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Work continues apace on Lorelai's house. Everyone is fooling T.J. into thinking he's the contractor on the job. T.J. is...a huge idiot. Rory has got this community-service thing in the bag -- she's actually running the show now with the road crew and all her other restitution jobs. Paris is torturing Lorelai twice-weekly with lunch meetings at the Inn, and the Dragonfly staff is about to revolt as a result. Rory starts her job at the DAR and fits right in, gossiping about stupid stuff. Sookie constructs what is perhaps the most fantastic wedding cake of all time. Logan comes back from Europe. Yay? He keeps giving Rory these pitying looks because he's enrolled in school and she's not. Lane and the band are finally coming off tour, $9,000 to the richer. Rory joins the DAR. Now, what's the most important thing you need to know about this episode? Everybody's hair is perfect. Also, by God if this hour didn't almost make up for the last two episodes, which royally sucked by comparison. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Construction continues at Lorelai's house, causing her to continue sleeping on the couch. Upon waking, she and Paul Anka go to the kitchen to "have a little breakfast," which includes enough donuts and Pop-Tarts to feed twenty-five bingeing actresses. Oh, wait, more like twenty-five hungry construction workers: the breakfast is for them. Thank goodness. All the pastries -- much like the ones we often see laid out at The Grandparents' -- were scaring me. Lorelai calls the guys in, encouraging them to get breakfast "while it's hot and nutrient-free." She warns them to inspect the bagels carefully: "Either they're new, or from my baby shower." (Cute, but did Lorelai have a baby shower, really? At age fifteen? This has possibly been covered in past seasons, and I did not see it or do not remember.) She also tells the guys that they've been playing favorites all week with the Pop-Tarts, and now somebody's going to have to be a man and start eating the Shredded Wheat. They groan appropriately. Paul Anka has quietly been sitting in his own chair at the table through all of this, and when one of the guys goes to pet him, Lorelai reminds everyone only to pet the dog with their non-watch hands: "In case you don't remember, watches cause him to freak out, jump up on the counter, and kick my once-working toaster across the room." I love it that Paul Anka is allegedly so crazy off-camera.
Luke comes in with muffins for all, grumbling loudly about having to give out free food to everyone, and he and Lorelai walk outside to overhear T.J. giving a string of nonsensical orders to the construction team. My favorite is when he tells one guy to dig a drain to keep the basement dry. "This house doesn't have a basement," the worker says to Tom, the actual contractor. "It certainly does not," Tom says, going over to Luke and Lorelai to discuss the issues with their fake contractor. Lorelai says they're going to keep the charade up to the bitter end. T.J.'s so cute in his toolbelt, she says, and plus, he polishes his helmet every night with real silver polish. "That's what he thinks silver polish is for," she says. "To polish anything that's silver." Somehow, she finds this adorable, and I get that we're watching TV, but having someone who apparently has the legal faculties of a nine-year-old bang holes in her walls and wreck the joint every single day...well, it's disbelief I cannot suspend. People like this show because it's smarter than a lot of other television, which makes it rather charming. Stupid dumb-asses aren't charming, nor are they in any way "adorable." If Lorelai wants something adorable to destroy her home, perhaps she should adopt a monkey. This T.J. business just isn't funny. This isn't Joey. Also, it's expensive -- Luke says that Lorelai is paying T.J. a regular contractor salary for work he's not doing, and then paying Tom 10% more to do his actual contractor's job, which T.J. thinks he's doing himself, but which Tom is actually doing. "You should hire Blake Edwards as your contractor." Good one, Luke, but don't go trying to apply logic when passive-aggressive subterfuge works just as well (if by "just as well" you mean "not at all"). Why, everyone is enjoying this little ruse! Right? Wrong. Tom says they're not in danger, since although T.J. has horrible instincts, he has absolutely no follow-through. Lorelai is off to take a shower at Babette's, and Luke wants to know why, since her own shower is working. Seems some of the guys -- you know, Pete, Joe, Slim -- saw her naked, due to a T.J. error. Luke is displeased, but Lorelai says that it's no big deal. When she walks away, one of the fellas strolls up to Luke and gives him a congratulatory pat on the back.
