Gilmore Girls Watch - A Hate Post For Emily

 I'm just getting my feelings out of the way early on. It's impossible to write about this show without doing it first and at length .

My gosh, Emily Gilmore is annoying. Like, in an evil way. Like in a deeply personal way. Her husband is also annoying and accountable, but she does it a lot more. She's such a terrible person! I didn't really have this wired when I watched it a kid, but boy do I have it wired in now. 

By way of metatextual explanation, 

The backstory premise of the show is that Lorelai, the mother protagonist, got pregnant with her daughter Rory at sixteen and then ran away from her wealthy parents' home and ended up raising her elsewhere, having very little contact with them. But now as an adult with her sixteen-year-old daughter, she's re-established a relationship with them - they need their money to pay for a private school so Rory has a better chance of getting into the Ivy League college she wants to attend, and her parents' price for their financial aid? The four of them having dinner once a week. 

But of course, talking with her parents, based on helping her daughter achieve her goals at the same age she was when she got pregnant, discussing things like school, college, employment, long-term careers, and raising a child ... lots of feelings are going to be brought up. And so she and her parents often find themselves arguments about whatever thing her daughter is trying out this week. And the argument in subtext and text often becomes about Lorelai herself. 

As a kid, I was like, "Seems complicated. Teen pregnancy is a scary thing according to church, and her parents seem disappointed in her." But as a more mature person, my goodness, Lorelai's parents are insane! It's been sixteen years! Get over it! Not to say parents can't be upset about their kid getting pregnant, but it is PATHOLOGICAL here! And especially with Emily. 

As this excellent and thoughtful YouTuber breaks down, the series is really about the dynamics of having a toxic mother. 

I think my generation is very quick to throw around words like "toxic" or "gaslighting" without necessarily understanding the entire context of those words, but I don't think it's an exaggeration here. Emily Gilmore has got a real, ongoing problem, that might be diagnosed as narcissism or emotional abuse or a pathological dismissal of her daughter's reasonable wishes. Things have to be her way, and when they aren't, she'll snark or complain or isolate or threaten or cold shoulder for years, never relenting. Lorelai is her daughter, sure. But she's also the continuation of their old money New England family, the symbol of her parent's prestige and wisdom, and by getting pregnant, not marrying the father and running off to a life of ... *gasp* ...  middle class self-sufficiency she's irrevocably damaged her family's standing in the eyes of their peers, and Emily will never forgive her for that. Never mind that in real life wealthy families turn out duds all the time. Never mind that Lorelai is a sober, mature, responsible, and professionally successful person. Never mind that Emily and her husband have missed out on fifteen years of her daughter's company and missed most of their granddaughter's milestones. She ... got them uninvited from some dinner parties! That's unforgivable! 

Of course, if this was all laid out in this way Emily would be too villainous of a figure for us to watch, and the series would fall apart. The series is built around the dynamic of trying to reach a manageable relationship with with her. You just gotta let it fly. But of course, if I knew someone like Emily in real life (I have known one or two, but it's not really like that anymore, thank goodness), I would hate them and either avoid them or fight them, and you should too. So that's that.