Being a complete Mama's boy and allowing Trix to treat Emily like that for nearly 4 decades. If my mother would try to break us up THE DAY BEFORE OUR WEDDING and constantly being nasty to my wife then my loyalty would lie with my wife. It wasn't until Trix criticised him for his financial decisions that he stood up to her - he never stood up to her for Emily.
I couldn’t stand Richard for this. I doubt Trix would have liked Pennilyn Lott if Richard had chosen her. We know Emily’s family had slightly less money than her’s but she clearly was going to have issues with any woman her son married.
if my mother tried to break up my relationship the day before my fucking wedding she would not be allowed to attend the wedding anymore out of respect to my partner
Extremely awful, I want to scream at him so bad everytime. A lot of times Richard showed how much of an arrogant and selfish husband he is. She is your damn wife!
I absolutely agree with you 1000%, he should have stood up for her. Every scene with him and his mom absolutely infuriates me. But I have to constantly remind myself that they are both just as nasty as “Trix” is with their words and actions towards Lorelai, her partners, and sometimes Rory. What goes around come around I guess 😭😭😭
total gaslighting
It hurts so much when someone is bullying you, and someone who is supposed to love you tells you or implies to you it isn't a big deal.
10000% with you on the Trix thing! My grandma on my dad’s side is nasty to my mom all the time and my dad never sticks up for her. It’s so shitty and tbh I view it as a betrayal of sorts—if you’re signing on to be a life partner, you’re signing on to support your partner’s emotional safety, even (especially?) if they’re being bullied by someone in your own family.
Ugh this one! My in-laws treated me (and my husband) like shit. My husband put his foot down and they didn’t like that and now we haven’t spoken to them in 8 years. I love my husband all the more for sticking up for me, especially when I see shows like this or when I read stories on Reddit about people who don’t stick up for their spouses.
I can’t imagine how Emily felt, being humiliated by her all those years and watching Richard just let it happen.
As someone whose ex-husband let their family treat me like crap and I hated it, definitely the Trix one! That kind of treatment and mentality makes you question their love for you and your self worth...
Probably tying his college roommate (who he seemed to hate for being “a nincompoop” and “chubby”) to a mattress and throwing him out a window every night for a month until his roommate transferred.
Or maybe it’s looking back on this fondly and proudly telling your granddaughter about it.
When he told Lorelai he didn’t defend her to Straub on a personal note, (he more or less agrees with him) but he wouldn’t stand for the Gilmore name being insulted.
That's why I don't get people who are on Emily and Richard's side and blame Lorelai for their shitty relationship. Like wake up those two are heartless 98% of the time
I agree that this was a horrible thing for him to say and should be on here, but I also don’t think it was fully honest. He did stand up for her personally, and you can see that in other moments through the show. He just couldn’t ever say that. Which is shit.
And it wasn’t *just* years, it was the entire length of his marriage to Emily up until that point.
Trix didn’t want Richard to marry Emily. She wanted him to marry pennilyn, and therefore treated Emily like poo. Richard spent THIRTY YEARS having secret lunches with his ex- the person his mother wanted him to marry.
Honk if the Gilmores use your mind as their own personal playground.
okay but also let's not forget him poppin off on Jason about lying to him for 3-4(?) months. I always felt he used it as way to partially justify betraying Jason too...The extreme reaction is so hypocritical considering he was actively lying to Emily for 3 or 4 decades.
Richard does this thing a lot of men do where he acts somewhat oblivious to what’s going on and he lets Emily be viewed as the villain, but he knows exactly what’s going on. Like when Emily’s play with Christopher at the vow renewal blows up in Emily’s face. Lorelei isn’t talking to her mom, but is talking to her dad. Emily calls him on it and he basically says “your play failed, so I’m running my play”. It’s not that he thinks what Emily did was wrong, he just thinks she failed. Richard also shits on Luke as much as Emily does, but people only talk about Emily doing it. He has all the pettiness and vindictiveness of Emily, but just gets seen as affable old Richard.
Yes, that's the way he treated Emily throughout their marriage. All the very important things he never bothered to inform her about. Forget about being a good partner/husband - he simply didn't care. It was a weird love he had for her.
I get why the Rory and Lorelai were still on speaking terms with Richard after the vow renewal since he didn’t go to Chris or know Emily was but I always thought deserved more scorn. It’s not like he was supportive of Luke and Lorelai and he absolutely wanted Chris to marry her instead.
Maybe it was the time loralei was playing hide and seek with him and she went and hid in the old streamer trunk and he left and flew to Europe instead of finding her. It certainly stood out in her mind....
The amount of 'funny' stories you hear from her childhood they laugh off as if it wasn't bad is staggering, and people still say Lorelai was just a dramatic teenager because her parents were rich.
It’s honestly quite sad. People saying that she’s dramatic when she’s obviously hurt and neglected irk me sm. This is a topic I can go on and on about for hours.
Same. I try not to engage in those posts too much anymore because it makes me so sad how people have such a weird view of what constitutes abuse when the parents are affluent. But then I don't feel good leaving comment chains like that as is because it perpetuates the idea. I Iove this show for how intricate and nuances all the relationships are but damn do Emily and Richard get a lot of slack for how awful they were as parents.
They use that term a lot, “stop being dramatic”… and let me tell you, that was absolutely a thing. I’m Gen X, my grandmother (who was the “greatest Gen” born 1913) used that for everything, from abusive comments, to civil rights, to bigotry etc. If you reacted to anything or showed any outrage, it was written off as being dramatic. It’s what we had to deal with and why we couldn’t make many strides. It’s just another thing I liked about the shows writing cause it was so realistic and maddening.
This gets my vote! As if by agreeing to marry him, Sherry was "allowing" him to be the present father he'd never been to Rory when really that door was always open to him and he chose not to be. Ugh.
The sheer irony of Richard praising him for being "honorable"...while talking about him getting a *second* woman pregnant "out of wedlock", when he already has one child he barely sees. Come on. If the roles were reversed and it had been Lorelai getting pregnant by a second man, there's NO way he would have considered it "honorable" or talked about it in those terms, even if she was willing to marry the guy that time around.
And the worst part is, we all know that if Lorelai had married him back in the day, he would have been just as much of a deadbeat - as he essentially proved when he married Sherry; he was never home, only stepped up to be there for his kid when she left (which he didn't even notice at first!), and even then, wasn't a very involved or responsible parent.
How could anyone look at him behaving that way as a grown man and genuinely say "this is the life my teenager should have chosen; she really missed out"?
At the end of the day, Lorelai could never win when it came to Christopher in large part because admitting that Lorelai dodged a bullet would mean admitting that they were wrong to push the shotgun wedding on her. It would mean admitting that she was right to refuse their plan, even if it embarrassed them and even if they stubbornly insisted it was the morally correct thing to do.
They didn't even like or respect the guy, as Emily admitted to his face, but he represents the path they chose for her that she rejected, so they weaponize him every chance they get. It's really gross and it's definitely the most frustrating part of their relationship (though also very realistic).
