All great teen TV romances force viewers to choose factions. Brenda or Kelly? Angel or Spike? Dawson or Pacey? Summer or Anna? Duncan or Logan?
The one in question: Dean or Jess? In the second season of the Gilmore Girls, Luke’s misbehaving nephew moves to town and takes a liking to Rory. Despite everyone’s (including her mother, her current boyfriend, her best friend) distaste for the new guy, the two of them develop a close friendship that eventually (in the third season) develops into love.
I have always been a solid Jess supporter, but I lived in a house of Dean-o-philes. It has taken many re-watchings of this beautiful narrative to figure out what it is, deep down, that creates the attraction. My identification with Rory runs so deep that for years my excuses for Jess simply mirror hers: you don’t understand the real Jess.
What people see is the tough guy. Quoth Lorelai, “He is a completely out of control, angry kid.” They see the troubled teen whose mom can’t handle him, who’s shipped off to live with his uncle. They see his pranks and snarky remarks. They see him as the guy who sneaks in between Rory and Dean. And all of that is true, however it is not the whole truth. It is the shell that Jess adopts, the equivalent of a leather jacket. Of course, if that’s all you see, you can’t help assuming, that that’s what everyone else sees, notably, that that’s who Rory’s falling for.
People understand the bad boy trope. There is something attractive about dangerous, unpredictable men. Come to think of it, what else sets two potential romantic partners apart? In the majority of the pairs listed above, one is new and exciting, the other, steady and predictable, boring, in fact. That’s the reason I choose Pacey, Spike, and Logan.
But that’s not the reason I choose Jess (although discarding Dean is much easier when he fails to stray from the boring yet dependable boyfriend mould). The romance between Rory and Jess is a literary one. When they are alone together, he takes off his metaphorical leather jacket to reveal the word-freak soulmate of one bookworm main character. Their first meeting takes place in the context of her bedroom library. At their second, he returns a borrowed book with (presumably intimate, since they come from his deep inner thoughts) notes in the margins. When they sit and talk and eat together, they debate favourite authors, classic novel milestones, and enjoy the rare experience of sharing a sincere passion for complex literature (that tends to set them apart from their peers) with a peer.
Nobody else is privy to this Jess. (Except for Paris, possibly the one character who can keep up with their literary banter.) Nobody understands him the way Rory does, the way I do.
I love Gilmore Girls! I have all the seasons on DVD. I also liked Jess better than Dean. Jess seemed to get Rory on a personal level. Even in later seasons he’s the one he got her back to Yale. Honestly, Dean needed a hair cut and annoyed me sometimes. Fun post.