[7.0/10] Heaven and hell, my friends. Heaven and hell. Some truly great things in this one, and then something that is so hackneyed and out of nowhere that you wonder if you were briefly watching the wrong show.
Let’s start with the good stuff. I like the idea that, for all of my issues with Jess, he seems to have been the catalyst for Rory to snap out of her funk and remember who she is when Mitchum seemed to make her forget. When the Huntzberger patriarch told Rory to hit the bricks, he did so on the basis that she didn’t have that killer instinct, that fire in her to get it done. I love the fact that in response, she shows the fire, she shows the persistence and confidence that have made her who she is.
While there’s a bit of the usual entitlement to her camping out in the Stamford Gazette offices and not taking no for an answer, it’s also the very sort of spirit she was said to be lacking. The old Rory Gilmore is back, making a case for herself, putting her foot in the door, and making the most of her opportunities.
But it comes at a price. My favorite scene in the episode is the one where Lorelai goes after her mother, who’s gone AWOL and is contemplating buying a private jet. I’m a sucker for Emily Gilmore, and the inherent tragedy of how she so desperately wants to be loved and yet so often pushes people away in the attempt. Her rant about how (in not so many words) her husband thinks what she does is frivolous, her daughter hates her, and now, to add insult to injury, her granddaughter seems to be lost to her too. I’ll admit, it got a little dusty in my living room when Emily broke down crying, suffering one more loss, one more event where she did all she could to take care of the people she loves and set them on the right path and all she gets for it is someone bolting under the proverbial cover of darkness with not so much of a goodbye, let alone a thank you.
Emily pushes people away when she means to hug, for reasons we don’t really know but can surmise are a product of her own upbringing. But there’s the silver lining that however much Emily feels she may have lost Lorelai, her daughter springs into action when she worries Emily is in distress, reassures her that Rory isn’t lost but rather returning to where she should be in her life, and goes a step further by saying that Emily hasn’t lost Lorelai either. It’s a powerful scene that’s worth the price of admission alone.
The same could be said for the reunion between Lorelai and Rory. Sure, everything happens very quickly, and there could probably stand to be a little more build to it, but still, that embrace, that mutual apology, the knowledge that Lorelai’s tough love (at least eventually) worked and Rory is back on the best path again is a hell of a heartening moment.
But then there’s the Luke stuff, and I just don’t know what to do with it. Let’s start with the easy part. The fight between Luke and Lorelai feels kind of forced. It makes sense that both Luke and Lorelai would be a little uneasy about the whole Chris thing after what happened before, but Luke gets really huffy without giving Lorelai a chance to explain or even answer. He’s petulant during dinner, and far be it from me to question how Amy Sherman-Palladino writes her own characters, but it felt out-of-character for this grumpy but understanding dude.
The problem is that, in hindsight, it feels like a pretty contrived way to get to the heavily underscored “we never keep secrets from each other” scene, which of course, leads to the end of the episode where Luke is now keeping, however temporarily, a giant secret from Lorelai. Now the last time I felt like Gilmore Girls was heavily telegraphing something (with the Twickam house being a source of conflict for Luke and Lorelai), they totally swerved me and delivered something delightful instead. But in the moment, this feels like we’re heading toward a cheap way to split Luke and Lorelai up over this secret thing.
And good lord, the secret. Look, I’m a Buffy fan, so I am both tolerant but very leery of long lost young women showing up out of the blue. But April had better be affiliated with the Knights of Byzantium or something because otherwise this is some soap opera bullshit. I’ll do my best to reserve judgment until we meet the mom and find out what the story is, but a long lost daughter feels like the sort of outrageous twist that reeks of a show desperate to inject some new element after having exhausted its premise rather than an organic development.
What’s worse is that April is a precocious moppet, who just so happens to fit into the chipper, fast-talking world of the show. I’m not saying she has to be a carbon copy of Luke or anything, and again, trying to reserve judgment to see if the show figures her out, but her personality is pretty annoying out of the gate, and there’s definitely some Cousin Oliver syndrome at play now that Rory has become more and more of an adult.
This is just the beginning of the arc, so I’ll try to give it some leeway, but holy cow is this a questionable narrative choice, and it threatens to sink the otherwise outstanding work being done in the non-Luke portions of this episode.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-01-07T06:10:39Z
[7.0/10] Heaven and hell, my friends. Heaven and hell. Some truly great things in this one, and then something that is so hackneyed and out of nowhere that you wonder if you were briefly watching the wrong show.
