Gilmore Girls - Rory, the O.G. Annoying Millennial

i've always done what's asked of me it's not always good enough to do just what's asked of you when gilmore girls first aired rory gilmore was a unicorn she was the rare teenage girl character who always had her nose in a book and was super close with her mom she's my best friend but this wasn't framed as uncool it was aspirational i want to go to harvard and study journalism and political science on your way to being christian amanpour it's safe to say that most who watch the original series imagine that after rory's graduation from yale her arc would only continue its upward trajectory towards rory becoming the next amanpour so it came as a surprise when in 2016's gilmore girls revival a year in the life the young miss gilmore hadn't exactly become a raging success i have no job i have no credit i have no underwear instead she was a portrait of a faltering millennial the whole journalism thing didn't really pan out the way i hoped if you look closer though the original series holds clues as to what went wrong for rory everyone in rory's life is constantly in awe of how smart and cultured she is rory you are taylor made for harvard they're lucky to have you and as the show progresses rory seems to believe her own hype she bristles whenever something doesn't come easy for her she becomes increasingly entitled and arrogant so i spent a night in jail big deal so did martin luther king are you comparing yourself with martin luther king she's so convinced she's the main character in her story that she justifies some pretty dubious behavior like having affairs with married and engaged men plus for a person who prides herself on being an achiever in her 30s she displays a terrible work ethic sorry i just didn't have a pitch prepared that's a little weird thought you'd bring some ideas on closer inspection rory embodies a lot of the realities of millennial white privilege but unlike some of her peers she remains staunchly in denial of the fact that she's not a scrappy underdog whether you like it or not you're one of us you went to prep school you go to yale your grandparents are building a whole damn astronomy building in your name here's our take on what rory's failures teach us about the importance of forging your own path and taking responsibility for your mistakes early on if you're new here be sure to subscribe and hit the bell to be notified about all our new videos the wine world can often seem closed off and snooty so where does the would-be connoisseur go to find the perfect wine to pair with the perfect meal bright cellars has created an easy quiz that matches your taste to the perfect bottle of wine are you a rory type who loves consuming gallons of black coffee with diner burgers bright cellars has a wine to go with that get 50 off your first six bottle wine experience with the link in the description thanks to bryce sellers for sponsoring this video [Music] stealing a boat is a pretty big deal i was upset about what about life gilmore girls is about a millennial's coming of age years before the modern portrait of millennials would come to be defined through endless think pieces about avocado toast and the self-mocking humor of shows like girls broad city and search party working feels bad and i don't ever want to work one more day in my entire life oh my god it feels so good to say that as tara sethurum writes in the atlantic rory's experiences mirrored or even foreshadowed what would become the defining challenges of her upper middle class fictional peers a decade later from handling the privilege of choice to grappling with a false sense of entitlement this is all your fault you know why because you told me i could do anything so what are these traits that millennials are supposed to embody incx bill murphy jr breaks it down into a whopping 17 bad habits but the ones that crop up again and again are entitlement sensitivity to criticism being out for themselves and wanting to be entrepreneurial without actually understanding what it takes to get there rory's sense of entitlement is deep rooted a result of both her privileged background and the expectations put upon her harvard yeah ever since she could crawl i really wanted her to go there a lot of the narrative about annoying millennials is really about white upper middle class millennials miss rory gilmore may i present your building when rory doesn't get an internship at the new york times her grandparents can't fathom a reason why she may not have been accepted this is preposterous who could be more qualified than you they were so confident she'd get the role that they already planned on buying her an apartment in the city now we realize that the upper east side is not the most convenient address for an employee of the new york times but it's just a 20-minute cab ride to work her grandparents also display a distinct lack of self-awareness by suggesting rory's failure to land the role is down to nepotism i'm sure it's nepotism if your name isn't keller or salzburg you may as well not even apply conveniently forgetting their own nepotism in helping rory get into both chilton and yale i thought i was helping my granddaughter get into what is in my opinion the best ivy league school in america meanwhile down to earth lorelei doesn't model this entitled attitude but she has placed a lot of pressure on rory by constantly underlining her daughter's specialness and if you see a teen walking around with a halo in a book