Hear Me Out: Logan Wasn't So Bad

Lorelai and Rory fans, the best day ever has finally arrived. The full Gilmore Girls series is finally streaming on Netflix. The. Entire. Thing. And naturally, we'll all spend our free time for the foreseeable future going over old episodes and the titular girls' romantic interests, a pursuit which must include the Gilmore Girls episode with Rory & Logan first kiss.

We've all fought over who was the best boyfriend for the one and only Rory Gilmore — I've thought about this for years and have given my heart over to Jess Mariano. But the reason for those years of inner turmoil can be summed up in two words: Logan Huntzberger. The young heir to the Huntzburger fortune gets a lot of flack for being Rory's boyfriend during her "bad" year when she dropped out of Yale, moved in with her grandparents, and joined the DAR. But the couple had some great moments, Logan and Rory's first kiss is definitely a highlight.

In Season 5, Episode 15 "Wedding Bell Blues," Richard and Emily are having a second wedding with Lorelai as maid of honor and Rory as best man. She sees Logan, her crush at the time (who won't seem to make a move with her), and bluntly asks him why he has yet to ask her out. He tells her she's amazing, but that she's clearly a boyfriend kind of girl. The problem is that he's not a boyfriend kind of guy. Rory proves that she's willing to make things a little more casual by pulling him into a side room at the banquet hall and planting one on him. And with that, their story begins.

Despite their fun beginnings, it's hard to ignore the crap Logan put Rory through during their time together on the series. He kind of cheated on her (though in his mind it was a Ross & Rachel "We were on a break" situation), he broke her heart, he was a jerk many times, he was reckless, and he issued an ultimatum about their relationship at the end of the series. Ultimately, Rory couldn't commit to being engaged and he couldn't go back to the way things were before his proposal, so she went off on her own.

But I believe being in a tumultuous relationship like that really changed Rory for the better. Logan, like Jess, was a bad boy in some ways. Though their big difference was that Logan was acting out against his societal and economic status with a bunch of like-minded idiots in a secret society. Trying to be in a casual relationship was a good step for Rory who had always been in serious relationships, one right after the other. Sure, easing into that transition with someone who is notorious for only having casual relationships was not easy for Rory, but it was important for her to understand that not everyone is in same place emotionally as one specific partner.

When Logan finally committed to Rory, he still had quite a bit of trouble with the concept even though it was clear he cared for her. As unfortunate as it was for Rory, she learned about heartbreak and what it feels like to be cheated on (again, that part is debatable) and in a very small way, she may have felt what Lindsay went through when Dean cheated with Rory. (Though Lindsay and Dean were married, which makes their situation pretty terrible.)

Rory kept running to Logan, even when her life was falling apart. Having support like Logan's was helpful when she didn't have her mother in her life, but she later realized she needed more. She figured out that a real support system would find out what was wrong and, if necessary, kick her as into gear (much in the way Jess did when he came to visit her). After that, she started to understand her priorities better and she went on to be even more successful in college.

And when Logan was finally ready to commit and marry her, I think she realized that her priorities and happiness laid with her own success and achieving her own goals, rather than settling down with someone. In some ways, Rory became more like her mother in that way. She needed to realize that she never needed the men in her life dictate what made her happy. The only relationship that constantly put Rory first was the one with her mother and thankfully, that's the one she maintained to the end.

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