1x20 P.S. I Lo...

[8.8/10] I have to admit, I wasn’t feeling this one at first. For one thing, Rory’s funk seemed to come out of nowhere. It felt like we’d sort of dealt with the Dean thing in “The Break Up Pt. 2” and that Rory was fine, if not necessarily walking on air, in the subsequent two episodes. Now these things come in waves, so it’s not crazy that Rory would feel okay for some number of days or weeks only to have it hit her again later, but there’s still a disconnect here, and it makes it hard to warm to her complete and total wounded/grumpy quality that seems to come out of nowhere relative to her disposition in the past couple of episodes.

That said, there’s the sense of the death of a thousand cuts bit happening. Everything from Dean showing up in her and Lorelai’s “one, two, three” game, and her also running into him studying with Lane that might conceivably set her off. Even the Max thing seems weird, since it’s inappropriate for Mr. Medina to conflate his roles as teacher and mom’s boyfriend to check in on how Rory’s doing personally like that. The whole thing feels sudden, but maybe there’s enough of a fig leaf there to cover it.

On the other hand, I’m still just kind of exhausted by the Lorelai-Luke-Rachel subplot, and it’s barely even gotten started. Lorelai playing faux-girlfriend to Luke -- buying him clothes, insisting he try them on, getting caught in compromising positions -- while Rachel is playing real girlfriend to him feels like such a contrived conflict. Again, I like the germ of the idea here, that Lorelai is overcompensating in trying to be “helpful” by picking out anniversary gifts for Rachel because it helps elide her feelings for Luke, but there’s a fair bit of romcom-esque qualities in the execution that make me involuntarily roll my eyes.

Then, about fifteen minutes into the episode, things suddenly get real. While Rory’s poutiness initially felt out of the blue to me, her argument with Lorelai felt all kinds of hurtful and upsetting in the way that happens when someone is upset and lashes out at someone they care about, not because they’ve done anything wrong, but because they’re there. Rory telling her mom that she goes through boyfriends too quickly for Rory to care is a pointed line and Lorelai’s hurt and anger is evident.

Lorelai’s response is an understandable one delivered with her usual cadence. I like the idea that she didn’t want to throw her happiness in Rory’s face while Rory was still hurting. It provides a relatable, compassionate motivation on Lorelai’s part, but also means that something that affects Rory’s life was kept from her, justifying some of her being upset.

Things get even more interesting when Rory runs away, and chooses to run away to her grandparents house. There’s so many fascinating things that spin off from that decision. We get some great comedy from Emily and Richard trying to head to and avoid a dull stuffed shirt function. We get Emily clearly being touched and just a hint smug that not only is Lorelai having to experience what it’s like for a daughter to run away from you, but that Rory ran to the home that Lorelai ran from. And we get Lorelai panicking about where her daughter is, which allows Lauren Graham to show off some of her terrific dramatic chops.

What I love about all of this is that everything is so layered. For one thing, I always enjoy scenes between Rory and her grandparents, because there’s a rapport that makes everything adorable and funny and heartwarming, but it’s also laden with the fact that she is essentially caught between her mom and her grandmother who are each, in their own way, vying for her love and mentorship at the expense of the other.

I always enjoy scenes between Lorelai and Emily because it’s the inverse of that idea. Lorelai is trying to respect her daughter, not give into Emily playing the dutiful, slightly reproachful caregiver of Rory, and not be overwhelmed by her own self-questioning in the wake of this. From such mildly annoying beginnings, the episode veers into such complex territory that deals with so many different interesting, intersecting dimensions of the characters, with some great comic lines to boot. (Emily telling Richard to say something reassuring to Rory and him responding by telling her that she has “good timing” was a knee-slapper.)

As if that weren’t enough, there’s an incredible heart-to-heart between Rory and Lorelai, one that reveals things about each of them. I like that there isn’t a long drawn out fight, just a stab at understanding one another. And it gives Lorelai a great insecurity to play. She hasn’t told anyone about rekindling things with Max, and after her daughter’s accusations, starts to worry that maybe it has to do with commitment issues on her part. This is extrapolation on my part, but there’s a sense that maybe between being so burned by her first love, and understandably wanting Rory to be her world, Lorelai never really gives herself over to another person she might love.

But more than that, she’s worried that she’s transferred this onto Rory, and the fact that Rory couldn’t return Dean’s “I love you” is a reflection of Lorelai’s own baggage being passed on to her daughter. Again, that’s rich territory -- the fear that not only are you off-balance in some way, but that you’ve jostled a loved one into the same position and it’s keeping them from happiness. It’s a very human conversation between the two women, and their reconciliation and frankness with one another is both heartening and refreshing.

If you’d polled me ten minutes into this episode, I would have expected it to be a clunker, awash in awkward sitcom-esque romance material for both mother and daughter. Instead, as Gilmore Girls does at its best, the episode pivots into being about the relationship between the three women of this family, and how they relate to one another, understand each other, and think about what’s been inherited and returned among them. Just proves that it’s worth judging an episode on where it goes, not just where it starts.