Gilmore Girls Had a Baby Problem
By: Gigi Love
Tags: Culture, Women, Feminism, Motherhood, TV Series

Gilmore Girls Had a Baby Problem

Please, stop using motherhood as a filler plotline.

I re-watched Gilmore girls in quarantine.

Because, when the world is flipping upside down, you need something consistent in your life like Stars Hollow. I mean, the biggest issue they had is that a pickle truck flipped over.

Ah, the simple life.

But I noticed something upon the re-watch.

Gilmore Girls had a serious baby problem.

If they didn’t know what to do with a female character, they impregnated her. They are repeat offenders and I am ready to dive into it.

The entire plot of Gilmore Girls revolves around an accidental pregnancy. Lorelai has Rory at 16 and now they live in Stars Hollow and are super codependent.

This pregnancy furthers the story. This pregnancy makes sense. The rest of them? Not so much.

Let’s take a look at the babies that ruined some of our favorite characters’ lives.

Lane has twins and her life comes to a halt.

Lane Kim started out as a really interesting character. She was a sheltered young girl with a very religious mother who hid contraband records in her floorboards.

She’s always trying to find herself. She joins the cheer squad. She crushes on guys. She visits her family in Korea.

And finally, she falls in love with a drumset.

I loved watching her join a band and fall in love with the drums. I wanted that to go farther than it did.

So, what happens?

She falls in love with a bandmate, gets married, and gets pregnant the first time she has sex.

Let’s be clear: I’m not against marriage and babies. (Although, babies on TV shows are kind of a snore unless they are MK & Ashley Olsen in Full House.)

But Lane’s personal dreams die in exchange for her wedding ring and motherhood.

In the end, Lane’s husband Zach — who kind of sucks, right? — is the one who gets this amazing opportunity to go on tour with this amazing band.

She almost joins but decides she cannot bring newborn twins in a tour van. Fair enough.

What I wish happened for Lane:

I wish she would have continued with music. Why can’t she have it all? Especially since she never seemed super jazzed about kids in the first place. I wish she would have left Stars Hollow. I’m not saying that Stars Hollow isn’t a musical treasure trove, but um, I kind of am. I wish they would have taken their babies and gone to L.A. She should have ended up with Dave Rygalski. He was the *most* deserving of her amazingness. He spent time trying to win her mom over. He saw her talent in its full form. Zach? Well, he just sucks.

Sookie has a third kid because we didn’t know what else to do with her.

Sookie St. James is an absolute delight.

She has a great arc on the show, climbing the ranks from an inn chef to co-owning her own inn with Lorelai. She goes from shy-with-guys to dating and marrying her husband, Jackson.

She has depth and humor and determination.

But, she is not immune to the Gilmore Girls baby plot.

Like Lane, Sookie is hesitant about being a mom. Here are a couple of examples:

She freaks out when she finds out her new husband wants four kids in four years. She confesses that she wanted one kid, maybe two “if the first one is really quiet.” She panics when she serves the wrong food at a kid’s birthday party. She says that she is not a kid person and she “doesn’t want to be pregnant anymore.”

Sookie being pregnant does nothing to enhance the storyline.

The only time the kids really come into play is when Lorelai and Rory are fighting and Sookie asks them to be godparents as a way to get them in the same room.

Otherwise? Her kids are kind of pointless.

Enter the biggest violation of the entire series.

After the birth of her second kid, Sookie sends her husband to get a vasectomy. She says “we’re done” with the kid phase. He wanted four, she wanted one, and they’re at a compromise.

The only problem? Jackson doesn’t get the vasectomy AND doesn’t tell her.

It makes me mad just typing that out.

Jackson completely violates her autonomy over her own body, and she gets knocked up. She understandably is furious, but Lorelai reminds her of all the good things that babies bring to your life, and she comes around.

The women in Gilmore Girls never have any control over their own bodies.

That’s what this all comes down to right?

We’ve taken two characters who started with ambition and goals and depth. We established that neither of them wanted kids. Then, we knocked them both up and stalled their growth as characters.

There is only ever one mention of abortion.

When we flashback to Lorelai getting pregnant and having Rory in high school, Christopher’s mother is the one to suggest it. The idea is never entertained.

In this world, abortion is only available to unwed teenage girls.

Fine, I’ll play along. But if that’s your intent, then why do you insist on creating characters who don’t want to have kids… then forcing pregnancy on them?

Gilmore Girls is supposedly a story about women. Yet, time and time again, it does them such a disservice.

In the end, we’ve come full circle.

If there is one bright spot, it was Lorelai’s story. She got pregnant at 16, escaped from controlling parents, and made a life for herself. She raised her kid well and she became a business owner.

But, at the end of the story, we are back where we began.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was a mess. But, if you’re going to hold it as a continuation of Gilmore Girls, then we have to acknowledge that they f*cked things up for Rory.

She’s floundering in life — again — and is sleeping with her engaged ex-boyfriend. (Guess it’s better than sleeping with her married ex?)

Then, like Lorelai, she gets pregnant.

She’s not sixteen, so that is better, I guess.

But still, it’s going to derail her life.

So what did we learn? What did we accomplish? Are we moving forward?

I learned that baby plotlines are dangerous. I’ll take the chef and the drummer and the writer plotline over pregnancies any day.