[7.4/10] Some series finales are epic climaxes, that pay off long-running feud or solve longstanding mysteries. Some are challenging exits that leave things painfully open-ended or uncertain. Some are greatest hits albums that just revisit the show’s high points and favorite bits.
And others, like Gilmore Girls’, are part victory lap, part pat on the back, and part quilt.
That makes “Bon Voyage” a good, not great finale. It’s full of perfectly pleasant, even outstanding moments, but they don’t really amount to a whole so much as they are deposited one after another into a mosaic that doesn’t really go anywhere. Nominally, we are building to Rory’s exeunt to the next great adventure while she spends her last three days in Stars Hollow before jetting off to cover the Obama campaign (replete with a “only in a finale” visit from her hero, Christiane Amanpourr). But in reality, we’re just checking in with everyone and nodding to every major relationship on the show before it’s time shut things down.
That means we also get one last heaping helping of town color, which much of the valuable real estate in the finale being taken up by the usual local yahoos putting their heads together in order to give Rory an impromptu send off to show how much they care. Taylor gets rebuked. The likes of Kirk and Miss Patty and Babbette all get up to their usual antics. And we get a perfectly pleasant pan of the lot of them cheering as the show’s eponymous duo arrive at their surprise party.
None of it’s bad exactly, but it tends to go on and on in an episode where every major interaction feels like it just barely has time to breathe. I could certainly have used more time to explore Lorelai’s feelings about her daughter leaving, and less time with Babbette talking about her weather-predicting ankles.
Still, the dribs and drabs of character and relationship grace notes are each well done. I’m glad the show took time to tie a bow on Rory and Lane, with each remarking on how far they’ve come and how much the friendship has meant to them. Their connection took something of a backseat once Rory left for college and their lives started to proceed more and more on different tracks, so it’s nice to have some final reminder of how much that relationship meant to the show over its run.
There’s also a number of great little moments involving Richard and Emily. There’s no real conflicts left to resolve between Rory and her grandparents, so we get a bit of warmth instead. Emily’s “It is a privilege to be your grandmother” is said with such conviction and feeling that it carries the day, and the sad realization that this will likely be their last Friday dinner as a quartet for some time.
There’s more to the elder Gilmores’ interactions with Lorelai though. Richard getting a little sentimental, almost-but-not-quite admitting his regret for how they’ve reacted to her life choices, and telling her that it takes a “remarkable person” like her to warrant this sort of treatment is a sweet moment that shows the growing respect Richard’s developed for his daughter over the course of the series.
Better yet, Emily is insistent upon Lorelai building a spa or a tennis court or some other addition to her inn for reasons that are initially mystifying. But then her scheme becomes clear -- she’s worried that with Rory gone, Lorelai will give up the family’s Friday night dinners, and she wants to create some leverage to ensure they continue.
Instead, Lorelai gives Emily all she could hope for -- the implicit assurance that Lorelai will continue to visit her parents on a weekly basis, without any financial blackmail necessary. It’s my favorite part of the episode, not just because it provides a lovely grace note to the eternally complicated but ultimately loving relationship between this mother and daughter, but because it’s the most understated in a finale that (naturally and forgivably) wears its heart on its sleeve.
The same can’t really be said for the Luke/Lorelai business here, which lays the “maybe Luke and I are done forever, he just never shows me how he really feels” shtick on thicker than thieves. It’s the plainest sort of a television show protesting too much to where you just know they’re going to pull the trigger on putting the uber-couple back together, and all the supposed indications and declarations to the contrary feel like grandstanding.
Still, once again, the moments where they stop pretending this isn’t going to happen and instead build to it happening are well done. Luke organizing the town to throw the party early, getting this collection of knuckleheads in gear in time, and even stitching together a makeshift party tent himself overnight at the last minute is the sort of “go the extra mile” stuff Luke always does. To be frank, it’s why Lorelai’s protests to the contrary and Rory’s statements that he always acts a little slowly feel pretty inaccurate.
It’s heartening enough though. Luke telling Lorelai that he just wanted to see her happy, and their kiss that’s accented with a crane shot, leans hard into the cheese. And the predictability of the reunion takes away some of its impact. Still, you have to give Rosenthal, Kirshner, and the rest of the writing staff credit. They spent the time to set up Luke and Lorelai getting back together, and laid plenty of groundwork, rather than slapping together a make-up at the last minute to send the crowd home happy. (Hell, they even use a light touch with chekov’s necklace, which I didn’t expect.) It’s not perfect, but it’s sound, which is my generally feeling about this episode as a whole.
That just leaves Lorelai and Rory, and the story of a mother realizing this is really goodbye and not wanting to face it quite yet. It’s a storyline that I wish had more time, maybe even its own episode, to breathe. As it is, Lauren Graham finds one last opportunity to soar with her performance. Rory feels a little hurt that her mom isn’t more broken up about her departure, only to find that when she asks Lorelai what the deal is, Lorelai admits that she’s focused on details and planning right now, because she’s not ready to deal with the emotional difficulty of confronting Rory leaving until it’s actually happened. And Graham’s face is perfect, with the right combination of “I love you” and “I’m putting up a good front, but I’m barely holding it together.”
The last couple of scenes lay it on a little thick, but such is the provenance of a series finale. Rory telling her mom “you’ve already given me everything I need” is the sort of on-the-nose dialogue that normally makes me wince, but in a final episode, you can get away with a little sap. Likewise, there’s something a bit too neat about the show ending with the two exchanging their usual banter at Luke’s, while replicating the same shot from the pilot, but I can hardly fault a show for getting a little sentimental with its bookends in its final frame.
Let’s face it; finales are hard. You have to find some way to sum up the entire run of your shown without it feeling contrived or too easy. Gilmore Girls doesn’t always escape that trap in its last outing. It’s a collection of feel-good moments that work when you’re watching them but don’t really crystalize into something cohesive or stronger-by-association when the credits roll.
Still, what it lacks in advancing the characters or delivering any grand bit of meaning beyond what we already know, it makes up for in its utter amiability. That was always this show’s strength. Even when its storylines started to sag, or its characters made inexplicable choices, or everything came too easily to its heroes, it was a world you always enjoyed spending time in. Whether it was Stars Hollow or Hartford or some other Norman Rockwell-esque locale, Gilmore Girls showed its viewers someplace where the people were always witty, the bon mots and references were thrown about fast and furiously, and the bitterness was there, but sweetness always followed. “Bon Voyage” gives the fans one last dose of that sweetness, and while there’s not much substance to it, it’s still worth that final, sentimental bite.
[7.5/10] It’s nice to see Paris get a win. She’s taken a backseat as the show’s gotten into its later seasons, with various boys and other problems taking up more of Rory’s time than her rival-turned-friend from Chilton. So before the show goes off the air (or at least on a decade-long hiatus), it’s a good thing that we get one last, meaty Paris story to chew on
And it’s a great one! The scene where Paris receives her acceptances is wonderful. It’s the perfect reversal of the show’s great moment in Season 3 where she was rejected by Harvard and devastated. It’s sweet that she waits for Rory (and sweeter that she says Rory’s always been an inspiration to her, in a very Paris way), and adorable that she puts so much stock into the luck of her friend and the special letter opener and all that amusing ritual.
Even better is her reaction to everything. Naturally she goes from utter, totally believable elation at achieving her dream, to questioning whether her best friend and boyfriend are sending her signals with their slightly varying levels of enthusiasm, to being laden with the weight of having created so many options for herself and now having to choose among them. It is a perfectly Paris progression of responses to this news and a sign that, Palladinos or no Palladinos, the show still knows one of its most distinctive characters.
That dovetails nicely with the sense that Luke and Lorelai are getting back to being the duo we’ve known and loved for so long as well. As belabored as a lot of the effort to get Luke and Lorelai back to normal in the last episode was, I appreciate the show’s commitment to exploring how awkward rekindling even a slight friendship after a broken engagement would be. Their dialogue is believably stop-and-start, with small talk that neither can stand and a sense that they just can’t get back to where they were.
That changes when they start bickering again. I love the observation there -- that the obstacle to Luke and Lorelai getting back into the rhythm is that they were straining to be nice to one another given the unpleasant circumstances of their break-up, when the core of their relationship is playfully jousting and challenging one another. It’s a small arc, but it’s satisfying, and the fact that it culminates in Luke doing that Luke thing -- telling Lorelai how stupid her (admittedly silly) idea about something is, and then going the extra mile to make it happen because he cares about her more than he cares about being right.
It succinctly and efficiently brings Luke and Lorelai back to something approaching normalcy (or at least what passes for normalcy given the participants), and who knew it would take Lorelai’s car breaking down to get them there. The show lays it on a little thick with the metaphor of Lorelai silently recognizing that her relationship with Luke can be fixed despite seeming broken beyond repair the same way that her destroyed dollhouse can, but as a whole, it’s a strong story that gets the essential character of the Luke/Lorelai relationship.
Speaking of that broken dollhouse, the only plot thread in this episode that doesn’t work is the Jackson/Sookie one, where Jackson is staying at Lorelai’s house to avoid his chicken pox-infected kids, and it brings to the surface Sookie’s lingering ill-feelings about the whole “lied about my vasectomy” thing.
Look, I can appreciate the show’s commitment to not just glossing over something like that, and devoting some time to Sookie still being upset by that sort of betrayal and the two of them needing to work through it. The problem is that it’s just a really shitty thing that Jackson did, to where you either need to give it at least a few episode’s worth of progression and exploration of the enmity and hardship that something so serious would cause in their relationship, or you should just make it like one of those dozens of major personal issues that the show just scoots around and never mentions again in the name of the status quo. Tackling it in a C-story just calls attention to how paltry the penitence is, and reminds the audience of the crappy thing that led to this pregnancy.
But this is an episode about couples figuring out what they mean to each other and working through problems, whether they’re married and pregnant, rekindling a broken romance, or deciding the next step of their lives. To that end, it’s revealing to see Paris break up with Doyle, and explain her reasons for it.
It’s relatable to have people in that stage of their lives struggling to balance the opportunities that lay ahead of them with the people they love who are right in front of them. It’s one of Paris’s most human moments when she admits that when considering which school to go to, she couldn’t help but think of these choices in relation to Doyle, something that scares her given how young she is and how that doesn’t fit into her meticulously curated life plan. And it shines a light on Rory’s own priorities when it comes to her relationship with Logan vs. her career prospects.
Gilmore GIrls decides to give Paris the win though. Doyle bursts back into the apartment, declares that he doesn’t accept the break-up because he loves Paris for being the amazing, sometimes trying person that she, and that he’ll follow her wherever she wants to go. After ending her high school years on a low note, Paris gets it all here: revenge on Harvard, the opportunity to follow her med school dream, and the love of someone who’s willing to bend his life to make sure it aligns with hers, wherever that may takes him.
But it gives Rory the loss, something that flips Rory and Paris’s fortunes from the end of Season 3, and which I cannot help but admire. Rory has had such a primrose path in so many ways, finding endless success at whatever she sets her mind too, and while there’s only three episodes left to explore it, I like the idea of Rory taking a gamble, as Logan might put it, and coming up empty. As the end of Season 6 showed, she’s not always great at dealing with adversity, so it will be interesting, to say the least, to see how she responds to this setback.
Paris, on the other hand, has suffered and struggled to this point. She didn’t get into the college of her dreams. She never had anything approaching Rory’s supportive home life. She was deposed as editor of the Yale Daily News, lived in a dumpy apartment in a bad neighborhood rather than her grandparents’ poolhouse or boyfriend’s penthouse, and had a rocky at best romantic history up to this point. Nevertheless, the show sends her on her way to the finale with med school acceptances in her hand, a loving partner on her arm, and a world of possibilities ahead of her. The girl’s earned it.
[8.1/10] There’s been an interesting theme to the teen-focused side of Gilmore Girls since around the halfway mark. It’s been a combination of Jess learning how to be a boyfriend and Rory learning that not all boyfriends are like Dean. It can get a little rote at times, but it’s true-to-life stuff and interesting to see both characters facing adjustments and having to grow and not take things for granted a bit.
For Rory, that means learning not to try to play it cool, but rather to be straight with Jess about what she wants, including making plans to hang out rather than just keeping it fuzzy. (And Lorelai’s cheerleading and reminiscing on that front is an interesting side dish.) There’s also the complication that she keeps running into Dean, the symbol for perfect doting boyfriendhood, to remind her that even if she didn’t love him anymore, he was good at the nuts and bolts of relationships in way that Jess isn’t and wasn’t. And the fact that he’s now kissing some old acquaintance named Lindsay only complicates the possible buyer’s remorse.
And Jess, for his part, is still monosyllabic but making an effort in his two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of way. He’s certainly oblivious much of the time, and thinks a lot of that nuts and bolts boyfriend stuff is lame, but he’s making an effort because of how he feels about Rory, and that makes him sympathetic even when he’s screwing things up.
There’s also some amusing and/or compelling stuff on the side. The Lane-Dave romance continues apace, with Lane going on a fake date with Yung Chu to please her mom, but with both her and Yung Chu pining for their real significant others. And Dave racing across town because he’s a little jealous, and Lane being flattered by that jealousy, is still pretty adorable. Plus in the comedy department, Taylor’s fussiness and Kirk’s overzealous and underinformed attempts to call the hockey game are worth a few laughs.
But the best storyline in the episode centers on Emily and Gran (aka Lorelai Sr.). As I’ve said before, seeing the normally unflappable Emily so flustered by her mother-in-law is always a treat, and the (admittedly sitcom-ish) twist of her walking in on Gran making out with a gentleman caller (officially credited as “Gran’s Kissing Man”) is a lot of fun. The way Emily preens and plans to lord it over her tormentor, and the gasps of the old ladies when she lets the secret slip are all just fantastic.
Still, the real strength of the story comes in the quiet scene shared between these two women who so rarely see eye-to-eye. As hard-edged as Gran can be, the story she tells -- of seeing marriage as a commitment that transcends death, but feeling lonely at times -- is a relatable one. It’s so relatable that it creates common ground between the two eldest Gilmore Girls, with Emily explaining that she too has her pride, and that she too gets lonely, and stating not in so many words that when Gran orders her around or takes all Richard’s time it hurts her on both of those fronts. It’s a nice resolution to the story, and it even produces a hilarious scene with Lorelai and Richard reflecting on what just happened. (Richard laughing and saying “I guess I have a new daddy” is just tops.)
Overall, a very pleasant and well-done episode with the stories feeding one another nicely.
[8.4/10] I’m not sure we’ve ever had a straight up Jess story before. I don’t mean that we haven’t had major plots involving Jess, but I think this is the first time he’s essentially been the protagonist of a story where he’s had an arc from the beginning of the episode to the end. I have to admit, he annoyed me a bit here (particularly at the dinner with Emily), but I like that they’re showing him learning and growing. As with his quiet development early in the season, it makes him more likable and gives him potential as a romantic interest for Rory.
And I like Luke as someone who’s legitimately guiding him. It’s nice that Jess is characteristically reluctant to do the nice boyfriend thing at Emily’s, that he’s upset that everyone assumes he got into a fight with Dean, and that he buttons up and thinks it’s all over when he and Rory get into a fight. But then there’s Luke, the voice of wisdom, explaining that he doesn’t have to be a pushover like Dean to accept Rory’s family and be more open with her. The fact that Jess seems to take it to heart, and talks to Rory afterward is a good place to take it, and shows Little Rat Boy slowly but surely maturing.
There’s also an interesting theme of physical affection that goes through the episode. There’s the reciprocal instances of Rory and Lorelai each walking in on the other necking with a boy, and the awkwardness of it as a moment where their mother-daughter relationship prevails over their best friends relationship. While Lorelai worrying so much about Rory being with Jess feels a little out of character (wasn’t she the one telling Luke to lighten up and telling Rory to kiss Jess more forcefully over the past few episodes), it’s an interesting note to have the character play, particularly given her own history and understandable concerns about history repeating itself on that front.
The final scene between the two of them is just spectacular. There’s a realness to both the uncomfortableness but also the understanding between Lorelai and Rory in that moment. It’s a real issue parents and children face, and I’m glad the show chose to dramatize it with an honest but simple heart-to-heart between them rather than something more overblown. It’s a very well-acted scene, particularly for Lauren Graham.
And while it was mostly fluff, I also enjoyed the Dave-Lane story here. Them having to hide their romance from the rest of the band is sitcom plotting, and the fake out of the “we have to get this out in the open” resolution being that the other bandmembers “out” and accept Dave as a Christian is a bit silly, but it’s nice material with its heart in the right place. The run-in with Mrs. Kim and the difficulty that Lane and Dave have convincing both her and their bandmates that they’re not dating at the same time creates some funny but sympathy-worthy knots for the almost couple.
But most of all, the comedy game was on point in this episode. Luke joshing Jess about being attacked by a swan is hilarious. While the scene went on a little long, Kirk going all Darren Nichols on Patty’s one-woman show is amusing. And my god, somebody go back in time and give Kelly Bishop an Emmy already. The way that Emily is unfailingly polite and yielding to Jess for Rory’s benefit when her granddaughter is in earshot, and then just unloads all her complaints about Jess to Lorelai on the phone is amazing. I mean, my god, her rant is an instant classic. Just the phrases “slap his monosyllabic mouth” and “abominable thug” and the way she intones “he should be in jail” had me in stitches. I’m pretty sure it’s the scene that clinched Emily as my favorite character on the show.
Overall, this was an excellent episode that had an interesting theme for Rory and Lorelai, a nice if abbreviated plot for Lane, a well-done arc for Jess, and some great comic material for Emily.
[7.3/10] So much of show’s like Gilmore Girls come down to execution. There’s something about the “coincidence” that Rory and Lorelai both happen to be going on double dates on the same night that instantly makes me roll my eyes. And yet, even if the premise is contrived, the show uses that structure to create fun scenes and tell compelling stories to where, by the end of the episode, I’d essentially forgotten how the constructed quality of the premise annoyed me.
On Lorelai’s side, it helps that she and Sookie make for a wonderful comic pairing, Sookie’s relatable anxiousness about going on her first date in years, and Lorelai’s smart remarks and support make for a great mix. The actual date was pretty silly, and the rudeness of Jackson’s cousin Rune was too broad, but it had a good throughline. Sookie is out of practice and worried so she’s scared to be assertive. Lorelai nudges her, and it gets Sookie to not only nail down a date with Jackson, but ask him to stay at Luke’s when Rune wants to go. It’s a small arc, but a satisfying one, that sees our dear Sookie being understandably nervous but standing up and going after what she wants.
(As an aside, it’s shocking to me that the show is reputed to play “will they won’t they” with Luke and Lorelai forever because they push that button pretty hard here. Still, I can understand the show trying to stretch the romantic tension as far as it will go because the two of them have fantastic chemistry, and it just exposes how tedious the whole deal with Max was.)
I like the premise of the Lane-focused half of the episode that Rory’s enmeshed in. The idea of “loving” someone from afar and then realizing they’re not for you once you actually talk to them is a very sixteen-year-old epiphany. That said, like Rune, Todd is a little too exaggerated as a dumbo for my tastes. Plus, Rory’s affrontedness when Dean is leery about setting them up perturbed me a bit, but as my wife pointed out, it’s probably an accurate reaction for a teenager.
But what really bumped the episode up a notch is the story with Lorelai and Lane’s mom. It went with a familiar tack that I really like on Gilmore Girls -- Lorelai stands on principle with one person but then gets to the heart of the matter with another. In the episode with Rory’s dance, Lorelai told her mom that she shouldn’t pressure Rory to go, but in private with Rory, Lorelai encouraged her daughter to give it a chance. It’s a nice way to show that Lorelai understands what’s right in terms of “procedure” for lack of a better term, but isn’t skimping on the substance of the issue.
