Episode Report Card Al Lowe: B+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT You're The Baptized!
By Al Lowe | Season 6 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.03.2005
At the Dragonfly, Lorelai and Michel are finalizing the room assignments for Jackson's relatives. Michel is less than pleased to be a part of this. He calls Jackson's family "freeloading hicks," and says they "go supermarket hopping to gorge themselves on free samples and get their perfume from magazine inserts; you can recognize them from the papercuts on their wrists." Sookie comes in, freaking out because Jackson has not arrived yet. "No," Michel says, "but his family's arrival is imminent, so I'm off to nail the furniture to the floor." Lorelai tells Sookie to relax, but she can't. She says she tries to say nice things to them, but that they always misinterpret her and think she's being insulting, so to offset that problem, she tries to stay very quiet, but that doesn't work because they wonder why she's being so quiet. "So I overcompensate," she says, "and start cracking jokes like I'm Carrot Top and I start doing funny things with props...and...eehhh, I hate prop comedy." I love Melissa McCarthy in this scene (as I do in most others, except when Sookie is butting in where she doesn't belong, which is a lot). Lorelai says that we all hate prop comedy, but they are interrupted by Jackson rushing in. He's breathless from outrunning his family's minivan so that he could get there in time.
Lorelai goes back to the desk, and Jackson and Sookie start having this conversation. Jackson: "Did you tell hmm-hmm about hmm-hmm?" Sookie: "No, he's your family. You tell hmm-hmm about hmm-hmm." Lorelai says she gets the feeling she is probably one of the hmm-hmms and wants to know what it's all about. They break it down, asking if Lorelai remembers Jackson's brother Beau. Oh, yes. She remembers: "Dark hair, coarse stubble, Jefferson Davis tattoo?" Yes. Jackson gives her the whole picture. His cousin, Rune, told Beau that Lorelai is a "nympho." Sookie: "It means you reeeally dig the fellas." Lorelai says, yeah, she knows what it means, and they are just getting into it...
...when the family arrives in full. Sookie turns on the fake welcome and they rush around greeting everyone. Brother Beau, played by the slaying-me Nick Offerman, comes in and says he'll handle check-in for the whole fam. Lorelai cringes as he sidles over, but gamely tells him, "Welcome to the Dragonfly Inn." Him: "Welcome to Beau." I'll tell you right now, Beau is the reason I gave this episode an A. His presence overcame Logan and Rosie O'Donnell and Lorelai saying "retarded" and the French maid and the baptism and all of it. If he was on every week, he'd probably irritate me, but right now I love him. Lorelai makes an attempt at chattiness and compliments his sunglasses as being "very Risky Business." Beau: "Risky business, huh? Are you into risky business?" Heeee! Lorelai blanches. "No," she says, "all of a sudden I HATE it. Tom Cruise in his underwear makes me want to barf." Lorelai, we all share that sentiment, as do the doctors and nurses at the secret and selective clinic where Katie Holmes probably went to be impregnated with the sperm of Xenu, or whoever the hell. Lorelai asks if Beau would like to register, pushing a sign-in form toward him across the desk. Without taking his eyes off her, he says he would love to, and scribbles his name down with a flourish. "You just signed the blotter," she tells him, and he apologizes, smarmily saying he was distracted. She's holding it together, and tells him where his room is. "Well," he says, "aren't you accommodating? I guess I'll go and get my duffle bag out of the minivan." Whew, the redneck romance. I can smell it in the breeze. Jackson comes up, and Lorelai is squicked, telling him that's the first time she's ever heard the word "duffle" sound dirty. Jackson apologizes profusely and repeatedly for his gross family: "I am so, so sorry." Sookie runs in on her tiptoes, thoroughly grossed out, whispering, "Ooooo, Uncle Artie hugged me too long." Jackson points out that Lorelai had to check in Beau, and Sookie begins the litany of apology as well.