Episode Report Card Al Lowe: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Just Like Gwen And Gavin
By Al Lowe | Season 6 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.16.2006
Lorelai is walking through town when she bumps into, surprise!, Taylor, disguised in a track suit. "I got lucky last night," he says, "and caught a plane out of Maine." Lorelai: "Even with the rain in Spain?" Hee. Taylor says that he's incognito to take his Huckleberry Finn opportunity to come back and spy on the carnival, to see how it runs without him.
Lorelai heads over to the carnival area and runs into Zach, who is hauling stuff around for the booths. She asks him how things are going. "I'm great," he says. "I lost my girlfriend; my band's broken up; my best friend won't speak to me; and I'm reduced to working as a five-dollar-an-hour carny. Bob Dylan should write a song about me." Instead of punching him in the face and saying all of that evil was wrought by his own hand, she attempts to make him feel better, saying that he'll get through it eventually and, like everyone else, move on. He freaks, thinking she's implying that Lane has moved on from him, and wanders off saying, "Oh my God," over and over again. "Hope I cheered you up some," Lorelai says, before turning to see that Kirk has planned a fortune-telling booth to go right next to hers. "Well, frankly," he says, "I have my doubts about your dog's ability to predict the future." He goes on to explain that in order to satisfy carnival customers, he's putting the real thing next door to her booth, "so that no one walks away bamboozled." Lorelai tries to explain that there is no "real thing. It's all fake. Those tarot cards are not real; my dog cannot predict the future." Kirk: "So you admit it!" Lorelai sighs, and says that she was never hiding anything. "That's fraud," Kirk says, and goes on to say that his girlfriend says that tarot cards are real. "Well," Lorelai says, "I like your girlfriend, but the tarot cards are no more real than my dog."
They are interrupted by her phone. It's Luke, getting the ball of subterfuge rolling. He wants to know what her time's like today, he says, because he has something he needs to run past her in person. She asks if it can wait until tonight, since half of her staff is out and she has the syrup council to deal with. "I just barely got away to come here," she says, "and get in an argument with Kirk." Correct me if I'm wrong (by which I mean correct me in your head, not in an email), but if she's in the park, isn't she pretty much standing directly in front of the diner? Right, so couldn't Luke just walk out and, I don't know, tell her that he has a secret kid he's known about for months now and, oops, forgot to mention? Instead, he sounds relieved that she is going to be too busy to drop by the diner today, and asks several times if she's sure that's the case. Everything about this Luke storyline and all his behavior surrounding it makes me like him less. They agree to meet up that night, and she goes off in search of Kirk. Meanwhile, Zach looks across the park and sees Mrs. Kim talking to a Very Hot Korean-American Man (VHKM). They are laughing it up, and VHKM tells her to keep warm and to tell Lane he'll see her later. Zach looks completely crestfallen.