‘Gilmore Girls’: Did Dean Forrester Have Absentee Parents?
Gilmore Girls, at its core, was about the relationship between parents and their children. Lorelai Gilmore and Rory Gilmore’s relationship was the main focus, but additional parent-child relationships were featured during the show’s seven-season run. One exception is Dean Forrester’s relationship with his parents. For the five seasons he appeared on the show, his parents were rarely seen, and apparently had no reaction to his odd life decision. So, where Dean’s parents emotionally absent?
Dean’s parents never got involved when an entire town bullied him
When Dean and Rory broke up the first time, they were just 16 years old. Their fledgling relationship fell apart when Rory couldn’t tell Dean that she loved him back. The break up was apparently pretty traumatic for Rory, but no one seemed to notice that an entire town, including grown adults, teamed up to bully Dean over the breakup.
Dean had an awkward slap fight with the 30-something diner owner, Luke Danes, and even told Lorelai that the entire town was blaming him for the breakup. At no point did Dean’s parents step in. You would think they might want to suggest that a village of adults should probably focus on something other than a teenage romance gone awry.
Dean’s parents didn’t take issue with their teenage son building a car for his girlfriend of a few months
Dean was apparently so mechanically-skilled that he could rebuild a car from the ground up. Sure, that’s a great skill to have, but it seems a bit strange that his parents didn’t see a problem with the depth of his feelings for Rory. A car is a pretty big gift, especially for a teenager who’s only income is working as a stocker at the local market. In fact, a vehicle, rebuilt or not, is a pretty big gift to bestow on a romantic partner at any age.
If Dean’s parents saw a potential problem, they certainly never seemed to speak up. Is it possible that they were so absent from his life that they had no idea what he was up to most of the time? That seems hard to believe because Dean noted his mom loved to take care of her family. It certainly seemed to strike Richard Gilmore as a little strange.
They also had nothing to say when he married someone he had been dating for less than six months
Dean and Lindsay got married straight out of high school. That’s a little uncommon, but still pretty accepted. The real problem has to do with how long the pair dated before tying the knot. Assuming Dean started seeing Lindsay just after ending his relationship with Rory, he proposed within six months of beginning their courtship.
They married during Rory’s first semester at Yale, meaning they were married before they celebrated one year as a couple. Dean’s parents and Lindsay’s parents, for that matter, both seemed to see nothing wrong with such a young couple getting married. No one even stopped to ask the couple why they were in such a rush; it would seem. Years after their marriage crashed and burned, Gilmore Girls fans are still questioning the storyline.
