Lorelai Gilmore

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Lorelai Gilmore
Lorelai on a walk with Max Medina in episode #1.8, "Love and War and Snow"
First appearance	"Pilot"
Information
Nickname(s)	Lor; Umlauts;Waffle
Age	38
Year of birth	1968
Occupation	Maid (Independence Inn) Manager (Independence Inn) Owner of The Dragonfly Inn
Family	Emily Gilmore (mother) Richard Gilmore (father)
Relationships	Christopher Hayden, in later seasons
Children	Rory Gilmore
Relatives	Trix Gilmore (paternal grandmother)
Episode count	135
Portrayed by	Lauren Graham Chelsea Brummet (young Lorelai)
Created by	Amy Sherman-Palladino

Lorelai Victoria Gilmore is a fictional character on the television series Gilmore Girls, played by Lauren Graham. She was named after her paternal grandmother, Lorelai "Trix" Gilmore (Marion Ross) and is mother to Rory (Alexis Bledel).

Raised in Hartford, Connecticut Lorelai is a highly talkative, flashy woman, a child of the eighties and part of the MTV generation.^[1]

Her wealthy WASP parents, Richard (Edward Herrmann) and Emily (Kelly Bishop), raised her to be a proper young lady of good breeding. They had her future in society planned out and arranged for her to come out to society after her sixteenth birthday, but Lorelai was always rebellious and resentful of her structured and sheltered upbringing.

[edit] Biography

As a teenager, Lorelai dated Christopher Hayden (David Sutcliffe), son of Straub (Peter Michael Goetz) and Francine (Cristine Rose) while in high school, and became pregnant right before her society debut, which embarrassed and disappointed her parents. ^[2] Christopher's and Lorelai's parents tried to convince them to marry, and Christopher was amenable, but Lorelai refused. When she realized she was in labour, she drove to the hospital alone. ^[3] Lorelai is played in flashbacks by Chelsea Brummet.

After her daughter, Lorelai "Rory" Leigh Gilmore, was born ^[4], she lived with her parents for a year before running away to find a job at the Independence Inn in Stars Hollow. The owner of the inn, Mia (first played by Elizabeth Franz, then Kathy Baker), took her in, gave her a job as a maid, and let her and Rory live in the potting shed (after renovating it). ^[5] Lorelai worked her way up over the years, and was eventually promoted to manager. The inn is where she met her best friend, Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy), a talented chef.

For many years, Lorelai had almost no contact with her parents, except for visits during major holidays. The rebelliousness of her teen years stayed with her in adulthood, something her parents still resent. As they both grew up, Lorelai and Rory's relationship evolved into something resembling the relationship of two sisters rather than a parent to her child. Lorelai appears uncomfortable playing "the mom card", but will use it as a last resort. It wasn't until she needed to borrow a very large sum of money for Rory's education at the exclusive Chilton Academy that she started seeing her parents regularly again, since a condition of the loan was that Lorelai and Rory join Richard and Emily for dinner every Friday night until the loan was paid off.

Lorelai repaid her parents for the loan when a real estate investment that Richard had made in her name at the time of her birth paid off, but Rory soon made her own bargain with her grandparents for Yale tuition. Lorelai continued to attend occasional Friday night dinners, partly as a way to see Rory while she was busy at college. Lorelai's relationship with her parents is still strained, but she appears to prefer her father Richard over her mother Emily, despite moments showing that she clearly loves her mother.

Besides an on-again, off-again relationship with Rory's father, Lorelai's romantic relationships have included Alex Lesman (Billy Burke), an outdoorsy coffee house entrepreneur (for whom she learned to fish), Max Medina (Scott Cohen), a teacher at Chilton, Jason "Digger" Stiles, and Luke Danes, the owner of the local diner. Despite rejecting his marriage proposals, Lorelai remained friends with Christopher throughout the years, and helped him to cope with the birth of his daughter Georgia, nicknamed GiGi, after his girlfriend Sherry Tinsdale (Mädchen Amick) deserted them to pursue a job in Paris. Despite his mistakes, Lorelai's parents like Christopher and have continually pushed her to pursue a relationship with him in their adulthood, so that their family can finally be together and whole. However, Lorelai broke off contact with him after he attempted to break up her relationship with Luke in Season 5, Ep. 13 "Wedding Bell Blues" (granted, Emily manipulated him in that direction beforehand). She proposed to Luke at the end of Season 5, Ep. 22 "A House is Not a Home", and he accepted at the very beginning of the next episode. They plan to renovate and live in Lorelai's two-story home in Stars Hollow. Lorelai fears that the wedding will never take place and has presented Luke with an ultimatum. Her relationship with Rory has been considerably strained after her arrest for the theft of a yacht and leaving Yale, and the two did not speak for several months. Rory was especially angry about Lorelai not informing her about the marriage plans. They have since reconciled.

Lorelai attended Hartford Community College and earned an Associate of Arts degree in business while running the Independence Inn. After the inn burned down, she and Sookie owned and operated The Independence Catering Company in order to fund renovation of the Dragonfly Inn, their long-term dream, which opened to rave reviews on May 6 during Season 4.^[6]

Lorelai's eating habits are famously unhealthy; she subsists almost exclusively on Pop Tarts and takeout. She and Rory had regular food-and-movie nights, for which they would order enough food for several people and then use the leftovers as food for the rest of the week. A running joke on the series is that food rarely, if ever, makes it all the way to Lorelai's refrigerator.

