Episode Report Card Al Lowe: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Valentine, The Destroyer
By Al Lowe | Season 6 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.13.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Logan invites Rory to his family's house in the Vineyard for the holiday, and invites Lorelai and Luke to come along with them. Lorelai is hesitant because "Luke is not a Valentine's kind of guy." No kidding? Luke's worried about being in the middle of Logan and Rory's relationship, concerned that they will break up right in font of him and Lorelai. It's weird to see the folks away from Stars Hollow, and it's a bit awkward for them, as well. Apparently, Luke doesn't know how to behave around people? He can't travel well? I don't know; it's just further evidence that the writers are turning him into a curmudgeonly jerk. He pretty much behaves like a six-year-old, and Lorelai actually expresses a real emotion to try to get him to act right. Logan saves Luke's ass and gives him a necklace to give to Lorelai for Valentine's Day. Lorelai finally tells him (and his hairpiece) about her concerns about their June 3rd wedding's being cancelled. He assures her that they will be married soon and even goes so far as to say, repeatedly, that he loves her, a phrase practically unprecedented on this show. All is sweetness and light, until Mitchum Huntzberger shows up at the house and he and Logan throw down. He berates Logan and forces him to go on a business trip to London, cutting everyone's weekend short. Lorelai is alarmed when, returning home, she finds out that her mother has made an engagement announcement in the paper, advertising the wedding date as June 3rd. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Lorelai enters the kitchen of the inn to find the staff in the doldrums. One of the assistants indicates Sookie over on her stool, head down. "Uh oh," Lorelai asks. "Food funk?" The guy says it's a major one. Lorelai asks if they're dealing with a Swiss chard à la Polonaise-level funk, like the one from last May, "or the Panna Cotta experiment of aught-five?" The assistant says it's worse than that: "2001 Pigeons à la Niçoise." Lorelai sighs. "Oh, boy," she says, worried, and gingerly approaches the downtrodden chef. "Sookie?" she says sweetly, but Sookie is too far gone. "You mean 'Sucky,'" she says, brandishing an oyster. She's been working, she says, on the prix fixe menu for Valentine's Day and cannot come up with anything new. Everyone, she says, will be serving oysters. "Lovers love oysters," Lorelai says. "Well, I don't. I love burritos, but people don't want burritos on Valentine's Day." Sookie is transformed: "How do we know unless we give them the option? That's it! I'll serve burritos!" Lorelai shakes her head: "That's flirting with disaster. We could be talking the octopus ice cream disaster of '98!" Sookie sees the reality: "Oh, God. You're right. I'll figure it out. I'm just hitting an oyster wall, here."
Lorelai asks what Sookie and Jackson will be doing for Valentine's Day. Sookie says that Jackson will make a nice meal for her and the kids and that they'll enjoy the holiday together. Sookie asks what Lorelai's plans are, and Lorelai shrugs: "Oh, I'll be here." Sookie is alarmed that Lorelai won't be spending the evening with Luke, but Lorelai says that Luke thinks Valentine's Day is just one of those holidays invented by greeting-card companies trying to get your money. Of course Luke -- whom they have turned into a pseudo-abusive, selfish, arthritic eighty-seven-year-old -- would think that. I'm here to tell you, men who say shit like that are just cheap bitches; how hard is it to buy a five-dollar box of candy and some flowers? Huh? You know what I gave my husband for Valentine's Day? Heart-shaped cheese and chocolate beer. The man wept. Valentine's Day is fun. It's about sweetness, not diamonds. Come on! Have an emotion, for God's sake. Plus, I have news for Luke and all fools like him: every single holiday we celebrate as humans was made up by somebody. ["Eh, I have to agree with Churlish Luke; Valentine's Day is some bullshit." -- Wing Chun] Sookie disputes the greeting-card company cliché anyway, saying that Valentine's Day does have historical significance, causing Lorelai to shrug again. "Oh, well, then," she says, "it must have been a greeting-card company in Roman times. You know, the one that came up with Gladiator's Day."