Hello and welcome, my name is Heather I’m a registered professional counsellor and a
certified life coach and I'm a huge fan of Gilmore Girls. Today’s video is Part 2 Rory’s analysis
where we’ll be focusing on her argument with Lorelai
in the basket auction episode where Jess outbids Dean for a romantic lunch with Rory. If you
haven’t seen part 1, I’ll link it up here and in the description below, let’s get to the show.
So it looks like Rory spent most of her day with Jess. From the last we saw of them, Jess asks
Rory to grab some pizza with him and now we find that they also went to the bookstore together.
You can see some hesitation from Rory when she tells Lorelai that she was with Jess and Lorelai
was surprised. Rory can hang out with whoever she wants, but the important thing that’s missing
is communication and finding a solution that everyone is comfortable with.
I really wish they showed us how that conversation went because I’m curious as to how she’s going to
explain to him that after the picnic, she was hanging out with Jess. I wonder if she would
be even upfront with Dean about all of that, I mean, we saw how reluctant she was to tell Lorelai
and that hesitation says a lot. It could mean that she knows she did something that
she shouldn’t have or she’s worried about the judgement that might come or both.
Lorelai does a good job starting the conversation. She owns her feelings and she’s voicing her
concerns about Jess. Rory is trying to convince Lorelai that there’s a good side to Jess,
that the reason why their first encounter wasn’t great was because he just moved here, he was upset
with his mom, and he didn’t know anyone. So that was probably all true and it might have influenced
how he behaved, but it doesn’t explain why he’s been acting this way the whole time since he’s
arrived. So why would Rory defend Jess? Maybe she really likes him, whether it be as a friend or
more is debatable at this time, but she likes him. So it’s possible that she is trying to convince
others to change their minds about him and to give him a second chance. We see that earlier in
this episode when she was telling Dean to ignore Jess or to stop hating him because it’s a waste
of energy and now she’s doing the same thing to Lorelai. The other possibility is that she doesn’t
know how to deal with conflict and the only way she knows how to deal with conflict is to try
to keep the peace, and this happens all the time within our own family dynamics and within our friend groups.
There’s nothing wrong with a parent having concerns, what’s important is how it’s
communicated. In this case, Lorelai wants to have some sort of influence on Rory which is why she
starts listing off the terrible things Jess has done since he arrived at Stars Hollow as a way
to persuade Rory. Honestly, Jess doesn’t have the best reputation with the rest of the town and Rory
can’t deny all those things happened. So what led to this point of the conversation is Rory being
deflective and in denial about Jess and she hasn’t fully acknowledged or shown that she understands
Lorelai’s concerns. You can see their dynamics have shifted from how the conversation started,
which they were communicating more as equals, but now we see that Lorelai has stepped into
more of the mom role because she’s trying to make sure Rory understands her concerns about Jess.
Much like a conversation you would see a parent have with child, let’s say the child wants to go
on a roller coaster and the parent says, no you’re too young, it’s dangerous, you’re not tall enough,
it's going to be too scary for you and the child gets upset or throws a tantrum by saying they
are big enough and all their friends go on the roller coaster and why can’t they.
It’s a small town, Lorelai would have heard about it eventually even if Dean didn’t tell her. The
other thing that might be happening is that since Rory is trying so hard to convince Lorelai that Jess
is nice, he’s got a good side to him, and when she finds out that Lorelai knows about the fight,
she feels like she needs to get defensive because now her ability to judge others characters
is under question. And you can see that she’s also attacking Dean as well, by saying he went
running to talk to her mother in a condescending way and completely ignored the fact that the
reason why he talked to Lorelai in the first place was because he was upset.
She was off with Jess, they kinda had a picnic, then they went to grab pizza,
and then went shopping for books. That’s at least a few hours and given that it looks
like it’s evening time there, it’s safe to assume that she was with him for most of the day.
Now remember when she said this…
Maybe she feels guilty that she lied to Dean,
knowing that he was worried and upset and instead of finding Dean right after the picnic, she
continued to hang out with Jess and because she knows this, she continues to deflect by saying she
was following the rules and Jess outbid Dean. Look at Lorelai's face, even she doesn’t buy this. I’m
not going to go too much in depth about it because I already mentioned this in the last video,
but there were other decisions that Rory could have been made and I talked about the reasons as to why
she decided to go off with Jess. I’m not saying what’s right or what’s wrong and I’m not here to
bash on fictional characters, my intention is to provide some different context and mention some
curiosities that I would bring up in counselling sessions if I were seeing these characters.
So this is pretty common in fights where we start just arguing about whatever comes up that may
not be relevant to the conversation. Let’s unpack this some more, Lorelai is telling Rory some of the concerns
she has about her hanging out with Jess and she also says that Dean has those concerns.
