Episode Report Card Pamie: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Rhapsody in Blue
By Pamie | Season 2 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.13.2002
Rory's waiting out on the steps as Lorelai pulls up in the Jeep. I wonder if Rory wrote another letter explaining why she sucks. She starts apologizing before Lorelai gets out of the car. Lorelai notes that nothing new is broken on Rory. Rory says that she's fine. Lorelai asks if anybody got hurt or ended up in the hospital or if there's any real reason that Rory skipped the ceremony. Rory says no. Lorelai says she'll get past worry then and move on to other things. Rory says she knows that Lorelai is hurt. Lorelai says she's really hurt, and that she didn't even want to attend this ceremony until Rory made her. She says it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and that her best friend should have been there. She doesn't know how anything else could have been more important to Rory. She asks if it was school. Rory says it wasn't. Lorelai asks if it was Paris. Rory says it wasn't. Rory says it was really stupid what happened. I don't know if I have the strength to recap all of this, but I think the best thing is to just transcribe it. Ready? Take a breath.
Rory: I cut school!
Lorelai: You what?
Rory: I cut school and I got on a bus and I don't even know why I did it. I, I have no excuse. I was just standing outside of Chilton and I, I don't know, I must've had a stroke or something. What does a stroke feel like?
Lorelai: I don't know. Not good, probably.
Rory: And I left school and I got on a bus and went to New York and that's it. I'm grounded for six months, or seven and no TV, no stereo, no reading and, in fact, take all of my books away from me and lock them up.
Lorelai: Hold on, here. You went to New York?
Rory: And no magazines either. And I'm going to do all the housework. Laundry, dishes, in fact, we're gonna start eating at home so we have dishes.
Lorelai: Rory?
Rory: What?
Lorelai: Stop. Why did you go to New York?
Rory: To see Jess.
I have to break in here. This tactic never worked for me. Making my own punishment didn't make my parents go any easier on me. They just let me pile a bunch of stuff on myself and then ground me for an extra week to boot. I'd totally lose all of these privileges for skipping school and going to New York with a bad boy. I'd lose even more. But I don't know for sure because I was never stupid enough even to try this. Rory says the stroke made her go to New York and see Jess. She says the phone call from him last night did something to her. She says that Lorelai should also take the phone away from her: "No books, no music, no phone." She says she's a horrible person. Sick, ill, and cracked. She says this isn't who she is. Lorelai is looking at Rory with such a face of pity that I get angry that Rory's going to get away with this. Rory says that if she wrote this down in her diary and then read it, she'd wonder who this freak is, because it isn't her. She says she wouldn't skip school when she has finals coming up to see a guy who isn't her guy and end up missing her mother's graduation which she wanted to be at so badly. "That's someone else!" Rory says. "That's someone flighty and stupid and girly and, I mean, I missed your graduation, which is the worst thing I could have possibly done. I mean, I hurt you and I had to spend hours on a stinky bus next to a guy that was spitting into a can just thinking about all the minutes that were going by that I wasn't at your graduation and they were hurting you and they should have been hurting you because it was so selfish of this person who wasn't me to do what she did!" Lorelai tells Rory to take a breath. Rory says she doesn't deserve a breath: "No breaths! You should add that to the list. You should beat me, ground me, take the phone away, and deprive me of air." Lorelai says that this isn't probably a mental problem or a medical condition. "Maybe, honey, you are falling for Jess." Rory shouts "no" a few times and says she loves Dean and will always love Dean and she doesn't love Jess. "That's it. Forever." Lorelai says it might not be forever. Rory says it is forever and Jess is gone and now she can be with Dean forever and everything will be good again. Lorelai says that Rory cut school and went on a bus to a strange city to see a boy and that means something.