‘Gilmore Girls’: Jared Paldecki Described Dean’s Marriage to Lindsay as a Cry for Help
Gilmore Girls had more than a few inexplicable moments throughout its 7 season run, but few storylines have been deemed more strange and confusing than Dean Forrester’s decision to marry someone he was dating for no more than six months at the ripe old age of 18. The marriage ends pretty abruptly, as often happens when people marry insanely young, but fans still don’t understand what the entire point of it was. Jared Padalecki, who played Dean for several seasons, has his own theories about it.
When did Lindsay and Dean start dating?
Lindsay is introduced as Dean’s girlfriend, post-Rory, at the state championship hockey game. Lane Kim, Rory’s very best friend, never seems to mention that Dean is seeing someone to Rory until they run into the duo at the hockey game, so we can assume that relationship was pretty fresh. In fact, Lane insists she failed Rory by not knowing about the relationship.
Assuming that Dean waited a couple of months after his relationship with Rory ends to pursue Lindsay, the pair probably got together around December of their senior year. By May, they are engaged, and by the fall of the following year, they are married. So the 18-year-old duo hadn’t even dated for a full year before they tie the knot in Stars Hollow.
Neither set of parents seemed to find the marriage troubling
Sure, Dean and Lindsay were technically adults, but fresh out of high school, you would think that one of the four parents in this scenario would have had an issue with the pair marrying so quickly. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Lindsay’s mother, Theresa, is apparently so jazzed about the partnership that she helps her only daughter craft a homecooked lunch every single day for her barely-legal husband.
Dean’s parents are also apparently confused when the marriage ends in disaster as if neither could have seen that coming. The whole thing is just bizarre, and fans noticed. Padalecki, who played Dean in the series and reprised his role in Gilmore Girls: a Year in the Life, insists that the marriage was never intended to last. In fact, he offered an interesting take on the entire story arch. Padalecki claims that the whole union was a “cry for help.”
Alexis Bledel and Jared Padalecki have their own thoughts on the affair storyline
Dean and Rory eventually enter into a little bit of an affair. Okay, technically, having sex twice might not qualify as a full-blown affair, but regardless, Dean cheats on his wife. Alexis Bledel, who played Rory, admitted she had a tough time with the entire storyline. She told Entertainment Weekly that she didn’t feel like it was in character, at the time.
Padalecki didn’t have much to say about the affair in interviews, but he did note that the entire storyline seemed like a cry for help. Padelecki surmised that Dean was so lovesick over Rory, that he went looking for someone who would fulfill the wife role that he knew Rory would never be ready for. For Dean, marrying Lindsay was an easy way to ensure the relationship wouldn’t end the way his relationship with Rory ended. He mostly went into the union with ulterior motives, and it showed.