that's my daughter rory as much as lorelai is framed as the unusual best friend mom like many parents of millennials she has centered her own life around cultivating her daughter's education and individual success everything we worked for all these years her whole future she was supposed to have more than me she was supposed to have everything gilmore girls begins with lorelai making the choice to do what's best for her daughter and tap into the source of privilege her parents represent i wasn't too proud to come here to you two begging for money for my kids school was i the first season centers on rory entering private school and cultivating a relationship with her wealthy grandparents and we watch her gradually develop into the person emily and richard wanted lorelei to become hence emily's blind panic after she finds out rory and dean spent the night at miss paddy's she's gonna get pregnant no she's not she's gonna ruin everything just like you ruined everything but who is this model young lady they want rory to be really it's someone who runs to them for help after she gets arrested for stealing a yacht she came to me lorelei she told me what she wanted in her own words and goes behind her mom's back to get them to pay for her college tuition i need money you need money for you you need money for yale does your mother know you're here no this is my thing rory is caught between two ideals her self-reliant hard-working mother who took a stand to make her own life you provide for yourself you're not dependent on anyone and her extremely wealthy insider grandparents who can unlock doors to make rory's goals more easily obtained this is the office of a very dear friend of mine his name is harris fellowes and he just happens to be the dean of admissions in reality while rory likes the narrative and self-made credit of her mother's path she often takes advantage of the privilege represented by her grandparents i mean i'm a gilmore do they know that but what makes all of this so toxic is her lack of awareness and unwillingness to view her own behavior honestly we take you in we pay to redecorate a pool house so you can have a place all your own i did not ask you to do that you accepted it you did not turn it down a notorious millennial trait that defines rory is sensitivity to criticism he said i can't do it so i can't do it when lorelei tries to spin the new york times setback as a learning experience most of the things you've gone for you've gotten this setback might help you have some perspective this isn't even really a criticism but rory clearly takes her mom's words that way and bristles and there is some paper out there that is gonna hire you as their future superstar that's just a fact yeah right just as she takes job rejections intensely personally i'm never gonna get a job anyway that's not true you are gonna get a job i'm not the new york times doesn't want me it's worth remembering at this point that rory's existential crisis comes after a mere two job rejections one of which doesn't count because there was no job there in the first place i got a letter from the chicago sun times they're not hiring not to mention that rory already turned down a job at the providence journal bulletin presumably thinking she was destined for something better i even called the providence journal bulletin and begged for that job but they already gave it to someone else some non-idiot who didn't think they were too good and turn it down recent numbers say that it takes job seekers over a hundred or 200 applications to get a job offer and often 10 to 20 applications to land even a single interview rory's refusal to adapt to or understand the wider context and her petulant response to not being immediately lauded by the top institutions in the country betray that her attitude has really always been more what would my grandparents do than what would my mom do i thought i was so in at the times i was just saying that i wasn't going to get it because i was trying to be humble but i was so not humble take the incident with the study tree another bizarre example of rory's entitlement when she becomes irritated because someone else dares to sit by a tree she's claimed as her own this is my study tree the hell's a study tree the tree is plenty big enough for two even three people to sit around but rory eventually decides to throw money at the situation to get what she wants which unfortunately for rory's personal growth does work this gets at rory's main problem it's not that she makes mistakes which everyone does but that she refuses to learn from them it's this intractability that's the reason for her drifting aimlessly as a 30-something she's just waiting for more opportunities to present themselves to her and more doors to magically open you basically promised me the job was mine you were a candidate looking back at gilmore girls the extent to which everyone reveres young rory can be a little mystifying she's a very impressive young lady i wholeheartedly concur she's a diligent student but none of her accomplishments really set her apart every child that applies has the same high grade point average they've taken the same ap classes and they're all on the student council it's hard not to be skeptical of how simply earning good grades gets her into so many ivy league schools or why she's elected editor of the yale daily news after she's just recently taken time off from yale um i did miss that semester so seniority's a question we're past taking seniority into account rory's best friend of me the ultra driven and extracurricular obsessed paris behaves the way you'd expect rory to behave if she were the hyper achiever we're told she is what the hell did romain mean when he was going on about weeding out the hyper intense in the interview process he stopped just short of calling me by name i'm losing it paris does put in the work and arguably isn't rewarded for it enough how am i going to tell him i didn't get into harvard what am i going to do lydia then writes that paris should have been valedictorian over rory quote she worked her arse off for four years got perfect grades was president of the student council editor of the newspaper and on every committee going what more did she need to do meanwhile rory kind of skates by on a mix of intelligence privilege general likability and an easy going veneer you're quiet you you say excuse me you look like little birds help you get dressed in the morning people don't fear you but the post-recession world of a year in the life seems to finally catch up to her as rory finds she's no longer rewarded for acting like she's above trying don't get me wrong i have ideas like um stuff about the world culture rory has a pretty bad case of main character syndrome she takes it for granted that both her grandparents and mother's lives should revolve around her she claims her mother's life experiences as her story you're 16 you're pregnant you're packing up to leave grandma's house it's a richest rag story it's got everything and doesn't find it valid that lorelai objects to having her intimate personal life shared in a book i don't want my mother finding out i left you in a bucket in a hardware store in chapter six this is such an overreaction it's my life rory in rory's friendships too most of the focus is on rory's problems and rory's life i have to get to the bus stop dean's meeting me there but i'm trying to talk to you about this what good is it to have a best friend when she's never around and she never listens but perhaps this main character entitlement is most egregious in rory's love life throughout the series she treats men pretty shabbily and plays love interests against each other she appears to view married and engaged men as fair game because if they're exes she considers them mine existing characters in her story he's not a married guy he's dean my dean he's not your dean he's lindsay's dean you're the other woman when she sleeps with her first boyfriend the now married dean she not only blames dean's wife lindsay she's not good for him okay she lets him quit school and work himself to death but also doesn't respect dean's adult life because it's not the one rory imagined for him rory has always looked down on dean for not being as academically inclined as she is instead of accepting that he's just interested in different things step forward jess who does fit the prescribed rory gilmore mold of intelligence in that he reads a lot of books you've read this before about 40 times but rory still makes sure to keep dean around while she's making up her mind and she repeats this self-centered behavior of keeping her options on the table when she kisses jess to get back at logan after rejecting logan's proposal in a year in the life rory is back to sleeping with him despite the fact that he's engaged someone's coming to town kind of odette and she's dating paul while the joke is that rory doesn't respect this person oh crap paul is here why is paul here i invited him for dinner and i totally forgot psychologist stephanie newman claims that one of the reasons women will sleep with married men is because they crave competition and a need for superiority saying feeling superior has less to do with the man in question and how desirable he is and more to do with being more powerful than and superior to the other woman the callous and confusing way that rory treats the men in her life also reflects her signature millennial traits like an emphasis on competition and fixation on the self in why dating as a millennial is so screwed up bold's drea rose writes that some of the generations bad dating habits include we ghost as a way to end things we're in a competition of who can care the least we expect a perfection that doesn't exist we're overloaded with options we're always stuck in a gray area and we don't feel accountable for the pain we inflict on others dean you're my boyfriend i would never do anything to hurt you yeah you're doing it right now rory's self-centeredness may also stem from the fact that she's an only child g stanley hall a child psychologist who first theorized the idea of only child syndrome describes them as having a tendency to be selfish and hypersensitive to criticism i never realized how spoiled you were rory but i guess that's to be expected only children are always spoiled all this speaks to a larger problem rory has to stop thinking of her relationships only as part of her story and start thinking more about how others feel it's my life it's our life yeah well you write your side of it a year in the life starts with rory aged 32 the same age lorelei was at the beginning of the original series hey how old is your mom anyway 32. lorelai was the teen mom who everyone thought had ruined her life but in fact she worked her way up at the independence inn and made a life for herself i worked my way up i run the place now i built a life on my own with no help from anyone ironically while rory was supposed