7x15 I'm a Kayak, Hear Me Roar

[7.4/10] This episode had three stories that did not have much to do with one another, but each was interesting on its own terms. Let’s take them in ascending order of significance.

Liz, TJ, and Doola moving into Luke’s place while their house is being fumigated was mostly comic relief and setup. The setup comes from Liz, and by extension the show, planting ideas in Luke and the audience’s head that now that Chris is out of the picture, Luke should get back together with Lorelai, or at least start down that path.

There is, again, a real meta vibe to some of this. The conversations between Babbette and Ms. Patty, and between Liz and TJ, seem meant to echo conversations among viewers, with discussions about who’s right for Lorelai, who’s right for Luke, and whether either should set back on that path. The towering relationship of the series is worth a decent amount of conversation, and it’s cute hearing TJ and Liz wonder if Luke is lonely, but there’s not much purpose to it beyond setting up a reunion between the show’s uber-couple.

Before that can happen, we have to pay a little attention to the show’s other big couple, Rory and Logan. Things are going swimmingly for the pair at the moment, with Rory celebrating Logan’s birthday by recreating all the small town niceties he never got as a stuffy rich boy. It’s a sweet and silly gesture, the kind Gilmore Girls specializes in, and proves a nice way to put some affection on display between the two of them.

The drama (light though it may be) is twofold. The first part of it comes when Mitchum invites Rory and Logan out for a birthday dinner, and in a private moment, gives Rory credit for Logan’s “transformation” to the point that he offers her “her pick” of jobs at any of the newspapers she owns. Rory politely goes along, but feels dirty and complicit in Mitchum minimizing his own son’s choices and efforts, only for her to come clean to Logan and be reassured that she’s simply been Huntzberger’d, and it’s fine.

What’s less fine is that, predictably, Logan’s risky business venture has gone down the tubes thanks to a patent issue, and now the company he invested his trust fund in is likely worthless. It’s a little easy, but I’ll admit my interest in seeing where a no longer rich Logan copes with this. Overall, the storyline has the right mix of cute couple interactions, another interesting wrinkle in the complicated relationship between Rory and the Huntzberger family, and a tease for further dramatic places to go.

The most substantive and best storyline in the episode, however, comes with Lorelai pitching in around the elder Gilmores’ house while a testy Richard recovers from his bypass. It’s one of those Gilmore Girls stories that is both relatable -- everyone is frazzled and grumpy after a hospital visit, and yet delightfully outsized -- everyone is wittier and more personally revealing than folks are in the real world.

There’s something true to life about the way Richard storms around the house, complaining about his new doctor-mandated diet, annoyed to be torn away from old golf games on TV, and generally irritable about the way he doesn’t quite feel like the captain of his own life anymore. In the meantime, Emily is frantically trying to keep everything afloat, between being firm enough with Richard that he sticks to the doctor’s order and calm enough to as not to upset him, while trying to manage the household and their finances in the midst of his convalescent abdication.

Oh yeah, and Lorelai has to tell her mom about the break-up with Chris amid all of this. The best part of this story, as is often the case with this show, are the moments between Lorelai and Emily. They’re both in their own sort of rough places, and it’s heartening how much solace and comfort they give one another.

Emily is open with her daughter, talking about how lost and helpless she feels, how bound to the old division of labor in marriage she is, in a way that could leave her, so to speak, without a paddle if something were to happen to Richard. But she’s also just as open and effusive with praise for her daughter, the way that, however much she may have questioned Lorelai’s life choice, she’s amazed and admiring of how self-sufficient Lorelai is.

Naturally, it’s in those impressed moments that Lorelai let's the break-up news drop. Emily’s reaction (and Kelly Bishop’s performance) is outstanding, with the usual stiff upper lip, the effort to gracefully change the subject, and then offering the nicest thing Emily Gilmore can offer -- not saying anything at all. The reassurances between them lean into the warm mother-daughter that the show (wisely) parcels out sparingly over the course of its run.

But the next morning, things are back to normal. Despite that moment of closeness, Emily is back to curt remarks and Lorelai is back to feeling more comfortable in her own home than in Emily’s home. There’s a truth in that too, the way that people have moments and then the moment fades and the relationship may have been nudged in one direction, but hasn’t been changed overnight. It’s sudden, but then those things are.

Overall, it’s a well-constructed episode with stories that often feel like they’re proceeding on separate tracks, but which wring bits of meaning and sentiment in turn nevertheless.