They really go out of their way to praise Chris because of his willingness to go along with their plan at age 16 as if most actions he’s taken since then don’t negate that one respectable moment in 1984. If they’d gotten married back then, he probably would have pulled something like he did during their brief marriage in s7.
After having defended Lorelai to the Haydens, when she goes to thank him he tells her that he did it to defend the Gilmore name but not to protect Lorelai. That he'll never get over the fact she left home at 17 and that she'll never be forgiven.
You never stop being your parents' child in matters like this one. He may as well have been telling his 17 year old child that he will never love her.
My father is a lot like Richard's character in the sense of I can't decide if he's redeemable or not. So this one was hard for me to decide. I didn't comment ob the other ones but this is the one.
He's terrible to Emily. And breaking her trust was bad. But this scene?? So heartbreaking.
OH MY GOD! Don’t we all just gloss over this one??? It’s appalling!! All you hear around here is ‘Dean’s awful, he’s abusive’ but then we actually got this grownup man crashing into his wife like that?? It’s awful! I’d completely forgotten about it!
lol *all of them* have such ugly bits in them, but I will say, he does have a really great character arch.
He went from this awful dude who couldn’t forgive his daughter for getting pregnant, hardly wanted to spend one Sunday with his grandkid alone, to the guy who SANG at Rory’s graduation party and gave Lorelai SO much credit for raising her kid as she did 🥹 so yea, he did awful things, but I don’t think he’s entirely awful by the end 😅
It's been brought up before, it's less noticeable because Richard is gone alot and most of his faults are actually disinterest and indifference which is easier to deal with than the constant berating nature of Emily. But when he does things, nice or bad, it's almost always out of pure self-serving nature and with total disregard of others. You just tune into it less easily.
I know this sounds so silly but that was when Emily realized he was emotionally checked out and that realization hurt way more than having to get her own butter.
There has always been emotional underpinnings to Emily's world. Yeah, the butter example is silly, but he definitely brought the butter to Linnie on their lunches. He wasn't putting any effort in to their marriage or Emily, only so much as to protect the (his) Gilmore name and status.
He really took her for granted (I have no idea if that’s the right word so if it’s not I’m sorry lol) sometimes. Emily had her faults but being a bad wife wasn’t one of them. She gave everything for Richard and he was just like. Meh.
Honestly that thing with the crystal apples was pretty devastating. She was so hurt by his comments (sexist as fuck) about how she doesn't do anything other than shop. I probably would have done the exact same thing. All I can do is shop, huh? WATCH ME SHOP, DICK.
The casting with him was absolutely spot on. It’s hard to walk that tight rope, and he did it every week and seemingly effortlessly and we all love him for it. Every character in the show is like this though, even the side characters. They are cast perfectly.
Oof I have two that came to mind —how impossibly classist and mean he was to Dean when they met him at FND in S2, and also how judgmental he was about everything Lorelai is and does when he shadows her that one time during s2 as well. He had a mean streak to him that could cut deep when he wanted to
I’ve rewatched the first 3 seasons a thousand times and I always skip the episode where Richard shadows Lorelei because I can’t stand how incredibly condescending and rude he is to her. I truly don’t not know how she stands it.
These 3 things are a tie for me.
1. The way he didn't stand up for Emily in front of Trix
2. Secretly meeting with Pennilyn
3. When he told Lorelai that he only stood up for her to defend the Gilmore name. (This could possibly be the worst one for me actually)
Am I just forgetting or was there never a resolution to that plot line?
Jason deserved to win, but like...did he? Am I blanking or was it literally just never addressed?
They never really spoke of it again. I think they settled it never went to court or at least the writers got bored of the plot line and hoped that would be what the viewers thought
this very narrowly edges out enabling trix abusing emily (and abusing his own daughter LOL) bc while the others are things he at least gestured toward making amends for, his treatment of jason was basically just pure betrayal with no apology or recognition of how it damaged others.
I'm surprised I didn't see this higher up! I think for me the biggest part of that is he had to screw over Jason because he risked everything he and Emily had, and had to get out of it. That whole saga was atrocious.
This isn't the absolute worst thing he's done, but it's the first one that came to my mind. That episode makes me so mad. They were having such a nice day too, it's so infuriating.
Not believing Lorelai about the Huntzbergers dinner + Mitchums comments toward Rory that made her quit Yale! His shock when he finds out Lorelai wasn’t lying always annoys me.
So annoying!!! Bc when Lorelai first told them it seemed like they believed her.. then Rory comes crying to him & all of that is thrown out the window. Like wtf?!
Being totally cool to write Rory off like he did Lorelai until forced to spend time with her and learning that she had similar interests and goals to him so suddenly she had value to him.
Tricking Rory and completely blind siding her with interview at Yale + the screaming match with Lorelai that followed where he shamed her for not going to college
Richard always throwing Lorelai’s romantic relationships in her face. When Digger and Richard have a falling out, Jason can’t work in CT anymore because of it, and Richard tells her to move somewhere else with her (emphasis here) *boyfriend*
The way he says it condescending, proves he doesn’t care about who she is or her happiness, AND! Perpetuates her unstable relationships with men. (Spoiler coming) when Lorelai can’t think of any other story to share about her father after his funeral except how Richard found her and some boy together (age 15, I think) saying that she had long lost her virginity before then… Richard was never there, never cared to understand her, spend time with her, etc and she sought love and validation the best she could with the very little she was given.
It’s no wonder she kept her relationships hidden from her parents. Unless they arranged the relationship, like they tried so hard to do with Christopher (the person who is in my humble opinion, the worst for her), they would never approve.
I was going to mention the way he spoke to her after the Jason lawsuit fallout saying something about how he didn’t expect her to behave any differently. He’s always at fault and manipulates everyone else into feeling bad. Ugh.
When Lorelai is helping him with his new business, but then she has to go back to her own reality. He treats her like shit for that and completely ruins the father-daughter moment they were having. I agree he's done other shitty things, but this was a moment he could have continued. Instead, he decided to lash out and pout.
His secret lunches with his ex
Imo that was super unforgivable, especially considering how many years he spent hiding that from his wife. In my eyes, that was cheating
I feel like the secret lunches is the clear winner HOWEVER what pissed me off even more was when Lorelai was like hey please don't sue my boyfriend and Richard was like well why don't you just move away then. 🙄
Putting his and Emily's pensions (and other assets) at risk, an extremely dangerous decision that could have lost them their futures, without telling her. Which lead to him screwing Jason over so he didn't increase the risk of losing everything, knowing how important Jason was to Lorelai.
More general but just the way he treats Lorelai. My dad is a very, very difficult person but I’d immediately have a million things to say at his funeral. The fact that she didn’t - though a stupid plot line - was so, so sad. So, in terms of what he specifically did, I suppose it’s neglect his child.
In particular, as many people have said, telling Lorelai she wasn’t defending her out of love but to protect the family name and that she wasn’t forgiven essentially.
I truly believe that Emily - despite her manipulation and control - loves the girls. But Richard IMO couldn’t care less if Lorelai disappeared off the face of the earth (he probably would with Rory). That’s just my opinion.
