[7.4/10] This one started shaky, but quickly found its feet. I enjoyed the main story, about Rory learning that being a journalist isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I’ll admit to have a certain sentimentality for Rory here, trying hard to balance the line between writing good copy that describes the event versus injecting her own opinion, and having to deal with conflicting reactions from editors, subjects, and the IRL-equivalent of commenters. But I think it works regardless.
We rarely see Rory struggle. Aside from one episode when she’d just started Chilton, Rory’s whole deal is pretty much worrying over nothing because she’s so talented that she inevitably wins the day. Her trying to be a good journalist and getting pushback from her editor (Danny Strong!) and then feeling like her pendulum swung too far the other direction with her takedown of the ballerina, is a nice dilemma. Again, I like when characters have to fight and suffer a little for their wins, even if it’s for something as low stakes as a staff position on a college newspaper. (And it doesn’t hurt that everyone’s reaction to her ballet article, including hippo, fat roll, and evolution-related comments, was hilarious).
The Lane C-plot is nice as well. The fact that she was freaking out over the “marriage jug” that her mom wanted to send to Dave in California, only to find out that was just some story Mrs. Kim told when Lane was six to quiet her down, is a delightful twist. I’m getting on board with the comic potential of Mrs. Kim. Her delivery of “If you want we can use it as a marriage jug...whatever that is” had me in stitches.
And I’m even getting on board with Digger Stiles. Maybe it’s just that the show is using him in dinner table scenes, which tends to be when Gilmore Girls is at its funniest and sharpest dialogue-wise, but he fits into the Gilmore milieu well, and you can see how his quick-witted style would mesh well with Lorelai. His manipulating his way into getting an invite to dinner and then slickly figuring out what sort of restaurant Lorelai would like is a fun bit. And the repartee around Friday night dinner is just delightful, particularly Emily’s insistence that Richard not google her, and her prior takedown of Atlantic City.
The one storyline here I didn’t like was the continuing Luke-Nicole business. It’s just presumptuous of Lorelai to interject herself and boss Luke around like that, but at the same time, she’s right, and it’s insane and kind of out of character that Luke would be doing this at all. Thankfully, it’s a relatively minor part of the episode, along with some broad, uninspired humor mostly centered on Michel locking horns with the midwife.
Overall, this one had its problems when leaning into that broad humor and the Luke/Nicole stuff early, but righted the ship quickly, particularly when it found a way to show Rory growing as a professional and not having it be a frictionless process.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-10-28T02:03:31Z
[7.4/10] This one started shaky, but quickly found its feet. I enjoyed the main story, about Rory learning that being a journalist isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I’ll admit to have a certain sentimentality for Rory here, trying hard to balance the line between writing good copy that describes the event versus injecting her own opinion, and having to deal with conflicting reactions from editors, subjects, and the IRL-equivalent of commenters. But I think it works regardless.
We rarely see Rory struggle. Aside from one episode when she’d just started Chilton, Rory’s whole deal is pretty much worrying over nothing because she’s so talented that she inevitably wins the day. Her trying to be a good journalist and getting pushback from her editor (Danny Strong!) and then feeling like her pendulum swung too far the other direction with her takedown of the ballerina, is a nice dilemma. Again, I like when characters have to fight and suffer a little for their wins, even if it’s for something as low stakes as a staff position on a college newspaper. (And it doesn’t hurt that everyone’s reaction to her ballet article, including hippo, fat roll, and evolution-related comments, was hilarious).
The Lane C-plot is nice as well. The fact that she was freaking out over the “marriage jug” that her mom wanted to send to Dave in California, only to find out that was just some story Mrs. Kim told when Lane was six to quiet her down, is a delightful twist. I’m getting on board with the comic potential of Mrs. Kim. Her delivery of “If you want we can use it as a marriage jug...whatever that is” had me in stitches.
And I’m even getting on board with Digger Stiles. Maybe it’s just that the show is using him in dinner table scenes, which tends to be when Gilmore Girls is at its funniest and sharpest dialogue-wise, but he fits into the Gilmore milieu well, and you can see how his quick-witted style would mesh well with Lorelai. His manipulating his way into getting an invite to dinner and then slickly figuring out what sort of restaurant Lorelai would like is a fun bit. And the repartee around Friday night dinner is just delightful, particularly Emily’s insistence that Richard not google her, and her prior takedown of Atlantic City.
The one storyline here I didn’t like was the continuing Luke-Nicole business. It’s just presumptuous of Lorelai to interject herself and boss Luke around like that, but at the same time, she’s right, and it’s insane and kind of out of character that Luke would be doing this at all. Thankfully, it’s a relatively minor part of the episode, along with some broad, uninspired humor mostly centered on Michel locking horns with the midwife.
Overall, this one had its problems when leaning into that broad humor and the Luke/Nicole stuff early, but righted the ship quickly, particularly when it found a way to show Rory growing as a professional and not having it be a frictionless process.