Reasons I hate Jess Mariano
(As someone who has watched GG 120,045,892x)
1. Pursuing Rory when she was in a relationship: That is problematic enough. Other than the fact that it is disrespectful, it says a lot about you as a person if you are actively, and aggressively, pursing someone you know is in a relationship. In simple terms: It’s scummy. More in depth: It shows entitlement and possessiveness and overall is a bad look. it is selfish because if you cared about that person genuinely you wouldn’t try to hurt them or cause problems in their lives. Jess loved when Dean and Rory argued because of him and he enjoyed taunting Dean. Jess isn’t stupid, he KNEW he was negatively affecting Rory’s relationship but he did it anyways. That is selfish because if he genuinely cared about Rory, causing her harm would be the last thing he would want to do. When he outbid Dean for the basket date, he sat there with a shit eating grin spreading from ear to ear as he watched Dean and Rory fight. To summarize, it is just very selfish, inconsiderate, arrogant and overly scummy to aggressively pursue someone In a relationship and revel in the conflict you are causing in their relationship. It is the opposite of loving and caring which is what a love interest SHOULD be.
2. The way he treated Lorelai when he first met her: This might be super controversial but people were well within their right to dislike Jess. Yes, the town meeting to ban him from town was a little over the top but if the first thing you do when you come to town is disrespect the people who are trying to welcome you, steal and vandalize, why would people like you? I think the whole “Jess was a kid and they were adults” argument is so ridiculous. It is also unnecessarily infantilizing Jess. Jess was 16/17 when he came to town. He knew right from wrong and he is fully capable of making the correct decision, so people judging him based on the decision he consciously chose to make is fair. Yes if you are an adult actively beefing with a child, that is one thing but it is valid to dislike disrespectful people regardless of their age. If you come into MY house, welcome yourself to my stuff then yell at me in a span of 10 minutes, I am not going to like you and that is valid. It’s almost like people don’t typically like people who disrespect them. Also, more controversially, just because you went through things doesn’t justify treating innocent people like crap and the idea that people who have been through things get a pass on being a piece of crap and disrespecting people is crazy and that would just normalize people being horrible because EVERYONE has been through something. “Lorelai doesn’t like jess because she sees herself in him” OOOORRRR because he was always extremely rude and disrespectful to her and was extremely bad to and for her daughter! I think that is one of the dumbest statements that have ever come out of this fandom. If Jess came in your home and yelled at you, you wouldn’t like him either. If Jess crashed your daughter’s car over a squirrel (if you know how to drive and arent stupid a squirrel isn’t going to make you total a car), you wouldn’t like him either. If Jess intentionally sabotaged your daughter’s relationship and enjoyed every second of it even though it caused her anxiety and pain, you wouldn’t like him either. It has nothing to do with “seeing herself in him” and everything to do with Jess … sucking. To summarize: his blatant disrespect of the people around him is super unattractive and unjustified. I don’t care to argue wether or not Lorelai was in wrong for trying to talk to Jess, the way he talked to her was unacceptable and if we gave every person whose life is hard a pass to be rude, everyone would get a pass. He completely earned being disliked, if you put yourself in everyone else’s shoes, why would you like the little punk kid who never has a kind word to say, has stolen from you and is consistently rude?
3. Keeping Rory’s bracelet: Yes, Rory didn’t notice but Jess’ intentions were unpure. It is very very weird that he was actively trying to sabotage Rory and Dean’s relationship. Yes, you can’t control your feelings (like if you fall for someone who isn’t available) but you can and SHOULD control your actions. Him keeping the bracelet didn’t directly sabotage Rory and Deans relationship but Jess’ intentions weren’t good, it was just not a good thing to do and he didn’t even acknowledge it as wrong. Also, yelling at Lorelai about it and justifying it by saying “if she is so in love with Dean why didn’t she notice the bracelet was gone?” is crazy. If I keep someone’s wallet because they didn’t notice it was gone does that make it okay?
4. Using Shane to make Rory jealous: The way he treated Shane was horrible, he literally treated her like a disposable object. He only ever paid attention to her to make out with her and make Rory jealous. When she would try to talk to him he would dismiss her and ignore her. I know this is just CRAZY but men who use women like that are a big no no for me. It was really gross behavior, it showed a lot about how he viewed the people around him and I think that particular storyline pushed a bad message.
5. He put more effort into the chase (stealing Rory from Dean) than he ever did into their actual relationship: Well.. that’s it I just said it. He put way more effort into stealing Rory than being Rory’s boyfriend.
6. His character development was MID!: There I said it. Gilmore Girls fans will act like Jess has one of the best Character Development / Redemption arcs in all of cinematic history. The truth is his character development was that he stopped yelling at people and he got and kept a job. THAT is the amazing, mountain moving character development this fandom is talking about?!?!? I did like that he acknowledged what Luke did for him and thanked him but lets not overhype mediocre character development. He didn’t even have the top 5 best character development in the show so let’s relax.
7: The party scene: Enough said.
Although I believe that you should be able to just not like a character, I genuinely had to get this off of my chest because Jess Glazers annoy me. I had watched Gilmore Girls before I ever interacted with the fandom so disliking Jess and Tristan seemed like no brainers, so seeing people absolutely worship Jess was such a shock to me. On top of Jess being unlikable all by himself, the way the fandom treats him makes me like him even less. The biggest one is that Jess gets 100% of the credit for getting Rory back to school from the fandom as if he didn’t try to get her to drop out two seasons ago and she was already on that route. Even before the “Why did you drop out of Yale?” speech you could already see that Rory was less and less comfortable in the life she created around her and she wanted a change. People who give Jess all the credit for getting Rory back to Yale must have watched the show with their eyes closed. Also, before the idiot brigade comes for me. Multiple things can be true at once. I watched the show a million times I KNOW that Jess comes from a troubled home, and had a damaged relationship with his unreliable, essentric and neglecful mother. A character can be complex, well written and realistic and still UNLIKABLE. Just as I said above, going through things doesnt make your actions justified and doesn’t mean you are owed or entitled to people’s forgiveness, understanding or grace. You aren’t owed multiple chances.
Example: If a homeless man on the street come up to you and punches you in the face so hard it fractures your jaw, obviously he is going through something, however to you he will always be the asshole who punched you for no reason and you wouldn’t be a bad person for being upset that someone hurt you even though they are going through something. Because going through something doesn’t justify hurting others.
You can empathize with Jess’ issues while acknowledging his wrongdoings and the fact that he isn’t likable and saying you don’t like a character doesn’t mean you “just don’t understand them”. You can understand the complexities of a character and their backstory and still not like them. Take Elena Gilbert as an example, we all watched the same show. We all know that Elena went through more than most people do in a life time. Everyone she knew died, she had to lose both sets of her parents, she died like a million times, was used in a ritual, was tortured, etc but people still find her annoying because two things can be true at once. I just see the “You don’t like them because you don’t understand them” argument way too much. No, I don’t like them because I don’t like them, I understand why they are the way they are but I still find them unlikable.
