Gilmore Girls: Lorelia's & Rory's Romantic Lives

The Gilmore Girls is a television series about rebellion, a subtle type of rebellion, but, still rebellion none-the-less, The show's focus is on a mother and daughter who are determined to make it on their own despite Lorelai, the mother's wealthy, social conscious parents. Rory, the granddaughter, definitely has her own mine but in some ways, she identifies with her grandparents more than her mother does. She is not as put off by her grandmother's snobbishness or her grandfather's stuffiness as Lorelai is and she is more willing to embrace their type of lifestyle in certain regards. Yet, she appears to be as much a rebel when it comes to her love life as Lorelai is.

Rory, herself, is a product of that rebellion because her mother had an affair as a teenager with a young man whom the grandparents did not approve. Lorelai finds that her relationship with Christopher, Rory's father, was not exactly where she wanted to go but she does want to keep the baby. The show opens with the events later of Lorelai as a hard working mother and Rory as a teenager entering her final years of high school. Lorelai refuses to accept any assistance from her parents except when they offer to help get Rory into a high class school that could get Rory on the fast track to Yale. Rory's aspirations for her future are aimed higher than those of her mother at the same age.

Both young women are involved in and out of relationships through the six years that the series ran. Some characters stay consistent through it and some don't. Christopher makes an appearance on the scene to finally take some involvement in Rory's life but Lorelai's romantic feelings no longer seem to be focused that way. She has various affairs but everything always seems to come back to Luke, the owner and operator of the local coffee shop/cafe. The friendship between Lorelai and Luke is light and easy with just hints of romance undertones. She is involved in her newly acquired business of a bed and breakfast that she and her chef partner bought and her off and on romantic escapes with different men which does also include Christopher. It gets almost to a serious point but then she backs away as if complete commitment is a place she still does not want to be.

Rory, on the other hand, is just discovering the wonders of romantic involvement and has to struggle with her promise to her mother to not make the same mistake she did by having a child too young. This proves hard on Rory as she is a healthy young woman and has seen the example of her mother's liberated ways all the years of growing up. She has the tentative romance at school which ends with the loss of virginity but she is spared from pregnancy. She dislikes the fact that Lorelai sets different standards for herself but expects Rory to adhere to a different set of rules. She has her father in her life but she knows that there is strong tie between Lorelai and Christopher other than herself.

Then there is Yale and her dreams of a future. Relationships drift in and out for both characters, including a season in which Luke and Lorelai explore the deeper part of their feelings for each other, but in the eventual end, Lorelai and Luke remain friends and Rory holds fasts to her hopes of becoming more of what her grandparents wanted from Lorelai than what happened. The show is entertaining and all of the in and out of romantic involvement keeps a flair going to what otherwise could have been a boring series of rebellious and social scenarios.