Episode Report Card Al Lowe: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT And I Think It's Gonna Be A Long, Long Time
By Al Lowe | Season 7 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.25.2006
Logan asks Rory whether she liked the present he left for her. "Like it?" she says, laughing nervously. "I...love it!" He is so relieved, saying he worried that maybe she wouldn't understand it, but that of course, she does. "Of course I got it! I loved it!" she says, like it's a foregone conclusion, though she does not get it at all. Happy, he says he's got to go (he calls her "Ace" again, thus causing me to reverse my previous decision to maybe like him) and Rory hangs up, more confused than ever about the rocket.
Speaking of the rocket...well, that's just what happens when we return from commercial, straight to the racquetball court, where Lorelai and Rory are sitting on the floor, speaking of the rocket. Lorelai doesn't get it, either. "Is it filled with anything?" Lorelai asks. "Gum, or candy, or anything?" Rory scoffs: "Gum?" Her mom is offended. "What? Rocket Gum! It could be a thing!" Rory, growing more frustrated, says that it's just a model rocket and wants to know what it means. "Rocket...rocket...Rocketman?" Lorelai tries. "'Crocodile Rock.' 'Benny and the Jets.' 'Candle in the Wind.'" Rory asks if she's just saying Elton John songs. Lorelai: "He is just so talented." Rory pouts and suddenly has an idea. "What about space?" she asks. Lorelai: "It's...the final frontier?" Rory says no, what if Logan meant he wanted space away from her. Lorelai says that can't be it, and Rory goes back to the drawing board. Squinting with concentration, she suggests that maybe it's code. "Like, I'm his rocket, right?" she says. "Like I'm his rock E.T. I'm his rock...in the Eastern time zone!" Lorelai breaks it to her that that's dumb. "Yeah," she shoots back, like Rocket Gum is sweeping the nation! Lorelai says that when she makes a zillion dollars on her brilliant Rocket Gum invention, Rory will have to eat her words. "Or, more likely, chew those words, and blow a bubble with them," she says, because what Rory doesn't realize is that Rocket Gum will be filled with helium and, when chewed, shoot the chewer into the atmosphere. The cuteness of this scene is overwhelming. Where has the cuteness been for about twenty-five episodes? On the racquetball court? They admonish themselves for talking when they said they wouldn't, and Rory admits it's her fault. "So maybe now," she says, "you'd like to talk about Luke." Lorelai smirks. "You know what?" she says. "I'd rather racquetball." Of course, on her first attempt at the sporting life, Lorelai serves a racquetball...right into her eye. "Okay," she says. "We're done."