Abnormal Aztec

Today’s Womans March was just deemed the biggest rally in U.S. History…

“Mom.” “Yeah?” “I’m pregnant.”

Many of us remember that moment in our own lives. And I’m sure some of us wished we could also just fade to black the minute the pregnancy test read “positive” and fast forward to the part where everything is figured out. But this was not a teenager notifying her mom about her pregnancy. This was 32-year-old Rory Gilmore telling her mother, Lorelei, that she was pregnant.

On November 25, 2016 Netflix released a Gilmore Girls revival called A Year in The Life. The revival consisted of four 90-minute episodes, each focusing on a specific season: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Dedicated Gilmore Girls fans will recall how the show’s creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino left the show prior to it’s last season in 2007, and as a result, she took her original ending for the show with her. So when Netflix announced it was revisiting the Gilmore Girls, via the revival, fans were excited to see the ending Sherman-Pallandino had originally envisioned.

And when the final words were uttered, the reaction was mixed, to say the least. True, when the show’s creator Amy Sherman-Palladino first envisioned this ending, she had intended those last four words to be for 23-year-old Rory Gilmore but production and contract negotiation issues made it so that Sherman-Palladino was not able to revisit Rory’s story until much later than originally expected, leaving the viewers to grapple with 32-year-old Rory announcing an unplanned pregnancy at the end of the show’s finale.   When we last saw Rory in 2007, she was a budding journalist, full of potential and promise.

Over the course of Gilmore Girl’s Revival, we saw 32-year-old Rory trekking through life once again, this time on not so steady ground. Rory goes through each season flailing through unsuccessful writing gigs, as her mother, Lorelei deals with the death of her father, Richard (played by the late Edward Herrmann) and her strained relationship with her mother, Emily. Many loose ends were tied up as the series neared it’s end, but the ending took me by surprise, to say the least.

“Holy Shit!” That was the first thing to pop into my mind when Rory uttered her final four words and the screen faded to black. I could not believe it. The overarching theme of Lorelai’s early pregnancy coming full circle was not exactly discreet. As young moms, we are constantly warned about how our early parenthood may potentially affect our children’s chances of becoming young parents, particularly where daughters are involved.

Not that Rory is young. But the fact that she is now faced with an unplanned pregnancy and the potential of raising that child alone was enough to leave viewers shaking their heads. Considering the precarious situation Rory was in throughout the series, many of us were left wondering, “now what?” Leading up to the revival, Amy Sherman-Palladino had stated in numerous interviews that she had fully intended for the series to be a cliffhanger.

Granted, there were some hints of the future. Jess staring longingly at Rory in the window as she tended to Kirk, implying that the two could potentially reunite. Luke and Lorelai, newly married, are now in a good position to help Rory financially and otherwise should she choose to keep her baby. Employment prospects look decent, as she is now editor of the Stars Hollow Gazette, and Headmaster Charleston’s offer of a teaching position at Chilton is still on the table.

Yet, her future is hazy. With nothing set in stone for Rory, things are very much in limbo. And now she is pregnant. As a young mom myself, with a desire to challenge social norms and stigma, this was my “AHA!” moment.  

Because here was Rory Gilmore. Bonafide brainiac, amazingly beautiful, graduated from Chilton as valedictorian, gone to Yale, campaigned with Obama during his race to the presidency in 2007 and had written for publications such as The New Yorker and Slate. But, she was human, after all.

The original series had shown that. She had raised eyebrows when she’d fallen asleep with Dean at Miss Patty’s studio in Season 1. Season 2 had her questioning her “perfect” relationship with Dean when “bad boy” Jess came along. The rest of the series showed similar sporadic- albeit human- tendencies from Rory. She landed herself in jail after an impulsive decision to steal a boat, quit Yale and joined the Daughters of the American Revolution. She stumbled quite a bit, but always seemed to pick herself back up and continue with life without much of a hitch.

So when Rory Gilmore announces she is pregnant (most likely from her affair with Logan), my initial response was: anyone can find themselves dealing with an unintended pregnancy. And also: is anyone ever ready?

There has been a lot of backlash from viewers who loved the original series. Many have made the assumption that the series’s ending indicates that Rory’s life has taken a turn for the worse, and that her future looks bleak.

For my response, I take you back to Season 3 episode 4: “One’s Got Class and the Other Dyes” where Lorelai and Luke are asked to speak about their success at Stars Hollow High for Career Day. What is supposed to be a day for Lorelei to highlight her experience as an Innkeeper ends up being a Q&A session about teen motherhood. One student even asks, “Do you regret being pregnant?” to which Lorelei responds: “No, of course not. It gave me Rory.”

The moms of the students present confront Lorelei afterwards, upset that she would “encourage promiscuous behavior to a group of young teenagers.” Lorelei then states she will not apologize for having a positive life in spite of her early pregnancy.

Perhaps, by presenting us with Rory’s pregnancy, Sherman-Palladino is asking viewers an  open-ended question. When is anyone ever prepared to get pregnant?

Those who automatically assume that Rory’s potential for a successful life has been interrupted should pay closer attention to Lorelei’s story.   Lorelei did not regret having Rory. As a teenage mom, she turned out fine by most standards. She went from living in a shed outside the Independence Inn to running the establishment, owning a house, starting her own business and successfully managing it for over ten years.

Unexpected pregnancies are a recurring theme in this show, and the consequences of each pregnancy vary from character to character. Lane’s hopes of becoming a recognizable rock star were indefinitely put on hold when she became pregnant with twins. Though the revival shows a seemingly content Lane living a very routine life, viewers are sure to recall the original controversy surrounding the plot line of Lane’s pregnancy.  Sherry’s story certainly raised eyebrows when she chose to leave Rory’s dad, Christopher, with their daughter because, in her opinion, she had sacrificed enough of her life raising her child and now needed to do something for herself.

If we even want to go deeper into the series, let’s focus on Emily and Lorelai. Emily went to college, married well, got pregnant at the appropriate time and provided her daughter with everything and yet the series AND the revival focus on the very hard time both mother and daughter have in understanding each other.

So, who really knows when someone is ready to be pregnant? Do the circumstances of Rory’s pregnancy suck? Yes, they do.

But this is a show that successfully ran for seven years and had overwhelming positive reactions over its revival ten years later despite the fact that the main character was a teenage mother.  In a society where we constantly attempt to dictate a young woman’s choices regarding motherhood, this show provided a glimpse into what it takes to raise a child, and highlights the fact that young parents do not always lose sight of their goals. A lot of teenage moms are like Lorelai–not quite ready for motherhood, but tackle it on and kick ass in their role as parents regardless. And lots of “age-appropriate moms” are Rory: caught off guard in a whirlwind of “Holy Shit!”

Like it or not, the ending of Gilmore Girls revival prompts viewers to consider a question that may not be as easy to answer as we want it to be: Are we ever truly ready for parenthood?