7x01 The Long Morrow

[7.3/10] Thirty-six hours. Thirty-six hours is all it would have taken for Lorelai to get what she wanted, for Luke to show up and want to elope, for the two of them to go get their wedded bliss. Instead, we get this, this heartbreaking moment of something being irrevocably damaged, of being so close to that happy ending, only to have it wrecked by one stupid mistake that can’t simply be taken back.

And I’m not even mad at Lorelai. Maybe it’s just that I can see the strings as the plot machine lurches forward, but even as Lorelai makes a mistake that ends the second best thing to happen in her life, I’m more frustrated with the show than I am with the character. It’s a strange state of affairs.

Maybe it’s just that Lorelai immediately regrets the decision. She’s anxious to get the hell out of there when she wakes up with Chris. She seems to accept that things have ended with Luke (even if that may be a bit self-justifying to try to her assuage her guilt over what happened with Chris). And most of all, she’s upfront with Luke about it, even when he’s offering her the thing she wanted so desperately, when it would be so easy to try to pretend that never happened and go on.

That’s what makes it so heartbreaking. The characters haven’t been acting like themselves lately, but that moment feels so true to all involved. Luke needing time to warm up to an idea but then going for it whole hog. Lorelai carrying the weight of a misstep and then facing the pain of it head on. And Luke not wanting to fight, not wanting to be mad, just wanting to go, to just throw up his hands and be devastated. It’s another outstanding performance from Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson, with each communicating how alternatively hopeful and devastating and tragic all of this is with their expressions alone.

That one powerhouse scene helps paper over the fact that this episode feels a little off-brand. I have to wonder what my reaction to it would be if I didn’t know the Palladinos had left the show, and David S. Rosenthal had been installed as the new showrunner. Would I feel, as I did here, that outside of that scene, this felt a bit like imitation Gilmore GIrls rather than the real thing, or would I just accept it as within the show’s acceptable variance without a second thought?

I’ll never know, but here I couldn’t help but feel like the fast-talking tenor of the program was turned up to eleven, that Rosenthal (who also wrote this episode), packed it lots of Lorelai-Rory antics to try to reassure the show’s fans that the core dynamic would stay the same. It smacks of effort, which is a criticism I hate leveling. Effort is good! Effort is what makes good television! But you can almost feel Rosenthal & Co. trying very hard to replicate the Palladino rhythms and it comes off as self-conscious imitation rather than a natural evolution. But again, that may just be the behind-the-scenes knowledge biasing my take on the art as presented.

The other part of the episode, beyond the Rory and Lorelai back-and-forth, is Rory puzzling over a model rocket that Logan left her. It’s a good bit, with her figuring out the mystery and then being super-touched when she figures it out and the message Logan was trying to send. I like the quiet theme that she’s in love and wants to hop across the pond to be there with him, but is having to deal with both the separation and the fact that Mitchum is integrating him into life out there. There’s a lot of good material to be explored in that vein.

The rest of the episode is the usual mishegas. It’s nice to know that even when much of the show feels a little off, Paris is our rock. Her tutoring service scenes are classic Paris, and very funny. I’m less on board with Taylor’s red light cameras sending a car into Luke’s diner. Again, it’s a little too “late season House M.D.” for my tastes, but it is what it is.

Overall, this is an episode that feels solid, though slightly miscalibrated for much of its run, until you get to that closing, dynamite confrontation between Luke and Lorelai, where your heart is broken at the knowledge that if things could have just stayed in stasis for a day and a half, all of this hurt could have been avoided, and Luke and Lorelai would be on their way down the aisle right now. It is tragedy, and as much as the narrative seams show of what let them to this point, Gilmore Girls earns that tragedy in its closing moments here.