[8.7/10] Rory doesn’t have a storyline in this episode, but she’s the fulcrum for the two bigger storylines in it. And that’s what I really liked about this one. It’s not that I don’t like Rory getitng her own plotlines; it’s that this episode isn’t on rails, with A-plots and B-plots and C-plots. It’s an episode with two major narratives that blend and bleed into one another.
The biggest one is the effort, engineered by Rory, to get RIchard and Emily back together, which inadvertently leads to Emily going on her first date since she was in college. There’s a lot to unpack in this one, but I like almost all of it.
I love the contrast between how Rory is with Richard versus how Lorelai is with Emily when they’re enacting Rory’s plan to divide and conquer. Rory thinks she’s so smooth and subtle about this, but Richard is just delighted to have his granddaughter and gently acknowledges what she’s not so stealthily hinting at, with little indication that it really moved him. By contrast, Lorelai is awkward and direct with her mom, unintentionally pushing Emily toward getting back into the dating scene, but ultimately making the point better than Rory (or Lorelai for that matter) could ever realize.
But there’s another interesting parallel, which is that Rory is desperate to get her grandparents back together, but just as desperate to keep her parents apart. Rory’s definitely overstepping her bounds here (on both fronts, really), but it’s interesting both how firm she is about warding Chris off from her mom, and how bold she continues to be about it. It’s clear she’s never really forgiven her dad for a number of things that have happened in the past, both with her mom and with her, and it’s compelling both how Rory tries to defend the Luke/Lorelai pairing and how angry and suspicious she is of her dad here, arguably overzealously if endearingly so.
That only magnifies in interest when Lorelai learns why Chris hasn’t been talking with her, and starts to wonder if there’s a reason she didn’t tell Luke, or at least considers that just because she didn’t think it was a big deal doesn’t mean that other people might not feel that way. What I really loved about this episode is the understated way in which people took lessons from other people and applied them in small but meaningful ways.
Lorelai doesn’t have some grand confession to Luke about lunching with Chris, she just remembers her conversation with Sookie and then slips it into conversation, to minimal reaction from Luke. Luke doesn’t blow up or have a long, drawn-out argument with Lorelai over it. He just remembers his conversation with T.J. (who’s still pretty annoying here), and then quietly tells Lorelai he’s okay with it at the end of a date some other night. And Lorelai doesn’t have some grand conversation with her daughter or her best friend about how they were right; she just doesn’t pick up the phone to call Chris back at the end of the episode, quietly suggesting that she’s taken their concerns to heart, that maybe Luke is different from Max or other past beaus, or at the very least that she’s trying.
And Emily is trying too. She’s hilarious when she’s freaking out about what to wear, and so unsure of herself and realizing that she never thought she’d have to do it again. It’s a great, well-written scene when she contrasts her anxieties on her wedding day with her anxieties about going on this date, and Lorelai asks if this is what she really wants. It’s a superb instance of the show balancing its manic comedy vibe and its heartfelt character focus.
The tertiary stories definitely lean more on the comic side. Jackson’s continuing trials and travails as town selectman are amusing enough, with Kirk’s scissor threat and Miss Patty’s tricking him into having a town meeting being particularly good beats. Michel jousting with the “bathrobe bandits” and Paris fasting for Ramadan are both funny if brief bits. And poor Marty is never going to find the right time to ask Rory out (though maybe he could take some of TJ’s screen time).
Emily, on the other hand, found the right time to ask one of her friends out (and her questioning and then freaking out at Lorelai about her “line” was both adorable and hilarious). The scenes we get of Emily’s date are lovely, and you get the sense for the first time that there might be someone else out there for her, that she could be happy and comfortable and that however rusty she may be, Emily can do this.
But then that one last scene punctures that balloon, and you see the tears, and with them, the unspoken realization that more than unbuttered rolls, this could mean the end of things for her and Richard, and it’s just too much for her. Maybe Emily can do this; maybe it’s the right thing even if it’s hard, but it’s hard, and Gilmore Girls doesn’t shy away from that. Emily is so strong, so unflappable, that when you see those private moments, the ones where she lets her guard down and admits that she’s wounded, you can’t help but feel it too. It’s a quality this whole, nicely understated episode has in spades, and a boon to the series as a whole.
