Paris Geller Came A Long Way On 'Gilmore Girls'

Remember when Paris’ only female friends were women she seemed to feel nothing but contempt for? While Madeline Lynn and Louise Grant were great, their passion for fashion and boys and relative disinterest in the stuff Paris got excited about didn’t seem like a great recipe for the friendship of a lifetime. It felt like possibly Paris only kept them around as friends because she didn’t feel threatened by them. But her friendship with someone she once considered her greatest rival suggested her growing self-confidence.

When we first meet Paris, she’s got a permanent stick up her butt, and all she wants to do is study and have extracurricular activities to count toward her application to college. In Season 6, she allows herself to go to spring break, and even makes out with Rory (albeit super briefly).

Remember that overly long period when Paris’ universe revolved around that department store mannequin in a blazer, Tristan? And how even though he didn’t give her the slightest scrap of attention or interest, she kept on crushing? Thank god for her relationship with Doyle, which taught her to express her needs every bit as much with a romantic partner as she did with Rory.

When we first meet Paris, it’s newspapers or nothing. Then, after graduating Yale, she ends up deciding to go to medical school. When we jump into the present with Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life, we learn she runs her own fertility clinic, which presumably combines the bossing people around she enjoyed so much from her newspaper days with her medical interests.

While we know that Paris preempts the first time she has sex with Doyle by “discussing modern-day Marxism in America,” she doesn’t seem particularly interested in the rich-poor divide until, surprise surprise, she becomes poor. When her parents “flip the bird at the IRS one too many times” in Season 6, the IRS freezes the Geller family’s bank accounts and Paris is forced to get her first job, serving food at a Daughters of the Revolution function — a shift that forces her to admit “Karl Marx has come alive for me today.”

Remember how College Paris only seems to have two friends, one of whom is her friend from school, Rory, and the other who’s her boyfriend? The 2016 revival of the series suggests how far Ms. Geller came when she states she’s “got to get [herself] together” for a panel discussion that’s being moderated by Lena Dunham, who “cannot see [her] like this.”

Sure, in A Year In The Life she freaks out upon seeing her old crush Tristan when giving a talk at Chilton, and her reaction’s as intense as any from teenaged Paris might have been. But this time she verbalizes what she’s going through. “What am I feeling? I’m feeling fear and loneliness and heartache… My hands are shaking, my heart is pounding.” For someone who hated seeming vulnerable, the fact that she can admit these feelings to herself and Rory is a big deal.

OK, so Paris is a little too dependent on her nanny. But it bothers her that her kids are so emotionally reliant on their nanny, and she’s surprisingly sunny around them in the moment Doyle brings them home. This side of her is unexpected considering mid-‘00s Paris, who was all about her career and seemed to place less importance on family.

Paris is all about getting “nips and tucks” when she feels they're needed.

Remember mid-‘00s Gilmore Girls, when Paris’ biggest problems were posed by herself? Her competitive nature, her bracing honesty, her paranoia? Well, happily for Paris, in the present day she has a far more manageable nemesis. In the episode "Spring" in A Year In The Life, Doyle and Paris both seem terrified of the stairs in their house. For some reason, whenever they send their nannies upstairs, the nanny quits. The fact that Paris’s greatest problem is something external suggests how far she’s come with battling her more challenging characteristics.

One of the running jokes on the original series was that Paris would constantly interrupt Luke when he spoke. In “Winter,” we get to see Paris and Luke interact, and while, OK, they’re not best friends, Paris’ attitude toward him is much more respectful. She even makes small talk with him (“How are you, Luke?”) and actually waits for him to respond. This is a whole new woman.

She never seemed to appreciate Lorelai’s efforts over the years when she was at high school with Rory. But when we see Lorelai and Luke meet with Paris for a fertility consultation, she insists on personally handling their case. (“You were practically my second mother.”) While her tone might be a little rough round the edges (“I’m not letting any of those bottle-service bimbos carry your baby”), her intentions are clear: She wants to give Lorelai and Luke the best possible fertility service for the lowest price. Paris doing a nice thing for someone who isn’t Rory feels a little alien, and it shows how far she’s come.

The way the formerly needy Paris Geller talks about her divorce feels worlds away from the last time she broke up with Doyle. She’s wryly funny about his evolution (“He’s a screenwriter, Rory. Have you been to the movies recently?”), and while she’s sad about the divorce, she also seems to be coping pretty well with it.

So raise your glasses for the most underrated character in Gilmore Girls, ladies and gentlemen. Paris Geller grew even more than you probably thought she could.