At The Grandparents', Rory and Emily are also sitting down to breakfast. There's about one-third the pastry we normally see. Emily is pissed. A member of her DAR chapter left a note at the HQ to the effect that the foliage around the office was looking a little peaked. Emily's taking it as a personal attack, seeing as how she's the president and the foliage is her responsibility. "Again," Rory says, trying to talk her off the ledge, "it's not exactly Martin Luther nailing the ninety-five theses to the door." Nice try, Rory, but can't you see that this note is implying that Emily has no control over the office? "Constance Bedderton," Emily says with disdain. Ever since a Christmas party last year at which Emily commented that Constance's husband sells used cars -- "which he does; he calls them pre-owned, but they're used" -- Constance has had it in for her. Hilarious. Kelly Bishop looks fantastic in this scene, by the way, like she's somehow lost fifteen pounds between episodes. Hair: perfect. Looks like she's about to run in the Miss Texas pageant. (All the hair in this episode is excellent.) She's also toned down the harpy a few notches, and I am really glad. Emily was originally a character I hated to love, but for a while now, she's been one I loved to hate. I enjoy her still bitchy, but tamer, shrew. Rory comes up with a plan to be Emily's eyes and ears at the DAR office and keep a lookout for any sinister plots by Constance Bedderton to overthrow Emily's reign as prez.
Cut directly to Rory and what now appears to be her backup band, The Road Crew. We won't find this out until late in the hour, but apparently a few months have passed since we saw her last, and in those few months, Rory has gotten a handle on her fight face. She's not so mad anymore. As a matter of fact, she's turned these people into a bunch of sweet and tender hooligans only Morrissey could love. She's the head lawbreaker now, apparently, walking among them, encouraging their progress. She's even got ol' rockstar Liza, with whom we saw Rory pushing and shoving last week, on a smoking-cessation program. Liza begs for a fix, but Rory stays firm: "No: we agreed, not until the end of your shift." Liza laments that, in spite of wearing, like, nine nicotine patches at once, she's still jonesing. Rory tells her to sit down and drink some water, and then consults with the crew supervisor, who clearly regards Rory as the one in charge. She gives him a funny rundown of the crew members' needs, including my favorite: "Sanderson got a little grumpy towards the end of the day, but it's just because he wants to be noticed, and he is by far our best spearman." Now, I do not mind at all that Rory is handing out orders. She comes by the pushiness quite naturally, after all, and I'm just glad to see the character doing anything with confidence, rather than making all kinds of missteps based on her own self-doubt. So, yeah, it's annoying that she's seemingly Everybody's Favorite All-American of Community Service, but what makes Rory a good character (when she is good, and not irritating) is that she does the whole lemons-to-lemonade equation better than most. As the chain gang breaks for the day, Liza asks Rory if she'd like to join "the girls" for pizza. A floppy-haired dude strolling by says he'll go, but is shot down for not being a girl. Rory also has to decline: she has a three-hour shift at the nursing home. Liza can't believe how much community service Rory got stuck with: "What the hell'd you do?" (If they're all palsy by now, wouldn't this have already come up?) Rory: "I shot a man in Reno." Awesome. I'd shoot T.J. just to watch him die, so I appreciate the reference.
