History Characters / GilmoreGirlsOtherCharacters

* AmicableExes: For the most part of the series with Lorelai, despite not having been ever married. He eventually does end up being divorced [[spoiler:twice, to two different women, both being the mothers of his daughters]].

* DerailingLoveInterests: Once he goes after Richard, Lorelai dumps him. He then squats at the Dragonfly, refusing to take no for an answer despite Loreli breaking up with him, nearly ruining her budding relationship with Luke.

->'''Played by:''' Chris Eigeman

* AmbiguousDisorder: Jason seems to have sensory issues. He dislikes noise to the point that he prefers to dine in a separate room at restaurants and is so uncomfortable sleeping next to anyone that he puts his one-night stands in a luxurious guest room.

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* AmicablyDivorced: For the most part of the series with Lorelai, despite not having been ever married. He eventually does end up being divorced [[spoiler:twice, to two different women, both being the mothers of his daughters]].

[[folder: Jess Mariano]]
->'''Played by:''' Creator/MiloVentimiglia

[[quoteright:224:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/download_11_4546.jpg]]
* AmbiguousDisorder: Shows the disdain and apathy consistent with someone suffering from depression and social anxiety, and in his centric episode in season 3, he blows up about his insecurities. See HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood below for more information on his troubled past and the actor has said that Jess is the kind of person who gets uncomfortable and leaves a room when there's too many people.
* AnguishedDeclarationOfLove: In season 4's "Last Week Tights, This Week Fights", Jess begs Rory to run away with him and be with him ("And I"m ready. I'm ready for this. You can count on me now. I know you couldn't count on me before, but you can now. You ''can''.") -- this is possibly a reaction to seeing Rory and Dean together outside her dorm room as he comes to talk with her. It doesn't make Rory's rejection any less heartwrenching. This comes in the same season as his LoveConfession, which was unexpected, but less anguished.
* AmicableExes: [[spoiler:With Rory in the revival. They chat over drinks, he provides a sounding board for her current life struggles, and gives her the idea to write her book.]]
* BettyAndVeronica:
** The Veronica to Dean's Betty. Rory later expressed regret about the relationship with Jess to her best friend Lane Kim; saying that, while she was initially attracted to Jess' intellectualism and his "bad boy nature", she had become used to Dean's reliability and affectionate nature.
** The Betty to Logan's Veronica in Season 6.
* BigApplesauce: Jess is from New York City. He spends some time in the series CommutingOnABus between there and Connecticut, before ultimately moving to Philadelphia sometime between seasons 4 and 6.
* BlackSheep: To all of Stars Hollow.
* BookWorm: Rory's massive book collection prompts him to steal and annotate her copy of Ginsberg's "Howl" so that he can attempt to actually talk to her. Their mutual love of reading forms the basis of their relationship.
* BrokenAce: Inverted. Jess' outward image highlights his troubled nature, his insecurity, and loner tendencies, when he's actually quite sophisticated and intelligent.
* BrilliantButLazy: Starts out this way, then puts on this as a façade the fact he's got a job at Walmart where he works overtime shifts. He also secretly fixed Luke's toaster and refuses to admit he did it. He's shed the façade completely by Season 6 as he's written a book and is running a small publishing house.
* BroodingBoyGentleGirl: Brooding Boy to Rory's Gentle Girl.
* BrutalHonesty: He's absolutely not afraid to say what's on his mind, especially how he sees Luke acting towards Lorelai. His first encounter with Lorelai even led him to bluntly ask her if they were a couple. In Season 6 this trait comes in handy making Rory see how much she's screwed up her life and go back to Yale.
* CharacterDevelopment: By Season 6, he's matured greatly, learned to communicate with people, and thanks both Luke and Rory for supporting him when his life was a mess.
* CommonalityConnection: Despite his bad boy, cynical New Yorker attitude being at complete odds with small-town sweetheart Rory, they quickly bond over a shared passion for music, popular culture, and literature.
