Gilmore Girls Series Re-Watch Recap: Season 2

Posted December 7, 2016 by Cristina (Girl in the Pages) in Features, TV / 0 Comments

With the Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life revival recently launching, I’ve decided to make it my mission to re-watch all of the seasons before I revisit Stars Hollow in the Netflix special. It’s been about 10 years since I watched the original show (I only made it through seasons 1-5) and I was a huge fan as a teenager, so it’s interesting to see how my perspective on the show has changed now that I’m an adult! You can read my thoughts on Season 1, or continue below to my thoughts on Season 2…and beware that I have some very unpopular opinions!

*Warning! This post will contain spoilers for Season 2!

Season 2

“Oy, with the poodles already!”

Plot: Season 2 begins with wedding preparations for Lorelei and Max and the seeds of discontentment starting to be sown in Rory and Dean’s relationship, one little thing at a time. Luke’s nephew comes to visit and wreaks havoc on the town of Stars Hollow, and further widens the divide between Rory and Dean. Christopher decides to become more involved in Rory’s life, including bringing his girlfriend Sherry into the picture. Richard struggles with being “phased out” of his company and forced into retirement, and finally decides to venture into business on his own.

Characters: Season 2 is a hard season for me in a lot of ways, because it’s also the season known as “The Season I Start to Hate Rory.” I’ll go more into depth in the romance section, but I really, really hate the way she treats Dean in the season. Sure, he has some issues too, but her duplicity and (at least emotional) cheating really turns me off to her as a character. Meanwhile, I find that Lorelei acts more like a “Mom” to Rory this season and calls her out and tries to set boundaries, which I appreciated. I enjoyed seeing the investment that this show makes into its secondary characters and their plot lines, such as Sookie and Jackson’s engagement (a chef and a vegetable grower, isn’t that adorable) and Taylor’s crusade to take over the town, one real estate purchase at a time. I was also relieved to find that Rory has settled in at Chilton and has become sort of frenemies with Paris, Madison and Louise, because watching them argue and harass Rory all of the time in Season 1 was getting exhausting.

Settings: Mostly Stars Hollow and Hartford, but we get our first glimpse of the Dragonfly and some more time spent at the Independence Inn.

Romance: Ok, please prepare yourself for a rant. Upon initially watching when I was a young teenager, I remember not liking Jess, undoubtedly because he came between Dean and Rory. However, now watching as an adult, I absolutely LOATHE him, and would loathe him regardless of if Rory had been dating Dean or not. He’s completely rude, disrespectful to everyone and anyone (including those people who have done nothing but show him kindness) and has no regards for other people’s boundaries or properties. I don’t understand why people romanticize him so much. Would you honestly be into a guy who treated your mother the way Jess treats Lorelei (remember the porch scene)? Yes he has a huge chip on his shoulder and he’s neglected by his parents, etc., but it’s still not an excuse for being a total jerk and stealing people’s stuff. I also don’t care if you skip school to read, I love reading but I would still consider it a pretty loser-ish move if I have dropped out of high school and/or continually cut class just because I didn’t like school. Newsflash: Life is all about doing things you don’t want to do. I also can’t believe Rory would be so attracted to someone who has such disregard for her relationship with Dean, whatever Jess’s feelings for her may be. And to top it all off, he crashes her car, she fractures her wrist, and his defense is that he “made sure he was OK” before fleeing the scene AKA he called an ambulance and then bounced. As a parent, heck, as a participant in that situation, I would be LIVID that he didn’t accompany Rory to the hospital, and Lorelei has EVERY right to flip out on Luke the way she did (I’m not absolving Rory of blame here, I think she’s just as culpable as Jess). The final straw for me with all of this nonsense is when she impulsively skips school to go visit him in New York and then ends up missing her mother’s graduation, her mother WHO HAS GIVEN UP EVERYTHING TO RAISE HER. I am like 10,000% done with Rory at this point and wish Dean would just dump her because he does not deserve to be treated like this (no one does).

In other news, I was really rooting for Chris and Lorelei since it looked like they may have been on track to reunite for a hot minute there until Sherry dropped the pregnancy bomb. I like the idea of their story lines converging and them finding a way to make it work after everything they went through together as teenagers. So basically Season 2 ended with massive holes being blown into all of my ships.

Loves

Charming small town traditions, such as the annual picnic basket auction.
Richard and Emily interacting more with Stars Hollow.
Paris and Rory’s budding pseudo-friendship.
The end of Lorelei and Max’s relationship.
Sleigh rides around Stars Hollow.
More Christopher.
Student election episodes that are extremely poignant in today’s political climate.

Loathes: