Episode Report Card Al Lowe: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mommies Dearest
By Al Lowe | Season 7 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.02.2006
...an open-air copy of his own diner manned, across the street, by none other than Kirk. The interloper is even wearing (to much less effect) a flannel shirt and backwards cap and has a coffee-cup shaped sign reading "Kirk's." Luke loses it, and asks Kirk why he's doing this. Kirk says that he's just filling a need: Stars Hollow residents really needed a place to "come and get a piece of pie, a cup of Arbuckle's, and a soupçon of small-town charm." Luke clenches his jaw and points out that Stars Hollow already has such a place: "Luke's! Ring any bells? Sounds a little like 'Kirk's,' doesn't it?" Kirk smirks (hee!). "Luke," he says, "if you're suggesting that you were the very first person to ever name a restaurant after yourself, I think that Denny, Arby, and Tony Roma might have something to say about that, not to mention Mr. Chuck E. Cheese." When Luke, in his rage, remarks that that last restaurateur is not even a person, Kirk scoffs again: "Do you really think a giant mouse opened a national restaurant franchise by himself?" He goes on to say that he heard Luke's was out of business, causing Luke to go right over the edge: "It's closed for repairs!" he says, stopping short of also punching Kirk, which I could easily get behind, "because some nincompoop, yesterday, drove his car through my diner!" Kirk, the nincompoop in question, dares to be offended and, even though they are already outside, asks Luke to step outside, where he threatens to sue Luke for slander. This is so ridiculous that I cannot even suspend disbelief to laugh at it; sometimes the townies are less "quirky" than they are "annoying as shit" -- or, as in this case, "clearly mentally ill and asking to be punched." "You're gonna sue me after you crash a car into my diner and bust a giant hole in my wall?" Luke rages. Kirk fails to acknowledge the sense of it: "For all you know, I have brain damage." Luke: "Oh, I'm pretty sure you do!" Why he bothers, I don't know, but he rages on a bit longer before charging back across the road to work on his own diner. He fails to heed my wishes of leaving behind a ticking grenade.
In the Inn's kitchen, Sookie is giving Lorelai a sushi-making lesson. "Slice it up," Sookie says, coming to the end, "and voila! Or, whatever they say in Japan. Ari...gato!" Lorelai: "Karate!" She is very impressed with Sookie's California rolls, but they come up with some even better ideas for the medium: meatloaf sushi, fried chicken sushi, Chinese food sushi, PB & J sushi! All sound awesome to me. Not awesome: Lorelai reveals to Sookie that she told Luke about sleeping with Chris. Sookie is appropriately mortified. "Why?" she cringes, and Lorelai tells her of Luke's visit that morning: "And he wouldn't take no for an answer, so I had to tell him. It's the only way he was gonna believe me; because it had to be 'no.'" Sookie is upset: "Did it have to be? Did the answer have to be 'no'?" Lorelai gets surly: "No. I mean, I guess I could be married right now to someone who really doesn't want to be married to me and to someone who doesn't know that I slept with someone two nights before we got married." Sookie: "Well, when you put it that way..." Lorelai says that telling Luke was one of the most horrible moments of her whole life: "What am I gonna do, you know? I have to be fine."