All the Men of ‘Gilmore Girls’ Were Fuckbois

Fuckboitimus Prime. The fuckboi That Was Promised. Fuckboi: Book of Shadows. See his hair in that picture right there? That’s fuckboi hair. His chin? Fuckboi chin.

On paper, Logan made for an awesome love interest for Rory. Whereas her mother had always been turned off by the world of privilege her parents wanted for her, it made sense that Rory would be seduced by it once at Yale University. Unfortunately, all that potential was distilled into-daddy-has-too-many-expectations Skull & Bones reject Logan Huntzberger.

Were 2005 the age of iPhones, we would assume he kept a group conversation with (Fuckbois in waiting) Colin & Finn, updating them on all the find games he was inflicting on Rory starting with the ever-so condescending nickname of “Ace.” (Aww, you little Ace journalist you!)

From burdening her with his constant daddy issues, to inviting her over for a hookup that turned out to be a card game with his bros (you knew damn well what you were doing), to getting her bogged down in rhetorical arguments about whether or not he had technically cheated on her when he slept with every last one of his sister’s bridesmaids after a fight, to casually asking her to move into his lavish bachelor pad and then throwing the fact that she didn’t pay rent in her face during yet another fight, the ABCs of fuckboihood were followed to the letter by this Huntzberger.

Sure. He had a good heart in there, somewhere – most fuckbois do – but we can’t do anything with that. Such a fuckboi he was that after three years of courtship, the Gilmore Gods saw fit to send him packing on the original series finale. After his final fuckboi move of proposing to Rory at her college graduation party -- in front of all of her grandmother’s friends -- and then breaking up with her when she didn’t agree to move to marry him, move to California and grow avocados as a Silicon Valley housewife.

We see you, Logan. We saw you from Day Fucking One.

Look, I like Jess. Really, I do. If I need to pick one, then yes, he’s my “Rory Gilmore OPT.” In the fanfiction-adjacent corners of my mind, they meet on the road during their respective book tours, find their way back to each other, and it’s goddamn wonderful. But that does erase history.

That crap he pulled with Dean’s bracelet? Getting a loose girlfriend he often mistreated and parading her around town for the explicit purpose of making Rory jealous? (Poor Shane. No one ever talks about Shane.) Not telling his then girlfriend Rory he didn’t graduate high school and letting her plan the perfect prom night? Leaving town without telling her and coming back a year later only to tell her he loves her and then bail again? Fuckbois love to unleash that “I love you.”

Yes, Jess grew, matured, and changed. In season 6, he was the one to remind Rory of how far she’d strayed from her path, something even Lorelai couldn’t do. But from the moment he strolled into town and took it upon himself to scribble in the margins of the books he borrowed from Rory’s shelf (excuse you?), Jess was an unquestionable fuckboi.

(We also secretly believe that his unbelievable sexual chemistry with Lorelai was wasted. Same with Dean’s sexual chemistry with Lorelai, really. Go back and look: things could have gotten so much weirder in Stars Hollow.)

Aw, you liked Dean, did ya? His polite, car-building small town charms did it for you? Fair enough. That might have been true for Seasons 1-3 Dean. But Season 5 Dean? “Last seen” Dean? A thorough fuckboi.

His fuckboiery wasn’t to Rory but to his 19-year-old doting ex-wife, Lindsay… Poor, blonde Lindsay who, back in the 4th grade, bought a magnet shaped like Mark Twain’s head for the woman that would one day sleep with her husband. (Stars Hollow is a savage place if your name isn’t Gilmore.)

Now, did Lindsay have it coming marrying a stock boy right out of high school? In many ways, yes. But there was still something heartbreaking about seeing her try her best to get a roast recipe right, all in hopes of pleasing the husband who was still so infatuated with his ex-girlfriend that he took her virginity behind Lindsay’s back a few months into their marriage.

There’s no denying that as the series went on, Dean was made… simpler in order to contrast sharper, wittier bad boy, Jess. He generally became more insecure and less capable of processing his emotions. By the end, he was basically one badly burnt roast away from throwing a plate at a wall. When we left him, Dean was a 20-year-old divorced guy and that Doose’s Market apron was looking more and more like a career path.

(You could argue that Rory majorly fuckgirl’d poor Dean by only reigniting her passion for him upon seeing that he was happily married to someone else but, that’s not today’s topic, now is it?)

“No, not Luke!”

Oh, absolutely Luke. Are you kidding me? Luke I’ve-been-under-your-eyes-the-entire-time Danes might be the biggest fuckbois on this entire list.

Two words: secret daughter. More specifically, not telling your fiancée about the -- screechingly obnoxious -- secret daughter you’ve discovered having and then using said secret daughter to justify your commitment issues. That is messed up.

More generally, the fuckboi-ry of Luke Danes boils down to the fact that Luke is a much better piner than he is a day-to-day life partner for Lorelai. Luke is a master of grand gestures: he’ll secretly build you an ice rink, a Huppah, and even a house (!) but the lights have to be off at 9pm because he needs to be up early for work. And all that building might all just be because he likes to build things? It’s like receiving a love letter from a Hallmark copywriter.)

For his numerous qualities, at the end of the day, Luke is naturally distant, withdrawn, and private – words that don’t belong in a Gilmore household. Who says they need to be in a romantic relationship to be pillars of each other’s lives?

Do I really need to put any words here?

