Saying goodbye to Jess Mariano
Stay gold, Gilmore boy.
Like many children of the early 2000's, I grew up with the Gilmores. For one hour each Thursday between “the Simpsons” and “Charmed”, I’d watch the inhabitants of Stars Hollow float around in their weird little universe of pageants and harvest festivals and ultraverdant grass.
And watching “Gilmore Girls” really did feel like observing a different universe- one with a familiar shape, but containing a strange symmetry. (Then you read this article years later and everything falls into place).
Everything about Stars Hollow was just a little bit better than the real world: even the people. The guy who owned the local diner was a surly misanthrope with a heart of gold. The town gossip was a florid sybarite with a heart of gold. The estranged grandparents were self-obsessed patricians with a heart of gold. Enough gold in peoples’ hearts to sink a ship twice.
Jess Mariano, the definitive love interest of Season 2, was a rebel with a heart of gold. Jess had a black leather jacket, very shiny hair and lots of books, which he would read in conspicuous places all over town. He listened to loud music and was almost always rude to adults. He was perfect.
In Season 3, Jess decamps for Venice Beach to rekindle his relationship with his long-lost dad (who happens to be married to a grown-up Audrey Horne, in the first of two different Gilmore roles played by Sherilyn Fenn).
When we meet Jess again in Season 6, he is a much-diminished version of himself. With his self-published novella tucked under one arm and a compilation of free jazz hits under the other, Philadelphia Jess prostates himself to Rory under a banner called Second Chances.
Philadelphia Jess has a new blazer, a new floppy hairdo and a new attitude: he radiates Zenlike capaciousness. Philadelphia Jess is equipped to deal with the disappointment of losing Rory- after all, his life is rich with ascetic triumphs. Philadelphia Jess worries only over the placement of Shiraz and macaroons at his next poetry slam.
Philadelphia Jess wears an implied beret. Philadelphia Jess is horrible.
Many viewers and critics were left bewildered by the last episode of Gilmore Girls, in which a freshly proposed-to Rory sticks by her decision not to start a life with Logan and runs off to have rollicking adventures with Christiane Amanpour on Senator Obama’s campaign bus. “Wait, so she ends up with… no one?” typed thousands of confused fans into AIM conversation boxes around the world.
Others shed joyous feminist tears at this depiction of an American woman prioritizing her career over a premature marriage to her sandy-haired, venture capitalist boyfriend.
To those who were surprised that Rory ends up alone, it’s important to note that the show’s writers proved that love doesn’t exist a full season earlier than the series finale in question. They did it when they introduced Philadelphia Jess: a wan specter barely sustaining himself with canned soup and the written word; a shadow of his former self. For all that Gilmore Girls handled death, sex, money, class and other base realities with its signature light touch, it could be brutally realistic when it came to “outing” the perfect men in Rory’s life. Despite his best efforts, Logan never escapes his destiny as an overprivileged drunk. And Dean’s seasons-long fall from grace from golden boy to cheating divorcee is downright hard to watch.
Throughout seven seasons, Rory Gilmore never really changes. But the men in her life always do — inevitably for the worse. Is this intentional? Maybe, maybe not. But there’s something that feels right about the circularity of it all: a show which began with two women, free and clear and unburdened by the expectations of men, ended the same way it started: full of possibility.
