Rory Gilmore might have many fantastic qualities incharacter in Gilmore Girls is important to the plot in some way, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore’s mother-daughter relationship is the heart of the show. Without either character, the show wouldn’t work.

Both characters go through their ups and downs, growing over the course of the series. Unsurprisingly, many fans connected with Rory, the bookish teen girl with high aspirations. In many ways, Rory starts out as a blank slate so that viewers can project themselves onto the character. However, she becomes a well-developed, interesting character by the end. This doesn’t mean she isn’t without flaws, though. There are many harsh realities about Rory Gilmore, and many aspects of her character wouldn’t work if Gilmore Girls were released nowadays.

10 Rory Shames Dean About His College Decisions

Attitudes Around College Have Shifted Since Gilmore Girls Released

One aspect of Rory that fits at the time it came out but doesn’t work now is that she’s obsessed with everyone going to college. Millennials were fed the message that if we went to college and worked hard, we would be guaranteed a job. However, the cost of college has grown exponentially, saddling people with ungodly amounts of student loan debt. Society has also developed a cruel paradox: people need experience to get entry-level jobs – even with a college degree – but need a job to get experience.

For these reasons, modern audiences wouldn’t respond well to her shaming Dean because of his plan to attend junior college. They would react even more negatively to her harassing him for taking a break from college. Between the two, Dean’s approach to education is more practical, and Rory has a ridiculous amount of privilege because her grandparents (and later Christopher) can pay her way through college.

9 Rory Refuses To Take Any Criticism

Rory's Job Field Requires Her To Be Flexible And Open To Criticism

Throughout Gilmore Girls, Rory gets very little criticism because she’s Stars Hollow’s golden child. When she does get criticism, she reacts defensively or lashes out at the person speaking. Her attitude might be forgivable when she’s a teenager, but she maintains this mentality throughout all her college years as well. This might have been overlooked when the show first came out, but it would never be accepted today due to her desired career path.

Rory wants to work as a journalist, a career that involves frequent constructive criticism and . Modern audiences typically expect more realism in shows, and Rory’s inability to accept criticism simply isn’t conducive to a job in journalism. More people would likely side with Mitchum Huntzberger’s controversial statement in Gilmore Girls season 5, even if he didn’t have the most tact in the conversation.

8 Rory Messes Up Her Internship But Is Allowed To Stay

Job Stability Isn't What It Used To Be

When Rory starts her internship at the Stamford Eagle Gazette, she has a disastrous first day. She walks around the office looking confused, she doesn’t do what she’s supposed to, and she never asks for help. Ultimately, Logan swoops in to save the day with his advice. This might have worked when Gilmore Girls came out, but modern audiences wouldn’t accept the storyline, given the state of employment.

Nowadays, it feels just as hard to keep a job as it is to get one. There’s a late capitalistic-driven sentiment that everyone is replaceable. The fact that she’s working in journalism would provide her with even less job security, given the frequent layoffs and downsizing. Because of these factors, there’s no doubt the Stamford Eagle Gazette would have let her go from her internship with so many mistakes on the first day.

7 Rory Repeatedly Engages In Cheating

Rory Would Get More Criticism For Her Infidelity

Throughout Gilmore Girls, Rory is painted as innocent and thoughtful even though she repeatedly cheats on her boyfriends and gets involved with people in relationships. At Sookie’s wedding, Rory kisses Jess while she’s in a relationship with Dean. In the Gilmore Girls season 4 finale, she sleeps with Dean, knowing that he’s married. In season 6, she cheats on Logan with Jess, and he gets mad when he finds out she’s still with Logan.

While it wasn’t exactly accepted back then, she still maintained her image as the golden child who can do no wrong. These decisions would be scrutinized more nowadays, ruining her innocent persona. This is proven by the backlash A Year in the Life faced for making Rory cheat on her boyfriend Paul with Logan – a wildly unpopular storyline in the revival.

6 Rory Gives Her Mother The Silent Treatment

Modern Audiences Recognize This Behavior As Manipulative

Neither Rory nor Lorelai behave perfectly when Rory decides to drop out of Yale. The entire situation is messy, and nobody is fully in the right or the wrong. However, the most difficult part of this situation is one behavior that would be labeled toxic and manipulative nowadays – the silent treatment. After Lorelai tells Rory she can’t live at home, Rory decides to give Lorelai the silent treatment for months. In all fairness, Lorelai also refuses to speak to Rory.

