6x08 Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out

[7.2/10] Cartoonist Anthony Pizzo described Daniel Palladino as a good writer for Gilmore Girls, but one whose scripts you can always detect because they invariably include heightened emotional moments where the characters are having feelings very loudly. I like a lot of this episode, but it feels very much in that style, where there’s interesting things at play, but they’re all very over-the-top and not at all subtle or restrained.

Let’s hit the big stuff first. Jess comes back! I’m not sure why I’m excited by that, since he’s probably made me roll my eyes more than any other character on this show save for maybe Taylor, but it’s still a minor thrill to see his name in the credits after so long. And what’s more, he seems to have put his life together and learned from his mistakes.

As I’ve said many times in these write-ups, I always liked Jess more as someone apart from being Rory’s suitor, a decent kid trying to figure his life out rather than a gadfly third wheel or less-than-great boyfriend. This episode leans into that. He’s written a book; he has a steady job, and best of all, he thanks Rory for help making it possible. He’s not falling all over himself asking her to run away with him or insinuating this or that. He just seems like a decent guy, come to share his good news and show real appreciation for someone who made his life better. It’s endearing how happy Rory is to see Jess find a little success and stability, and to have her belief in him vindicated.

But then there’s the confrontations with Logan and Rory, and it starts to become a case of ideas I like with execution I don’t. It seems totally natural that Logan would (a.) be miffed to find his girlfriend palling around with an ex without saying word one to him (it’s what nearly broke up Luke and Lorelai), and (b.) would try to puff himself up a bit in the face of his girlfriend’s former beau. But man, it’s a bad look for him here. Even if Logan was just a garden variety jerk to Jess, which would comprehensible if not exactly commendable, the way that he patronizes Jess by throwing his money around, or implying Jess is a rube, or just generally tries to abrasively establish himself as better than Jess is truly unpleasant, and arguably unprecedented for Logan.

Then there’s the big flare up between Jess and Rory outside the restaurant. Again, I really like the idea here. I don’t know if I buy Jess’s “I know you better than anybody” self-assessment, but he’s right that he has an impression of who Rory is deep down, and the choices she’s made are very much not her, something that Logan, in his own way, agrees with. I like the narrative choice here, that Rory is affected by someone she considers a friend and who has insight into her without having been along for the ride, declaring that there’s something wrong, that she’s not acting like herself and it worries him.

What I don’t like is the melodramatic way it all goes down, or the Jess’s constant repetition of the same lines, or his odd, uptalk-y, headbobbing performance of his last few bits of dialogue. It’s nice to have someone non-jokingly ask Rory “why the hell would you drop out of Yale?” but like a lot of the old Jess stuff, it’s too overwrought to land despite the good ideas underlying it.

The same goes for Logan’s little blow up with Rory. The show’s been building to his growing dissatisfaction with the way his dad is railroading him into a life he doesn’t want, and there’s something there. But the way he gets angry at Rory, and the way that Rory gets angry at herself, is all over the top as they each accuse the other of being in the preferable situation and squandering it. The contrast Palladino tries to draw there is a sound one, but the method of delivery is too blunt.

Luke thinks the girls soccer team he’s sponsoring is a little too blunt as well, though more in the physical than figurative sense. It’s frankly the best, or at least the most solid part of the episode, which is not something I typically say about something there purely for comedy. It’s a little goofy of a plotline, but Luke being reluctant to sponsor the team, then super into it, then recoiling when he realize how hard-nosed his charges are is a cute bit with some fun comic performances. Heck, I even like the “Lorelai goes full bore into swatch-picking” comedy subplot as well.

But then Daniel Palladino starts holding your hand through every point he’s trying to make. I’ve never been a big fan of Paul Anka the dog, if only because the comic elements didn’t really work for me. But here the show goes over the top in underlining the fact that the dog is pseudo replacement for Rory. And while Lauren Graham does a yeoman’s job of trying to make the hamfisted dialogue work, the who equivalence drawn between her thinking she’s a bad pet owner and also thinking she’s a bad mother for “not being able to prevent this” is just too on the nose.

The same is true for Rory feeling stifled by her grandmother the same way Lorelai did. Once again, I really like the idea of Rory finding herself in her mom’s shoes and suddenly bristling at Emily’s micromanagement. But the episode makes it too cartoony, and then has that final confrontation where Daniel Palladino writes it all on the screen by having Emily declare that Rory is just like her mother, and refer to Richard in a sentence a la “wait til your father gets home.” We get it, Daniel. You’re recreating the Emily/Lorelai dynamic in a new generation. You don’t have to underline it so hard!

Anyway, I’m probably guilty of the same thing, taking Mr. Palladino to task for the same issue over and over again. What’s frustrating is that if you gave me the elevator pitch version of this story, of the parallels that would be drawn and the places the characters would be, I would be very enthusiastic. But this script squanders a lot of good opportunities for real, earned emotion, which means that it’s not bad since those good ideas shine through, but it could be so much better, and somehow that’s more frustrating.