Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Ooh, That Smell
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.23.2006
Morning at the Dragonfly, and Michel's face is even more twisted in disdain than usual. It might even be disgust. If not, dare I say it, revulsion. Again, even more so than usual. Lorelai comes in, and whatever's getting to Michel hits her hard as well. It's an odor, clearly. A smell. A miasma. Something is rotten in Stars Hollow. "It smells like rotting cabbage," Lorelai gags, shocked. Michel adds, "Or with dense but subtle undertones of olives and tar." Sookie arrives, holding a kitchen towel over her nose and mouth and asking what's going on. "It's not coming from the kitchen?" Lorelai asks, which surprisingly doesn't earn her a smack across the chops; Sookie's too busy worrying that it's an olfactory hallucination, which she thinks is a sign of an impending heart attack. Lorelai doesn't think that they're having a "communal, massive heart attack." I always thought olfactory hallucinations were a precursor to a psychotic episode, and I would totally buy a massive, communal one of those on this show. Another one, I mean. Michel tries to blame the stink on some guests that he suspects of "traveling with decaying animal flesh." Lorelai dismisses that theory and tries to open the window, but that just makes it worse, because the stench is coming from outside. She slams it shut again. "So glad we tried that," Michel says, watery-eyed. Lorelai says that she's going outside to investigate. Sookie's right behind her, but Michel wants to wait and see if Lorelai makes it to the end of the block first. Sookie shames him into following, which he does while holding a fruit from the bowl under his nose. I'm just going to pause for a moment while I imagine Michel as a regular on C.S.I..
Okay, I'm back. Outside, the streets are thronged with townies holding cloths over their mouths and noses. Lorelai and her little entourage catch up with Kirk, who's strolling along unaffected as he says that Taylor called an emergency town meeting. "I'm not sure why," Kirk adds, because he doesn't think the smell is that bad. Not nearly as bad as, say, the length of time Kirk has been waiting to deliver another decent joke. Sookie wants to head right on over to the town meeting to find out what's going on, but Lorelai's heading back to the inn: "I'd rather smell this smell for the rest of my life than see Luke at a town meeting." Wow, that bad, huh? Michel and Sookie go ahead without her.
At the meeting, Taylor is presiding over an unruly citizenry. He begins by assuring everyone that the source of the odor is non-toxic: "It's pickles." Kerfluffle ensues. "Like, one giant pickle?" Kirk asks amid the commotion. Taylor explains that, three days ago, a train derailed outside of town and scattered seven thousand pounds of pickles and pickle brine along the tracks. The mess has been "baking in the hot sun" ever since (this line spoken while we can clearly see the paper jack-o-lanterns hanging from the ceiling directly behind him), and now that the wind's shifted, they're all suddenly living in Stench Hollow. People start turning on Taylor, and Babette screeches some weak crack about "Picklegate" that I've already wasted way too many words on. Sookie asks how hard it can be to clean up some pickles, and Taylor says that's not his concern. Over the increasingly noisy crowd, he explains that the mess isn't Stars Hollow's responsibility. The pickles themselves are from Ohio, the railroad company is incorporated in Delaware, and the pickle spill is on the Woodbridge side of the tracks. Do you care about this? Because nobody else in Stars Hollow does. Luke stands up and roars, "Just pick up the damn pickles, Taylor!" Taylor protests that the tab for the cleanup will run an "astronomical" $2500. "Sold!" Luke yells, to general agreement. Taylor calls a vote, and it's unanimous in favor, even Kirk. Taylor taps his gavel in defeat. "Pickle smell gone in forty-eight hours, along with everything good in Stars Hollow," he drama-queens, adjourning the meeting. And in case you're interested, I just transcribed every word Luke gets to speak in this episode.