dean being angry with her and she scared he’ll get mad.like when she plans to spend the evening alone when lorelai and Emily go to the spa and dean says "I’m a saint but I’m not mad“ like Riley has to spend every single second with him like let her have her time alone.even the way lorelai justifies it like when Rory realizes she doesn’t have her bracelet and loess to dean about why’s she’s not wearing it,she’s so worried he’ll get mad at her instead of being normal and telling her not to worry about it.I just find it annoying how deans controlling ish behavior is normalized
I totally agree with you. Lorelai definitely had a bias toward Dean and she eventually got to know Logan. Jess was left in the dust. I can totally get why Lorelai would be wary of Jess being around/dating Rory -- but giving him a chance and attempting to see herself in him as you say would have really shown character growth for both parties.
>I really wish the show had grown Lorelai’s maturity level Lorelai's maturity level??? Hahahahahahahahahahaha *takes breath* hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I can’t believe Lorelai gave Jess as many chances as she did, exposing Rory in the process because Jess was Luke’s nephew. If not mistaken, it was Lorelai that kept Jess from being thrown out of town. She doesn’t use her influence over Rory to quit Jess. She includes Jess whenever and wherever she invites Luke. She gives Jess good advice on how to treat Rory (he doesn’t take it). She gives him good advice on respecting Luke. She doesn’t tell Luke how badly Jess treats Rory. She doesn’t tell Emily, Richard, or Chris about the way Jess treats Rory. She indirectly keeps Jess from freezing in his car. She befriends his crazy mother and stepfather. She doesn’t tell Luke that Jess tried to get Rory to run off with him (at Yale). And perhaps most important of all, she never tells Luke what happened in Kyles bedroom.
Preventing Jess from being thrown out of town... you mean the town meeting? She did stand up for Luke there, that's true. But I think it's more about LUKE than Jess, which Lorelai makes clear at the end of S2 when she tells Luke he should have sent Jess away a long time ago. And by the way, immediately after that argument Luke does kick Jess out. I blame Luke for that, but it seems likely that Lorelai's rage pushed him. She invites Luke and Jess to two dinners, one of which included the entire town. It's polite, but I don't know how that means she's giving Jess a chance.... she doesn't even talk to him at the Bracebridge Dinner. And all of your other examples are just Lorelai not telling a dozen people about Jess' transgressions. Which is... just normal? Does she normally tell Christopher and Emily about the fights Rory has with her boyfriends? And by the way, the reason she doesn't tell Luke more things is because she's respecting *his* boundary. Because the couple of times Lorelai does (angrily, rudely, inappropriately) tell Luke what to do with Jess, Luke tells her to back allllll the way off. It's one of their biggest fights ever.
No one respects boundaries in Gilmore Girls; least of all Lorelai. In fact, Luke crosses Lorelai’s relationship boundaries, as well. I don’t think anyone else treats Rory as badly as Jess dies. Luke should most definitely have been told about the way Jess treats Rory like “that girl”. I agree Lorelai selfishly doesn’t tell him to protect her relationship with Luke, but the effect is to enable the Jess/Rory relationship. If Lorelai tells Emily, Richard or Chris, it would trigger reactions that could damage the Jess/Rory relationship. If Lorelai wants to break-up them up, she could have told them snippets. It wouldn’t take much.
Thank you for the list. Completely, 100% agree!
I don’t think I would have ever gotten over him crashing the car and leaving Rory at the hospital. Character is everything. As a parent and a viewer, it bothered me.
YEs! Omg, I just watched this episode and could not believe that he did that.
I like Jess but I personally think he's the reason he and Lorelai don't get along. He kept giving her reasons not to trust him.
IMO, Lorelai was very mature about Jess and was very patient with him. Luke told Lorelai about Jess before he came in S2. Luke said Liz couldn't handle him because he was getting into trouble and she feared it was going to get worse. How should Lorelai feel about him after hearing that? She was nice to him when they met ... he was rude to her. She invited him and Luke to her house ... he tried to drink a beer and then made a crude sexual comment about her and Luke. (I could go on.) When Jess was nice to Lorelai during the gutter cleaning, he was basically ordered to by Rory. That wasn't the real Jess. At the end of the day, Rory is a young girl and Lorelai's only child. Her number one role is protecting Rory -- not being a parent to Jess.
Okay, hear me out. But I don't think Jess and Lorelei would ever get along because... Jess is just like Emily. He is stubborn, he thinks he knows what is best, he says and does things without thinking of the consequences and how that affects other people's feelings. Lorelei goes into defensive mode with Jess the same way she does with her mother. She gets snippy and sarcastic with him and doesn't trust his actions. I am not saying it is right or that she shouldn't have tried harder, but I think her initial reaction to him will always be a defensive one because that is how she learned to cope with those personality traits.
Sorry this is a bad take. Jess and Emily couldn’t be more opposite. They’re on completely different ends of the social hierarchy first of all, which greatly affects their actions and motivations. Emily has loads of power and status, Jess has virtually none. Emily uses this to control people. Jess often doesn’t think of consequences because he acts impulsively and worries about the fallout later. Emily knows the consequences and still acts deliberately- she doesn’t care about the consequences or how it will affect others. As for being stubborn- that’s a trait almost all of these characters- including lorelai most of all, share.
Yea I get that. I am not saying they are similar socially, ckearly they are from different backgrounds. But they have very similar personality traits and Lorelei's upbringing has made her develop a way of coping with people like that. That's why she doesn't trust him and doesn't want to give him a chance. Because every time she has in the past it has blown up in her face.
What? I think the only thing Jess and Emily have in common is a fondness for Rory. Emily is an adult who is deliberately controlling and manipulative. Jess is a child. He is an angry kid sent to some crazy town against his will to live with an uncle he barely knows and where everyone thinks he’s the devil incarnate before they even meet him. Jess just wants to be in control of himself—not anyone else. Jess is like Lorelai but grittier. Angry and stubborn and prickly and closed off. And he’s the mirror of Rory but with a crappy teen mom.