Gilmore Girls' Creator Based An Entire Show Around A Character Even More Awful Than Rory

Published Oct 14, 2026, 11:01 AM EDT

Casey Duby is an avid TV writer, watcher, and reviewer. She graduated from Emerson College in 2021 with a focus in Writing for Film and Television, where she wrote several pilots and watched countless more. She's been working in television ever since.

Casey loves thoughtful content that makes her ponder our world and the people in it, and she's learned that any genre can surprise her. With favorites in every genre from horror to politics, family to action, nothing is off limits.

Casey has experience working in TV development and writing scripted shows. Currently working as a Writer/Critic in Los Angeles, with an AMC A-List membership to boot, she is always hunting for the next good story and great theme song.

Gilmore Girls has become a quintessential fall staple, with many still considering the quaint series, which premiered in 2000, among the coziest shows of all time. Yet even as Gilmore Girls has cemented itself as a rewatchable staple in the years after its finale, one of its most important characters has become more infamous over time.

As the young, polite, soft-spoken half of Stars Hollow's adorable mother-daughter duo, Rory Gilmore was poised to be beloved by characters and viewers alike. At first, this was the case, as family members, neighbors, love interests, friends, and even frenemies were, deep down, smitten with Rory. Eventually, though, the sentiment that Rory was special and could do no wrong seemed to go to her head.

As the show went on, Rory became increasingly selfish, impulsive, and thoughtless, only to hide behind her persona of innocence when her actions negatively impacted other people. Yet the rest of the characters maintained their obsession with Rory, making it unclear whether Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino intended for Rory to come across as unlikable as she ultimately did.

Deliberate or not, Sherman-Palladino magnified Rory's flaws in 2017 with the premiere of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The show, set in the late '50s, followed Rachel Brosnahan's Midge Maisel, a budding stand-up comedian who shared, and even exacerbated, many of Rory's faults.

Midge Maisel Is A Lot Like Rory Gilmore

Like Rory's treatment in Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel presented side characters who tripped over themselves to do Midge's bidding and comedy audiences who broke into raucous applause after each of her sets as if to insist on her lovability and hilarity, even as her behavior indicated the opposite.

Comedy is, of course, subjective, so any viewer's personal preference for the jokes Midge told on the show doesn't determine her comedy chops. What is notable, though, is that, just as Gilmore Girls was built on Rory's polite, "good girl" personality, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was built on Midge's innate comedy gifts without taking the time to cement that trait for its viewers.

The premise of Gilmore Girls was that Lorelai was the more chaotic and rebellious figure on the show, while Rory was precocious, mild-mannered, and never needed to be worried about.

Yet these respective roles proved to exist mainly in attitude alone, while in practice, Rory's downfall began early as she made unethical choices with boys, took abrupt, selfish trips, and generally appeared shocked when things didn't go her way.

Similarly, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel spent little time showcasing Midge's comedy chops, the main hook of the show that made her character interesting. Instead, the show depicted her abandoning her traditional lifestyle, while still expecting to maintain the same lavish lifestyle she was used to.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel made a point to show the lengths her business partner, Susie, went to to accommodate Midge, even going well beyond the reasonable scope of her responsibilities as Midge's comedy manager to right Midge's personal life when she got engaged on a whim and then broke off said engagement on a whim.

When Susie hesitated to drop everything for Midge, Midge accused her of being a bad manager. When Susie made a comparably more reasonable request, Midge refused, cementing the one-way nature of their relationship. In her home life, Midge's parents were seen to be inconvenienced by the unspoken expectation that they would house and care for Midge's kids upon her decision to pursue comedy.

Like Rory, much of Midge's behavior seemed to be driven by an assumption that she was "special​​​​​," and thus automatically deserving of special treatment, despite the show largely neglecting to actually put in practice the character trait that this assumption, and the show as a whole, was based on.

The Stakes Were Much Higher In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

As an adult with children, Midge came into The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with many more responsibilities than Rory had at the start of Gilmore Girls​​​​​​. Midge then chose to raise the stakes further by pursuing an unstable career with no traditional family structure to fall back on for housing and childcare.

These challenges actually put Midge in a position more akin to Lorelai, but instead of truly trying to find her own way through the world, Midge relied on familial support and considered her mere presence in their lives to be fair compensation. As an adult with a messy life and not a beloved granddaughter like Rory, this approach placed a distinctly heavier burden on the people she was financially relying on.

Midge's circumstances and attitude also had steeper emotional consequences for the people in her life. Rory didn't stop her love interests from derailing their lives to pursue her, even going so far as to sleep with the married Dean, which ultimately destroyed his marriage. Yet the men pursuing Rory still seemed like they were responsible for their own choices, and their consequences were of their own making.

Midge's relationships were much more emotionally and logistically enmeshed, and when the mafia got involved in later seasons, the stakes truly became a matter of life and death. It was heavily implied that Susie had romantic feelings for Midge, and Midge further weaponized those feelings by chastising Susie's managerial skills any time she tried to establish emotional boundaries.

Meanwhile, Midge claimed to be forming a healthy post-divorce relationship with Joel, but in reality, Joel was madly in love with her, and it was ruining his own personal life. It ultimately led to Joel getting involved with the mafia to protect Midge and going to jail for years.

Had Midge Maisel not followed Rory Gilmore's lead and created an environment in which both Susie and Joel felt they had to go to great lengths to please her, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's climactic final storyline likely wouldn't have put its supporting characters through so much emotional and logistical turmoil.