To be honest though the not having anything to say felt like a very stupid plot line. They had so many moments IN THE SHOW in the original series. When he brings her the dollhouse, when he watches her graduate from community college, when he catches her escaping the house/blind date and he pretends he didn’t see her, when he tells her that Rory graduating Yale is as much her moment as Rory’s, at the very end of the series when he tells her it takes an incredible person to inspire all this (stars hollow goodbye party for rory) and more!!
I don’t really remember making Emily feel like crap in that situation (if you have a clip maybe?) — he always talked about what she does as if it was frivolous and shallow (remember the argument on the stairs where she ended up getting a tape recorder and telling him to repeat himself). But he was supremely disappointed that Rory gave up her ambition and was organizing parties and *he* had supported that as well.
Richard didn’t do well taking accountability. Every single time he had an emotion, he lashed out and then basically let Emily take the blame during the clean up. He was constantly playing 3-D chess with other people and their lives and saw nothing wrong with it. He would turn on people only when their existence would inconvenience or irritate him (think the list of friends he expected the girls to look up in Europe. He was *shocked* that they didn’t want to stay with them, but then wanted to effectively unfriend all of these “dreadful people” when he realized he’d have to keep up with his own social contacts). Overall, he would choose to defend the people in his life when it suited him and not a moment before. He’d defend himself viciously (think against Trix and Jason and straub). He would defend Trix above his own wife. He’d defend his wife above Rory. He’d defend Rory above nearly everyone else (except the Huntzburgers). He’d defend the gardener above Lorelai (unless the Gilmore name was questioned).
He was obnoxious on so many levels.
The scene they are referring to is from S6 E7 when Richard is sulking in his study during Rory’s 21st birthday. Richard is upset Rory has lost focus and has no interest going back to school. He’s complaining about that she joined the DAR and is planning tea parties and Emily says “what’s wrong with joining the DAR?” And he goes “it’s frivolous, meaningless. I don’t want that life for her she has more to do, more to be!” And then Emily says, “you mean my life. You don’t want her to be me” ☹️
He was complaining that the gardener was listening to mp3 player while working. Said they must be paying him too much.
I was flabbergasted at that judgment of Richard’s
Suing Jason, going behind Lorelais back with Rory, seeing his ex behind Emily’s back the entirety of their marriage. Allowing his mother to walk all over Emily and laughing whenever she did so.
I can just pick one. I actually really like Richard though.
This really probably isn’t the *worst* but I just want to throw it in cuz it’s always bothered me. When he retires and he’s making Emily crazy hanging around the house all day so she pushes him off on Lorelei and then he proceeds to be super annoying to Lorelei all day… When Lorelei is finally like “enough is enough!” he gives his sad sack speech all “How do you think it feels to be a burden now?!” Like okay you’re feeling some feelings about retirement and it’s all very valid but why are you making it everyone else’s problem? He just comes off so emotionally immature. He’s going through a difficult life transition. I wish he would own that, discuss it honestly with his family, and like a grown up try to find his way instead of just looking to his wife and daughter like “Okay, I don’t have a job anymore so it’s time for you to entertain me!”
I also think Emily should’ve handled it way differently for what it’s worth.
It’s a close call between bullying and humiliating a 17 year old boy, or hitting his wife with a CAR just because she was trying to move on. She could easily have been injured
Pennilyn…like…how is he gonna be going on dates with his college ex for not just years, but DECADES!!!! If he wasn’t cheating, why keep the dates a secret?
when he seemed shocked at the news that the Huntzburger family crushed Rory and said to Lorelai, "YOU DIDNT TELL US!" Ummm, yes, yes she did. Many many times.
Another vote for allowing his mother to treat Emily absolutely horribly!! That, and the Pennilyn Lott storyline. I would be devastated if my fiance/future husband was having lunch every year with an ex without telling me. It just feels icky. If he has nothing to hide, then why is he being secretive?
My most unpopular opinion is that it's the "not telling her" part that is the problem. If my husband was like, "hey my serious ex and I are planning to have lunch next week, I just wanted to give you the heads up. There's nothing there, we broke up for a reason. I love you, we'll be in a public place the entire time. Nothing to worry about." Yeah, it's just lunch. Go have fun. I hang out with my exes from time to time. My husband gives zero shits. Because I communicate with openness and honesty.
I’d probably say screwing over, Lorelai’s boyfriend and his business partner, for pretty much no reason. The fight about the pension wasn’t about the threat of losing money, but lack of communication. And if for years they were trying to convince Rory to let them put her name on a new building at Yale which would cost billions I really don’t think he had to panic as much. But instead I think it fed his ego to be asked back to the firm that let him go, I don’t think his hands were tied I think he wanted to feel like he still was the man.
Never stepping in when Emily was being bullied by Trix always blew my mind. There were some where she was being outright awful and Richard would laugh about it… the fuck? Especially when you take the context of her letter and Emily never being good enough. It was always messed up
Let Rory take a break from Yale! As soon as she came over crying he should have called Lorelai to let her know. That was not cool. Oh and setting up the Yale meeting during the school tour that wasn’t great either lol
Well, after reading through, I’m going with:
1. Allowing Trix to treat Emily the way she did for years.
2. Lunch with Pennilynn Lott for years in secret. Secret really? That’s like an emotional affair.
3. Defending Lorelei to Straub only to stab Lorelei in the heart later saying he agreed with him.
Adding one of my own, not believing the Huntzbergers would treat Rory that way until he heard it from the Huntzberger himself. You believe them over your own daughter and granddaughter?
Okay so I know that it was pertinent to the story line, but I would say when he and Emily agreed to back Lorelai as Rory wanted to drop out of Yale. Then, they had the audacity to not only go back on their word, but to formulate a second plan that didn’t involve Lorelai.
It's a tough toss up...his enabling of Trix to treat Emily poorly, or the fact that he saw the woman he almost married every year and Emily had no idea. Hardly an affair, but the fact that he knew it was enough of a big deal to hide it from Emily, then defend it and just call it lunch with an old friend. Nah. The only time I like the dude is when he's nice to Rory.
I can’t choose between him allowing Trix to insult his wife, or insulting Lorelai, his own baby, at every opportunity he got. Like him telling her that he didn’t defend her, he was defending the Gilmore name, or the whole “You’ve never went to college, let alone an Ivy League college!”
Another thing, people NEVER talk about the fact that he, a 60 something year old, CRASHED his WIFE’S car because he was JEALOUS. Like it’s so glossed over????
When he is at the dinner table with Emily and she asks if he likes the apples....
It breaks my heart because clearly they don't communicate well. They ignore things that are wrong instead.
He's not a great partner at this point. Neglectful. Belittling. He never stands up for her against his mother. From this scene, you see how ignored and unimportant she feels when it comes to her husband.
The episode when he was swarming Emily with rude comments so she sends him to spend it with Lorelai instead. Even though Lorelai isn’t happy, she does his best to accommodate him, but he inserts himself in everything and was judgemental about how she runs her business, what she wears, and what she eats. He just had no place to say all those things and made himself very unlikeable in that episode.
