Episode Report Card Al Lowe: B- | 2 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Fight For Your Right To Be Laaaaaazay!
By Al Lowe | Season 6 | Episode 2 | Aired on 09.19.2005
Outside in the park, a pet-adoption event is going on. Lots of cute dogs and one cute...pig? Yes. Lorelai bends down to say hello and apologize for the "you-L-T" she ate yesterday. She wanders around until she sees a precious, shaggy fellow in a crate and stops to check him out. Lorelai coos over him and tells the rescue volunteer lady that Lorelai and the dog have "a love thing going on." From nowhere, Miss Patty rolls up in an impossible-but-true tie-dyed muumuu. She warns the pet lady: "This is not right. [Lorelai] can't have a love thing going on with the dog." Lorelai says that yes, she can, and orders, "Go about your business there, Patty." But Patty is persistent. Surely, she says, the animal people have Lorelai's name on a blacklist somewhere. Lorelai gets mad and defends herself against Miss Patty's repeated reminders of the hamster, bunny and turtle who all allegedly met their untimely deaths under Lorelai's care. Somehow, Lorelai gets rid of Miss Patty, laughing nervously to the pet lady that Patty is such a comedienne, "she just gets a bit and just keeps on going, you know, even with one that's not funny." Kind of like this scene? Yeah.
As the pet lady wanders off, Lorelai says goodbye to the dog and is starting to leave when she is accosted by Liz, who is so excited to see her, she says she's going to eat Lorelai's face. "Is that good?" Lorelai asks. They get girly and compare rings. Liz likes Lorelai's, especially since it didn't turn Lorelai's finger green and give her gangrene as Liz's own ring did. No matter, Liz is so thrilled to be welcoming Lorelai into the family, she busts out a Wonder Twins Power moment, raising her ring up and sing-songing "Sister-in-laaaaaaws!" Lorelai participates, and is even nice enough not to correct Liz's grammar (but you can tell she's thinking it). Lauren Graham looks so irritated in this scene. Liz asks, in general, about Rory, and Lorelai realizes that Liz hasn't heard the whole sordid story. She says that Rory's staying with the grandparents for the summer and for once lets that be it, while Liz rhapsodizes about the Gilmore family and how close they are before going off to her gangrene finger-therapy appointment. Lorelai is left to contemplate the shambles of her family and, to fill the void, abruptly adopts the scruffy dog she saw and loved earlier.
At the grandparents' house, the elder Gilmores are relaxing at their morning buffet, large enough to serve the brunch crowd at the Ritz, when Rory kind of drifts in. We learn that her car has been impounded and damaged and is still in the shop, and that her grandparents are working on getting it out. This is THE most annoying scene in the episode. The Grandparents' (I like calling them "The Grandparents," like they're from Flowers in the Attic) prattling dialogue does nothing but grate, and I feel like we could have gotten all this information about her car and whatever from some other source. Like, a conversation with Lane or Paris or anybody but the g-rents. I get that Rory is supposed to sit there watching them plan their lives and schedules while she herself has nothing to plan or schedule, but...damn, I wish to God they'd shut up.