Rory’s charming father Christopher was the it’s-never-my-fault fuckboi. From the multiple daughters to his sudden reappearances, doe-eyed Christopher is always caught between a rock and a hard place of his own making. So much so that even his own daughter eventually told him to stay away from Lorelai. (I speak of Rory, but I’m sure ten-year-old Gigi is getting an inkling by now.) When Lorelai was finally vulnerable enough to date him – right after breaking up with Luke -- he absconded with her to Paris for a quickie wedding because deep down, he knew Rory/Sookie/Emily/anyone could talk Lorelai out of it.

Hey, jabroni: if your daughter can easily talk her mother out of marrying you, maybe you two shouldn’t be getting married and ruin the last sloppy season of this American classic by making it about a marriage no one was rooting for?

Screw you, Christopher. You rode into the show on a motorcycle and left in a Prius with your bastard daughter, one season too late. I hate you.

Contrary to popular belief there are no generational restrictions to being a fuckboi. What’s that? …You’ve been having annual lunches with your ex-fiancée, Pennilyn Lott, behind your wife’s back for years knowing it would make her furious?

You won’t take a stance when it comes to your mother and let her insult said wife at her own dinner table? When your marriage hits a turning point, you separate by moving to the pool house like you’re Ryan Atwood or something, where you work on cars and practice with your A Capella group but still throw a fit when she goes on a single date? You want special turtle soup when you’re sad?! Get the hell out of here with that nonsense, fuckboi.

I mean, really.

Long before the word was even created, Tristan Dugray was the original fuckboi. Tristan is what all fuckbois see when looking in the mirror: a rich Chad Michael Murray lookalike that operates on the assumption that all women naturally want to get with him. A dick pic isn’t sent for the Tristans of the world; it is bestowed.

For two seasons, Tristan only had one way of conveying his feelings for Rory/Mary and that was by being an ass to her every chance he got. (Mary… Ace… What was it with guys refusing to call Rory by her actual name?)

He was also the first recorded case of Affluenza on the pre-CW WB network. Oh, and his last name was literally ‘Dugray’ in case you didn’t know. I can’t think of a fuckboier surname for a high school bad boy from the right side of the tracks.

Good ole Fuckboi DuGray.

Before terms like “beta male” and “friendzone” were popularized, there was Marty, the walking subreddit of male inadequacy. I initially rooted for Marty’s befuddled charms. (He and I both had a Confederacy of Dunces poster in our carefully curated college dorms: of course I wanted him to get the girl!) But “Naked Guy” Marty got real fuckboi real quick once he realized Rory did not want what he was selling. Marty disappeared for a year or so and when he came back into Rory’s life, it was a batten-down-the-hatches fuckboi storm, I tell you.

Forget the drunken come-ons, Marty immediately trapped Rory in a weird passive-aggressive lie by pretending not to know her upon being reintroduced to her by his new girlfriend, Lucy. It’s the sort of weird payback power move you only unlock by having read at least half of a Strauss book. And considering that Rory only made two female friends during the entirety of her college life, there a lot was at stakes with Lucy!

This one hurts because we really liked Jason. He had a dog named Cyrus he had trained to move “a little to the left,” and could keep up with Lorelai.

We can even get on board with his quirks like his being unable to sleep in the same bed as the woman he just had sex with, requiring her to move to a separate guest bedroom. However, just like Lorelai, we have to draw the line at the whole “suing your family behind her your back” thing. Yes, he had cause and was royally screwed over by Richard Gilmore but that’s just an all-around a fuckboi move. Sorry, Digger.

Major fuckboi. I’m sorry, but illustrious chef Sookie St-James basically spent the last three seasons of Gilmore Girls pregnant or saddled with pregnancy storylines. Why? Because she went on one date with her produce guy who in turn quickly revealed that he wanted four kids in four years. And as likeable as Jackson could be, there was something troubling about this dude deciding that he wants a brood and using Sookie like a brood mare for the expansion of the Belleville lineage -- just as she was trying to get a new business off the ground!

(Clockwise from left) KIRK GLEASON (Sean Gunn) The lack of career stability, his questionable friendships with really old women for the purpose of acquiring their jewelry once they died, and his mother’s oppressive presence, all point to one thing: Fuckboi. (Although, to be fair, there’s also an 80% chance he killed this repeatedly-mentioned-but-never-seen mother years ago.)

MICHEL GERARD (Yanic Truesdale) Not a fuckboi, but only by virtue of the fact that Michel does not actually fuck. He exists as an asexual embodiment of all gay stereotypes. But Black, French, and living in a small, sexually repressed town… can we just imagine how much fuckboi-like shenanigans an openly gay Michel would have gotten up on? up to on Grinder in an R-rated version of the Gilmore Girls.

ASHER FLEMING (Michael York) Asher Flemming, illustrious 60-something professor of Yale University, is a fuckboi by the most literal version in that he is a boy who fucked. A lot of female students.

DOYLE McMASTER (Danny Strong) Made a move on his girlfriend’s best friend while they were both drunk.

I know what you’re thinking: Jesus, Ben: are all the men of Gilmore Girls fuckbois by your unforgiving standards?

No. There were exactly two exceptions. Max Madina (Scott Cohen) and Lane Kim’s dim-witted rocker husband Zack Van Gerbig (Todd Lowe). We’ll forgive him creepily hitting on Lorelai on his first appearance.

Two solid dudes.

That’s it.