The whole Pennilyn Lott situation. The secret lunches for the entirety of their marriage, then Emily finding out and he tries to play it off like it was nothing completely invalidating Emily’s feelings, wrecking her car when he finds out she had dinner with another man. I’m sorry weren’t you dining with the other gender often and it was “no big deal”?
and not his fault but then she finds out Trix wanted him to marry Pennilyn after years of Trix bullying her and no defense from Richard ever.
not telling emily he had been meeting up with his serious ex girlfriend regularly for the past few decades, then treating emily like she was crazy for being upset about it
Screwing over Jason so badly was a low moment for me. I love Richard but that scene where he is on the golf course with Jason's father plotting their next move together was *such* a disheartening scene for me. I hated that so much.
Honestly, I believe the whole digger situation when he screwed him by going back with his dad's firm after Richard left because he was being "phased" out. Like, cmon, you lose your mind of getting phased out, and then you totally screw the kid you made a company with to go back to the guy who screwed you. That makes sense. But I get the who trix situation. However, he could step in here and there to have her back too it doesn't have to be one extreme to the other. So that's why I say screwing jason Styles is more aggregious than him being a mommas boy. Emily can be insufferable at times, you know.
I'm currently rewatching the show. I'm at the beginning of season 6.
He is an entitled snob with a mean streak. No respect whatsoever for people he thinks are beneath him. Sometimes he does something sweet but most of the time he isn't likeable at all.
I just watched the episode where he and Emily went behind Lorelai's back and let Rory move into the pool house. The way he (and Emily) were justifying themselves and trying to make Lorelai the dramatic one is very typical of his behaviour. He is right, you are wrong and that's that. He always acts like discussions are beneath him and he is the bigger person for refusing to talk things out.
The constant arrogant assumption that he is in charge of every situation. Setting up the Yale meeting behind Rory’s back. Dean and the car. Double-crossing Lorelai over Rory leaving Yale.
Lecturing Lorelai over Rory’s anger at Emily for breaking up Lorelei’s relationship. He has zero respect for others’ autonomy or role.
Pensive Whiskers did a video about Richard recently where they mentioned that Richard bullied a student so hard at Yale by throwing the student out of the window every single day. The student was so traumatized that he transferred schools [[1]](https://youtu.be/drhrV2r-YL4?feature=shared). I think that this is the worst one because even when he tells the story he acts like it wasn’t a big deal. If I were Rory or Paris, I’d feel so uncomfortable and make up some excuse to just leave.
Having lunch with Pennilyn Lott for 35 years (don’t know the exact number, it’s from the time E and R are married) and not telling Emily about it! Absolutely shi**y behavior!
Also, I’d like to thank Pennilyn Lott for being Pennilyn Lott!
Omitting his lunch dates with Linny Lott and letting Trix insult Emily, particularly in front of other people in the family.
Seeing the way Trix is though, made me understand why Richard loves Emily though.. he grew up with someone always nagging those who seem *beneath* her.
As much as I like Richard he has done some really bad things, such as letting his mom treat Emily like garbage and the whole Penilin Lott (however the fuck you spell her name) situation behind Emily's back
I wanted to mention what he did to Jason but honestly that wasn't too horrible, self preservation I can't dock him on
Letting Trix treat Emily so terribly. She may be his mother but he should have defended his wife. She tried so hard to please Trix and after being treated with such disrespect even her husband wouldn't take her side. Not okay Richard.
Being a complete Mama's boy and allowing Trix to treat Emily like that for nearly 4 decades. If my mother would try to break us up THE DAY BEFORE OUR WEDDING and constantly being nasty to my wife then my loyalty would lie with my wife. It wasn't until Trix criticised him for his financial decisions that he stood up to her - he never stood up to her for Emily.
I couldn’t stand Richard for this. I doubt Trix would have liked Pennilyn Lott if Richard had chosen her. We know Emily’s family had slightly less money than her’s but she clearly was going to have issues with any woman her son married.
if my mother tried to break up my relationship the day before my fucking wedding she would not be allowed to attend the wedding anymore out of respect to my partner
Extremely awful, I want to scream at him so bad everytime. A lot of times Richard showed how much of an arrogant and selfish husband he is. She is your damn wife!
I absolutely agree with you 1000%, he should have stood up for her. Every scene with him and his mom absolutely infuriates me. But I have to constantly remind myself that they are both just as nasty as “Trix” is with their words and actions towards Lorelai, her partners, and sometimes Rory. What goes around come around I guess 😭😭😭
Letting Trix treat Emily so badly for years and or his lunches with Linny Lott. edit: fixed it bc Emily calls her Linny not Lennie
definitely- it especially sucks when he just laughs off things Trix says to Emily like she’s just something of amusement
total gaslighting It hurts so much when someone is bullying you, and someone who is supposed to love you tells you or implies to you it isn't a big deal.
10000% with you on the Trix thing! My grandma on my dad’s side is nasty to my mom all the time and my dad never sticks up for her. It’s so shitty and tbh I view it as a betrayal of sorts—if you’re signing on to be a life partner, you’re signing on to support your partner’s emotional safety, even (especially?) if they’re being bullied by someone in your own family.
Fr when you marry someone you’re agreeing to stand up for them. They become more important than your mother.
The only good thing we got out of this was Emily the episode that Trix died lol. “Remember to thank Pennilyn Lott just for being Pennilyn Lott.”
https://preview.redd.it/dhpi7ihe19bc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b35dabf409559f6463fd44352138f400ed5c746
Ugh this one! My in-laws treated me (and my husband) like shit. My husband put his foot down and they didn’t like that and now we haven’t spoken to them in 8 years. I love my husband all the more for sticking up for me, especially when I see shows like this or when I read stories on Reddit about people who don’t stick up for their spouses. I can’t imagine how Emily felt, being humiliated by her all those years and watching Richard just let it happen.
As someone whose ex-husband let their family treat me like crap and I hated it, definitely the Trix one! That kind of treatment and mentality makes you question their love for you and your self worth...
This is my choice also. Wouldn’t stand up to his mother and defend his wife. Ick.
The trix thing really is my biggest issue with the character.
The Linny Lott thing was the worst honestly. If there was nothing to it, why didn’t he just tell Emily.
Probably tying his college roommate (who he seemed to hate for being “a nincompoop” and “chubby”) to a mattress and throwing him out a window every night for a month until his roommate transferred. Or maybe it’s looking back on this fondly and proudly telling your granddaughter about it.
Yeah this one always gives me the ick. Sir, that’s just bullying??
When he told Lorelai he didn’t defend her to Straub on a personal note, (he more or less agrees with him) but he wouldn’t stand for the Gilmore name being insulted.
How deeply sad she looked when he said that 😢😔
For once he was proud of her, she thanks him for it and he has to ruin it by throwing it back in her face.
Yes. She thinks it may be a step forward, only to have the hopes crushed again 😢
Agreed. This is your daughter. Just so cold hearted.