The show returns to the same move here. When Lane’s mom catches her daughter out with boys, she drags Lane away, and Lorelai, while not quite so fiery, takes Rory to task over her being selective with the truth in describing their outing with Dean. I loved Lorleia’s exclamation that Rory is truly her daughter after realizing that she left out details so that Lorelai wouldn’t have to lie to Lane’s mother and break the “mom code,” and her affirming that she wouldn’t lie to Lane’s mom for that very reason.
But then the episode follows it up with a great scene between Lorelai and Lane’s mom, where Lorelai affirms Lane’s mom’s right to raise her daughter the way sees fit, but implores her to see that she’s already done a great job with Lane and that she’s a good and responsible young woman. There’s some comedy in bridging the philosophical divide between the two women, but it’s a nice back-and-forth that gives both sides some solid points, understandable concerns, and frank admissions.
That’s one of the best things Gilmore Girls does -- take wacky sitcom premises like a daughter’s reluctance about going to a dance or a coincidental double double date (quadruple date) and turn it into a heartwarming than harrowing exploration of the generational relationships among mothers and daughters, or potent reflection of the unspoken camaraderie between moms (even moms with starkly different views on parenting), or the universal anxieties about impressing someone you like and standing up for getting to spend time with them. Nice to see the execution outstrip the premise here.
8.6/10. A really well-balanced episode in several respects. For one, I loved the show's use of Ted and The Mother's first date as a frame story, and the way that it used that as a device to tell stories within stories (e.g. Ted telling her the story about when he was at the wedding telling the story about how he met Gary Blauman.) One of the deftest strokes of Season 9 is how it filled in the gaps of Ted and The Mother's future together little bit little to where by the time they meet, we get a pretty complete, if abbreviated picture of who they are. The two of them continue to be cute together, and the fact that Ted didn't blurt out an I love you (among other callbacks to the pilot here) and the way it led to Ted and The Mother's first kiss was well done and downright heartwarming.
But it wasn't all warm fuzzies! I often complain about the broadness of the show in its later years, but I have to admit, as exaggerated as it was, I loved everyone milking the reveal as to whether they were going to say "love" or "hate" (or some variation) when it came to how they felt about Gary Blauman. The various flashback stories about him were fun (especially all the dorky Teddy Roosevelt jokes between Ted and Gary), and Marshall's impromptu courtroom bit was a fun touch as well.
The show also found a really nice way to give closure to a wide swath of its secondary and tertiary character without it feeling forced. Many of them were cute or clever (Scooter ending up with Stripper Lily and Jeanette ending up with Kevin were oddly perfect) and the fly-by device gave everyone a moment without overcrowding the episode. On top of that, tying those little updates with the theme that friends drift apart and if you care about someone, you have to hold onto them, and having that pay off in the story of Ted and The Mother's first date (with The Mother making the move!) was a really neat way to handle it as well. Overall, a nice lead-in to the finale.
It's so refreshing to see things from a different perspective. I believe it's even more interesting now that we see the version of a real couple with their real struggles instead of the versions of lovebirds. I paid attention to everything I could knowing how things can change from one's perspective. Helen's a really dark one. Noah's still playing hero on his head, as when he was so worried about his son's stomachache (in Helen's version it wasn't even commented) and when he shows up to the mediation meeting with a nosebleed (in Helen's version he was just fine). A few other things are interesting and differ a bit more than they usually do (as when Helen goes to the police station bringing Noah a good lawyer and when on Helen's version both Noah and the mediator sit in front of her - and the camera shots intend to show how confronted and alone she is in this).
It was definitely one of the show's best episodes so far. MUCH MORE MATURE than season one. Much darker as well. I'm really hoping next week we get to see Allison's Vs. Cole's version! For those thinking you can't really tell a long story about an affair, that was a good slap in the face.
