Just the way you are

Just when I thought I adore Naya so much already, the way Chris described her made me love her even more if that is even possible. ❤️

IN MEMORY OF NAYA RIVERA

Naya Rivera was a mom, a sister, a daughter. She was an actress, a singer, a writer, a model. She was a latina woman who went through a lot in this life. She was always vocal and open about important issues such as homophobia, racism, toxic relationships, sexism, motherhood, abortion. Her character in Glee was probably one of the most influential and important representations for the LGBTQ+ community and she always talked about how Santana was important for young LGBT people and how proud she was for being able to represent something good. If Santana ever helped you, Naya was so proud of that and of you. She changed lives.

Lorelai & Her Parents

At 16 Lorelai was rebellious against anything her parents did or said & she’s the same way even in Year in the Life where she’s in her late 40’s. She has zero open communication with her mom...still.

She never listens to her parents, avoids their calls, tries to get her daughter to be the go between on several occasions.

Lorelai whines, bitches & moans about her parents being the root of all evil. The way she talks we would expect them to be Joseph Stalin (a comparison she made herself in that magazine interview about the Inn).

However, we never see or hear anything that bad about her parents. Nothing unforgivable. They’re just normal loving parents who have strong opinions & are sometimes pushy.

Lorelai gave birth to Rory when she was 16. No parent would be thrilled at the idea their child just made their lives considerably more challenging for themselves. Parents generally want their kids to have better lives than they had.

In flashbacks we see Richard & Emily being good parents. Posh & proper they took parent in lots of events & rituals Lorelai didn’t like. Such as sitting for a portrait & wearing fancy dresses etc

Lorelai’s seen joking with Christopher & in good spirits. She’s not traumatized or being abused in any way.

We never see them being cruel, angry, or abusive to her. They definitely wanted her to follow suit. To do what they say...to listen...and to learn from them.

Lorelai rejected all of that. She’s not good at any of those things.

However they still seemed like good parents. Great even.

When they realize Lorelai’s pregnant they are shocked & disappointed. Immediately they jump into protective mode. Richard suggests helping Chris join the family & the kids could get married... his attempt to salvage her reputation. He knows how cruel people can be especially from the upper class elites whom of which can be petty.

Both Richard & Emily want to fix the mistake so they jump in. Christopher even said he wanted to marry Lorelai & he seemed excited about having the baby. Lorelai just looked annoyed at all of it.

We also see that she pushes them away again & again.

When she goes to the hospital alone they rush to be by her side. And she still acts annoyed. They wanted to help someone they love & she was annoyed!

In the flashbacks we see that Lorelai & baby Rory were living with Richard & Emily for at least a few weeks. Her parents seemed to be okay with the living situation.

A nice house, no rent, all expenses paid, and they mentioned a nanny...to which Lorelai felt she had to escape. What??

Seriously, she wanted zero help from everyone & anyone. That’s not just being independent that’s being blinded by pride.

And after her parents did everything for her, Lorelai runs away with baby Rory.

That’s completely selfish. I could imagine how painful that would be for her parents.

To make matters worse, it’s said several times in the early part of the series that Emily never got to see how Lorelai raised Rory...and that they barely ever got see or talk to Rory when she was little.

In fact, the first interaction we see of Rory & her grandparents it’s like Rory doesn’t know them. It’s like they’re being introduced to each other.

So...basically Lorelai didn’t try to have her parents involved in Rory’s life. She didn’t encourage a relationship with them - that is so incredibly spiteful & selfish.

When Emily finally meets the owner of the Independence Inn we see that she was upset about all that missing time. She didn’t have pictures of Lorelai or Rory during that time. It’s so...sad.

Season one has Rory getting into Chilton & it’s an excuse for her parents to get involved in their lives. They see it as an opportunity to get to know Rory. They pay for Chilton in exchange for Friday night dinners.

Even though they made a deal & Lorelai gave her word to have weekly dinners with her parents she still tries throughout the series to get out of them. It’s so rude & she’s so ungrateful.

Lorelai always whines about the dinners. But they were good! They get nice food, sit in comfort & have good company. She often looks like she’s having fun but later complains about them. There were only a handful of bad dinners in the series with her parents.

So why did she always complain about them?

Because she’s ungrateful for everything her parents did for her.

Good things Richard & Emily did for Lorelai:

* They raised her in a loving, stable home

* She had a good education

* They taught her good morals

* She was always fed & taken care of

* They tried to help when she was pregnant & provided support once the baby was born

* In season 1, Lorelai hurts her back & Emily takes care of her

* They paid for Chilton & Yale

* Their only request (or as Lorelai called it they ‘demanded’) to spend time with their daughter & grand daughter in exchange for the schools’ tuition.