* CommutingOnABus: Returns twice for several episodes in Season 4, and two in Season 6. He's mentioned in "Winter" and appears in "Summer" and "Fall".
* DeadpanSnarker: Must be inherited from his uncle, as their conversations tend to fall into SnarkToSnarkCombat, as well as towards Lorelai. He's much nicer to Rory for obvious reasons.
* DeliberateUnderPerformance: Jess doesn't see the point in school and doesn't bother to try. He reads during tests in school (when he actually goes), and doesn't do his work. He fails out of high school despite being intellectually on-par with Rory and Paris.
* DisappearedDad: His father left the family right after Jess was born.
* {{Foil}}:
** For Dean. While Jess has his own problems and is generally not well liked by the residents of Stars Hollow he connects with Rory on an intellectual level unlike anyone else in the town.
** For Logan: Both of them are intelligent but unmotivated, rebellious and had neglectful childhoods. But while Logan is ridiculously wealthy and can rely on his family to bail him out of trouble, Jess comes from a poor single parent family and has to deal with the consequences of his bad decisions. They're also foils regarding Rory: Both of them fell for her despite being fairly guarded, uncaring guys most of the time but while Logan drags her down into partying and theft, Jess inspires her to stick with her dreams and go back to Yale. [[spoiler:This carries into the revival where she's Logan's mistress while Jess tells her to write a book.]]
** For Rory herself. Both of them were raised by young mothers without their fathers present. But while Lorelai raised Rory with a fierce devotion in the stable environment of Stars Hollow, Liz was a wildly unstable alcoholic and drug user who rarely paid attention to her son while barely raising him in the more chaotic New York City, forcing him to raise himself. When they first met, she was on a bright path to Yale while he was insecure and self-destructive about his path in life. [[spoiler:In the revival, he has a stable life in Philadelphia working in publishing while Rory is floundering in her career and unsure about her life. As one review put it, it's telling that while he continues to carry a book with him and is reading in his final scenes, ''Rory'' hasn't been seen with a book the entire time, aside from glancing at the ''Stars Hollow Gazette'' and writing the first three chapters of her manuscript.]]
* GeniusBookClub: A trait shared with Rory. He has read and can be found reading many famous authors, including Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jack Kerouac. He debates the merits of Bukowski with Paris and teases Rory for her disdain of Hemingway. He grabs her attention in an EstablishingCharacterMoment by writing notes in the margins of her copy of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl", which he tells her he's read "about 40 times."
* HatesSmallTalk: Self-admittedly. His monosyllabic tendencies are commented by several characters and never in a positive light.
* HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: When Liz shows up her ditzy nature and bad taste in men is almost entirely played for laughs... never mind that Jess had to grow up with an unstable mother and her string of horrible boyfriends. And yeah, ''he'' gets blamed for being bitter about it? In his first meeting with Lorelai, she clumsily attempts to relate to him with her own past - despite some clear differences, namely that her parents smothered her while his neglected him - and it only makes him even angrier.
* IconicSequelCharacter: He doesn't appear until season 2, but quickly becomes Rory's SecondLove, and is probably the most iconic of Rory's love interests on the show, thanks to his popularity with fans.
* InsecureLoveInterest: Openly admits that he has no idea why Rory is with him, and his insecurity is a major reason their relationship falls apart.
-->'''Luke:''' She picked you.\\
'''Jess:''' God knows why.\\
'''Luke:''' She knows, that's all that matters.
* {{Jerkass}}: In season 2, he treats everyone ''horribly'' except Rory. In season 3, he's not much better and there's also his treatment of Rory herself after they start dating, which ends with him leaving town without telling Rory anything. He has a FreudianExcuse but still...
