6x18 The Real Paul Anka

[7.2/10] This is another grab bag episode, which it felt like the show had gotten away from at some point, but is apparently back to. That may be a Daniel Palladino thing, but I could just be projecting. Let’s start at the little stuff and work our way up to the big stuff.
There’s fun to be had at the margins here. As much as dog Paul Anka has felt like a cheap gimmick in Season 6, getting some payoff here in a Lorelai dream featuring the real Paul Anka, almost makes the whole thing worthwhile. True to the Lorelai’s romantic rivals, there’s a real Twin Peaks vibe to the cold open with the dream, and it’s enjoyable in its elliptical qualities.

There’s also a number of barely-there stories in this one. The most notable of them is Lorelai being asked by Mrs. Kim to do alterations on her wedding dress so that it’ll fit Lane. There’s not much to it, with Lane understandably begging Lorelai to destroy the monstrosity instead, and Lorelai acquiescing with an “accidentally” spilled coffee cup, but it’s amusing enough as local color.

The same can’t really be said for Lorelai’s not-so-subtle attempts to dissuade her parents from moving to Stars Hollow when she catches them house-hunting via Kirk. I can appreciate the attempt at comedy with Lorelai coming up with outlandish, made-up problems in the town she loves to try to scare her parents away, but very little of it actually made me laugh.

(As an aside, my theory on the house-hunting is that it’s all a misdirect, and the reason that Richard and Emily are hiding their house-shopping from Lorelai is that they’re planning on getting her a new house as a wedding present. Also, it occurs to me that we never really dealt with any of the fallout from Emily putting a wedding announcement in the newspaper at the end of “Vineyard Valentine.”)

But what did make me laugh is Emily playing Go Fish with a little girl she mistakes for Luke’s daughter. The way Emily’s disposition instantly changes from sweet and accommodating to disbelieving and contemptuous when she realizes it’s just some random girl is, as usual for Emily, hilarious.

Better yet is the way she chastises her daughter for not meeting April yet. I’m not actually on Emily’s side here or anything, but I like the scene because it’s 100% how Emily would view the situation, and it makes things even worse for Lorelai, since the only thing that would make her feel smaller and lesser in her mother’s eyes would be to admit that it’s not her “cautiousness” that’s kept her from meeting April, but rather that Luke’s excluding her for some reason they’ve never really discussed. For some of the problems in this episode, it gets this uncomfortable moment just right.

Speaking of April, Luke makes good on his promises to chaperone her field trip to Philadelphia, and it’s a cute story. It’s been a while since we’ve had a Luke episode that wasn’t centered around Lorelai, and despite the unpleasantness and implausibility of the whole long lost daughter storyline, it’s actually really nice. Luke feels like himself as someone trying to be a good parent and feeling awkward around a little girl he doesn’t have much in common with and whose style he’s cramping a little. And that’s before he has to deal with the square, judgy parents who are also chaperoning. But for all his bumbling, well-meaning parent stuff, he gets a wonderful little grace note when April jokes to hear friends about him being overprotective, but does so while calling him “my dad” for the first time. It’s a sweet moment that doesn’t feel overdone, and shows that the two are growing closer, even if they’re not exactly peas in a pod.

Luke wasn’t like peas in a pod with Jess either, but look how he turned out! For as much as Jess was one of my most-hated characters when he was around before, it’s really heartening to see him having gotten his life together and turned into a surprisingly decent and mature human being. He meets April (and with Rory’s spontaneous appearance, that makes Lorelai one of the very last significant people to be excluded) and is cordial, and he tries to repay Luke for the money Luke spent on him. They’re hug is heartening as all get out, and while Jess is a little too hipstery and T.V. bohemian for my tastes, he’s turned into a decent guy, which makes him the most commendable person in the show right now.

That’s particularly true when he handles the situation with Rory as well and as maturely as anyone reasonably could. I have to admit, this is the most that I have ever disliked Rory on the show. She is not merely cold to Logan, but vindictive with him, intentionally digging at him by superseding his piece without a word, deliberately crapping on his friends (admittedly poorly-thought out) plan for a post-graduation trip, and being as dismissive and uncaring as possible about him having had enough of this faux forgiveness and leaving.

It’s perfectly fine for Rory to still not be okay with what happened with Logan, but rather than being an adult and admitting that to him, she pretends things are okay and then intentionally tries to hurt him, which is unlikable behavior. She claims to love him, to be irresistibly in love with him, even if she’d really like to resist, but this is not the behavior of someone who genuinely cares about another person.

And to make it all worse, she goes to Jess’s without telling Logan, or telling Jess about Logan for that matter, and somehow is grossly unfair to both guys. It’s unfair to Logan, because however Rory feels about Logan’s actions, she’s going a step further by intentionally cheating on him because she can and because she feels justified in it. It’s revenge, and it’s not a good look. And she’s unfair to Jess because he really cares about her, and thinks she’s turned her life around (in a way that involves ditching Logan), and in turn she is using him, taking advantage of his affections to get back at her boyfriend. It’s only Jess’s newfound decency that ought to keep him from sending her on her way right then and there.

Rory was never a particularly realistic character, but she was always good-natured, and when she slipped, you could usually attribute it to her being mixed up, young, naive, or some combination of the three. But this is her knowingly causing pain and not regarding the feelings of people she cares about, and it’s the sort of deliberate choice that can’t be waved away from her being inexperienced or hurt. This is a new side of Rory, and it’s not pretty.

Overall, this is a pretty good episode, with a handful of enjoyable and/or endearing moments, but it also unveils a version of one of its main characters that is hard to watch.