* Despite not being invited by their daughter (because Lorelai assumes they wouldn’t want to go), both Richard & Emily attend Lorelai’s college graduation as the proudest parents in the world.

* They bought Rory an over the top high school graduation gift- a car- to which Lorelai barely thanked them.

* Richard taught Rory to golf & showed her around the country club.

* Richard was a mentor for a school project of Rory’s

* Emily encouraged Rory several times to make friends with her classmates

* Emily encouraged school involvement to help make those friends & for college. She stated something along the lines that it would help for everything.

* They remain friendly with Christopher (Rory’s father) even though he’s rarely around & they don’t like the fact he & Lorelai never got married. They know it’s important to be civil as he’s Rory’s father & they hope eventually the situation would improve.

* Emily is super nice to Jess upon their first meeting even though she thinks Rory is too good for him. She kept her opinion to herself, except when she had a private conversation with Lorelai.

* Emily helps Rory navigate parties & the DAR, making sure her grand daughter would be prepared for life of the upper society instead of leaving her to flounder.

* Emily prints out a list of tips for ways in which Rory can avoid getting stabbed in prison (during her community service)

* Richard defends Rory’s honour when he realizes Mitchum Huntzberger had upset her.

* Likewise Emily gives a great verbal thrashing to Shira Huntzberger in response to the woman having humiliated Rory

* Even when he’s not speaking with Lorelai, Richard helps take care of the insurance at the Dragonfly Inn.

* There were lots of warm family exchanges between them & Rory. Some warm exchanges between them & Lorelai too.

* When Rory ran to her grandparents, breaking down & basically begged them for help, they gave it to her. They took care of her.

* When Rory got arrested they never gave her a hard time or judged. They tried to help.

* They were still open to Logan being in Rory’s life even though his parents treated her poorly.

Not so good moments of theirs:

* Richard breaks business ties with Digger, going behind his back & working for his father

* Richard manipulates the situation so that while visiting Yale Rory has a meeting with the dean

* Emily throws the Yale (boys) party to try to get Rory to meet someone new as she’s too good for Dean (it worked, because she was too good for him)

* When they feared for Rory’s ‘virtue’. Old fashioned, yes. They felt her being a virgin until marriage was the way to go so they set up an awkward dinner with a pastor to talk sense into her. Good intentions but it was none of their business.

People have a lot of opinions about who was responsible for the rift between Lorelai & her parents.

What I think is this:

When Lorelai ran away with baby Rory, it was her fault. She took off, pushed them away & refused help.

Being rich & powerful, they could have won custody. All they had to do was get a private investigator to take pictures of the shed Lorelai & Rory were living in. Prove that Lorelai (who refused help from anyone) left Rory alone while she cleaned rooms at the Independence Inn.

It would be easy for them.

However, they didn’t do that. They actually gave Lorelai space & took what scraps of contact she was willing to give.

During the series (even with nothing triggering it) Lorelai pushes her parents away, bad mouths them, constantly hides big life events from them (her college graduation, not one but TWO engagements! , etc)...and she humiliated Emily by giving that mean interview about her when she should have talked about the Dragonfly Inn.

However, when Richard betrayed Digger, that caused tension. When he forced Rory to talk to the Yale Dean, it caused a rift. Not approving of Luke caused tension but they still supported Lorelai even though they didn’t like him.

Supporting Rory’s decision to drop out of school was huge. They supported her, thinking it was the right thing. Then Richard laid it out for Lorelai (because Rory was too chicken shit to stand up for her mom more than once a year 🤷‍♀️) .

It was what Rory wanted but Lorelai felt it was all her parents’ fault, which wasn’t true.

Emily even tried to encourage Rory to talk to Lorelai a few times. Finally getting through to her with the invitations to her birthday party.

And Lorelai showed up to the party & acted like she wanted to kill them. Emily asked how Luke was & Lorelai jumped down her throat...and of course that was when we realized that again Lorelai didn’t tell her parents she was going to marry Luke.

Another knife wound.

Emily & Richard are critical but they also learn & evolve. They both are pragmatic so while Emily was underhanded in inviting Christopher to the vow renewal, I get it. Emily wanted to see if she can piece the family back together - choosing one of the few times where she’s getting along with Lorelai. She probably thought that if he saw Lorelai at a wedding he’d want to marry her & vice versa. Kill two birds with one stone.

Yes it was shitty because Lorelai was with Luke; however, if that had been a healthy relationship (there were lots of issues) it wouldn’t have imploded the way it did. Later when the two have a healthier relationship both Richard & Emily are more accepting of Luke.

