The Most Iconic Drama Of The Early 2000s Main Character Is Completely Unlikable

To truly understand why Rory Gilmore is so unlikable, we need to talk about what I refer to as the “Rory Gilmore death stare” she often has throughout Gilmore Girls’ seven-season run. The best way to describe this piercing gaze of dissatisfaction is by comparing it to something we’re all familiar with.

Let’s say you’re at a party, and your friends are sitting on the couch watching movies. One friend gets up to take a phone call, and they’re absent for over an hour. Wanting to join in on the fun, you take the vacant seat on the couch, only for the absent friend to return after their phone call and stare you down with a “how dare you” look because you “stole their seat.”

In this analogy, the absent friend is Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls.

Describing Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls as a menacing and territorial couch-bandit may seem like a stretch, but this is how she treats all of her boyfriends throughout the series. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to focus on Rory’s relationship with Dean Forester, her first love.

Dean stays loyal to Rory way longer than he should, as their relationship was on-and-off for the first three seasons. Rory dumped Dean to date the series’ bad-boy, Jess Mariano (Milo Ventimiglia), but expected Dean to wait for her while she decided if Jess was the right one for her (he wasn’t, but she continues to lead him on too). After years of frustration, Dean decides to finally move on, and starts dating Lindsay Lister (Arielle Kebbel), which doesn’t sit right with Rory.

In the classic Rory Gilmore fashion, she tears Dean’s marriage apart by hooking up with Dean, resulting in his divorce.

I’ll be the first to admit that it takes two to tango, and that Dean is also responsible for his failed marriage in Gilmore Girls. But the important takeaway here is that Rory Gilmore exhibits this pattern of behavior time and time again throughout the series without ever learning from her mistakes. When her relationship with trust-fund playboy Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry) is on the rocks (which is often), she goes back to Jess, also expecting him to wait for her while she figures out her own life.

Rory Gilmore comes from old-money generational wealth in Gilmore Girls, but she constantly scoffs at anybody else who is similarly fortunate. In a season 7 episode called “Introducing Lorelai Planetarium,” Rory, an aspiring journalist, writes an incredibly judgemental hit-piece about Logan and his trust-fund friends after observing their behavior at a launch party for one of his start-up businesses.

The article, entitled “Let Them Drink Cosmos,” rightfully rubs Logan the wrong way, and after reading it he snaps back with “You’re not exactly paying rent,” causing yet another rift in their relationship.

And Logan isn’t wrong. Rory’s Yale tuition was paid for in full by her grandparents, Emily (Kelly Bishop) and Richard (Edward Hermann), and at this point in the series she was living with Logan in his apartment that was paid for by his father, Mitchum (Gregg Henry).

What truly makes Rory Gilmore such an irredeemable character in Gilmore Girls is her inability to take criticism in any way, shape, or form. When Mitchum tells Rory she’s not cut out to be a journalist, she drops out of Yale instead of trying to prove him wrong. If you’re familiar with Rory’s arc in the 2016 Netflix reboot, you know that Mitchum was 100 percent right because she proves that she can’t hold a meaningful job.

All of the above personality flaws would be somewhat forgivable if Rory just took some advice from her mother, Lorelai (Lauren Graham). Lorelai, in stark contrast to Rory, made a name for herself by walking away from her privilege and living the life she wants to live while learning from her mistakes. Rory on the other hand, gets everything handed to her, and it will never be enough to satisfy her.