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In ‘Richard in Stars Hollow‘, Dean gives Rory the car he’s been building for her, but Richard doesn’t approve of the gift, being worried that it’s safe. Dean is up-front with Richard about how much he loves Rory, and that’s clear here. But I wonder… is it just too much? Seriously, a car?! That is a HUGE gift and a huge commitment of time, and money, I’m sure.
Now, the “intensity” of this gift could just be one more of the aspects of Dean’s evolving “clinginess“, his need to be everything to Rory. Or is he trying to over-compensate in some way?
Watch this episode of Gilmore Girls on TheWB.com here.
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I can’t quite remember – is this in the second season? I think so – which means that he and Rory have not been dating all that long. A car is a huge gift – especially since we know that Dean isn’t exactly rolling in cash and the parts must have cost a fortune! So this is a massive statement from him about how much he cares for Rory. I’m actually a little suprised at how easily Rory and her mom accept it.
(And i totally understand Richard wanting to have it thoroughly checked!!)
Oh come on! It’s an incredible gesture, Rory didn’t seem to think it was too much!
Luke gets attacked for being too neglectful, and Dean gets attacked for being too “clingy.”
I don’t get it. I think they’re both great. The bigger issue seems to be with the Gilmore Girls.
Dean enjoys building things and probably would have built the car even if he did not know Rory. While a significant time investment he was smart enough to do it on the cheap. That he had someone special to give the car to was as cool a bonus for him as it was for Rory.
Is it an optical illusion or is Jared really more than a foot taller than Alexis as appears in the photo??
A car from a boy would be way too much. In real life, this just would not happen. I would be concerned, like Richard, about the safety of the car. I do think that Dean is way too clingy. In some instances, I think he ran Rory off.
And yet, Stacy, technically she NEVER ran from Dean. Despite the bad writing in the show occasionally saying otherwise forgetting who broke up with whom, Dean broke up with Rory — all three times. He broke up with her in Season 1, then in Season 3 left her on the dance floor, and then again in Season 5, at her grandparents house.
Not only did Rory NEVER run from him, she went back to him. Twice.
And I bet if he had showed up in one of the later seasons looking as hot as he did around Season 7 & 8, she would have gone back to him again.
Good point Marie but when Dean broke up with Rory, at the 24 hour dance, it was after the many signs she was giving that she crushed on bad boy Jess.
Rory did not run away but she was looking else where.
The car was a sign of love and care. It may have cost as much as some jewelry,but it took time and thought to give.
A girl,Rory, could turn down a gift if thought too much. She did not.
i think if he had bought the car it would have been too much, but as something he made for her it was HUGE but in a really nice thoughtful way. i actually thought logan giving rory a birkin bag was kind of too much given she didnt even know what it was! that was just extravagance for the sake of it without any personal thought behind it. not that i would be complaining if it happened to me…
It IS a huge gift for a high school relationship, but I think we are supposed to assume that Dean enjoys fixing up cars as a hobby, thus using this to give Rory a practical gift that she would love. I don’t think Dean is trying to overcompensate anything to Rory, especially at this point in the series. Am i correct in remembering that Dean planned the car for Rory long before Jess even came on the scene?? Rory and Dean did break up briefly after he told her he loved her (“thank you!”), but it wasn’t long before they reunited. I honestly don’t think Dean ever appeared “clingy” until he began to realize that Rory was interested in someone else.
This is just more of early seasons’ overemphasizing of Dean’s character as “the perfect boyfriend”, which sometimes defies practicality. Like the thousand yellow daisies, this is one of the fairytale not-quite-realistic elements from the beginning of the show that were toned down for later seasons.
I think it does sound like Dean has way too much time on his hands. I guess there’s a little foreshadowing here, what with the grand gifts and all.
What’s funny is that Dean’s mechanical skills evaporate later in the series. He’s supposed good enough to build a car from scratch, but his character is later written as an unskilled high school graduate who has to work in construction for lack of professional/technical abilities. Which, speaking as a Literati fan, I prefer. Dean the unskilled divorcé is much more fun than the Dean the idealized boyfriend.
His mechanical skills sure did evaporate, as well as any smarts that he ever seemed to have. Didn’t Dean still work at Doose’s market when he and Rory were dating in Season 4? This is actually something I always wondered about…why didn’t Dean pursue any kind of further education, either during or after his marriage? Poor Dean, he really seemed like kind of a loser towards the end, not what we would have expected from earlier seasons.
I hadn’t thought of that before, Aly, but you’re right. I think the writing got very simplistic and sloppy. Rory kept insisting Dean was “smart”, much as Christopher was repeatedly said by Richard and Lorelai to be smart, and then the characters were turned into morons. It made it so easy to see them as losers.
When Lauren Graham said she wanted more complex writing to make her own love triangle at least entertaining and believable that she’d be torn, I think this is what she must have been talking about.
I read somewhere that the Palladinos were working on another pilot when season 5 started and lost some of their writers, plus Jared P. was leaving the show, which may explain why they dumped on the character, much as when David Sutcliffe moved on to his own show.
It’s always interesting to think about the effect that Rory had on all her guys. The two who were kind of “bad” for her actually change for the better: Jess gets his act together and Logan finally grows up. But Dean, who started out “perfect”, goes on this downward spiral into a total loser. Rory basically ruins his life, and he fades out of series humiliated, pitiable, and rejected yet again. Poor Jared!
I think the car is too much, they’re only 16 years old. It’s a nice gesture, Dean not wanting Rory to take the bus to school everyday, but it’s too big of a gift given their age.
And why was Lorelai so accepting of this gift when she specifically told Emily (in Season 1) not to give Rory a car. Richard and Emily certainly could have afforded it, yet she is willing to let her daughter accept a car from her high school boyfriend who works part-time at the local market.
Aly, Dean did try to pursue his education, but Lindsay was so full of wanting a nicer home and more things that Dean was stuck dropping out to work more hours to get the money for all the things. And then she got mad at him for spending so much time at work, even though it was her own fault.
Dean showed Rory the start of the car in season 1 the day he said he loved her, so they all knew this car was coming someday, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise. If she had not wanted the car, Rory could have told him not to do it back when he showed her the partly-made car the night of the Firelight Festival. But she did not. It was a big gift, but they knew it was coming and didn’t stop it, and that’s how Dean came to give Rory the car.
I think giving her the car was a way of having a part of Dean be with Rory wherever she went, so it was likely part of his clinginess, though it was also sweet too.