Yet, but a show is also a piece of art, even when it’s focused on real life as GG is.
Creators have to find a way to show us the real state of mind, the mood, and the soul of their characters. And one way is using contrasts.
For instance, in the first episode, Rory is taking note about her assignment, while the other girls – more close to her mother’s state of mind at the same age – are comparing colors, and perfumes. If you watch this scene closely, you’ll see that the contrast is not really resolved yet. Why? Because it’s still on the processing?

First, we see Rory becoming for a while the simple teenager she still is, with appropriate thoughts of her age, while her mother is shown as a very mature woman, taking in charge many responsibilities… Yet, it’s not really her character… And one of the striking examples is that she runs to her mother as soon as there is a crucial problem: the fees matters.

So the balance must be reached again, through a new process: the undressing, dressing, and undressing process.
First Lorelai fails to get up on time, and of course it’s the fault of the clock. She undresses her mind from all responsibilities. This kind of regression is pictured through the careless way she dresses, which contrasts the way she is dressed at the inn. (Dressing, undressing, dressing…)
While Rory goes to school to study, the now again teenager Lorelai is going to the kind of high school she remembers going sixteen years ago. And, probably, she would have liked to go there dressed like that if she had been allowed too, even if this state of mind is hidden by a thick coat. But it’s the sixty years old Lorelai that is flirting with the handsome father of a Chilton’s pupil, as if he was someway an accomplice of her state of mood.
But, as if she were sixteen again, she must pay the price of those orgies of liberty: She faces her mother, and Mister Authority, and she must obey the injunction, and appear a little foolish. End of the dream, of the feast, of that orgy of liberty.

Everything has come to an end. When the handsome man – may be “the may be King of the Queen of the promotion Lorelai would have loved to be” – comes to the inn, the teenager Lorelai is not there anymore, it’s Lorelai the women, dressed as the women she is… he meets.

And since the show often relates to the real life, I bet that many mothers shared that sort of feeling when their daughters went to school, high school, and university for the first time.
That’s the reason why Emily, deprived of those many sweet feelings, wants so much be part of that aspect of Rory’s new life.

Everything is dressed again, isn’t it?

The scene in the Headmaster’s office is fascinating to look at the character being established, one that the writers abandoned once they got her to Yale. Notice how Rory says that she wanted to study Political Science and Journalism, part of her desire to be a foreign correspondent. And yet, aside from a few stories at the YDN, the show completely forgets about the academic Rory who makes lists and is intensely focused on her goals – she studies literature instead, shows little interest in studying foreign cultures, and keeps saying she wanted to be a foreign correspondent while spending all three summers unfocused on her career. None of this was ever reconciled or seemed to have a point other than to focus on Rory’s love life at the expense of her true goals.

When the Headmaster asks Rory if she wants to be like Christian Amanpour because she’s on television – THIS version of Rory convincingly says no. The one in Seasons 4-6 (and bleh Season 7) seemed to have no clue what it means to be a true foreign correspondent – those who REALLY want it end up going to countries without job guarantees and freelancing.

My guess is that the Palladinos found themselves out of their element once they got her to Yale – invoking the same authors (Hemingway – again) and philsophers (did Dan study philosophy in college – and Joseph Campbell!!!) rather than portraying a character who would have been rigorously taking advantages of Yale’s McMillian Center for International Studies like Anderson Cooper did to prepare her to go overseas.

It may not have been the most realistic outfit, considering all the stuff hanging in the closet, but it was funny.

Astrid, if you haven’t already, consider putting your dissertation online for the rest of us to read – we’d love to see it!