[9.0/10] Despite the presence of Alexis Bleidel and Danny Strong on both shows, it’s rare that Gilmore Girls feels like Mad Men. The former is more explicitly comedic and bright, while the latter is more serious and apt to delve into darkness. Despite that, the two have a decent amount in common, if only in how they tend to be intimately concerned with their characters’ emotional states and sense of who they are and what place they occupy in the world, and how that translates to and affect how they treat others.
But “A Vineyard Valentine” feels more like a piece of television that presages Mad Men. Maybe it’s just the single, getaway setting, something that predicts the way Don Draper & Co. constantly confuse a change of scenery with a change of self. There’s more to it than that though.
There’s little that happens in terms of plot for most of “A Vineyard Valentine.” Rather than a narrative that advances, the episode is mainly concerned with how everyone feels, and how those emotions pierce or prod the other people in that lakehouse, as spirits wax and wane over the course of the weekend. Sure, there’s a revelation or two, but they’re ones whose impact is most clear on how they change the demeanor and affect of Luke, Lorelai, Rory, and Logan, rather than resulting in new courses of action.
That’s seen most clearly in the differing trajectories of the two couples over the course of the weekend. Luke and Lorelai start off on different pages. Lorelai hoping that the getaway will take Luke’s mind of all that’s been occupying him and, implicitly, that it will make him remember his deep love of her and allow them to keep their wedding date. And Luke is out of his element, walking into a fancy environment that he’s unfamiliar with and which doesn’t suit him, having ill-prepared for the trip, and being inherently suspicious of Logan and all that he’s touched after what Lorelai’s blamed him and his family for.
Logan and Rory have the opposite starting point. The two are the picture of bliss, seeming perfectly in sync at Martha’s Vineyard, making well-worn jokes about the newspaper, and planning their trip for summer. This is paradise for the two of them, having reached a certain equilibrium, to where they can see doing this sort of thing for the rest of their lives. Rory comments to her mother about them each possibly having found “the one” and it comes from a place of security and optimism, which only casts into relief how unsure and disheartened Lorelai feels about her once-rock solid relationship.
Then, a funny thing happens. Luke, with a bit of prodding, starts to melt. Despite Luke’s skepticism of Logan, the young man not only gives Luke a gift for Lorelai to cover for the fact that Luke didn’t bring one, but then comes up with the perfect cover story for it, giving him esteem in Luke’s eye. Logan even cooks Luke a delicious lobster dinner, something Luke’s never had and ends up loving, which changes his perspective on Martha’s vineyard.
And most importantly, Lorelai talks to Luke about how she feels. She expresses her concerns about the wedding potentially not happening and the difficulty for her of having to cancel all those services and orders that dashes her thin hope things might proceed as planned and makes the postponement feel like a reality. And Luke reassures her, admits he’s been preoccupied and in his own head. He tells Lorelai that he loves her, that there will be a wedding and that they’ll have lobster. He even talks about eloping (something that he knows about already, I suppose) and coming back there. It’s a change in him, and by the next morning, all seems right in the world again for Luke and Lorelai.
That is, however, when things come tumbling down for Rory and Logan. Mitchum comes storming into the lakehouse, excoriates his son for missing a meeting to be with his “little girlfriend,” and reveals that after the school year, Logan is to spend a year in London at his father’s business.
For one thing, that moment perfectly captures the awkwardness of being a bystander for family unpleasantness spilling out in the open in an explosive fashion. In the same way, the whole episode captures that strange air of a shared vacation, one where different people may be in different moods and at different levels of acquaintance, each trying to be polite and friendly while working through their own issues and level of comfort.
But Mitchum’s tirade can only ruin Rory’s comfort level in a place where it seemed like she belonged. It pops the bubble that she and Logan had been living in, where they could plan for Asia and maybe had the rest of their lives together to look forward to. The fact that Logan kept it from her is a sign that he too is trying to deny reality, to pretend that it isn’t so that he can enjoy that bubble a little longer. Rory, however, knows better, and it sucks away all the glow she’d been experiencing until then.
Luke and Lorelai, however, are still basking in it, returning to Stars Hollow with a renewed sense of rhythm to the two of them, serving coffee and joking about “Mass Ass” and doing all those Luke and Lorelai things that were always so endearing.
Until Caesar reminds Luke that his daughter is coming to visit the next day, which means Lorelai will have to clear out, which means Luke will have to stop by without seeing her to pick up April’s bike, which means that the invigorating happiness they’d achieved out by the water has dissipated and things are back to where they were before they left. That’s only reinforced by the messages on Lorelai’s answering machine about this (clumsily-dialogued) June 3rd wedding, as noticed by Emily’s announcement in the local paper, making Lorelai’s embarrassment and discomfort at having to postpone all the more public and hard to face as she returns to the house that remodeled to be the space of her wedded bliss.