However, this feels more frustrating when it comes to Rory for two big reasons. Firstly, Gilmore Girls treats Lorelai as flawed while it presents Rory as perfect. The behavior doesn’t feel out of character for the mom, so it’s less upsetting to see from her. Secondly, Rory rubs salt in the wound by running to her grandparents, knowing it would hurt Lorelai. This feels like an especially cruel decision.

5 Heaster Charleston Doesn’t Kick Rory Out Of Chilton

Heaster Charleston Gave Rory Her One Warning But Never Followed Through

When Chilton its Rory, Heaster Charleston makes it very clear that Rory doesn’t have to be at the school and might not succeed. After her first outburst in class, he explains that nothing like that will be tolerated again, which feels like a warning. However, she has at least three other notable outbursts in school. The first happens when she and the Puffs break into the school. She and Paris also get into a fight at the Franklin. Then, they yell at each other in front of the heaster.

These incidents completely ignore the fact that she had low grades on a few assignments, and she ditched school. In a regular school, this might be fine, but she’s at a prep school. If it weren’t for the fact that Gilmore Girls wants her to be the perfect teen, she would have been kicked out of school based on Heaster Charleston’s initial statements. The modern grind culture of today adds extra educational pressures, making the patience for failure much lower. It seems less likely that Rory would have stayed in Chilton.

4 Rory Talks Back To Her Yale Professor

Rory Gilmore Gets Audacious When Talking To Asher Flemming

When Gilmore Girls came out, society essentially required that young adults get a college education. That was seen as the only way to succeed in life, with the lasting impacts not being discussed. As such, some of Rory’s ill-advised decisions at Yale were less egregious than they would be if the show came out now. One of the most notable is the fact that Rory talks back to her university professors on two different occasions, which feels like an immature and privileged thing to do.

The first time, she talks back to her Game Theory professor when he tries to give her advice. The second time, she talks back to Asher Flemming, questioning his grading practices. Nowadays, students know that a college education is a privilege that many people can’t afford, so it seems less likely that a student like Rory would disrespect their professor like that.

3 Rory Stigmatizes Therapy

Therapy Has Become More Normalized In Modern Day

While Gilmore Girls feels timeless, some elements have aged poorly. Notably, all the Gilmores degrade and stigmatize therapy throughout the series, including Rory. After her breakdown in her mandated therapy, she calls Lorelai and says, “Guess who’s crazy?” She explains that she has to go back to the therapist every week for a few months because she had a breakdown. This depiction, along with the others in the show, is incredibly frustrating to watch nowadays.

Therapy and mental health treatment are considered much less shameful than they used to be, with many individuals being open about their mental state. If the show came out today, they would need to approach the topic in a very different way. Rory would need to speak in a less stigmatizing way. If a character talked about these topics this way, most modern audiences would hate them.

2 Rory Doesn’t Recognize Wealth And Class Differences

Rory Gilmore Pretends To Be Ignorant Classism

Throughout Gilmore Girls, Rory acts blissfully unaware of class divisions and the attitudes surrounding wealth. She is unaware of how privileged she is that her grandparents can swoop in and pay for Chilton and Yale, thinking of herself as broke. At the same time, she believes that because she’s a Gilmore, Logan’s parents will accept her. She doesn’t seem to realize that there are different levels of class divisions and old money versus new money.

Her complete lack of awareness comes across as unrealistic nowadays. Society has become more vocal about the widening wage gap between the working class and the upper class. If Gilmore Girls came out today and Rory displayed those same views, she would be utterly unlikable to the majority of viewers, which isn’t the goal of the show. As such, she would have to have some sort of understanding about these topics rather than acting naive all the time.

1 The Whole Town Idolizes Rory

Rory Being Beloved By Everyone Is Unrealistic In Gilmore Girls

One of the most egregious elements of Gilmore Girls that’s simply unrealistic is the fact that the entire town of Stars Hollow adores and idolizes Rory. She’s the golden child, and anyone who even moderately criticizes her is ostracized for their views. The show pushes really hard that she’s perfect and lovable to the degree that everyone in town protects her. For many reasons, this part of the story wouldn’t work if the show came out today.

Besides the fact that nobody is liked by everyone, viewers have now become more critical of the “Mary Sue” characters that received a in the past. They have repeatedly rejected other characters along these lines as being unrealistic, so there’s no reason to believe that Rory would be any different. A modern version of Gilmore Girls would need to present the main character as being more flawed and nuanced, and that means including characters in Stars Hollow who don’t like her and aren’t villains.