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[quote=Anonymous]This is one of those shows that got under my skin and I wound up semi-hate watching the whole thing. I say "semi" because there are actors, and performances, I like on the show. Also, even though I find Lorelai and Rory vaguely awful (I'll get to that in a minute), I think Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel are very charismatic, watchable actors. So even when I'd be watching their stupid, enmeshed banter and hating it, part of me also enjoyed their chemistry and the way the actors give and take in those scenes, especially as the show progressed and Bledel became a better technical actors.

The thing about Lorelai and Rory is that they are both privileged, entitled aholes but they are also cosplaying as a needy single mom and her underprivileged only daughter. It is honestly grotesque. I remember watching it and for a time feeling like there was another shoe that was going to drop to explain this dynamic in a way that didn't make them awful. I seriously assume for some period of time that Emily and Richard had been physically abusive or at least severely neglectful of Lorelai, explaining her behavior and making the plot where she seems to loathe her parents so much, even though they mostly just seem to want the best for her and to have been unhappy when their smart but headstrong teenage daughter got pregnant (normal!).

But no, Richard is honestly just a wonderful person and loving father and grandfather. Emily is a tough nut and I can see her butting heads with a daughter a lot, but she's also incredibly smart and certainly loves Lorelai as much as Lorelie loves Rory. Like it is just nonsensical that Lorelai acts like she was somehow abandoned by her family (she left them) or that they don't care for her (they do literally everything they can to support her and her daughter).

I say this as someone from a highly dysfunctional family, who had one parent with a personality disorder and the other a codependent enabler, and I maintain a good deal of distance from my family for my mental health. So I was primed to be sympathetic to even a rich girl (I didn't grow up rich but also not poor, family dysfunction does not limit itself to people in poverty at all) with similar issues. But she does't have them! She has had a remarkably easy life, especially when you consider the poor decisions she made in high school (SHE made them, no one force her to do anything). Like every time you think "well, at least she's doing that on her own" you find out, just kidding, someone else is paying for it or supporting her in some critical way that most peopel don't have. And then on top of it she's just a total narcissist. The crap with her multi-day birthday celebrations and just the way she behaves like the central character in EVERYONE's business. She is truly the worst.

Rory is also terrible and displays a ton of the same traits, this kind of vulnerable narcissism where, despite being very wealthy and having a super-supportive family, being very pretty and smart, and pretty much getting everything she wants, she still somehow paints herself as a victim who people should feel sorry for and go out of their way to help. It is so grating. I have known a couple people like that in life and they are so toxic, you have to run as far as possible in the opposite direction. It's a "don't engage, don't make eye contact" situation. I guess Rory gets more sympathy from me because unlike Lorelai, who grew up the only child of two wealthy but loving parents, Rory is the only child a single mom with a personality disorder who prevents Rory from having functional relationships with her father and her grandparents for the first 13/14 years of life. So it's not shocking that Rory is deeply screwed up, but that doesn't change the fact that she is.

TL;DR: Lorelai and Rory are both vulnerable narcissists with Main Character Syndrome, a fact that can't even be concealed by the fact that they are indeed date main characters of this show. Emily and Richard seem great, as do a handful of other characters (mostly Paris, to a lesser extent Suki and Laine though the show does both of them dirty in ways that honestly feel offensive to me). And yet, I watched every single episode including the stupid reboot miniseries thing. It's addicting trash.[/quote]

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