That is, perhaps, the most Mad Men thing of all in “A Vineyard Valentine.” Mad Men was often a show about people seeking temporary escapes -- in liquor, in sex, in efforts to run away -- that don’t fix the problem they’re trying to run away from. In this episode, Gilmore Girls spends an episode with its characters feeling those problems, or trying to avoid them, only to find their inescapable once they have to go home.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-01-10T01:54:04Z
[9.0/10] Despite the presence of Alexis Bleidel and Danny Strong on both shows, it’s rare that Gilmore Girls feels like Mad Men. The former is more explicitly comedic and bright, while the latter is more serious and apt to delve into darkness. Despite that, the two have a decent amount in common, if only in how they tend to be intimately concerned with their characters’ emotional states and sense of who they are and what place they occupy in the world, and how that translates to and affect how they treat others.
But “A Vineyard Valentine” feels more like a piece of television that presages Mad Men. Maybe it’s just the single, getaway setting, something that predicts the way Don Draper & Co. constantly confuse a change of scenery with a change of self. There’s more to it than that though.
There’s little that happens in terms of plot for most of “A Vineyard Valentine.” Rather than a narrative that advances, the episode is mainly concerned with how everyone feels, and how those emotions pierce or prod the other people in that lakehouse, as spirits wax and wane over the course of the weekend. Sure, there’s a revelation or two, but they’re ones whose impact is most clear on how they change the demeanor and affect of Luke, Lorelai, Rory, and Logan, rather than resulting in new courses of action.
That’s seen most clearly in the differing trajectories of the two couples over the course of the weekend. Luke and Lorelai start off on different pages. Lorelai hoping that the getaway will take Luke’s mind of all that’s been occupying him and, implicitly, that it will make him remember his deep love of her and allow them to keep their wedding date. And Luke is out of his element, walking into a fancy environment that he’s unfamiliar with and which doesn’t suit him, having ill-prepared for the trip, and being inherently suspicious of Logan and all that he’s touched after what Lorelai’s blamed him and his family for.
Logan and Rory have the opposite starting point. The two are the picture of bliss, seeming perfectly in sync at Martha’s Vineyard, making well-worn jokes about the newspaper, and planning their trip for summer. This is paradise for the two of them, having reached a certain equilibrium, to where they can see doing this sort of thing for the rest of their lives. Rory comments to her mother about them each possibly having found “the one” and it comes from a place of security and optimism, which only casts into relief how unsure and disheartened Lorelai feels about her once-rock solid relationship.
Then, a funny thing happens. Luke, with a bit of prodding, starts to melt. Despite Luke’s skepticism of Logan, the young man not only gives Luke a gift for Lorelai to cover for the fact that Luke didn’t bring one, but then comes up with the perfect cover story for it, giving him esteem in Luke’s eye. Logan even cooks Luke a delicious lobster dinner, something Luke’s never had and ends up loving, which changes his perspective on Martha’s vineyard.
And most importantly, Lorelai talks to Luke about how she feels. She expresses her concerns about the wedding potentially not happening and the difficulty for her of having to cancel all those services and orders that dashes her thin hope things might proceed as planned and makes the postponement feel like a reality. And Luke reassures her, admits he’s been preoccupied and in his own head. He tells Lorelai that he loves her, that there will be a wedding and that they’ll have lobster. He even talks about eloping (something that he knows about already, I suppose) and coming back there. It’s a change in him, and by the next morning, all seems right in the world again for Luke and Lorelai.
That is, however, when things come tumbling down for Rory and Logan. Mitchum comes storming into the lakehouse, excoriates his son for missing a meeting to be with his “little girlfriend,” and reveals that after the school year, Logan is to spend a year in London at his father’s business.
For one thing, that moment perfectly captures the awkwardness of being a bystander for family unpleasantness spilling out in the open in an explosive fashion. In the same way, the whole episode captures that strange air of a shared vacation, one where different people may be in different moods and at different levels of acquaintance, each trying to be polite and friendly while working through their own issues and level of comfort.
But Mitchum’s tirade can only ruin Rory’s comfort level in a place where it seemed like she belonged. It pops the bubble that she and Logan had been living in, where they could plan for Asia and maybe had the rest of their lives together to look forward to. The fact that Logan kept it from her is a sign that he too is trying to deny reality, to pretend that it isn’t so that he can enjoy that bubble a little longer. Rory, however, knows better, and it sucks away all the glow she’d been experiencing until then.
Luke and Lorelai, however, are still basking in it, returning to Stars Hollow with a renewed sense of rhythm to the two of them, serving coffee and joking about “Mass Ass” and doing all those Luke and Lorelai things that were always so endearing.
Until Caesar reminds Luke that his daughter is coming to visit the next day, which means Lorelai will have to clear out, which means Luke will have to stop by without seeing her to pick up April’s bike, which means that the invigorating happiness they’d achieved out by the water has dissipated and things are back to where they were before they left. That’s only reinforced by the messages on Lorelai’s answering machine about this (clumsily-dialogued) June 3rd wedding, as noticed by Emily’s announcement in the local paper, making Lorelai’s embarrassment and discomfort at having to postpone all the more public and hard to face as she returns to the house that remodeled to be the space of her wedded bliss.
That is, perhaps, the most Mad Men thing of all in “A Vineyard Valentine.” Mad Men was often a show about people seeking temporary escapes -- in liquor, in sex, in efforts to run away -- that don’t fix the problem they’re trying to run away from. In this episode, Gilmore Girls spends an episode with its characters feeling those problems, or trying to avoid them, only to find their inescapable once they have to go home.