Don’t know about you, but I feel like I finally got my Girls back, and then some. It took a while, but both Lorelai and Rory have found their footing and are moving in the right direction. And the steps they’ve taken have affected everyone around them, both good and bad.Let’s start with Lorelai. Her recent behavior? Making demanding ultimatums, then impulsively getting married. Since leaving Christopher, she’s become a patient daughter, a good friend and a fantastic mediator. She helped Luke win partial custody of April, she stepped in when her mother needed to get Richard’s business in order and she’s brokered one hell of deal between the stubborn Lane and intolerable Mrs. Kim. The listener, the messenger, the pacifier: Lorelai played every role perfectly. In the end, Lane accepted that her twins could turn out to be bible readers, and Mrs. Kim understood that they could be rock and rollers. Loved Lorelai’s gentle reminder, “My mother missed ...
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If you managed to catch the preview for this episode — and I’m not sure you could have missed it since it aired every half-hour for a week straight — you knew the end was coming. “You’re the man I want to want!” wails Lorelai in the promo. So when she finally choked out those sad words in the episode, they kinda lost their kick-to-the-stomach-effect. Which was a shame, because the familiarity practically robbed us of her honesty. It’s as if the lines were delivered by a woman on truth serum, admitting to one horrible thing after another: “I still have feelings for Luke.” “I jumped.” “I’ve always thought of you as a possibility” (BTW: Chris, “possibility” is another word for “backup.” Ouch.) And then the Big Line. Chris took it well, actually. Who wants to hear that someone wants to love you, but you know, they just can’t muster up the feelings? Interesting: Chris is a selfish jerk, but som...
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While I am so, so tempted to write all about how Chris completely bailed on Lorelai during her awful time of need (was that four or five messages left on his cell about Lorelai’s dad having a heart attack?), instead I will write about Rory. Yes, Rory, the fair-skinned, doe-eyed, too often incomprehensible but still incredibly bright daughter of the esteemed Lorelai Gilmore. (There I go mentioning Lorelai again! Gotcha!). Now that you’ve picked yourself up from the floor, 'cause you know, I actually mentioned the "R" word, let’s move on. Can you believe how Rory’s relationship with Logan completely turned around? One minute she’s jealous over Bobbi, two minutes later he’s jealous over Marty, and now Rich Boy actually flew in on a freaking helicopter from Montauk, Long Island, straight to the hospital in New Haven! (Hey, if you had a hedge-fund partner-dude who’s willing to lend you his chopper, you'd swoop in Jack Bauer-style, too. I'm just surpris...
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So, wouldn’t ya know it, Chris found The Letter. The one Lorelai slaved over, the one she wrote and rewrote, the one she finally banged out on a typewriter, the one she hid, the one she keeps calling a "character reference." Big diff, right? Well, actually it is. I wouldn’t exactly refer to Lorelai’s praise of Luke (“He’s honest, he’s decent, he’s kind, he’s caring…. Once he’s in your life, he’s in it forever”) as a love letter. Now that kind of thing would go on to say something like: “And I can’t believe I gave you that ridiculous ultimatum. When you said no and stormed off, I went straight to my ex Christopher’s house, slept with him, told you the next day while turning down your offer to get back together, then impulsively married my ex only a few months later, let him move into the house that you helped me rebuild and actually allowed Chris to put up a ridiculously ginormous plasma TV in the living room ...
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Yep, that sentence can explain both Lorelai’s head and much of this episode. We waited seven weeks, seven long weeks for our Girls to return. So where were the Lorelai and Chris struggles, the Luke and Anna tension, the Rory and Logan misunderstanding? They must’ve disappeared in rerun land and were replaced by seven Christmas trees, Chris' hugely garish stockings and Gigi and Rory’s strings of cranberries and popcorn. OK, so Lorelai put Christmas on hold until Rory got back from London. She even did a dance with a coconut bra to make sure it didn’t snow. (And for real, it didn’t, not here in the Northeast. Maybe the bra worked.) Sure, that’s sweet. But this whole scenario would have been so much more charming, I don’t know, maybe two weeks after the holiday? But not an entire month later! It wasn’t Stars-Hollow quirky, it was Stars-Hollow bizarre. And so was Lorelai as she tried to write Luke’s character-witness letter. “Bicycle, un...