Lorelai is innately humorous and has a witty remark for every situation, often with a pop culture reference. Often, however, her remarks do come at the expense of others, and can confuse people who aren't familiar with her. As such, most of the characters do not find her amusing. These kinds of interactions with people, among other things, often make Lorelai seem like a case of arrested development - a fully grown adult woman who somehow never quite outgrew her adolescence. ^[7]

Lorelai tends to isolate herself from friends and family after extremely unpleasant arguments. Rather than try to work through the dispute like a mature adult, Lorelai will simply alienate the other person, whether it's her mother or her daughter, until the dispute is more or less forgotten, indicating that she never really learned how to deal with conflict.

Lorelai is somewhat insecure when it comes to the relationships between herself, her parents, and Rory. Because her daughter gets along better with her grandparents than she herself ever did, Lorelai often feels that her parents prefer Rory over her. She thinks they view Rory, who is considerably more subdued and more classically "feminine" than her mother, as the daughter they should have had. This seemed very evident when, following a rift between Rory and Lorelai after Rory attempted to steal a yacht and dropped out of Yale, Rory moved in with her grandparents, who welcomed her with open arms. Her fears were further cemented when Rory adapted very well to her grandparents' lifestyle.

When it is revealed in the sixth season that Luke has a daughter, April, from his previous relationship with Anna Nardini, Luke and Lorelai delayed their original wedding date again, after having already delayed it once so she could settle her feud with Rory, and continue to postpone as Luke tries to make up for lost time with April. There is no interaction between April and Lorelai until Luke asks Lorelai to help him with April's birthday party, during which time April comments that Lorelai is a lot like her own mother, Anna, and says they'd like each other; Lorelai hoped this would be a major breakthrough in moving things along. Unfortunately, Anna got mad at Luke for asking Lorelai to help him with the party without asking her first, after which Lorelai confronts Anna to assure her she doesn't mean to harm April, and that her relationship with Luke is serious, Anna throws her into doubt because, as she puts it, "people get engaged all the time." Lorelai eventually grows impatient and resentful of Luke taking so long to sort out things with April and in the season six finale, after having avoided him for some time, she gives him an ultimatum - elope with her now or never - and then storms away without giving him time to think it through, perhaps ending their relationship. Lorelai goes to Christopher for comfort and the season ends with a scene of her in his bed the following morning having slept with him. The next day, Lorelai threw out everything that reminded her of Luke, which included almost everything in her house. The day after that, Luke - following the destruction to his diner in a public event planned by Taylor that went horribly wrong - showed up at her home with his truck packed and passionately professed his love for her, only to have her reveal that she'd slept with Christopher after their fight. Without saying anything, Luke slammed the door behind him in his truck and drove away. After Luke verbally took his anger out on Lorelai while her passing her by in the street, Lorelai had to confront Rory on what happened when Rory overheard her father's phone message about "the other night"; Rory angrily berated Lorelai for her actions and left, only to come back later to comfort her mother when she was in tears. Lorelai had a chance encounter with Luke at a grocery store, where he attempted to apologize and summed things up as being that they simply weren't right for each other, but whether or not he really believes that is questionable. When she told her parents she and Luke had broken up, their reaction was strangely subdued to the point of being non-existent, which Lorelai found annoying.

After being unable to get her on the phone, Christopher ran into Lorelai after he had dinner with Rory; she offered him coffee, and Christopher responded by telling Lorelai that he still loved her, had always loved her and would never stop loving her, and that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life without her. Following this and her failed relationship with Luke, Lorelai decides to take a chance on rekindling her relationship with Christopher.

At the start of Season 7, Episode 7 ("French Twist"), Christopher and Lorelai return from Paris, apparently married—Christopher calls her "Mrs. Hayden." She does not reply, but looks at the ring on her rather sadly, suggesting she is not quite content with the event. They have maintained a reasonably normal married relationship for a few episodes, but it seems as though Luke is not quite out of the picture, much to Chris' chagrin.

In "To Whom It May Concern" a story arc is started in which Richard has a heart attack during a class he is teaching at Yale. Rory witnesses this and she, Emily and Lorelai are all immediately at the hospital. Christopher, who was angry at Lorelai from the fight they had, would not answer his cell phone to come to the hospital. However Luke hears about Richard's heart attack and comes with food. Christopher sees Luke there once he finally decides to come and gets the wrong message ("I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia").

After that Christopher won't come home or answer his phone and Luke and Lorelai share a sweet moment while looking at Liz's baby. When Chris finally comes home he and Lorelai start talking and he admits that he pushed her and their relationship. And that it was just a rebound a relationship but he wouldn't let her go. She says that she wants to be with him but she can't make herself (in "Farewell my pet"). However Lorelai only tells Rory this in the next episode in which she also has trouble telling her mother and is shocked when Emily does not seem surprised or offer any sympathy.

[edit] Trivia

• Her favorite flower is the yellow daisy.
• Her favorite song in Junior High was Shadow Dancing.
• According to Season One DVD trivia book, Lorelai Gilmore is 5 feet 8 inches tall, but the actress portraying her, Lauren Graham is slightly taller than this at 5 feet 9 inches tall.^{[citation needed]} Chelsea Brummet, who played the young Lorelai, is 5 feet 4 inches tall.^{[citation needed]}
• Her favorite band in high school was The Go-Go's, but in season one, she cites Metallica as one of her favorite bands. Also high on that list would be The Bangles.
• As a baby she had a big head.
• Loves coffee.

[edit] References

Gilmore Girls
Main characters
Lorelai Gilmore | Rory Gilmore | Luke Danes | Christopher Hayden | Sookie St. James | Lane Kim | Paris Geller | Jess Mariano | Logan Huntzberger | Kirk Gleason | Emily Gilmore | Richard Gilmore
Recurring characters
Jackson Belleville | Taylor Doose | Dean Forester | Michel Gerard | Jason Stiles | Max Medina | Trix Gilmore | Mrs. Kim
More
List of episodes | List of characters | Stars Hollow