to be the golden girl she's accomplished a lot less than her mom had at her age this is in part because rory has never had to struggle or take on the world alone rory's never been seriously tested so she hasn't developed the resilient spirit her mom built up out of necessity as a young single mom we've seen earlier signs of this missing resilience in season 5 logan's dad tells rory he doesn't think she has what it takes to be a journalist i just don't think you really have the drive to put yourself out there to be honest to get a story to dig and it sends her into such an existential tailspin she drops out of yale all i've been doing is working toward being a journalist i'm not going to be a journalist so what momentum am i losing exactly but even this doesn't turn into an opportunity for rory to really better herself because rather than being made to fend for herself she gets to live a cushy life in her grandparents pool house hosanna draw rory bath please hosanna has a pot of coffee for you in the other room interested wow in her 30s rory is at last having the moment of reckoning that her mom had when she was just a teenager she's no longer finding that the world bends to her will and she's taking time to figure her life out i feel like this is my time to be rootless and and just see where life takes me the show begins to view her more critically and less like the princess of stars hollow but on the flip side we can empathize with her more the fact that rory is so stuck in her early 30s is probably the most relatable she's ever been i'm blowing everything my life my career i'm flailing and i don't have a plan or a list or a clue and now that life has at last gotten tough it forces her to change just as lorelei did a year in the life set up a full circle journey for rory that is essentially about becoming her mother show creator amy sherman palladino has even said that the theme of the show takes after the opening song where you lead in that it's about history repeating itself and rory following lorelei's lead like lorelai rory reveals she's about to become a single mother i'm pregnant and although it's never said explicitly it seems like the father of the baby is logan the privileged immature heartthrob whom sherman palladino has compared to rory's dad christopher while the bombshell of her pregnancy would seem like an indication that rory's hopes a professional success will be even more unlikely the implication is that rory will follow in her mom's footsteps in unlocking her resilience once she's at last tested she'll show the world and herself what she's really got digging deep into her relationship with her mother is also the key to her deeper creativity as a writer i sat down and it just came out flew out it's like the story has just been sitting in my brain for years taking up space and the cure to rory's main character syndrome will no doubt be motherhood which will force her to stop seeing the world as only revolving around her a lot of rory's problems as an adult can be put down to the fact that she was a gifted child many gifted children struggle to live up to their potential or feel enormous pressure later in life they also often plan a career path too early you've known what you wanted to do with your life since you were three be a journalist the national research center on the gifted and talented explains that if a career decision is made early due to cognitive maturation without synchronous emotional maturation the gifted adolescent may not be able to consider the long-range planning persistence and self-sacrifice needed to achieve the intended career goal if i hire you tell me what rory gilmore would write about for sandy says oh if i worked here sell me so okay we're selling um like many millennials and gifted young people rory needs to sit down and ask herself if the path she set out for herself at 16 is still the right one 16 years later she's spent too long plowing on ahead the privileged entitled spoiled millennial who assumes everything will work out for her so it's good when at last it doesn't moving home gilmore girls leaves us with a new definition of what counts as millennial success maybe career and relationship stuff isn't going to take off for rory at least not right now but she still has a real shot at finding herself they've been to college then out in the real world and it spit them out like a stale piece of gum and now they're all back in their old rooms like you this is the take on your favorite movie shows and culture thank you so much for watching and for supporting us please subscribe and never miss a take you

Channel: The Take

Views: 1,296,816

Keywords: gilmore girls, bright cellars, rory gilmore, lorelai gilmore, alexis bledel, lauren graham, rory and dean, rory and jess, rory and logan, rory gilmore studying, rory gilmore graduation speech, rory gilmore pregnant, rory gilmore downfall, rory gilmore scenes, girls, annoying millennial, search party, broad city, only child syndrome, main character syndrome, rory and lorelai, lorelai and luke, gilmore girls theme song, amy sherman-palladino

Id: dKXTJvR1COw

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/DekeCobretti]

poverty tourist.

[u/nememmim]

I love the The Take, but I didn't care for this video. I don't think taking snippets of a characters worst moments makes for a good character analysis. It zooms in all the things that she did wrong while not accounting for context and other people's parts in creating bad situations.