I agree with you that Rory and Jess's teenage relationship being immature and dysfunctional in a lot of ways was realistic, and... I mean, they WERE immature and dysfunctional, haha! Two teenagers who'd never witnessed a healthy long-term adult relationship in real life? It wasn't going to be smooth sailing! And so much of the blame gets put on Jess, but relationships take two to tango, and Rory definitely made mistakes too. They were BOTH really bad at communicating, and either too proud or too scared to be vulnerable with each other. I'm definitely NOT trying to claim that Jess didn't make some pretty disastrous mistakes (especially at the end), but neither of them was perfect at this, haha!

The other thing I wanted to say was... your tags about how lack of screentime plays into people's perception of the relationship. I like to say that audiences don't need everything spoon-fed to them, but... maybe they do. 😬 I'm not trying to be mean! Because my first impression of Jess and Rory's relationship (watching on TV!) was similar. For years I would say, "It was really disappointing, all they did was make out or fight!" But then, rewatching was surprising, because I picked up on all the subtext this time! I think, with a show like Gilmore, the dialogue is really fast, and when people are just casually watching a TV show instead of STUDYING it, it can be so easy to miss the subtle details and only remember the big surface appearance. Apparently we DO need it "spelled out" for us sometimes.

Oh totally! Obviously most viewers understand that relationships are nuanced and unless we’re talking abuse a teenage relationship is bound to have issues from all sides. (also what a person thinks and how it comes across in writing can also be an issue) But there does seem to be a certain amount of people who either think Jess was some force of evil who only ever treated Rory badly or that Rory was an out-of-touch spoiled cruel princess who left poor innocent Jess in the dust. And that’s just... so not it? Rory let other people’s assumptions cloud her judgement of Jess, Jess’ tough guy/lone wolf shtick kept him from openly communicating with Rory, and so on and so on, because they were both awkward messy teenagers trying to figure stuff out like teenagers do!

And yeah, I don’t want to make assumptions about individual viewers or Gilmore Girls fans, but overall in internet fandom there does seem to be a dip in media literacy and appreciating that character arcs demand flaws and problems...