Logan Huntzberger was the third and final of Rory Gilmore’s boyfriends over the course of the seven-season run of Gilmore Girls. Despite the rocky beginning to the pair’s relationship during their college years at Yale, Logan proves to be a solid match for Rory given their shared backgrounds and goals and his support for her. Logan shows his support for Rory through his honesty. Although sometimes blunt, Logan consistently keeps Rory’s best interests at heart, and sometimes calls out her shortcomings.
Gilmore Girls famously ends with Rory turning down Logan’s marriage proposal at their college graduation, and instead of moving to California with him to expand his tech company, she heads to Iowa to follow the Barack Obama presidential campaign trail as a journalist. The shocking break-up does not last for long, as in 2016’s reunion Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, it is revealed that they are still together, but that Logan is having an affair with Rory outside his engagement. Upon breaking down the final year of the couple’s relationship, it is clear that things would have ended differently if Rory had taken Logan’s advice at one pivotal moment.
Logan Points Out Rory’s Privilege In Gilmore Girls Season 7
Logan Reminds Rory That They Are Cut From The Same Cloth
In the season 7 episode, “Introducing Lorelai Planetarium,” Rory attends a party for Logan’s burgeoning tech brand. The next morning, Rory writes a scathing article about the wealthy partygoers, critiquing what she feels was out-of-touch behavior. Logan immediately reminds Rory that she is in fact just as privileged as all the people at the party, given that she attended Chilton Prep School and later Yale University, and will soon have an astronomy building named after her on campus (all of which were financed by her wealthy grandparents, Emily and Richard Gilmore).
Logan calling out Rory’s sense of moral superiority was an important moment and a display of his transparency throughout their relationship.
While at Yale, Rory even has the luxury of taking a leave of absence and living with her grandparents while figuring out her career goals, which many scholarship students cannot take. Logan reminds her that she is, after all, “one of them” and not a “Joe bus driver” and that her inability to acknowledge her privileges will hold her back in the long run.
Logan calling out Rory’s sense of moral superiority was an important moment and a display of his transparency throughout their relationship. While Rory did grow up in a smaller home with a single mother, she did have the support of her grandparents and all the townspeople of Stars Hollow, which are resources that many children of single parents do not have access to. Logan’s advice could have strengthened Rory’s work as a writer and a journalist as it would have pushed her to be honest with herself, and she should have listened to his thoughts on their shared privilege.
Logan’s Season 7 Monologue Basically Predicted Rory’s A Year In The Life Story
Rory Has A Struggling Career And Love Life In Part Because She Did Not Take Logan’s Advice
In 2016’s Gilmore Girls revival A Year In The Life, Rory is still struggling professionally, years after both Logan’s father Mitchum’s criticism and his own comments about Rory’s self-awareness. In a meta moment for the show, Rory finds inspiration in her own family story and decides to write a book about herself, her mother, and her grandmother. At her grandfather’s funeral, she describes it as a “riches-to-rags story,”yet again proving that Logan’s words about her lack of introspection still ring true.
While her mother Lorelai did leave home to raise Rory on her own, she did so voluntarily to have greater control over her parenting style, as she did not want to marry Rory’s father at the time. She works her way up to becoming a successful Inn manager, later opening her own Inn with her best friend Sookie St. James. All the while, she finds support and community with her fellow local business owners, especially with her friend and later husband Luke Danes (who serves as Rory’s father figure throughout her life). When Rory needed financial help to attend Chilton, her grandparents were eager to step in. Therefore, it was never truly a “riches-torags story.”
Gilmore Girls Doesn’t Acknowledge Class & Privilege As Much As It Should
Gilmore Girls Does Not Acknowledge How Rory’s Privileges Differ From Her Friend Lane Kim’s
While the show remains a classic for its sharp and witty dialogue and exploration of matrilineal generational trauma, it neglects to understand the impacts of class privilege, and how it can impact interpersonal relationships. The most striking example of this is Rory’s ability to choose any college of her liking and pursue a career with her family’s support, while her best friend Lane is left to survive on her own with limited support from her religious mother, who does not support her musical aspirations.
In the years following Gilmore Girls, other teen and young adult dramas have worked to reckon with class privilege in much greater detail. Most recently, The Summer I Turned Pretty acknowledges the difference between the wealthy Fishers and the middle-class Conklins. Riverdale also was sure to differentiate between Veronica Lodge’s powerful family and Archie Andrews’ working-class family, providing each character with a unique set of knowledge that proved helpful in solving the show’s many mysteries. Gilmore Girls overall stands the test of time, as it still sits at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, but the show likely would have handled class privilege very differently had it been made today.