I think that Rory is so defensive that she isn’t even listening to Lorelai anymore,
this happens a lot in fights. When we get to this point in our conversations where it’s no longer
functional communication, everyone becomes concerned with being right and they stop listening
to the other person. One way Lorelai could approach this is by saying, “I want to express
my concerns, I get worried that you and Jess are spending time together. I also think that it’s
important for you to consider your relationship with Dean in all of this because I’m sure he also
has feelings around you hanging out with Jess. Of course, this is your life and your decision and
this is something you will have figure out with Dean.” Maybe Rory is feeling personally attacked,
maybe she feels like she’s being treated as a child and that her freedom is being infringed on
because she can’t choose who she wants to hang out with. And maybe she feels judged
or frustrated that everyone is against her in a way. And I would ask Rory,
“Okay, so you hear your mom express her concerns. How do you feel about that?” That can give Rory an
opportunity to slow down and say, “I feel frustrated that I can’t be friends with Jess
without getting judged” or “I feel torn between wanting to keep you and Dean happy
and wanting to make a new friend”. Right now, I don’t really know why she’s getting mad that
everyone is worried about her safety and we can only guess, but that’s not sufficient enough to make a judgement.
And then Rory leaves just when Dean is about to come over? So, she just ditched him again? It’s
possible that she feels guilty for not being there for Dean
and in order to avoid feeling guilty, she finds anything to replace that
guilt, and so she refocuses and gets mad over this one thing. This happens all the time and mostly,
people aren’t aware that this is happening. Guilt is one of those feelings that we don’t know how to
process and it’s much easier to get angry instead. The other thing that can happen is that, when we’re
ashamed of something, we tend to project that on to others, that’s the meaning of projection.
So let’s say, Rory is ashamed or feels guilty for hanging out with Jess or she wants to deny
that she did anything wrong and as a way of coping with that,
we push that out on other people and attack it, but what we’re really doing is trying to trick ourselves
in thinking that it’s an external problem when really it’s internal. And so Rory is now fixating
on the fact that Dean talked to Lorelai and treats it as if it’s this huge betrayal
when really she knows that she was the one who betrayed Dean in a way. Let’s take a look at this
next scene where they’re at Friday night dinner.
Wow so they’ve been in a fight all week? Yeesh.
Did we actually find out if it’s Dean or not? Cause I thought they also weren’t talking?
I’m going to talk more about the conversation Dean and Lorelai had next week so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it.
But basically they all hang out together and I think in one of the later episodes Lorelai
tells Dean that she thinks of him as a friend and so was it really out of place for Dean to
express his concerns to her? It sounds like Lorelai also had similar concerns as Dean.
If you were in Rory’s position, would this be something you’d be upset about? Let me know in the comments below!
This statement I find interesting because Rory and Dean were dating at the time but Rory tried to
make the same argument between her and Jess even though they’re only supposed to be friends. Maybe
Rory is more mad at the fact that Lorelai doesn’t like Jess than she is about Dean talking to her,
but she can’t express that anger because she secretly likes Jess and instead she pretends
she’s really upset about the whole Dean thing. This wouldn’t be far fetched,
human beings are complicated and we were never taught how to navigate our feelings
or how to express them in a functional way.
We have seen some evidence of that from Jess trying to get close to Rory
and the picnic auction was another example of that. But this conversation isn’t going
anywhere right now. It’s very surfacy and it doesn’t focus on how they’re feeling
or around finding a solution, rather it's more finger pointing and accusatory. Rory leaves the table and Lorelai talks to Emily
about the situation in which Emily agrees with Lorelai. Lorelai goes to find Rory to talk about it.
Lorelai is going to have concerns and worries and that is completely normal,
both as a mother and because it’s Jess. She’s doing a good job explaining her
feelings. Rory could have said, “I can understand why you’re feeling concerned.”
Good, so she’s acknowledging Rory’s autonomy and respecting her decision to be friends with Jess.
And she states her request for Rory, which is for her to be careful. Again,
it’s okay to make requests in relationships, what’s important is how it’s communicated.
And it looks like things with Dean are also smoothed over now? I really wish
we saw their conversation and how this got resolved. It would have given us a
better understanding of how they resolved conflict and also how it was communicated.
So they come back from dinner and Rory waits until Lorelai is in her room before she sneaks
off to call Jess. I don’t know why she feels the need to wait for Lorelai to be in her room first,
especially if they just agreed that it was okay for them to be friends.
Maybe she knows that she’s not being careful. It’s a slippery slope for sure
and it makes we wonder if it was actually Jess who paged her?
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Because next week I'm going to be talking about episode from Dean’s perspective. In the meantime,
check out my other therapist reviews videos and I look forward to seeing you
in the next one. Until then be kind and love yourself.