Well, here I am my Wee Readers, back again with my second Gilmore Girls Blog Series. Today we delves into the strange and sometimes somewhat unsettling world of the men of the Gilmore Girls. I know it says love interests in the title, and that’s a usual more gender ambiguous term – but this was a show from the nineties and even its modern revival technically only had one canon gay character, and he was a man so it wouldn’t really make a difference even if I did include his unseen partner on this list. Sorry, got away from my self there … let’s get this started before I get distracted again … ooh what’s that shiny thing?

Dave Rygalski

I’m going to start this list off on a slightly controversial note … I don’t like Dave. Yes, yes, I live for your hate – boo louder, grab those pitchforks and torches, chase me across the field! You’re only giving me what I want! But in all seriousness, I don’t particularly care for Dave. Sure as a first boyfriend for Lane he’s perfectly serviceable. Nice enough, technically good looking, and willing to tie himself in nots and tell any lie to her mother just to be with her. That may sound like the stuff of dreams to a large portion of the Gilmore Girls fanbase, but I would argue at least one of those qualities your fawning  over makes Dave a terrible choice for Lane in the long run.

Can you tell? It’s the lying.

Oh sure, we never see him lie to Lane herself, but he feeds into her gut instinct to lie and scheme around her mother and the other problems in her life rather than confronting them. Don’t get me wrong, in the short time they actually go out, Lane is still in the part of her life when she relies on this coping mechanism to stay sane.  So it never comes up as an actual issue, but I can’t help but cringe every time I watch that part when he curly berates her in front of the other members of Hep Alien, so as to better keep their relationship hidden from them. And the reasons they do this are deeply dumb, and unnecessary. Especially considering the two people they’re hiding from this time are Zach and Brian – two people who could not care less about their bandmates private dating lives.

Mrs. Kim at least makes sense, given the repressive regime she ran in the Kim household – but, the thing you have to understand with that is, that Lane’s coping mechanism of hiding and scheming to get some freedom was always a short term solution. If we can tell anything from the progression of the Kim’s storylines post-Dave, it is that to truly be able to live a full and rich life, something had to break. Mrs. Kim needed to discover who her daughter really was. Yes, it’s sad that upon discovering her records and clothing and other paraphernalia that she threw her out of the house and Lane was forced to move in with Zach and Brian. But ultimately I would still argue Mrs. Kim discovering the truth was something that needed to happen – as once she calms down and makes contact again, we see the mother and daughter are able to more honestly support and understand one another’s needs than they had before their confrontation. And that never would have happened with perfect Dave and his wonder lies backing Lane up.

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