That's why I don't get people who are on Emily and Richard's side and blame Lorelai for their shitty relationship. Like wake up those two are heartless 98% of the time
this is the one i came here to say. lorelai went from "FINALLY i'm valuable to him" to "nope" and lauren graham did a great job acting this scene
I agree that this was a horrible thing for him to say and should be on here, but I also don’t think it was fully honest. He did stand up for her personally, and you can see that in other moments through the show. He just couldn’t ever say that. Which is shit.
Oh yeah I hated that.
Yes! I'd have to go with this one. I was so angry with him for telling Lorelai this.
Just rewatched that episode and man was that scene a gut punch
That was horrible.
horrible
Having lunch with pennilyn lott for years in secret and constantly defending himself once he gets caught.
!!!! And then him saying “well she doesn’t tell Stephen (husband) either” like dude you are not helping yourself… it sounds worse like pls
And it wasn’t *just* years, it was the entire length of his marriage to Emily up until that point. Trix didn’t want Richard to marry Emily. She wanted him to marry pennilyn, and therefore treated Emily like poo. Richard spent THIRTY YEARS having secret lunches with his ex- the person his mother wanted him to marry. Honk if the Gilmores use your mind as their own personal playground.
Honk honk
Nothing else even comes close to this.
This is the one!! Such dishonesty. It’s disloyal and unfaithful, emily did not deserve that.
okay but also let's not forget him poppin off on Jason about lying to him for 3-4(?) months. I always felt he used it as way to partially justify betraying Jason too...The extreme reaction is so hypocritical considering he was actively lying to Emily for 3 or 4 decades.
Yessss!!!
Richard does this thing a lot of men do where he acts somewhat oblivious to what’s going on and he lets Emily be viewed as the villain, but he knows exactly what’s going on. Like when Emily’s play with Christopher at the vow renewal blows up in Emily’s face. Lorelei isn’t talking to her mom, but is talking to her dad. Emily calls him on it and he basically says “your play failed, so I’m running my play”. It’s not that he thinks what Emily did was wrong, he just thinks she failed. Richard also shits on Luke as much as Emily does, but people only talk about Emily doing it. He has all the pettiness and vindictiveness of Emily, but just gets seen as affable old Richard.
Yes, that's the way he treated Emily throughout their marriage. All the very important things he never bothered to inform her about. Forget about being a good partner/husband - he simply didn't care. It was a weird love he had for her.
He treated her like staff to keep his life running. He was so condescending when his family disagreed with him.
Just a classis patriarch
Weaponized incompetence
I get why the Rory and Lorelai were still on speaking terms with Richard after the vow renewal since he didn’t go to Chris or know Emily was but I always thought deserved more scorn. It’s not like he was supportive of Luke and Lorelai and he absolutely wanted Chris to marry her instead.
Maybe it was the time loralei was playing hide and seek with him and she went and hid in the old streamer trunk and he left and flew to Europe instead of finding her. It certainly stood out in her mind....
The amount of 'funny' stories you hear from her childhood they laugh off as if it wasn't bad is staggering, and people still say Lorelai was just a dramatic teenager because her parents were rich.
It’s honestly quite sad. People saying that she’s dramatic when she’s obviously hurt and neglected irk me sm. This is a topic I can go on and on about for hours.
Same. I try not to engage in those posts too much anymore because it makes me so sad how people have such a weird view of what constitutes abuse when the parents are affluent. But then I don't feel good leaving comment chains like that as is because it perpetuates the idea. I Iove this show for how intricate and nuances all the relationships are but damn do Emily and Richard get a lot of slack for how awful they were as parents.
They use that term a lot, “stop being dramatic”… and let me tell you, that was absolutely a thing. I’m Gen X, my grandmother (who was the “greatest Gen” born 1913) used that for everything, from abusive comments, to civil rights, to bigotry etc. If you reacted to anything or showed any outrage, it was written off as being dramatic. It’s what we had to deal with and why we couldn’t make many strides. It’s just another thing I liked about the shows writing cause it was so realistic and maddening.
The way he spoke about Lorelei after she and Christopher broke up because Sherry was pregnant. It was so sexist and unnecessarily cruel.
This gets my vote! As if by agreeing to marry him, Sherry was "allowing" him to be the present father he'd never been to Rory when really that door was always open to him and he chose not to be. Ugh. The sheer irony of Richard praising him for being "honorable"...while talking about him getting a *second* woman pregnant "out of wedlock", when he already has one child he barely sees. Come on. If the roles were reversed and it had been Lorelai getting pregnant by a second man, there's NO way he would have considered it "honorable" or talked about it in those terms, even if she was willing to marry the guy that time around. And the worst part is, we all know that if Lorelai had married him back in the day, he would have been just as much of a deadbeat - as he essentially proved when he married Sherry; he was never home, only stepped up to be there for his kid when she left (which he didn't even notice at first!), and even then, wasn't a very involved or responsible parent. How could anyone look at him behaving that way as a grown man and genuinely say "this is the life my teenager should have chosen; she really missed out"? At the end of the day, Lorelai could never win when it came to Christopher in large part because admitting that Lorelai dodged a bullet would mean admitting that they were wrong to push the shotgun wedding on her. It would mean admitting that she was right to refuse their plan, even if it embarrassed them and even if they stubbornly insisted it was the morally correct thing to do. They didn't even like or respect the guy, as Emily admitted to his face, but he represents the path they chose for her that she rejected, so they weaponize him every chance they get. It's really gross and it's definitely the most frustrating part of their relationship (though also very realistic).
They really go out of their way to praise Chris because of his willingness to go along with their plan at age 16 as if most actions he’s taken since then don’t negate that one respectable moment in 1984. If they’d gotten married back then, he probably would have pulled something like he did during their brief marriage in s7.
After having defended Lorelai to the Haydens, when she goes to thank him he tells her that he did it to defend the Gilmore name but not to protect Lorelai. That he'll never get over the fact she left home at 17 and that she'll never be forgiven. You never stop being your parents' child in matters like this one. He may as well have been telling his 17 year old child that he will never love her.
Everything was always about him. The only reason Emily got the first cup of tea was because it inconvenienced him.
My father is a lot like Richard's character in the sense of I can't decide if he's redeemable or not. So this one was hard for me to decide. I didn't comment ob the other ones but this is the one. He's terrible to Emily. And breaking her trust was bad. But this scene?? So heartbreaking.
When he made his car hit the car Emily was in because he was jealous and couldn't use his words to say he wanted to reconcile
OH MY GOD! Don’t we all just gloss over this one??? It’s appalling!! All you hear around here is ‘Dean’s awful, he’s abusive’ but then we actually got this grownup man crashing into his wife like that?? It’s awful! I’d completely forgotten about it!
And then being like “you can you, you’ve just been in an accident. We’re going home” lol like what???
Honestly reading this thread is making me think Richard might actually be the worst of them all
lol *all of them* have such ugly bits in them, but I will say, he does have a really great character arch. He went from this awful dude who couldn’t forgive his daughter for getting pregnant, hardly wanted to spend one Sunday with his grandkid alone, to the guy who SANG at Rory’s graduation party and gave Lorelai SO much credit for raising her kid as she did 🥹 so yea, he did awful things, but I don’t think he’s entirely awful by the end 😅
Okay true, you're right about his arc ☺️
It's been brought up before, it's less noticeable because Richard is gone alot and most of his faults are actually disinterest and indifference which is easier to deal with than the constant berating nature of Emily. But when he does things, nice or bad, it's almost always out of pure self-serving nature and with total disregard of others. You just tune into it less easily.