Rory says to Marty that she broke up with Dean "this week" but it must've been longer since there was already another Friday (night dinner) since the party
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2017-12-13T03:26:44Z
[8.7/10] Rory doesn’t have a storyline in this episode, but she’s the fulcrum for the two bigger storylines in it. And that’s what I really liked about this one. It’s not that I don’t like Rory getitng her own plotlines; it’s that this episode isn’t on rails, with A-plots and B-plots and C-plots. It’s an episode with two major narratives that blend and bleed into one another.
The biggest one is the effort, engineered by Rory, to get RIchard and Emily back together, which inadvertently leads to Emily going on her first date since she was in college. There’s a lot to unpack in this one, but I like almost all of it.
I love the contrast between how Rory is with Richard versus how Lorelai is with Emily when they’re enacting Rory’s plan to divide and conquer. Rory thinks she’s so smooth and subtle about this, but Richard is just delighted to have his granddaughter and gently acknowledges what she’s not so stealthily hinting at, with little indication that it really moved him. By contrast, Lorelai is awkward and direct with her mom, unintentionally pushing Emily toward getting back into the dating scene, but ultimately making the point better than Rory (or Lorelai for that matter) could ever realize.
But there’s another interesting parallel, which is that Rory is desperate to get her grandparents back together, but just as desperate to keep her parents apart. Rory’s definitely overstepping her bounds here (on both fronts, really), but it’s interesting both how firm she is about warding Chris off from her mom, and how bold she continues to be about it. It’s clear she’s never really forgiven her dad for a number of things that have happened in the past, both with her mom and with her, and it’s compelling both how Rory tries to defend the Luke/Lorelai pairing and how angry and suspicious she is of her dad here, arguably overzealously if endearingly so.
That only magnifies in interest when Lorelai learns why Chris hasn’t been talking with her, and starts to wonder if there’s a reason she didn’t tell Luke, or at least considers that just because she didn’t think it was a big deal doesn’t mean that other people might not feel that way. What I really loved about this episode is the understated way in which people took lessons from other people and applied them in small but meaningful ways.
Lorelai doesn’t have some grand confession to Luke about lunching with Chris, she just remembers her conversation with Sookie and then slips it into conversation, to minimal reaction from Luke. Luke doesn’t blow up or have a long, drawn-out argument with Lorelai over it. He just remembers his conversation with T.J. (who’s still pretty annoying here), and then quietly tells Lorelai he’s okay with it at the end of a date some other night. And Lorelai doesn’t have some grand conversation with her daughter or her best friend about how they were right; she just doesn’t pick up the phone to call Chris back at the end of the episode, quietly suggesting that she’s taken their concerns to heart, that maybe Luke is different from Max or other past beaus, or at the very least that she’s trying.
And Emily is trying too. She’s hilarious when she’s freaking out about what to wear, and so unsure of herself and realizing that she never thought she’d have to do it again. It’s a great, well-written scene when she contrasts her anxieties on her wedding day with her anxieties about going on this date, and Lorelai asks if this is what she really wants. It’s a superb instance of the show balancing its manic comedy vibe and its heartfelt character focus.
The tertiary stories definitely lean more on the comic side. Jackson’s continuing trials and travails as town selectman are amusing enough, with Kirk’s scissor threat and Miss Patty’s tricking him into having a town meeting being particularly good beats. Michel jousting with the “bathrobe bandits” and Paris fasting for Ramadan are both funny if brief bits. And poor Marty is never going to find the right time to ask Rory out (though maybe he could take some of TJ’s screen time).
Emily, on the other hand, found the right time to ask one of her friends out (and her questioning and then freaking out at Lorelai about her “line” was both adorable and hilarious). The scenes we get of Emily’s date are lovely, and you get the sense for the first time that there might be someone else out there for her, that she could be happy and comfortable and that however rusty she may be, Emily can do this.
But then that one last scene punctures that balloon, and you see the tears, and with them, the unspoken realization that more than unbuttered rolls, this could mean the end of things for her and Richard, and it’s just too much for her. Maybe Emily can do this; maybe it’s the right thing even if it’s hard, but it’s hard, and Gilmore Girls doesn’t shy away from that. Emily is so strong, so unflappable, that when you see those private moments, the ones where she lets her guard down and admits that she’s wounded, you can’t help but feel it too. It’s a quality this whole, nicely understated episode has in spades, and a boon to the series as a whole.