Gilmore Girls: Jess’s First Appearance Secretly Teased Rory & Dean’s Break-up

Gilmore Girls often foreshadowed big twists, such as the cryptic clue to Rory and Dean’s break up hidden in Jess’s first appearance on the show. A classic cozy TV institution, Gilmore Girls was a cult dramedy which ran from 2000-2007 (and was revived for a critically-maligned Netflix reunion miniseries A Year In the Life in 2016). Throughout its run, the show won critical acclaim for its ability to balance witty dialogue with believable, messy relationship drama.

The titular Gilmore girls Rory and Lorelei were a mother and daughter duo who spent much of the show unlucky in love, bouncing between flings and gaining a veritable rogue’s gallery of short-lived love interests in the process (remember when Lorelei dated Billy Boyd? The show sure didn’t, vanishing his character without any explanation after two appearances). Lorelei may have met her match in sardonic diner owner Luke, but Rory never found the right partner despite dating the fandom-dividing trio of boyfriends Dean, Jess, and Logan at different points.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

But Rory’s lack of a lasting love interest wasn’t due to a lack of planing by the writer’s room. In fact, the creators of Gilmore Girls artfully telegraphed her eventual inevitable break-up with Dean an entire season before the event occurred. The break-up finally happens in season 3’s classic installment “They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They,” the dance marathon episode from High School Musical director Kenny Ortega (and named after Sydney Pollack’s depression era drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They). But few fans picked up on the fact that the show hinted at the couple’s eventual dissolution way back in the season 2 episode “Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy,” during misunderstood bad boy (and eventual success story) Jess Marino’s first appearance.

The moment Jess returns Rory’s “borrowed” (and now heavily-annotated) copy of Ginsberg’s Howl shortly after their first meeting, the song “Girl From Mars” by Irish indie rock band Ash plays. But what’s the song’s significance? It’s an ode to an imaginary alien girlfriend written by the band’s frontman when he was in his early teens, the same awkward age as the two characters. But the singer admitted in an interview that the inspiration for the song came after he broke up with his first girlfriend, a relationship which was, in his words, a “very intense, first love” [via The Guardian].

In the show, meanwhile, the song plays as Jess wins over Rory during his first appearance, drawing her away from the down-home charms of Jared Paladecki’s Dean with his more refined tastes. It’s a moment which will eventually lead Rory to cheat on Dean with Jess by the time the second season finale rolls around and to eventually (after an entire season of agonizing) break up with Dean, her first boyfriend and, well, very intense first love. Thus for anyone familiar with the song’s origins, the indie hit makes for a clever bit of foreshadowing that alludes to the eventual break-up. Not to mention the fact that “Girl From Mars” is an absolute banger of a song to boot, making for one of the best musical moments on Gilmore Girls.

Why Anatomy Of A Scandal’s Finale Twist Was So Controversial (& Unethical)

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *