1x15 Christopher Returns

[4.8/10] Fun fact: this is the first Gilmore Girls episode I ever watched front-to-back, and it put me off the show. Something about the melodrama of Lorelai and Chris and the emphasis on quirkiness and the predictable clichés of it all convinced me that this show was not for me. I expected to like it better this time, considering that a pair of better episodes endeared me to the series and the characters, and as my write-ups portend, I’ve generally quite enjoyed the show and the episodes that led me to this point.

Imagine my surprise then when, revisiting this one, even with a better understanding of the show and its characters, I could confirm that yes, in fact, my original impression was right and this isn’t a very good outing for Gilmore Girls.

Maybe it’s just the presence of Christopher that messes things up. It feels like the show is going for a few things with him as a character, few of which work. The most obvious is that he’s supposed to be kind of charming, which allows him to live large off of promises he never keeps. Richard and Emily’s enthusiasm for him, Lorelai’s falling back into old habits with him, and his fly-by-night business stuff suggest he’s supposed to have a con artist’s charm, and he just doesn’t. Obviously, your mileage may vary, but there’s supposed to be something that suggests why people (other than Rory) are so anxious to have him in their lives, and it just isn’t there in the performance.

By the same token, the show seems to be going for a sense in which Christopher and Lorelai have this bond and connection that persists even though Lorelai has her serious qualms and reservations about him. It seems to be going for a “I shouldn’t do this, but part of me wants to” between the two of them, and the lack of chemistry doesn’t support that. There’s a solid tack to the episode that this whole incident brings Lorelai back to when she was 16 and that results in her making the sorts of mistakes sixteen-year-old Lorelai would. But for a character we just met for five minutes last episode, the pair don’t have that physical and emotional shorthand that speaks to them as old friends who can fall back into familiar patterns.

To be Frank, Chris just comes off as a bland-ish, tryhard sort of jerk, without much in the performance or the writing that would justify why anyone would keep him around. There’s lipservice paid to it. Rory wanting her dad in her life is the one that makes the most sense and feels the most earned. Emily and Richard wanting to approximate being one big happy family works as subtext, though again, Chris doesn’t quite have the personality to pull off the warm reception he receives. And the overwritten stuff with Lorelai’s “I’ve known him since I was six. He knows all my secrets routine” feels told more than shown when their interactions don’t play as though they have a history.

So what’s good in this one? Well, I like the yin and yang (and...yin again?) of Richard here. He initially talks up Chris and seems to speak of him more highly than his own daughter. Then, when Chris’s dad Strove (what kind of name is that) impugns her, Richard not only defends her, but nearly comes to fisticuffs and more importantly, affirms that Lorelai is very good at what she does. And then, just to complete the cycle, when Lorelai comes to thank him, he snaps back that this doesn’t wipe away all the hardship Lorelai put them through, how much the events sixteen years ago disrupted their lives and hurt them, and how it’s not as though everything is okay. There is a truth and complexity to Lorelai’s relationship with her father, and that is one of the few things that “Christopher Returns” vindicates in a satisfying way.

Another is Emily’s short but meaningful interaction with Rory. Her trying to speak well of Strove and then admitting “Who am I kidding, the man’s an ass” is a great moment. And Emily reassuring her granddaughter that whatever the disappointments and regrets from that tumultuous time in the Gilmore family sixteen years ago, Rory is not one of them and they are all proud of and grateful for her is the right shade of sweet.

But that all stems from a familial explosion that feels far too neat and paint-by-numbers. Of course Chris’s parents start trouble, and everyone’s feeling awkward and it ends in confrontation. Again, I like where it goes for Richard, but it feels like such a tired attempt to do family drama and hit the “we’re trying to make this work but it’s all wrong” theme hard. Again, there’s a decent enough germ of an idea here about everything reverting Lorelai and others to where things where when Lorelai got pregnant, but it’s done in such a hamfisted, on-the-noise manner that it doesn’t really land.

The same goes for Lorelai and Chris’s fight the next day and Chris’s proposal. Normally, Gilmore Girls is pretty darn good at balancing Lorelai’s quick wit with its more serious scenes, but here it makes for exchanges where the show tries too hard to do one or the other. If you don’t buy into the notion that there’s anything that would attract Lorelai to Chris, then the entire subject of their conversation seems wrong. The writing is very loud and blunt here, in contrast to the deft hand the series usually has, even when it’s being more direct.

Nevermind the Luke stuff. Chris’s material really suffers when Lorelai and Luke have better chemistry in two minutes than Lorelai and Chris do for a whole episode. Lorelai sleeping with Chris when she should be helping Luke paint like she promised feels like a Melrose Place development rather than a Gilmore Girls development, and the reasons for her doing the one and completing the other feel thin and out of character.

That’s the big overall problem with “Christopher Returns” for me. Everything feels out of character for the show I’ve come to know and enjoy over the prior fourteen episodes. The writing isn’t as sharp. The characters aren’t as believable. The dialogue isn’t as crackling. And the connections between the people on the screen don’t feel as lived-in or real. It’s not hard to understand why I was put off from the show with this as my opening salvo -- it mutes so many of the things the show does well, and turns up the overblown drama and odd character choices that don’t fit the stylized but down to earth world Gilmore Girls created in the prior half season. I can only hope, like Lorelai, that it’s an aberration and not a sign of things to come.