7x13 I'd Rather Be In Philadelphia

[7.8/10] I have a soft spot for Gilmore Girls episodes that take place in hospitals. Season 1’s “Forgiveness and Stuff” is one of the episode that got me on board with this show, and it’s still a touching piece of Gilmore familial heart and hecticness. So I had high, probably impossible to meet expectations for this one after our tease of Richard’s heart attack in the last one.

And it doesn’t quite meet those lofty expectations, but it’s still quite a good episode, particularly on the writing side. There’s lots of little details, like Lorelai fitting in the description of her dad as “tall” when necessary, or the setup of Lorelai and Emily’s conversation about clichés paying off when Emily uses them to try to reassure her daughter about her marriage, or even the continuing references to Logan’s vaudeville routine with the fish man that show a deftness in the script.

There’s also some great emotional work being done. Kelly Bishop is particularly outstanding here. Nobody nails those tearing up monologues the way she does. It’s a nice mini-conflict between Emily and Lorelai, where Emily is caught up in details like restaurant reservations and fish deliveries and even Richard’s will, which frustrates Lorelai because she feels like Emily is being insensitive to Richard being sick. In reality, this is Emily’s means of coping with her feelings of powerlessness in the situation -- taking on these tasks is a way for her to feel like she’s doing something, and her breaking down, and Lorelai recognizing that, is a really nice moment.

There’s also a tale of three gentleman. The first is Logan, who confirms his good guy-ness by dropping everything he’s doing, flying to Hartford to support the Gilmores, and ignoring his blackberry. The show drops hint that he might lose all his money in a business venture his dad thought was a bad idea, but aside from that tease, it’s just a story about he and Rory interacting and Logan being a good guy at a time of need. That doesn’t move the ball very much, but it leads to a nice beat where Lorelai gives the relationship her blessing, and starts to question her own.

That’s easy to do when the two guys in her life are contrasted. Chris can’t even be bothered to get over his issues, or at least put them on hold, when Lorelai’s dad is in the hospital and ignores his wifes calls adn texts. While Luke, completely without prompting, jumps into the fray, gets Richard’s car, and even delivers food for the family. The episode lays it on a little thick, but the contrast is clear.
Of course, TV kizmit demands that Luke and Chris show up at the same time, but that said, it’s still a solid way to illustrate the differences between them.

Overall, it’s not quite as good as the Gilmores’ first hospital episode, but it’s still a quite good one, where the dialogue is crisp, the conflicts are small but have personal stakes, and we get some great Lorelai/Emily scenes, which are almost always my favorite.