1x03 Summer

[3.3/10] This might be the worst episode in the entire series.

I need some time to reflect, to put it in context, to see where it’s heading in terms of the finale for this very brief season, but my god, this was bad on multiple levels, in multiple ways, for multiple reasons. It is unfunny, and in large portions. It has main characters being awful to one another. And it delivers everything in as high volume, on the nose, and thinly-motivated a fashion as possible. This may be the nadir folks, and it aint pretty.

The town color has never been my favorite part of Gilmore Girls, but Heaven help me, it’s part of the show’s DNA, and I have made my peace with it. The problem is that this sort of thing is usually a side dish, or something in the background to more meaningful stories. That’s kind of sort of what the show is going for here, but whether it’s because the 90-minute episode is still a little ungainly for this type of show, or because, God bless him, writer-director Daniel Palladino just isn’t that good, this is basically “Town Color: The Episode” and almost none of it works.

The comedy here is just atrocious, broad and obvious and unfunny in almost every way possible. I’ll cop to having some initial chuckles at “Stars Hollow: The Musical” both from Taylor aping Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the subtle indications that it’s essentially Taylor’s Glen or Glenda. But it lasts for an embarrassingly long time, is preceded by a dull town meeting with a corny loud air conditioner gag, and is followed by a long committee meeting where everyone inexplicably loves Taylor’s shlock and the show is no more adept at making it funny. (Hey! Taylor doesn’t think Carole King’s song is catchy even though it was a real life hit! Do you get!).

Nevermind the repeated cheesiness of “the thirty-something gang” which is about as broad and sitcommy as you can get. Nevermind interminable, unfunny exchanges from the Gilmore Girls where they judge people by the pool. Nevermind, for goodness sake, the way the show means for Lorelai and Rory ordering around a pair of middle-schoolers like slaves as something that’s supposed to be amusing rather than a paean to their selfishness and sense of entitlement.

The one thing that worked for me comedically in this (give or take April’s pleasant cameo) was the “Boots Were Made For Walking” sequence, which managed to employ some visual humor and flair, rather than the verbal humor that’s normally this show’s forte, and have some fun with it, but even there, debates about east side vs. west side felt like the sort of “pitch the comedy to the cheap seats” style of humor that can only elicit eyerolls.

There’s meatier things that happen in “Summer”, but for the most part, it feels like Gilmore Girls means for this to be the comic relief episode, the dose of wackiness before things get more serious in the final episode, and good lord, is Daniel Palladino the wrong guy to put in charge of that.

In terms of the actual substance of the episode, “Summer” finds each of the Gilmore Girls in some state of being lost once again. The briefest of these storylines in the episode is Emily’s, but it’s also my favorite, possibly because Daniel Palladino had limited real estate to work with. I like the sense that Emily is, once again, not herself, but rather than trying to give all her stuff away or keep up appearances, she’s just drifting, sleeping till noon and not caring what’s in her pastry puffs and seeming disconnected from the world.

The appearance of Ray Wise as her new pseudo boyfriend is a little sudden, but I think it’s supposed to be. (And it proves that old Gilmore Girls adage -- if you learn, to your surprise, that someone on this show was dating someone unexpectedly, chances are it’s someone from Twin Peaks). But the confrontation between Emily and Lorelai is oddly miscalibrated, and while Emily can often be cutting or barbed with her daughter, I’m not sure she’s ever been so cold as when she twists the knife with Lorelai about her and Luke not being “partners” in this one. Maybe you can chalk it up to Emily still being in a weird place, but it mostly just comes off as an uncharacteristic bit of cruelty.

Speaking of cruelty, you have Rory’s story in this one too! Rory is still floundering, and feeling herself losing the feeble pillars of her life that she was clinging to before. (On the comedy front, all the “I’m not back” running jokes were more on-the-nose, cornball humor.) That takes place on three fronts. The first is her romantic life, where Logan’s fiancée has moved in, and so now their dalliance can’t proceed apace, and it’s really hard to feel bad for Rory about it, since she’s both being the other woman to a soon-to-be marriage, and cheating on her own boyfriend.

The second is her professional life, after Rory decides to become the editor of the Stars Hollow Gazette whose editor (super-conveniently) just retired. It’s mainly an excuse for more bad jokes and nothing comes of it beyond a cameo from Jess who gives her the usual “write what you know” spiel and tells her to write a book about her life.

That prompts the third part of her story where Rory decides she wants to write about her life with her mom, and Lorelai, understandably, is uncomfortable with that. And so we see Rory at her absolute worst and most solipsistic, not hearing her mom’s “no”, declaring “I just have to do this” without any consideration for Lorelai’s feelings in a stunning bit of myopia, and all around disregarding the hurt and discomfort this idea is causing the woman who did more for her than anyone in the world.

Nevermind the fact that this whole “you should write a book about your life...it’s just like this show!” is some Little Women-esque bullshit. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen Rory more entitled than when her mom tells her that she wants her life to be private, and Rory can’t or won’t respect that. I get the idea that Rory is supposed to be desperate here and that informs her behavior, and it’s nice to see Lorelai standing up for herself and shutting down Rory, (though she says “kid” so many times in the conversation that it sounds like fan fiction), but it’s just the sort of high volume, over-the-top confrontation that Daniel Palladino writes, and it saps the exchange of any of its power.