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Here's a rerun you didn't want to miss. I am tempted to go off on Luke for his horrendous comments when he ran into Lorelai on the street: "It's not as big a deal for me as it is for you. So we're not getting married. It's fine by me. You're the one who proposed in the first place." Ouch!But you know what? Enough agita. I'd rather talk about Lane and Zack, Stars Hollow's best couple. Naturally Pedro's Paradise turned out to be anything but... the poor couple spent their Mexican honeymoon in Pedro's dirty apartment, nowhere near the beach, overlooking an ad for Mexican nasal spray (of all things). I'm surprised a control freak like Lane actually let Zack plan the honeymoon in the first place, but we'll let that one slide. If that's not bad enough, Lane is convinced that her mother was right about sex all along, "that women are maintaining this pervasive media-supported charade, that sex is normal, that sex is wonderful, that sex is sexy." You too would think sex was pretty awful if ...
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Ladies and gentleman! In this corner, we have lightweight Christopher Hayden! Prep-school flunkie! Former deadbeat dad! Total metrosexual! Newly minted millionaire! Recently married to Lorelai Gilmore! And in that corner, we have heavyweight Luke Danes! Diner owner! Public-school grad! New father to a teen he didn’t know existed! Total tough guy! Regular middle-class Joe! Recently engaged to Lorelai Gilmore! Let’s get ready to ruuuuuumble!Now, I’m not one for violence, and I usually look away when things get brutal. But this was one smack-down I was not going to miss. I was shocked that Chris, the kind of guy who gets manicures and facials, could even hold his own against lunky Luke. But he got in a few good punches before Luke socked him right across the jaw, knocking him to the ground. That didn’t stop scrappy Chris from lunging back at Luke. (Nothing says Merry Christmas like two grown men rolling around the town square, taking down the Stars Hollow Christmas ...
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Quick: What’s the first thing you think of when you see someone knitting? What about an entire town full of people knitting, huge balls of yarn in Stars Hollow Square, and Sookie cooking up balls of spaghetti speared with bread sticks? Okay, we get it. This one is about children. A little too heavy-handed this time around. (Meanwhile, what town actually holds a knit-a-thon to save a beetle-infested bridge? Don’t most New Englanders raffle off romantic swag like intimate candlelit dinners for two, midnight hay rides and weekend stays at cozy B&Bs?)So, of course, Liz finally had her baby. I loved how Luke rushed right over as she was delivering — at home, natch. Did you catch that huge smile when he first held his niece, Doula? (With a name like that, I hope this kid will pack a mean punch on the playground.) I don’t think I’ve seen Luke that happy since he and Lorelai kissed on the gazebo the night they got engaged. Good thing, because holding that newbo...
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I found it quite appropriate that the theme of tonight’s episode was printed on an old rock T-shirt Chris stole from Lorelai when they were teenagers: Synchronicity. It began the second Lorelai put that shirt on and said she’d never take it off. (Here, let me quote you some of the lyrics by The Police: "Synchronicity / A connecting principle / Linked to the invisible / Almost imperceptible / Something inexpressible / Science insusceptible / Logic so inflexible / Causally connectable / Yet nothing is invincible.")Is it just me, or do those lines explain exactly what’s going on between these three couples: Chris and Lorelai, Luke and April, and Rory and Logan? Each of them is bound together in this episode by odd timing and twists of fate: After 20 years, Chris and Lor are now the married couple settling into the house that, ironically, Luke rebuilt. Sure, there was some back-and-forthing about the flat-screen TVs in practically every room and how they’d need to re...
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I’m pretty sure my old Magnavox isn’t going fuzzy. And thanks to my contacts, I’ve got a perfect 20/20. But I swear I just saw a bunch of people in Stars Hollow getting soft around the edges. Let’s start with Luke: packing lunches, checking for biology homework, reminding about sweaters, swimsuits and pickups after practice. Sure, it’s with a typical Luke delivery — curt and succinct. But did you catch that huge smile on his face when April ran back into the diner to grab the lunch she’d left behind? Someone’s falling in love with his daughter. More proof? The two of them close together on the couch, Rory-and-Lorelai style, pigging out on pizza and sweet rolls. 'Nuff said.Now Lorelai. Did you ever think she’d attend a stuffy, foofy event unless her parents forced her into it? But Chris really wanted to go to parents’ weekend at Yale. So after some slight prodding, she actually agreed. Sure, she complained about the too-green grass an...
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