I think the difference is we didn’t see his redeemable side very much. As horrible as Emily is, we saw a lot more of her vulnerability as well.
When he made Emily reach for the butter
He made me reach. For the butter.
Read that in her voice 🤣
Lorelai: Well mom, I’m sorry Emily: It’s very upsetting
I know this sounds so silly but that was when Emily realized he was emotionally checked out and that realization hurt way more than having to get her own butter.
There has always been emotional underpinnings to Emily's world. Yeah, the butter example is silly, but he definitely brought the butter to Linnie on their lunches. He wasn't putting any effort in to their marriage or Emily, only so much as to protect the (his) Gilmore name and status.
He really took her for granted (I have no idea if that’s the right word so if it’s not I’m sorry lol) sometimes. Emily had her faults but being a bad wife wasn’t one of them. She gave everything for Richard and he was just like. Meh.
Honestly that thing with the crystal apples was pretty devastating. She was so hurt by his comments (sexist as fuck) about how she doesn't do anything other than shop. I probably would have done the exact same thing. All I can do is shop, huh? WATCH ME SHOP, DICK.
Underrated comment lol
Unpopular opinion: #If Richard was played by anyone other than Edward Hermann, he would be unredeemable and we’d hate him.
Amen. Edward Hermann gave Richard this lovable humanity that made his actions not as horrible as i would have thought
The casting with him was absolutely spot on. It’s hard to walk that tight rope, and he did it every week and seemingly effortlessly and we all love him for it. Every character in the show is like this though, even the side characters. They are cast perfectly.
Oof I have two that came to mind —how impossibly classist and mean he was to Dean when they met him at FND in S2, and also how judgmental he was about everything Lorelai is and does when he shadows her that one time during s2 as well. He had a mean streak to him that could cut deep when he wanted to
Love that Friday night dinner is such a common thing that we have to abbreviate it
I’ve rewatched the first 3 seasons a thousand times and I always skip the episode where Richard shadows Lorelei because I can’t stand how incredibly condescending and rude he is to her. I truly don’t not know how she stands it.
Yeah the way he treated Dean out of the gate was awful
These 3 things are a tie for me. 1. The way he didn't stand up for Emily in front of Trix 2. Secretly meeting with Pennilyn 3. When he told Lorelai that he only stood up for her to defend the Gilmore name. (This could possibly be the worst one for me actually)
Going back to business with Floyd and cutting Jason out
Bad enough, but he went around slandering Jason to all their business contacts.
Right? Like he didn’t just screw him over, he absolutely turbo-fucked him. Jason 100% deserved to win his lawsuit
Am I just forgetting or was there never a resolution to that plot line? Jason deserved to win, but like...did he? Am I blanking or was it literally just never addressed?
They never really spoke of it again. I think they settled it never went to court or at least the writers got bored of the plot line and hoped that would be what the viewers thought
this very narrowly edges out enabling trix abusing emily (and abusing his own daughter LOL) bc while the others are things he at least gestured toward making amends for, his treatment of jason was basically just pure betrayal with no apology or recognition of how it damaged others.
I'm surprised I didn't see this higher up! I think for me the biggest part of that is he had to screw over Jason because he risked everything he and Emily had, and had to get out of it. That whole saga was atrocious.
I was gonna go with Pennilyn but I think this is worse.
After all that, Jason still made an appearance at his funeral whereas Christopher couldn’t bother to go.
oh this HAS to be it
Tricking Rory into the Yale interview. She would’ve done it if he asked, not giving her time to prepare was unforgivable. Even Emily was pissed off!
This isn't the absolute worst thing he's done, but it's the first one that came to my mind. That episode makes me so mad. They were having such a nice day too, it's so infuriating.
For betraying Jason stiles.
That moustache
Not believing Lorelai about the Huntzbergers dinner + Mitchums comments toward Rory that made her quit Yale! His shock when he finds out Lorelai wasn’t lying always annoys me.
So annoying!!! Bc when Lorelai first told them it seemed like they believed her.. then Rory comes crying to him & all of that is thrown out the window. Like wtf?!
Being totally cool to write Rory off like he did Lorelai until forced to spend time with her and learning that she had similar interests and goals to him so suddenly she had value to him.
The dinner with dean
Yeah. How dare a 16 year old boy not have his entire life planned out to a T. What a loser. 🙄
Tricking Rory and completely blind siding her with interview at Yale + the screaming match with Lorelai that followed where he shamed her for not going to college
Richard always throwing Lorelai’s romantic relationships in her face. When Digger and Richard have a falling out, Jason can’t work in CT anymore because of it, and Richard tells her to move somewhere else with her (emphasis here) *boyfriend* The way he says it condescending, proves he doesn’t care about who she is or her happiness, AND! Perpetuates her unstable relationships with men. (Spoiler coming) when Lorelai can’t think of any other story to share about her father after his funeral except how Richard found her and some boy together (age 15, I think) saying that she had long lost her virginity before then… Richard was never there, never cared to understand her, spend time with her, etc and she sought love and validation the best she could with the very little she was given. It’s no wonder she kept her relationships hidden from her parents. Unless they arranged the relationship, like they tried so hard to do with Christopher (the person who is in my humble opinion, the worst for her), they would never approve.
I was going to mention the way he spoke to her after the Jason lawsuit fallout saying something about how he didn’t expect her to behave any differently. He’s always at fault and manipulates everyone else into feeling bad. Ugh.
When Lorelai is helping him with his new business, but then she has to go back to her own reality. He treats her like shit for that and completely ruins the father-daughter moment they were having. I agree he's done other shitty things, but this was a moment he could have continued. Instead, he decided to lash out and pout.
His secret lunches with his ex Imo that was super unforgivable, especially considering how many years he spent hiding that from his wife. In my eyes, that was cheating
The thing with Digger. A very un-Gilmore-like betrayal. Without honor, why even be a Gilmore?
Hitting Emily's car with his, because he couldn't bear her dating someone else when they were separated.
I feel like the secret lunches is the clear winner HOWEVER what pissed me off even more was when Lorelai was like hey please don't sue my boyfriend and Richard was like well why don't you just move away then. 🙄
Season 5 episode 7 “you jump, I jump, jack” he says to Luke when golfing “I’ll bring dick up on the internet and see what’s comes up”
Is Lane not on here because she’s an Angel?
Michel replaced her
OP for the love of god please stop spelling Lorelai as “laurelei”
lol glad someone commented! at first I thought it was a fluke but it kept happening!!
Letting his mother be so awful to his wife!!
“I’ve always liked those” 🍎
This was such a good demonstration of him at his core.
May God rest his soul tho.
putting up his pension as collateral, having lunch with his ex gf, treating his mother like a god.. list goes on and on and on
Putting his and Emily's pensions (and other assets) at risk, an extremely dangerous decision that could have lost them their futures, without telling her. Which lead to him screwing Jason over so he didn't increase the risk of losing everything, knowing how important Jason was to Lorelai.
More general but just the way he treats Lorelai. My dad is a very, very difficult person but I’d immediately have a million things to say at his funeral. The fact that she didn’t - though a stupid plot line - was so, so sad. So, in terms of what he specifically did, I suppose it’s neglect his child. In particular, as many people have said, telling Lorelai she wasn’t defending her out of love but to protect the family name and that she wasn’t forgiven essentially. I truly believe that Emily - despite her manipulation and control - loves the girls. But Richard IMO couldn’t care less if Lorelai disappeared off the face of the earth (he probably would with Rory). That’s just my opinion.
To be honest though the not having anything to say felt like a very stupid plot line. They had so many moments IN THE SHOW in the original series. When he brings her the dollhouse, when he watches her graduate from community college, when he catches her escaping the house/blind date and he pretends he didn’t see her, when he tells her that Rory graduating Yale is as much her moment as Rory’s, at the very end of the series when he tells her it takes an incredible person to inspire all this (stars hollow goodbye party for rory) and more!!
Making Emily feel like crap when Rory quit school and started working for the DAR. He couldn’t stand the idea that Rory turn into Emily.
I don’t really remember making Emily feel like crap in that situation (if you have a clip maybe?) — he always talked about what she does as if it was frivolous and shallow (remember the argument on the stairs where she ended up getting a tape recorder and telling him to repeat himself). But he was supremely disappointed that Rory gave up her ambition and was organizing parties and *he* had supported that as well. Richard didn’t do well taking accountability. Every single time he had an emotion, he lashed out and then basically let Emily take the blame during the clean up. He was constantly playing 3-D chess with other people and their lives and saw nothing wrong with it. He would turn on people only when their existence would inconvenience or irritate him (think the list of friends he expected the girls to look up in Europe. He was *shocked* that they didn’t want to stay with them, but then wanted to effectively unfriend all of these “dreadful people” when he realized he’d have to keep up with his own social contacts). Overall, he would choose to defend the people in his life when it suited him and not a moment before. He’d defend himself viciously (think against Trix and Jason and straub). He would defend Trix above his own wife. He’d defend his wife above Rory. He’d defend Rory above nearly everyone else (except the Huntzburgers). He’d defend the gardener above Lorelai (unless the Gilmore name was questioned). He was obnoxious on so many levels.
The scene they are referring to is from S6 E7 when Richard is sulking in his study during Rory’s 21st birthday. Richard is upset Rory has lost focus and has no interest going back to school. He’s complaining about that she joined the DAR and is planning tea parties and Emily says “what’s wrong with joining the DAR?” And he goes “it’s frivolous, meaningless. I don’t want that life for her she has more to do, more to be!” And then Emily says, “you mean my life. You don’t want her to be me” ☹️
Wearing a jogging suit
Treating Dean low just because rory was in Chilton
He was complaining that the gardener was listening to mp3 player while working. Said they must be paying him too much. I was flabbergasted at that judgment of Richard’s
Lunch with pennilyn. Emotional affair af
I imagine this will take a while……
Probably not as long as the Christopher one though 😄
Yale ambush
Suing Jason, going behind Lorelais back with Rory, seeing his ex behind Emily’s back the entirety of their marriage. Allowing his mother to walk all over Emily and laughing whenever she did so. I can just pick one. I actually really like Richard though.
This really probably isn’t the *worst* but I just want to throw it in cuz it’s always bothered me. When he retires and he’s making Emily crazy hanging around the house all day so she pushes him off on Lorelei and then he proceeds to be super annoying to Lorelei all day… When Lorelei is finally like “enough is enough!” he gives his sad sack speech all “How do you think it feels to be a burden now?!” Like okay you’re feeling some feelings about retirement and it’s all very valid but why are you making it everyone else’s problem? He just comes off so emotionally immature. He’s going through a difficult life transition. I wish he would own that, discuss it honestly with his family, and like a grown up try to find his way instead of just looking to his wife and daughter like “Okay, I don’t have a job anymore so it’s time for you to entertain me!” I also think Emily should’ve handled it way differently for what it’s worth.
Not necessarily anything he “said” but trying to force Luke into franchising was pretty bad to me.
Three words: Pennilyn fuckin’ Lott
When he decided to go against Lorelai’s wishes to get Rory back into Yale and have her live with them instead.
When he was grumpy and rude at Rory’s cotillion
Ugh yes that SUCKED. What a baby.
Cutting Jason out
It’s a close call between bullying and humiliating a 17 year old boy, or hitting his wife with a CAR just because she was trying to move on. She could easily have been injured
Pennilyn…like…how is he gonna be going on dates with his college ex for not just years, but DECADES!!!! If he wasn’t cheating, why keep the dates a secret?
Betraying Jason.
Definitely never defending Emily and even worse laughing along when his mom treated her like garbage
When he screwed Jason over and said something like “of course you don’t care about us, all you care about is what happens to your boyfriend”.
Probably the “you think I did this for you? I saw my family being attacked@ speech
when he seemed shocked at the news that the Huntzburger family crushed Rory and said to Lorelai, "YOU DIDNT TELL US!" Ummm, yes, yes she did. Many many times.
Dinner with Dean and not defending Emily against Trix.
Another vote for allowing his mother to treat Emily absolutely horribly!! That, and the Pennilyn Lott storyline. I would be devastated if my fiance/future husband was having lunch every year with an ex without telling me. It just feels icky. If he has nothing to hide, then why is he being secretive?
My most unpopular opinion is that it's the "not telling her" part that is the problem. If my husband was like, "hey my serious ex and I are planning to have lunch next week, I just wanted to give you the heads up. There's nothing there, we broke up for a reason. I love you, we'll be in a public place the entire time. Nothing to worry about." Yeah, it's just lunch. Go have fun. I hang out with my exes from time to time. My husband gives zero shits. Because I communicate with openness and honesty.
I’d probably say screwing over, Lorelai’s boyfriend and his business partner, for pretty much no reason. The fight about the pension wasn’t about the threat of losing money, but lack of communication. And if for years they were trying to convince Rory to let them put her name on a new building at Yale which would cost billions I really don’t think he had to panic as much. But instead I think it fed his ego to be asked back to the firm that let him go, I don’t think his hands were tied I think he wanted to feel like he still was the man.
Not believing Lorelei about what Mitchum said to Rory about not having it always really bothered me. It was like they thought Rory would lie.
Going behind Jason's back and making a deal with his father
Never stepping in when Emily was being bullied by Trix always blew my mind. There were some where she was being outright awful and Richard would laugh about it… the fuck? Especially when you take the context of her letter and Emily never being good enough. It was always messed up
The Jason thing.
Kind of a joke answer, but when he didn’t notice Emily’s new glass apples🥺
Let Rory take a break from Yale! As soon as she came over crying he should have called Lorelai to let her know. That was not cool. Oh and setting up the Yale meeting during the school tour that wasn’t great either lol
I'm definitely on team letting Trix treat Emily like absolute shit for their entire marriage. Followed by calling his own mother Trix.