Even during Emily’s emotional breakdown where she wanted to buy that plane she suggested that Lorelai & Luke can use it - showing at that point she’d accepted the relationship.

So who was to blame for the rift?

Both...but mostly Lorelai.

While I can understand the argument that she had been raised in a way she didn’t like, you can’t place blame on that.

Lorelai felt suffocated at 16 but she didn’t just need space, she wanted to cruelly ditch her parents.

You definitely can’t blame her parents for the way she acted towards them at 30-something. Because adults are responsible for themselves. You have issues with someone? Talk! Communicate! Even if that involves arguing.

Suck it up, address the issues then figure out how to fix it.

I feel like Emily & Richard did this a lot. They struggled sometimes but eventually they worked things out. But Lorelai kept pushing them away & shut them out of her life.

Even in Year in the Life. She still resented her father so much that she couldn’t remember a single good memory about him at the funeral. Then she acted angry at Emily when she was upset. Emily had every right to be.

They go to therapy because after all these years they can’t talk to each other. Still. Well, we know Emily is very vocal so who could be to blame? Perhaps the fact Lorelai was keeping her therapy from Luke was a bit telling.

In any case, whomever you blame for the problems, I think we all can agree it would have been nice if the show had more flashbacks so we can see why Lorelai resented and (at times) hated her parents.

Nothing I saw in the series was enough to be that angry with them & to run away or barely see them in 16 years. Were they stifling? Yes. Controlling? A little bit but parents often are. Annoying? Yes.

Abusive, cruel, mean, neglectful? No, no, no, and no.

In my family, we talk & occasionally yell. We don’t have to like what each other is doing but hey that’s family. But we do try to talk. Sometimes things come up that annoys us but we deal with it.

Lorelai’s family wasn’t perfect. That’s fine, but why wouldn’t she want to see them? Why would she take a situation about her neurotic mother & think it was funny to tell perfect strangers & to compare herself to a murdering dictator?

You have to be pretty heartless to do that...even if Lorelai didn’t realize it would be in print. I don’t care how annoyed I get I would NEVER talk about my parents like that.

So, why does Lorelai? What happened to her that she thinks this is okay? What (if any) shady things did her parents do to deserve something like that?

I wish the show could have shown us because the absence of information just feels like Lorelai is cruel & vindictive

I personally think Lorelai just never grew up. She acts immature even in later seasons so I believe she has the same mentality as she did when she was 16. She assumes several times the worst about her parents when the were just being straight forward or asking simple questions.

Like, for example, Rory’s invitation to her birthday party. Lorelai assumes it was a manipulation by Emily but her daughter was just reaching out to her. Instead of checking to see if she was actually welcome she - like a child - ignores it & would rather miss Rory’s birthday then deal with 2 minutes of awkwardness on the phone to get clarification. She just assumes there is no possible way she’d ever be wrong. Keep in mind at this point Lorelai is supposed to be around 38.

She’s not a child, she’s not naive nor stupid. She’s merely self involved. She thinks how she thinks, never bends, & can’t possibly comprehend the fact that her parents genuinely love her & try any means in which they can see her & their grand daughter.

In later seasons we can see how heartbroken her parents were still about missing out on Lorelai’s life. Emily starts making suggestions about adding onto the Dragonfly Inn, by having a spa attached. Lorelai brushes it off like it was nothing but Emily was reaching out to her because she was worried she wouldn’t want to do Friday night dinners again.

And we see in season 7, when the girls attend Mia’s wedding that Emily was still upset by the separation all those years ago. She’s civil while trying to hide her pain. Lorelai was completely oblivious to how upset Emily was. Rory points that out & eventually Lorelai actually understands.

Some people aren’t fans of season 7 but I loved that episode because it showed Emily’s vulnerability & pain and we actually got to see some growth between Lorelai & Emily!

Year in the Life completely shit all over that of course.

The series finale was alright regarding how Lorelai is with her parents. They were in a good place & she reassured her mom that Friday night dinners would continue. Meaning, she would still be in their lives.

I had no complaints about that. Though I still wish we saw more about their past.

What I had hoped to see in Year in the Life was a solid relationship with Lorelai & Emily. After all those years, why wouldn’t they have progressed?

We saw hints that when Lorelai would take her head out of her butt, she actually enjoys time with her parents. Such as having fun with Emily at that fashion show.

And a lot of people get annoyed at their family as teenagers but once they’re grown up & moved out, they have a good relationship with them.

I wanted, in the Year in the Life, for Emily & Lorelai to still have their banter but be friendly. Meeting up to shop occasionally & such. But instead they’re still in a bad place? After ten years...really?