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
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The morning after! Rory wakes up in Logan's empty apartment, surrounded by the detritus of the swinging bash she threw him and finds that he's left her a beautifully wrapped...model rocket ship. Summer has started, and Rory is at a loss without him. Paris gives her a lecture to enlighten her about her limbo status. Lorelai, on the other hand, is experiencing nothing so romantic as that. She opens her eyes to the gross reality of last night's mistake -- she really did slept with Christopher. When Luke arrives at her house later that morning to discuss things, she tells him "it's over" and gives him the brush off. It's not the only bad news he's getting today. Taylor (annoyingly) informs him of a new red light to be installed in front of the diner that will require his power to be cut off. Except that what actually happens is that Kirk, during a demonstration of the system, DRIVES his CAR, through Luke's DINER. To heal their broken hearts, Lorelai and Rory decide to "not talk." So...they spend several minutes talking about not talking, and decide the best thing they can do to keep from talking is to play racquetball. This doesn't work, but they do have an hilarious conversation on the court about Logan's rocket (not like that), the meaning of which Rory finally discovers, though her heart is broken anew when he asks her to come to London at Christmas instead of the summer. After his diner tragedy, Luke realizes that he is ready to marry Lorelai and makes a desperate plea for them to get back together. She, however, insists that it's over and finally reveals to him that she slept with Chris. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Rory wakes up amid the wreckage of the farewell party she threw for Logan, sad and alone. Welcome to Season 7 of Gilmore Girls, subtitled: "My boyfriend's gone, and we're gonna be in trouble." She stumbles through all the mess -- and smiles when she sees that Logan has somehow left a beautifully wrapped, secret present for her on the bar. She opens it to find...a model rocket ship. Just what every girl wants! She looks at it, clearly confused.
Also confused? Lorelai, who is also just waking up in Christopher's bed. Oh, mom and dad, you've been up to NO GOOD. Urgh. I was hoping we'd find out that -- HA HA -- last season's big finish was some cleverly disguised sequence that would end with Miss Patty loudly kvetching in the diner that, suddenly, in her dream, the swamp monster was Christopher! And he was in Lorelai's bed! But, no. Lorelai, too, looks disappointed that this reality is actually real and does that uncomfortable Morning After escape maneuver where she insists that she can't stay, over his many protestations. "I can't," she says. "Paul Anka." Chris smirks. "Oh, there's no way he could be performing this early," he says. "Check your tickets." She gets dressed while he rattles on, and finally has to cut him off with a firm "no." Her face when she leaves gives us all the evidence we need that she is as squicked by her own behavior as we are.
When, moments later, Lorelai does the shoeless walk of shame into her house, she is greeted by a honking "you're baaaack!" It's Babette, who scares the crap out of her. "Yeah, it's my voice," Babette says. "Frightens a lot of people...it's the nodules on my vocal chords. The more I strain my voice, the more they grow. It's nature's way of trying TO GET ME TO TALK SOFTER!" Wincing, Lorelai tots up the score: "Babette: 1; Nature: nada." No kidding. I hate to bust on the legendary Sally Struthers, but those kids in Africa called and asked that she stop screaming at them. They've got enough problems. Save the Children...from Deafness, is what they're saying.
Babette tells Lorelai that she broke in to, you know, feed Paul Anka and do a load of her "intimates." As one does. Lorelai makes a move to check her answering machine and needn't bother -- Babette tells her before she can even get there that there are no messages. Furthermore, Babette screeches that she already knows why Lorelai's so anxious to check them: everybody knows about her fight with Luke. "You know Adrienne Bittenberg's daughter, Becky?" Babette asks. "She's got a huge mouth?" Lorelai defends the maligned Becky, saying that the girl is not a gossip. "But," Babette insists, "she has a huge mouth." She says that Becky and another girl were behind Doose's seeing how many devil dogs Becky could stuff in her mouth and that when the other girl had to race for help, she overheard Lorelai's fight with Luke in the street. "Well," Lorelai says, "I'm glad she had the presence of mind to listen in on our argument while her friend was choking to death." Babette brushes this off. Presumably, Becky Bittenberg is dead. She offers some empty platitudes about every couple having fights and it being good for clearing the air, or whatever, and then immediately and not subtly tries to find out where Lorelai spent the night. Lorelai hedges, and makes it clear that she's ready for Babette to scram. "Oh, I'm just waitin' for my panties to dry," Babette says, but is brought up short when she sees that no, Lorelai really, really is ready for her to leave, probably because she has a migraine from all the yelling going on in her house at this ungodly hour. Babette leaves, asking that her panties be put on a delicate spin cycle, and saying that Luke will probably call soon: "They always do!"