Speaking of desperate, Lorelai herself is supposed to be in some dire straits emotionally. She again finds her life changing in ways she doesn’t like and can’t control, as Michel announces he’s leaving for the W Hotel in NYC. They’re conversation at the secret bar is the best scene in the episode, if only because it’s one of the few where the characters act like real human beings. Michel is apologetic and sensitive but brings up the fact that he’s good at what he does and wants more, and Lorelai is hurt to lose another big part of her life, but she understands. It’s the sort of tough but comprehensible decision that puts two people who care about one another in different places that good drama is made of.

If only that were the case for the rest of Lorelai’s deal in this episode. We have this idea that Luke and Lorelai kept their lives separate all this time that’s never really been mentioned before now. You got the impression of the two of them as a pair of lives joined without the paperwork, and the reveal that they don’t share any finances and make such a point of leaving their worlds separate seems unlikely and cheap. The “lying for no good reason” chickens come home to roost, and naturally it leads to the sort of overdone blow-up that Daniel Palladino specializes in.

But not before we get one last heaping spoonful of on-the-nose, nonsensical crap. Look, the “I Am Not Unbreakable” song is actually pretty damn good on its own (even if it plays like an excuse for the Palladinos to shoehorn in their old Bunheads pals). But good lord, it reeks of convenience that Lorelai hears a song that’s exactly on point to her feelings just when the episode needs her to. I’m a proponent of being generous with your willing suspension of belief, but it just makes no sense with Taylor’s show, and comes of really contrived. Lauren Graham is so tremendous as an actor that she almost saves it from her reaction alone, but you can’t escape how constructed the moment feels and that robs this big emotional moment of any limited force it might have.

So then she’s going to go walk (some portion) of a 2,000 mile trail. Which, what? That in no way feels like something Lorelai would do in response to her problems. Maybe she was just reading Wild and got it into her head that this is some kind of solution, and i guess she’s impulsive enough to just dive into something like that, but it doesn’t feel like how Lorelai reacts to hardship, or how she would react to hardship even if she’s in a desperate place. (I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I imagine there’d be a bottle of tequila and Christopher involved.)

The result is that Lorelai is leaving to embark on this journey for thin reasons. She “just has to go” which is the cheapest TV excuse in the world for some grand adventure. And screw me, “because it’s never or it’s now” its worst sort of faux-profound, but ultimately meaningless and insulting to your intelligence type of TV writing.

Make no mistake folks, this is god awful, rendering some characters utterly unlikable, other cruel, and others nonsensical, all while it’s packed in with gobfulls of some of the worst comedy the show has ever conceived. It is almost an achievement, with nearly 150 episodes in the tank, for a show to put out its worst effort this late in the game. But suffice it to say, Daniel Palladino managed it. He made the anti-Gilmore Girls -- an episode bereft of laughs, bereft of any earned feeling, and bereft of anything that would make you want to keep watching if this is the woeful level of quality you can expect.

People surprised with Rory being entitled always surprises me - yes, she is and has always been, the show just don't pushs that button too hard because she's one of the main "sweet likeable" characters, but it's no surprise to me that her life derailed like this on her thirties - being sweet, smart and loved by everyone will never warrant you a succesful career and it's kinda nice the show indulges on that.

But i get the complaints about everything else on this specific episode (the other two were pretty good, great even), the dramatic doesn't work because it's still the same dynamic from the original series and god help me, it was the worst part of it... Luke and Lorelai discussions are about the same things and even triggered by similar events (unintentional omission/lying) and sadly there was nothing new on the Emily x Lorelai front... I felt like the theater parts went on for too long and the jokes were too easy and the culmination of Lorelai simply stating she will go hiking because she has to is oddly unsatisfying - Hope they can wrap it up on the final episode.

Oh and last but not least, I understood and let the body-shaming jokes go by on the original series, but it's the 2010s and you are writing for Netflix, not for The WB on early 2000s, you can and should loose those.

I actually like the storyline in a way that it's very realistic and relatable to our current era. Sure, Rory is supposed to be a good girl and have been portraying that in the past seasons but it is a fact that in this season, she IS 32 already. When i say relatable, i mean that sure, she has good qualifications and personality but it doesn't always guarantee a great job and good future all the time. That's exactly what our current era's about now isn't it? Going to school juz to get the certificates, learning things that we don't apply in our jobs (most of the time) It's not a negative thing to me, don't get me wrong and i'm not gonna preach bout our era. I'm juz saying that they're probably trying to make Gilmore girls a lil more relatable to the current era. As much as i don't like how she's sleeping around with different guys like she's being too "easy", i believe we can all admit that girls nowadays are way too open minded, so Rory's not any different. That's part of growing up and having missed out on major parts of her growing up, i'm not surprised Rory's the way she is now. So far, Gilmore girls are still the same old girls(at least to me), same relationship they have with each other juz more grown uppy now. So yea, it's all good! ^^