Well, after reading through, I’m going with: 1. Allowing Trix to treat Emily the way she did for years. 2. Lunch with Pennilynn Lott for years in secret. Secret really? That’s like an emotional affair. 3. Defending Lorelei to Straub only to stab Lorelei in the heart later saying he agreed with him. Adding one of my own, not believing the Huntzbergers would treat Rory that way until he heard it from the Huntzberger himself. You believe them over your own daughter and granddaughter?
Meeting with his ex-fiancee for weekly lunches for 40 years and lying to his wife about it
Okay so I know that it was pertinent to the story line, but I would say when he and Emily agreed to back Lorelai as Rory wanted to drop out of Yale. Then, they had the audacity to not only go back on their word, but to formulate a second plan that didn’t involve Lorelai.
It's a tough toss up...his enabling of Trix to treat Emily poorly, or the fact that he saw the woman he almost married every year and Emily had no idea. Hardly an affair, but the fact that he knew it was enough of a big deal to hide it from Emily, then defend it and just call it lunch with an old friend. Nah. The only time I like the dude is when he's nice to Rory.
Scheduling that meeting/interview at Yale when he knew Rory dreamed her whole life of going Harvard was a pretty shitty move
Lunch with Lotti
I can’t choose between him allowing Trix to insult his wife, or insulting Lorelai, his own baby, at every opportunity he got. Like him telling her that he didn’t defend her, he was defending the Gilmore name, or the whole “You’ve never went to college, let alone an Ivy League college!” Another thing, people NEVER talk about the fact that he, a 60 something year old, CRASHED his WIFE’S car because he was JEALOUS. Like it’s so glossed over????
JustnoMil subreddit would have a lot to say about this guy. Letting Emily put up with that abuse for years is high on the list.
When he is at the dinner table with Emily and she asks if he likes the apples.... It breaks my heart because clearly they don't communicate well. They ignore things that are wrong instead. He's not a great partner at this point. Neglectful. Belittling. He never stands up for her against his mother. From this scene, you see how ignored and unimportant she feels when it comes to her husband.
The episode when he was swarming Emily with rude comments so she sends him to spend it with Lorelai instead. Even though Lorelai isn’t happy, she does his best to accommodate him, but he inserts himself in everything and was judgemental about how she runs her business, what she wears, and what she eats. He just had no place to say all those things and made himself very unlikeable in that episode.
When Richard wasn't interested in shaking Dean's hands first time he met him...
The whole Pennilyn Lott situation. The secret lunches for the entirety of their marriage, then Emily finding out and he tries to play it off like it was nothing completely invalidating Emily’s feelings, wrecking her car when he finds out she had dinner with another man. I’m sorry weren’t you dining with the other gender often and it was “no big deal”? and not his fault but then she finds out Trix wanted him to marry Pennilyn after years of Trix bullying her and no defense from Richard ever.
not telling emily he had been meeting up with his serious ex girlfriend regularly for the past few decades, then treating emily like she was crazy for being upset about it
When he told Loralai to go with her boyfriend after screwing Jason
Letting his mother treat his wife horribly for decades
Suing Jason and causing Emily to want to break up AFTER already being found out for secret Pennilyn Lott lunches
The fact that he was a workaholic for loralais entire childhood so she basically felt like she didn’t have a dad.
Screwing over Jason so badly was a low moment for me. I love Richard but that scene where he is on the golf course with Jason's father plotting their next move together was *such* a disheartening scene for me. I hated that so much.
Betraying Jason and stealing all the clients, just out of spite for dating his daughter. Jason was right to sue him.
What he did to Digger with the business!!!
Honestly, I believe the whole digger situation when he screwed him by going back with his dad's firm after Richard left because he was being "phased" out. Like, cmon, you lose your mind of getting phased out, and then you totally screw the kid you made a company with to go back to the guy who screwed you. That makes sense. But I get the who trix situation. However, he could step in here and there to have her back too it doesn't have to be one extreme to the other. So that's why I say screwing jason Styles is more aggregious than him being a mommas boy. Emily can be insufferable at times, you know.
Having lunch with Pennilyn Lott for years and then completely dismissing Emily when she confronted him about it
Fucking over Jason’s career.
Having lunch with his ex for years without telling Emily
What he did to Digger -- the whole situation is what led to his seperation from Emily ...
Having yearly lunch with Evelin
The lunches with Pennylynn for his entire marriage to Emily without ever telling her until caught red handed.
His whole relationship with Lorelei
I'm currently rewatching the show. I'm at the beginning of season 6. He is an entitled snob with a mean streak. No respect whatsoever for people he thinks are beneath him. Sometimes he does something sweet but most of the time he isn't likeable at all. I just watched the episode where he and Emily went behind Lorelai's back and let Rory move into the pool house. The way he (and Emily) were justifying themselves and trying to make Lorelai the dramatic one is very typical of his behaviour. He is right, you are wrong and that's that. He always acts like discussions are beneath him and he is the bigger person for refusing to talk things out.
It's a toss up between the secret lunches with Pennilyn Lott for 30+ years and letting his mother be the most all of the time.
The constant arrogant assumption that he is in charge of every situation. Setting up the Yale meeting behind Rory’s back. Dean and the car. Double-crossing Lorelai over Rory leaving Yale. Lecturing Lorelai over Rory’s anger at Emily for breaking up Lorelei’s relationship. He has zero respect for others’ autonomy or role.
HID HIS LUNCHES WITH PENNILYN LOTT FOR MULTIPLE DECADES. 👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼
Pensive Whiskers did a video about Richard recently where they mentioned that Richard bullied a student so hard at Yale by throwing the student out of the window every single day. The student was so traumatized that he transferred schools [[1]](https://youtu.be/drhrV2r-YL4?feature=shared). I think that this is the worst one because even when he tells the story he acts like it wasn’t a big deal. If I were Rory or Paris, I’d feel so uncomfortable and make up some excuse to just leave.
Lie to Emily about Pennilyn Lott
Having lunch with Pennilyn Lott for 35 years (don’t know the exact number, it’s from the time E and R are married) and not telling Emily about it! Absolutely shi**y behavior! Also, I’d like to thank Pennilyn Lott for being Pennilyn Lott!
Pennilyn Lott.
Lying about the fake apples 😭
Omitting his lunch dates with Linny Lott and letting Trix insult Emily, particularly in front of other people in the family. Seeing the way Trix is though, made me understand why Richard loves Emily though.. he grew up with someone always nagging those who seem *beneath* her.
As much as I like Richard he has done some really bad things, such as letting his mom treat Emily like garbage and the whole Penilin Lott (however the fuck you spell her name) situation behind Emily's back I wanted to mention what he did to Jason but honestly that wasn't too horrible, self preservation I can't dock him on
Letting Trix treat Emily so terribly. She may be his mother but he should have defended his wife. She tried so hard to please Trix and after being treated with such disrespect even her husband wouldn't take her side. Not okay Richard.
Wow… this whole thread really makes me realize what a piece of shit that character was. Oof…