There's something so fucked-up about creating a cozy rom-com to redeem Jimmy Mariano, of all people.

Let's forget the first attempt at the backstory because it was obviously changed. Jimmy knocks up this teenage girl, somehow agrees to marry her, they have an apartment and a life set up and they're at least going to try family life, and he bails before the baby comes home. The show doesn't talk about it because the subject is supposed to be about the Gilmores and the betrayal of Lorelai running away and choosing a less prestigious lifestyle, as well as how it's always more important that Lorelai is embarrassed to tell her wealthy father she's sleeping with his wealthy business partner or how Jess won't plan for dates and how this is the worst thing in the universe or whatever comparatively trivial thing is often going on with the main characters, but the Danes really could not take the stress of Liz being left alone as a teenager with a baby. The business was failing, William Danes got very sick at some point, and Luke (also only a teenager when this started) was the only person to hold it together...Jimmy left Liz in the middle of that, likely knowing she didn't stop drinking while she was pregnant, knowing she couldn't and wouldn't stop partying, knowing the rest of the family couldn't handle it. He didn't come back for eighteen years (and I doubt he paid child support, either) and when he did exactly...what was he expecting? Liz is gone, Luke is barely holding it together, Jess at this point is something of a broken husk of a kid who's finally failed at keeping his demons at bay...what did you think would happen, buddy? You abandoned your kid to that, two decades ago. I guess you thought it's like giving a kid up for adoption and you'd show up and find out that he's done fine without you and you can stop thinking about it, but you didn't sign the papers to give him a better life, you just left. And once you find out that he's not better off, that you had a big part in making him what he is, you leave again.

And when Jess comes to find him, in a beach bum version of Stars Hollow where he will never fit in and that he's going to hate worse than the place he just left, he rejects Jess again, because he just can't handle it again and even after making all the effort to go and see him in the first place, he doesn't have any room for Jess in his family or his life, even if Jess has no one else. He has to beg to be given half a chance, and Jimmy barely takes it. Where's the shame, the guilt, the sense of responsibility? Why does the kid you abandoned have to beg YOU for a chance, Jimmy?

And I don't care if he's cute and charming and ASP thinks throwing a handful of la-la-las in this bucolic environment is going to cover up the ugliness here. I don't care if the excuse of being a teenage father is going to be what Jimmy keeps riding on, because Luke and Lorelai were children when they got the huge responsibilities of a small baby and a dying dad dumped on their laps, and they still tried to care for the people that needed them. I don't want to see THAT GUY, who has no shame or guilt over what he's done and seems to resent Jess for asking for anything, redeemed. Fuck you, deadbeat dad. Put in some effort. Oh, it might harm your laconic hot dog stand owner vibe. I forgot.

So I'm glad it never happened, because Jimmy Mariano didn't deserve it, and I don't think it was what Jess needed, and the fact that he comes back to Stars Hollow angrier than ever and still spitting nails at Luke, unable to offer either Luke or Rory any sort of an apology or explanation, is definitely an indication that things did not go well out there. I know ASP would likely have had all kinds of excuses for Jimmy just like she did for Christopher and fail to really account for the harm he caused the kid he left behind, just like she did for Christopher but I think...we had more than enough of that for this universe, especially with the attempts to wave away Liz's behavior that we got over the next few years.

We didn't need more of that. Let Jess silently hate his worthless dad. Rory didn't get to. There should be one character that does.

Jimmy on Jess staying with him for a few weeks: "If [Sasha] says yes, we'll see. [....] It may not work out. [...] But I'll ask, and if she says it's okay, we'll see."

This is, of course, after Sasha has already told Jimmy she'd make up the extra mattress for Jess, because she assumed he was staying with them.

Hmmm, I wonder why Jimmy was never mentioned again... 😒

I can’t bring myself to hate Christopher. I know it’s popular to hate him. But it’s the same deal as dean? What crime did he actually commit except be the woman’s first love? And a reminder of who she was before the most popular fandom choice? I prefer Luke for Lorelai. But I can’t hate Christopher. Sherry whatsherface and Anna Nardini on the other hand….let’s just say I don’t take well to people willingly abandoning their children. And the less said about April’s two faced, passive aggressive mother the better.

Ps. I remembered that Anna Nardini’s actress played Mariano’s defacto stepmother and I am CACKLING!!!!!

I feel exactly the same way, anon. Like… to a T.

People in this fandom hate on Chris as if being flaky is the most heinous thing a parent can ever be. (I mean, hey - I’m glad they’re all in such a fantastic place where their standards can be sky high, and that they all have the perfect parents or whatever, but good GOD. We have to stop babying Rory so much. Like aww, her life isn’t picture perfect?)

I hate to come across as the person in the anti-Chris debate who’s like ‘other people have it so much worse’, but… I mean-

Come on. IT IS NOT THAT SERIOUS.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I would happily trade fathers with Rory in a heartbeat. (No take-backs though. I’d keep Christopher, and she can pass on my father to some unsuspecting sap like the demon from It Follows.)

