5x13 Wedding Bell Blues

[8.7/10] Every T.V. show is a collaboration, requiring the work of scores of people to make things work. It’s an easy shorthand to refer to a showrunner as the visionary behind a program, to ascribe every success and failure to them, but that shortchanges the many people, both above and below the line, whose work and talent is needed to make an episode or a series what they are.

But man, it’s hard not to watch an episode like “Wedding Bell Blues,” both penned and directed by series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, and wish that, in a perfect world, she could have done the same for every episode of the series. That’s not to malign the scores of great writers and directors who’ve worked on the show, but there’s just this little extra zing, this extra dimension to the characters, some unreplicable quality that elevates the bulk of the episodes under her name.

The easiest place to see that is in the dialogue. It’s obviously one of Gilmore Girls signature elements, and as much as there’s great back-and-forth patter in this episode, there’s also some all-time great, quotable lines. “When a woman gives birth to a crack baby, you do not buy her a puppy” is, perhaps, the most Emily line ever uttered. The emcee announcing “for the very first time...this century” when introducing Richard and Emily had me in stitches. And Cousin Marilyn's “You cannot keep a group of Anglo-Saxons waiting this long or they'll start to form more clubs” is an all-timer. ASP knows how to turn a phrase, and that was out in full force here.

But this is also arguably her finest hour as a visual stylist. Again, it’s reductive to ascribe every visual flourish to the credited director with the potluck of operations that is a T.V. set, but there’s more visual storytelling here than Gilmore Girls usually engages in. The camera captures the frenetic, controlled chaos as lives and relationships intersect at the reception. The way ASP and her team shoot Emily walking down the aisle creates a sense of dynamism to what could otherwise be a straightforward scene. And the collection of reaction shots during the ceremony, from the Gilmore Girls glancing off at their beaus (or prospective beaus) and those beaus in turn looking lovingly at the objects of their affections tells the story of the complex, intertwining relationships better than even Sherman-Palladino’s cracker jack dialogue ever could.

In the same way, what’s so notable about “Wedding Bell Blues” is how it plays with the idea of cause and effect. Unlike most Gilmore Girls episodes, which tend to have a pretty well-defined A-story, B-story, C-story etc., this episode is basically one big story with a number of moving parts. The way Sherman-Palladino keeps that from feeling like a big jumble is having a clear sense of progression to these events, how one moment leads to the next and ties all the disparate plot threads floating around together by the end of the episode.

You have Emily’s speech and invitation to Chris in the last episode, which leads him to give his little speech about how Lorelai seized the moment and kissed him when they were teenagers, which leads to Rory attempting to show the same confidence with Logan, which leads Lorelai to find the two of them in flagrante, which leads Chris to make a big show of trying to be the angry, protective father, which leads Luke to bring up the ways in which he’s been more of dad to Rory than Chris has, which leads Chris to let slip why he’s here and what Emily told him, which leads Lorelai to tell her mother that the two of them are “done.”

It’d be too much to call it clockwork. Like real life, there’s too many bumps and detours on the road here and there to call it something so streamlined and direct. But in a momentous episode, one that could have easily crumpled under its own weight given how much dramatic stuff happens, is instead one that feels nimble and effective in how it collects all these bubbling narrative points and puts them in line.

There’s even some great comedy beyond the quotable lines here (and a great return engagement from Cousin Marylin). The impromptu bachelorette party for Emily is a hoot, between the exchange student not understanding why anyone would do a vow renewal, to poor Gypsy being cornered by Emily as the Gilmore matriarch drinks and dishes to all of Lorelai’s friends. There’s even some fairly dark humor when Lorelai’s prank with the seating chart leads to the wedding planner getting fired, or Richard and Emily plot to kick out the painting class in the salon just because they can.

And amid all the dramatic undertakings here, there’s also a great deal of charm to Richard and Emily’s reunion. The way Richard looks at Emily as she’s walking down the aisle is heartwarming. And his little story about the song to soothe Lorelai’s ear infection being “their song” for a night is the sort of lived-in detail that really works. As much as I had my issues with the way their break-up and reconciliation went down, the time the show kept them separated makes their coming together and reestablishing their dynamic all the sweeter.

There’s also at least what appears to be some parallels to the budding romance between Rory and Logan, where the two are playful but also direct with one another when needed, in a way that it feels like Richard and Emily would approve of. Lorelai, on the other hand, certainly wouldn’t. It’s sharp writing again from Sherman-Palladino in the scene where Lorelai gives her opinion on Rory’s piece on the Eternal Life Club, and it becomes a talisman for both of their feelings about the bourgeoisie class, feelings that are very directly tied to who the representatives of that class are to each of them at the moment.

And god help me, I may be a little bit Team Logan here. The slap-slap-kiss vibe the show tried to do with Rory and Jess works much better here, with Logan being more sly than a jerk at this point. More than that, I love the fact that Rory takes Chris’s words to heart and makes her own move rather than waiting to be chased, and I love that Logan is upfront with her, telling her that she’s something special but that he’s not boyfriend material, and makes sure this is what she wants before letting her make her own choices regardless. There’s a chemistry there that was only intermittently present between Rory and any of her other past love interests, with plenty of places for it to go and conflicts it could present. Color me cautiously optimistic.

And as mentioned, the blow-up over Lorelai and Rory’s two dads finding her and Logan together creates some meaningful, charged scenes as well. I don’t tend to like it when Gilmore Girls goes over the top, and lord knows there’s something uncomfortable about the way that both Christopher and Luke revert to the “get away from my daughter you heathen boy” routine, but this episode feels like it earns those heightened moments rather than just depositing them into the scene for the added drama.

Chris, rightly or wrongly, feels like he’s meant to be with Lorelai and feels like he’s being squeezed out of his ideal life by this interloper, which is an interesting counterpoint ot how Lorelai felt with Sherry. And Luke, though arguably overstepping his bounds, is right to say that he’s been there for Rory in ways that Chris hasn’t. And Lorelai is 100% right to say that it’s not their business right now, and to confront Rory about the foolishness of what she’s doing.

And she’s right in her reaction to the realization of what Emily put Chris up to. So often the show goes for the heightened drama, the impassioned arguments, the major blow ups when these sorts of revelations come down. The simple “you and me, we’re done” gains power from its comparative simplicity. This is not Lorelai arguing with her mother, or berating her mother, or challenging her mother. It’s just the last straw, a simple declaration that things are over, that signifies how sacred a thing Emily tampered with.

Amy Sherman-Palladino understands that complex web of emotions between her characters better than any other writers. She gets the humor and the patter and the dialogue of the show so perfect that it carries things through from start to finish. And now she has the visual flair, to go along with the keen understanding of how to move the multi-faceted story along, that makes episodes like these stand outs and shows off the greatness of the show and its creator.