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In ‘Haunted Leg‘, Francie is given a more prominent position within the series. Instead of us just having Paris as the “mean” one, we now have Francie, head of the Puffs.
Francie and Paris butt heads, and I’m not sure if this animosity is the result of the Puffs not being able to initiate Paris that one night. On the student body, Paris is the student body President, but Francie is the Senior Class President, and those two roles are now butting heads. Francie tries to pull Rory onto her side to make Paris’ life a “living hell.” Francie even threatens Rory to get her to comply.
Why does Francie act this way? Are you surprised by it all? What is her motivation?
Watch this episode of Gilmore Girls on TheWB.com here.
Image by RD/Leon/Retna Ltd / Used with Permission of Second Stage Theatre
As a person, I would’ve like to bring Francie down a peg or two. As a character, she was kind of awesome. She and her conniving ways as a good example of the decent subplots that existed in the early seasons of the series. It brought out the vengeful side of Rory (in a good way of course), the insecure side of Paris, and brought the Rory-Paris friendship to a new level by the end. The same cannot be said for some other characters later introduced which did jack sh*t for the series (*cough* Lucy and Olivia *cough*) and actually brought out the annoying in most of the characters involved. Basically, seeing the Francie storyline reminds me of how great the series was and also how awful it got…
I enjoyed the Francie storyline too – it was great to see someone taking Paris on instead of being terrified of her, and it was one of the first times I thought Rory really showed some guts. Francie was pretty funny back in the Puffs episode too.
I think her motivation is just old fashioned power play, nice and conniving….
I always assumed the Puffs completed their “initiation” of those still interested [Paris and whoever] offscreen since to fail to do so would bring complete shame on Francie’s legacy and she would never put up with that. Thus, the later headbutting between Paris and Francie was a continuing fight to be top dog among two deepely intense rivals who were stuck with and could never escape each other during their time at Chilton.
I guess I saw more than a little bit of this dynamic for real in college Greek life and it always seemed like such a waste of time and energy, but at least in GG it was useful for dramatic purpose.