He loves (and even likes) Rory and is glad she exists. That’s at least the first step in being a decent parent in my books. I’ll admit - my bar for fathers is probably a little lower than it should be, but even taking that into consideration - the amount of hate Christopher gets is ridiculous. I think if you took away the fact that he’s the main obstacle to a fan favorite ship, people wouldn’t be overly bothered by him. His only “crime” is that he wasn’t around in person regularly, but his situation is a little weird, tbh. He’s still in love with Lorelai, and she sort of loves him too, but she doesn’t want them to be a traditional family, etc. It would be kind of awkward to navigate that, but he still called Rory on the phone fairly regularly, helped pay for her education, and immediately rushed to SH and stayed up all night when Rory ended up in the hospital after the car crash (the first and only real injury she’s ever had if I remember right?). People who call him a “deadbeat dad” really need to look up what that term actually means. He was invested enough in his relationship with Rory that he actually got upset and was ready to fight with Lorelai when Rory stopped communicating with him and he believed that Lorelai was behind it. People argue that he only cares about Lorelai, and always shows up only because of her, but that’s clearly untrue. And you’re absolutely right - he gets the Dean Forester treatment. He’s the wrench in their preferred ship, so they exaggerate his negative qualities to rationalize their blind hatred. It’s insane (and more than a little annoying). To me, if you don’t like a character, that’s fine - but the least you can do is be honest about why you don’t like them. Don’t try to feed me your fan-made caricatures. This show gives us enough examples of actual bad parents without the fandom treating the middling ones like they’re the spawn of Satan. Why hate Liz and Chris when Jimmy, Sherry, Anna (and a lot of times, Emily and Richard) are RIGHT THERE? Plus, I think ASP felt the same way and tried to do some damage control with the fandom when she wrote Dean and Chris’ scenes in AYITL. I think Rory’s interactions with them (her monologue about Dean being a great boyfriend, and Chris asking not to be painted as “too much of a villain”) was a pointed hint on how she wanted the fandom to feel about those characters. Funny how people will respect her authority as the creator only when she conveniently aligns with their opinions. 😒

I think I hate Anna more as a person than as a parent. April may have received some collateral emotional damage (and I obviously don’t like that), but my main beef with Anna was her treatment of Luke. There was literally no reason for her to be so nasty to him or to be as possessive over April as she was.

Sherry was god-awful. It’s probably a good thing Chris chose to stay with her in S2, because if he hadn’t - Sherry might have left Gigi in a dumpster or something.

I think Sherry abandoning Gigi and leaving Chris to be a single dad served as a major highlight of Chris and Lorelai being the “timing was never right” sort of couple. They had an undeniable bond, and ended up leading parallel lives, 19 (?) years apart. If it wasn’t for Luke (and I say this as a hardcore Luke/Lorelai shipper), I think Chris and Lorelai would have been a no-brainer option for each other. Even though I love Luke/Lorelai more, I do love Chris/Lorelai - both together and separately (even though the writing in S7 made them a little weird). I think their relationship is very bittersweet and tragic, and they break my heart a little bit.

I think one thing that's not talked about enough with regards to the Jess-centric spinoff that never was is just how awful of a person Jimmy Mariano is.

According to the revised backstory (we'll ignore the first one since the show retconned it) Liz got pregnant in the spring/summer of her senior year of high school, binge-drank her way through the pregnancy, somehow convinced Jimmy to marry her, and he took off right after Jess's birth and disappeared. He never called or visited and presumably did not pay child support of any kind. He shows up out of nowhere when Jess is 18 to --- and here's where it gets foggy, because they have one non-conversation and he takes off again. What did he want? Who the fuck knows.

It later turns out that Jimmy lied to his live-in girlfriend and said he was going to Sacramento to talk to a supplier, but actually took off to talk to Jess and didn't fess up until Jess shows back up. He still won't talk to him, doesn't even want to share as much as a meal with him, insists that there's no way he can even stay overnight with him, that he's a screw-up, Jess can't trust him, so just go the fuck away now and stop messing with his nice little life. Jess has to beg and beg to be allowed to even stay a couple of weeks. Jimmy stop short of mentioning that New York was the worst place he ever lived, by the way. So why did he go back and find him? What did he think was going to happen here?

And let's circle back to Sasha and Jimmy. I've seen it written in several fanfics that she's a therapist (not sure where this comes from) but regardless of what she does for a living I'm pretty sure she's paying all or most of the bills. All the retro memorabilia, the vinyl collection in their house? Jimmy can afford all that shit because he's likely not paying for much (he was supposedly itinerant for most of his life, according to him, so these are recent acquisitions). Regardless of where the money is coming from, Venice Beach is a fabulously expensive place to live so Jimmy can afford his nice life there and all his hobbies but he can't spare any time or expense for the kid he abandoned...or to avoid lying to the woman who likely made all those things possible.

So, yeah. I'm pretty glad we never spent any more time with Jimmy and I would not have wanted to watch a TV series dedicated to "redeeming" him. If there was any Jess-centric spinoff in the making, The Real Paul Anka tells us enough about his life in Philadelphia to wrap a story concept around it. I'd like to think the reason Jess places so much importance on being financially independent in the latter seasons it has to do because of what he watched his sperm donor grow attached to instead of him. He'll forge an independent life because of those passions AND be supportive of his family as an adult instead of clinging to them to fill up the space he created by his neglect. He is nothing like the trash man who spawned him.