Let’s start with the good stuff. I like the idea that, for all of my issues with Jess, he seems to have been the catalyst for Rory to snap out of her funk and remember who she is when Mitchum seemed to make her forget. When the Huntzberger patriarch told Rory to hit the bricks, he did so on the basis that she didn’t have that killer instinct, that fire in her to get it done. I love the fact that in response, she shows the fire, she shows the persistence and confidence that have made her who she is.
While there’s a bit of the usual entitlement to her camping out in the Stamford Gazette offices and not taking no for an answer, it’s also the very sort of spirit she was said to be lacking. The old Rory Gilmore is back, making a case for herself, putting her foot in the door, and making the most of her opportunities.
But it comes at a price. My favorite scene in the episode is the one where Lorelai goes after her mother, who’s gone AWOL and is contemplating buying a private jet. I’m a sucker for Emily Gilmore, and the inherent tragedy of how she so desperately wants to be loved and yet so often pushes people away in the attempt. Her rant about how (in not so many words) her husband thinks what she does is frivolous, her daughter hates her, and now, to add insult to injury, her granddaughter seems to be lost to her too. I’ll admit, it got a little dusty in my living room when Emily broke down crying, suffering one more loss, one more event where she did all she could to take care of the people she loves and set them on the right path and all she gets for it is someone bolting under the proverbial cover of darkness with not so much of a goodbye, let alone a thank you.
Emily pushes people away when she means to hug, for reasons we don’t really know but can surmise are a product of her own upbringing. But there’s the silver lining that however much Emily feels she may have lost Lorelai, her daughter springs into action when she worries Emily is in distress, reassures her that Rory isn’t lost but rather returning to where she should be in her life, and goes a step further by saying that Emily hasn’t lost Lorelai either. It’s a powerful scene that’s worth the price of admission alone.
The same could be said for the reunion between Lorelai and Rory. Sure, everything happens very quickly, and there could probably stand to be a little more build to it, but still, that embrace, that mutual apology, the knowledge that Lorelai’s tough love (at least eventually) worked and Rory is back on the best path again is a hell of a heartening moment.
But then there’s the Luke stuff, and I just don’t know what to do with it. Let’s start with the easy part. The fight between Luke and Lorelai feels kind of forced. It makes sense that both Luke and Lorelai would be a little uneasy about the whole Chris thing after what happened before, but Luke gets really huffy without giving Lorelai a chance to explain or even answer. He’s petulant during dinner, and far be it from me to question how Amy Sherman-Palladino writes her own characters, but it felt out-of-character for this grumpy but understanding dude.
The problem is that, in hindsight, it feels like a pretty contrived way to get to the heavily underscored “we never keep secrets from each other” scene, which of course, leads to the end of the episode where Luke is now keeping, however temporarily, a giant secret from Lorelai. Now the last time I felt like Gilmore Girls was heavily telegraphing something (with the Twickam house being a source of conflict for Luke and Lorelai), they totally swerved me and delivered something delightful instead. But in the moment, this feels like we’re heading toward a cheap way to split Luke and Lorelai up over this secret thing.
And good lord, the secret. Look, I’m a Buffy fan, so I am both tolerant but very leery of long lost young women showing up out of the blue. But April had better be affiliated with the Knights of Byzantium or something because otherwise this is some soap opera bullshit. I’ll do my best to reserve judgment until we meet the mom and find out what the story is, but a long lost daughter feels like the sort of outrageous twist that reeks of a show desperate to inject some new element after having exhausted its premise rather than an organic development.
What’s worse is that April is a precocious moppet, who just so happens to fit into the chipper, fast-talking world of the show. I’m not saying she has to be a carbon copy of Luke or anything, and again, trying to reserve judgment to see if the show figures her out, but her personality is pretty annoying out of the gate, and there’s definitely some Cousin Oliver syndrome at play now that Rory has become more and more of an adult.
This is just the beginning of the arc, so I’ll try to give it some leeway, but holy cow is this a questionable narrative choice, and it threatens to sink the otherwise outstanding work being done in the non-Luke portions of this episode.