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: He's certainly rude, surly, uncommunicative and difficult, but does care about Luke and Rory, and tries to support them though he's too dysfunctional to succeed at first. By his return in S6 and in ''A Year In The Life'', he's much more communicative, reliable and friendly, though his bluntness and snarking remain.
* LikeASonToMe: To Luke by the end of the series. [[spoiler:In ''A Year In A Life'', Lorelai even asks Luke if he wanted a son to throw a football around with and Luke says he has Jess.]]
* LoveAtFirstSight: Upon his second return in season 4, he tells Rory that he knew they were "meant to be together" from the first time he saw her. Sadly, Rory has lost her trust in him by this point and rejects him.
* MenaceDecay: The show treats Jess like a bona fide James Dean, but he does very little to live up to any sort of standard of "bad boy," other than smoking and a disdain for authority. His list of crimes include stealing garden gnomes, his high school's supply of baseballs, and creating a chalk outline of a fake murder victim outside the grocery store. He crashes Rory's car...avoiding a small furry animal. He skips school...to work a job at Walmart. This is, at one point, lampshaded by Lorelai at a town meeting, but when he shows interest in Rory, she also starts treating him like he just got out of juvie. Logan weirdly fits the trope better, but managed not to be the boyfriend remembered as the "bad boy" by the show or the fandom.
* {{Nephewism}}: Is introduced into the story by being sent to live with his uncle, Luke.
* NoRomanticResolution: In "A Year in the Life", [[spoiler:Jess is the only one of Rory's major ex-love interests she does ''not'' get closure with. This did not go unnoticed by Literati shippers.]]
* OddFriendship:
** Although very short-lived, as they really interacted only on one evening, Jess notably goes down in the show's history books as the only one of Rory's love interests who got along with Paris. A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD_k1HHnABE deleted scene]] showed that even Paris could sense their BelligerentSexualTension and gave him her seal of approval.
-->'''Paris:''' If you ever do decide that you like him, I wouldn't blame you. He's unbelievably cute, and though his literary tastes leaves a little to be desired, at least he has literary taste.
** Rory's friendship with Jess is seen as this by pretty much everyone, including Lorelai. This is mostly due to Jess coming off as a troublemaker and punk to the rest of the town, but he connects with Rory over their shared interests.
* OperationJealousy: The first half of season three. Jess gets himself a blond bimbo solely to infuriate Rory and show her that little does he care about her still being Dean's girlfriend. As soon as Rory and Dean are broken up, the bimbo is out of the picture.
* ParentalAbandonment: Jess ends up in Stars Hollow because his mother couldn't handle him. She ships him off to Luke without asking his (or Luke's) input.
* PetTheDog: In one episode, he pulls a prank which turns the whole town against Luke because he tried to defend him yet again. When he gets a WhatTheHellHero from Rory for not caring about it and being ungrateful to Luke, he fixes the toaster Luke was working on in the beginning of the episode and doesn't even take credit for it.
* PromotionToOpeningTitles: In season 2.
* TheReliableOne: Amazingly - considering how he started out - he's become this in the revival, getting Luke to talk about his situation with Lorelai, solving his wi-fi problem and comforting Rory through her mid-life crisis.
* SecondLove: To Rory. Dean was the first.
* SelfMadeMan: Season 6 reveals that he's published a short book co-runs a small publishing business, and is very involved with the local independent arts scene.
* SmarterThanYouLook: The early seasons. Most of the town thinks he's a failure and a trouble maker, and he does little to change that opinion. He fails high school, but is highly intelligent, well-read, and goes on to work in publishing, including a novel of his own. Rory calls him on this explicitly in "Teach Me Tonight", and tells him he could do more with his life.
* StarCrossedLovers:
** As the show went on, this became the case for him and Rory. Their initial attraction and relationship is plagued by the presence of Dean, the town's disapproval and Jess's own issues. Jess then runs away, leaving Rory heartbroken but later returns to find Rory back with Dean, leaving him heartbroken. He then returns again (after fixing himself) as a young adult to find Rory now with Logan and as much of a mess as he was before. After he convinces her to 'fix' her life, they kiss for a final time, only for her to decide to remain with Logan instead, causing Lit fans to lose their final shred of patience with the writers.
** [[spoiler:The ending of ''A Year In A Life'' hints that Jess might still have feelings for Rory, but only a few scenes later we discover she's pregnant with (probably) Logan's child.]]
* StickyFingers: Jess steals things for his own amusement. Luke finds this bizarre, because the items he steals have no monetary value. This includes Babbette's prized garden gnome (which he hid in Luke's closet) and all ''500'' of Stars Hollow High's baseballs. [[NoodleIncident No word on where he stored those or what he did with them.]]
* SugarAndIcePersonality: In the early seasons, Jess is a jerk to pretty much everyone but Rory. She notices, of course, and confronts him about it. He evades until she drops it.
* TeensAreShort: Milo Ventimiglia is actually 5'10", which is the average height for guys. Part of the trick to convince the audience that he was was 17 was to use camera angles to make him look shorter as well as dressing him in slightly baggier clothing. Playing most of his scenes against the 6'3" Luke and 6'4" Dean also helped make him look smaller by comparison and Milo has said that when filming "Keg! Max!"'s big fight scene, what Jess lacked in size, he made up for in scrappiness.
* TerseTalker: He can be eloquent (mostly when talking to Rory or taunting Dean), but usually gets by 'yep', 'nope' and 'huh'. Frequently [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded.]]
-->'''Jess:''' The verbal thing comes and goes.
* TookALevelInKindness:
** Far friendlier and more sociable when he returns in S6, and certainly much better at articulating his feelings. The Jess we first met would never have given genuine heart-felt speeches about appreciating everything Luke and Rory did for him.
** Taken UpToEleven in "A Year in The Life" he gets along quite well with Rory again [[spoiler:and gives her the idea for her novel]], and comforts Luke when [[spoiler:Lorelai leaves to find herself]] before yanking out the diner's [=WiFi=] to give his uncle some peace. [[spoiler:It's strongly implied in his last scene he's still in love with Rory, and might have another shot with her.]]
* TroubledButCute: Sullen, broody, a neglectful and borderline abusive mother... but damn is he cute. Post CharacterDevelopment he settles on being just cute.
* {{Tsundere}}: He is Tsun Tsun towards everyone but Dere Dere mainly to Rory and at times Luke.
* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: Jess has pretty low self-esteem at the start of the series, despite being intelligent and well-read. While the townsfolk of Stars Hollow buy into his bad boy persona, Rory and Luke don't and insist he can do more with his life. They were right. By season 6, Jess has mellowed; he has published a short novel and works for a publishing company. Both Rory and Luke are proud of him.
* WackyParentSeriousChild: Particularly in comparison with Liz, his mother.
* WhatHaveWeEar: Is introduced with a talent for sleight-of-hand magic tricks. He attempts to use them to flirt with Rory. She is not impressed.
* WillTheyOrWontThey: With Rory during Season 2 and 3. [[spoiler: They do but later break up.]] Then again during Season 4, when he's CommutingOnABus, again during brief appearances in Season 6 [[spoiler:and then the revival reignites this trope literally ''minutes'' from the end]] .
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* TheUnintelligible: Nobody in-universe knows exactly what language Berta speaks (best guess is one of the Iberian Romance languages) but her dialogue is subtitled for the benefit of the viewer. [[note]] Rose Abdoo apparently [[https://www.gilmorenews.com/2016/12/01/rose-abdoo-on-new-role-as-berta/ just modified her Spanish]].[[/note]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: He's certainly rude, surly, uncommunicative and difficult, but does care about Luke and Rory, and tries to support them though he's too dysfunctional to succeed at first. By his return in S6 he's shed most of the jerkish aspects and is much nicer, though his bluntness and snarking remain.

* NiceGuy: Upgrades to this by Season 6 and in ''A Year In The Life'' as he's much more communicative, reliable and friendly.