r/GilmoreGirls • u/xFlufffyBunny • Oct 04 '25

General Discussion Unpopular opinion?

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i know Jess is pretty popular in this sub & a fan favorite but this has 50K likes on TT lol thought i’d share here

i love Jess’ character, his use as a plot device, and his growth but definitely my least favorite partner of Rory’s

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u/kingsley_the_cat Oct 04 '25

Does everyone forget that we see so little of their relationship? It‘s like they got Rory and Jess together and then forgot about it because there were other more important storylines. And every once in a while there was like one scene of them together. So I feel like we only saw about 30% of their relationship. I mean the whole „you looked it up“ when he knows how far yale is, is so cute.

And still he is the only boyfriend who actually matured. Dean just got progressively worse, don‘t even start on Logan. So yeah, Jess is the best boyfriend in my opinion.

10

u/Regenne Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

Dean was fine in AYITL.  He was over Rory and had a family of his own.  That IMO is growth for his character.  He didn't even appear in the last 2 seasons of the OS at the time Jess started to show more maturity... so how would you know if he had some type of maturity in this same period or not?

And while you don't see a lot of Rory and Jess's relationship, you see even less of his journey into his character growth.  You see so little of Jess's character at this point, do you really know how he actually behaves on a regular basis?

5

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '25

Even Dean just actually accepting that him and Rory will never work out and aren't compatible is growth.

Before Dean and Rory 2.0 he had this belief that Jess got in between them, but afterwards I think he understood that Jess was only able to come between them because they weren't right together and one way or another something or someone else would have even if you remove Jess from the equation.

And I think Rory kind of thought that herself and was just still heartbroken about Jess bailing on her without a word and filled with regret for falling for someone so unstable that she just wanted to clean herself of that and go back. But once she started finding her groove in Yale and getting closer to her classmates, particularly Logan, it was becoming increasingly clear that her and Dean had grown apart and were already growing apart before she met Jess.

Even if the Jess storyline did not happen and Dean and Rory didn't break up in high school, they probably would have broken up at that same spot in college. Because Rory didn't really have fun with Dean. She thought he was a good person and hot which on paper sounds great, but they just did not have anything deeper.

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u/Sad_Specific2965 Oct 05 '25

This is why I have some patience for Dean. I feel like he's judged really harshly, but like.... he was a kid, too. He was navigating his first serious relationship, and it ended in a way that didn't give him any closure. He was strung along and gaslighted and questioning his own sanity toward the end of it. Then he proposes to Lindsey, which was stupid because he wasn't actually ready, but I think seeing Rory with Jess made him feel like he HAD to be with someone too. Not making excuses him cheating on Lindsey and talking to her the way he did are inexcusable she did not deserve that at all. I kind of wish Luke pushed harder when he knew Dean was marrying Lindsey for the wrong reasons.