7x21 Unto The Breach

[7.1/10] “Unto the Breach” has a lot of what I expect from penultimate episodes, in that there’s more setup for the finale than complete stories, and the episode is more a collection of nice individual moments than it is something narratively fulfilling in and of itself.

But those moments are really nice! Richard and Emily singing their ode to their granddaughter is adorable! Paris hugging Rory and telling her best friend how excited she is to see where her life goes is unbearable touching. The pair of them handing with Lucy and Olivia and having one of those last hangouts before graduation comes doesn’t add much, but is a nicely observed moment. And Richard telling Lorelai that he’ll note the time and take the pictures so that Lorelai can be in the moment herself is both a quiet sign of respect and of love and understanding from a father who appreciates how much his daughter did to get his granddaughter to this moment.

And, of course, there’s that moment of Lorelai standing up and cheering for her daughter as she walks across the stage, breaking the decorum as is her style (along with her rule-breaking baby daddy) in service of sending as much love and affection as she can up to that presidium. The looks on the Gilmore Girls’ faces says it all, particularly Graham’s, who communicates the bittersweetness and overwhelming emotion of such a momentous moment expertly.

To the extent there are storylines here, they’re mainly brief and a bit ephemeral. There’s one last gasp of town color, as Kirk stages a David Blaine-like stunt, and the rest of the town demands Lorelai stage a reenactment of the graduation since they can’t get tickets to the actual one. I’ve always been come-see come-saw about the antics of the denizens of Stars Hollow, and this is no exception, as the townsfolk are pretty entitled and annoying and inconsiderate about the whole thing. But I guess you have to give them their moment in the sun for the ending.

There’s also enmity between Luke and Lorelai, as the two of them are feeling uncertain but hopeful about rekindling something, but things go down the tubes when Luke overhears Lorelai tells busybodies Babette and Miss Patty that her song didn’t mean anything, and the coldness spirals from there.

I strongly dislike this bit, because it’s so obvious that the episode is doing a headfake with this tiff to try to make it non-obvious that they’ll come together in the end. But god knows that chekov’s necklace is going to have to be given at some point, and one suspects a happy or at least hopeful ending is in the offing, so the show pretending otherwise just feels like a waste of time.

There is, however, some good material with Lorelai and Emily having one last little disagreement that showcases how different they are in their approaches. Emily insists that Lorelai use her influence to steer Rory toward marriage, and that a mother’s responsibility is to do what she can to guide her daughter toward the right path. Lorelai not only thinks Rory is too young to marry Logan, but does Emily one better and doesn’t even take her advice in form but not in substance.

Lorelai remains steadfast with her daughter, insisting that she won’t even give Rory her opinion, because she believes a mother’s place is to let their children figure these things out for themselves, particularly the big decisions, and decide what’s best for them. Still, after the fact, Lorelai is willing to give Rory the reassurance that she believes her daughter made the right decision, and it’s a nice sign that she and Rory are on the same page, even when Lorelai is letting Rory fly on her own.

That just leaves the one major storyline in this episode -- Logan actually proposing and Rory mulling it over, but ultimately rejecting him. You feel for Logan. His intentions are pure, and his belief in the futility of everlasting long distance, particularly when Rory has nothing tying her down or keeping her from moving to San Francisco other than that she’s just not ready, seems well-founded. It’s gotta hurt.

But it’s also gotta hurt for Rory, whose realized that unknowns can be their own kind of exhilarating, and wants to explore them rather than settle down just yet. It’s been an interesting arc for her over this half season, and while this is a heavy price to pay for it, and the scene-to-scene work of it hasn’t always been perfect, it’s a worthwhile story to tell and direction to take the character.

Overall, like a lot of penultimate episodes, this one feels more like a primer for the finale than its own thing, but the constituent parts are solid at worst. Bring on the (however temporary) ending!