Episode Report Card Al Lowe: B- | 153 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT You Can Dance If You Want To
By Al Lowe | Season 7 | Episode 3 | Aired on 2006.10.10
Later that night, Rory is awakened by her ringing cell phone. It's Logan, calling at the start of his day in London. They proceed to have the awkward conversation of a long-distance couple, one of whom has been awakened in the middle of the night. Rory tries to tell Logan the story of the guy she's tutoring through Paris's program, but she can't think of what's funny about the story and yada yada yada, it's awkward and they have to hang up when Logan has a meeting.
In the morning, Rory comes out of her room to find Lorelai in deep contemplation of her Pop-Tart. She's wigging, she says, because of her parents' non-reaction to the breakup story: "It's almost like the absence of their reaction was worse than any freakout they could've had." She says it made her wonder why she cared so much how they reacted to things: "And then I thought that maybe their freakouts are like some sort of compass for me. Like I know I'm doing what I want to do, because it freaks them out!" Here eyes are googly as she explains that it made her wonder if she even really likes the things she likes, or if she only likes the music and movies and food and men she likes because her mother doesn't like them. She remembers, for example, the first Pop-Tart she ever had: "I knew my mother would recoil at the very idea of me having a Pop-Tart. I thought it tasted like freedom. It tasted like I was my own person. It tasted like freedom, and rebellion and independence." Rory: "Wow, that was some Pop-Tart. What flavor was that?" Lorelai goes on, wondering if she would ever like Pop-Tarts if the Gilmores had made her eat them every day, and to test this theory, she's eaten every one of them in the house, much to Rory's chagrin. "If it makes you feel any better," Lorelai says. "I don't know if I like them!" As Rory goes for the substitute Fruit Loops, Lorelai asks how her conversation went last night with Logan. "I don't know if it's the trans, or the Atlantic," Rory says, "but Helen Keller and Stephen Hawking could have a more connective conversation." Oh, snap. That shouldn't have made me laugh, at all, but it did. What's next, some man-with-no-legs jokes? Damn. Rory says that her conversations with Logan are awkward and pause-y, and that the more she tries to connect, the more disconnected she feels, and that the feeling makes her go into a spiral of self-consciousness. "Maybe it's just the salt in the ocean that corrodes conversations, or something," she concludes.