Late, but on Rory's relationship with Lorelai and everything, honest to god, it scares me. I'm a lot like Rory, and I have a pretty dang good relationship with my mom.
I don't like seeing Rory in the downward spiral at all. The first three and a half seasons were great, just fabulous. Rory was a nice kid that everyone would have wanted to meet; Lorelai was her cool - if sometimes overprotective - mother.
Then Raincoats and Recipes happened. And that caused a major rift. Look at it this way: In season 3, Rory said that she'd talk to Lorelai before she did "it." She didn't. Not to mention that Dean was married ... Just a bad combo.
Sometime between Jess asking her to run away, and Mitchum Huntzberger telling her that she "doesn't have what it takes," Rory got some notion in her head that wasn't the Rory we all know and love. Or, at least stealing a yacht wasn't here.
But there's a quote from the pilot of the show. "This is it. She can finally go to Harvard like she's always wanted and get the education that I never got and get to do all the things that I never got to do and then I can resent her for it and we can finally have a normal mother-daughter relationship." Lorelai says that about Rory starting Chilton. And maybe that's what the show is saying, that nothing perfect can last.
Rory and Lorelai fight in the pilot. They claim that they had never fought like that before. They fight in Rory's Dance because Lorelai thinks that Rory and Dean are sleeping together. They fight over her seeing Jess. They fight over her sleeping with Dean - though three years later. They fight over her quitting Yale.
All in all, Rory and Lorelai fighting is a normal part of the show.
Anyways, I almost always end up on Lorelai's side, because her viewpoint is
always justified. She wanted Rory to have a future. She didn't want Rory - at 16 - sleeping with a guy that seemed a lot like Christopher.
And she didn't want Rory to drop out of Yale and live with her grandparents. And some of that was selfish, but she wanted Rory to have the future. Lorelai would give up the relationship that she had with Rory in the first few seasons to guarantee that Rory got the future that she'd always dreamed of.
Anyways, I'm glad that they made up, I doubt that they'll ever have the best friend relationship back. I can't quite say why, but I think that the "mom card" just keeps being pulled out a bit more often and a bit more often.
So, Rory's being 17 at 21, because she was 25 at 17. She's hitting the rebellious stage a bit late, that's all.
But I still miss bookworm-Rory.
(Okay, no more discussion posts at one AM for Magster.

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