Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | 83 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Ooh, That Smell
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 5 | Aired on 2006.10.24
At the Dragonfly, Michel is lighting a veritable inferno of scented candles while he talks on the phone to a prospective guest, using a more pleasant tone of voice than I think I've ever heard from him. He sweetly inquires, "If all the air around you smelled like pickles and there was no place to run, no place to hide, would you find that bothersome?" Lorelai tries to enter through the front door, but she can't because Michel's jammed a bunch of rugs and blankets against the base of the door to keep the smell out. "No, that is not a metaphor," Michel tells the caller. "Perhaps it would be better if you checked in tomorrow night." He finally rings off and dons a handy surgical mask to admit Lorelai, who's still trapped outside and whining, "It's getting in my pores! My pores are pickling!" Michel lets her in and sprays air freshener at the edges of the door after he closes it behind her, going on about secret government chemical weapons testing. "That's a cheery thought," Lorelai says. Michel has more where that came from, but she's heard about all of the doom-c'est-ing she can take for now.
Lorelai heads straight for the kitchen, where Sookie has been busy combating the odor the best way she knows how -- by cooking. She says that she started with baked apples with cinnamon and nutmeg, but that didn't work, and neither did cooking with cheeses, breads, or chocolates. Someone's going to eat all that, right? Sookie says that she finally decided to "embrace the pickle," and while Lorelai goes on an olfactory free-association jag that leads from Milton Berle to the Carnegie Deli, Sookie lifts the lid off a pot and announces, "Pastrami!" She offers Lorelai a sandwich with some celery soda, but Lorelai's all full of Lunchables from the park. Sookie's unimpressed. "Don't judge what you do not understand," Lorelai warns. Even more unimpressed than she was with the Lunchables, Sookie comments, "Friday in the park with Christopher, hmm?" Lorelai gets all avoidy by snagging a celery soda out of the fridge after all, making the trenchant observation, "Soda that tastes like vegetables. Who'da thunk it?" Not even trying. And then she comes right back around to Christopher, telling Sookie about the whole Sherry/Gigi/apology thing. Sookie thinks that means Sherry wants to get back with Christopher, but Lorelai tells her about Jean-Claude or Jean-Pierre, the fake-named yoga instructor. She also tells her about Chris's plan to send Gigi to Paris with a "twenty-year-old nanny." Sookie: "And you told him that's insane." Except, Lorelai says, not so much. Which is weird, she realizes, because she's used to saying what she thinks, as Sookie well knows. But Lorelai's already figured this out: she thought she was talking to Luke: "Luke is the one who didn't want me getting involved in his kid's life, not Chris. Christopher is not Luke." Sookie agrees with that sentiment, heartily and yet neutrally. Not sure how she does that. Lorelai asks why all nutritious things aren't in soda form. "I swear I would eat my vegetables if only they were fizzy." And I would watch this show for free if only it still were.