At the Dragonfly, Lorelai is suffering through tea with Paris, who is up in arms about choosing the correct thing to sleep in when consistently sharing a bed with a man. Oh, the eternal debate. "I mean, nightgowns are obviously out," Paris says, "but wearing nothing seems extreme and, in case of fire, completely impractical." Hee. I'm sorry to derail, internet, but I have to give you a very brief lesson: just don't sleep nude. Because one day you'll be sixteen and going through this nude-sleeping phase which you are trying to keep from your parents who would most likely make no end of fun of you for it and you'll wake up kind of sickly early one Sunday morning and creep down to the bathroom and faint. You've never fainted before, so you don't know what's going on, but as you come around after hitting the floor, you realize the only person awake in the house is your dad, reading the paper in the living room, and now he is slowly opening the bathroom door responding to the weird thud your naked ass just made against the tile. And even in the midst of this medical crisis, you will have to force yourself to become cognizant enough to emit a strangled, slow-motion cry of "Geeeeeeeetttt Mooooooootheeeerrrrr," which he will do, and your mother will come in and find her nude child all gangled up and she will have to wrestle you into a bathrobe while simultaneously panicking and laughing at you. I could have been dying and the woman laughed! I mean, uh, you know, I am just giving you a hypothetical situation, here, of course, but I'm just saying: Sleeping in the nude can only lead to lifelong humiliation. Paris runs through her options. Camisoles strangle her and she's not a teddy girl. Lorelai suggests t-shirts, but Paris has concerns. What will t-shirts say to Doyle about her? "Sweetie," Lorelai says, in pain from this endless girl talk, "it's just a t-shirt. They don't tend to be that chatty." ["Sure, they do!" -- Wing Chun] Paris says she should maybe consider the completely-naked option. After all, she says, she's twenty-one, and her ass will never be any better than it is now: "I should exploit that, right?" Lorelai says that Paris absolutely should, suggesting that she get a video camera and go to town. Paris nods, saying that she's starting to fade. Lorelai openly celebrates, thinking that this is signaling the end of their meeting, but Paris just wants to order another espresso. Lorelai hems, lying they're out of espresso: "We shut down the machine down at 3:00 to give it a rest. It's Italian, so it's a little temperamental." Lorelai rushes Paris out, now, and says she looks forward to seeing her again on Tuesday.
The Dragonfly staff, however, is not so enthused about Tuesday. Michel, as a matter of fact, has been hiding out every since Paris arrived. Lorelai says she can't believe how he's acting: "She has a tough exterior, but inside Paris is..." Michel interrupts: "Tokyo Rose." Lorelai defends Paris, saying that she's lonely and doesn't have a lot of friends. Sookie and Michel, however, are not buying it. They put forth their list of grievances. Sookie says she won't cook for Paris anymore because she's too demanding. "She mocked my accent," Michel puts in. "She called me 'Canadian.'" (Love it, especially since the fabulous Yanic Truesdale is indeed Canadian.) They want Lorelai to cut off the relationship with Paris, who they feel comes around entirely too much. "It's creepy," Michel says. "The thing you know, you'll be carrying Emmanuel Lewis around on your shoulders."
A conversation about an upcoming wedding that will be held at the Inn leads Sookie excitedly to ask what date Luke and Lorelai have set for their own wedding. Lorelai says that they haven't chosen one, yet. Sookie says she figured on that, so she had Michel block out all of July for year, since Sookie can totally see Luke and Lorelai having a summer wedding. Really? I see fall. Well, whatever. Lorelai is not amused. She tells Michel to "un-black it out." Michel gets smug with his mug and sing-songs "I told you so" to Sookie, who throws in the towel: "I am so naïve. I believed." Lorelai wants to know what they're talking about. Michel explains that he tried to convince Sookie that Lorelai would not be getting married, since a woman who cannot even commit to a purse will have no ability to commit to a partner. Aw, man. The truth hurts. However, Lorelai denies all this, saying that she is getting married; she and Luke just haven't had time to make wedding plans, yet, and by the way, she's had the same purse for over a year. Michel is unmoved. "Of course," he says, full of sarcasm "my mistake. Now, let me go cancel your wedding plans." She keeps up her defense that she and Luke just don't have time to set dates right now, but the other two aren't buying it. They don't have time to continue needling her, however, because apparently Paris is returning to the Inn. Michel is in a panic. "Maybe she left her phone," he says, "or her spell book." Lorelai berates him for being a ridiculous, saying that he has a job to do. "So do you," he says, "and I don't see you running out." Man, good point. Why does Lorelai insist on everyone else handling their business while comfortably remaining passive-aggressive herself? I like Lorelai, but that shit drives me crazy. T.J. is annoying; Paris is annoying; Rory is annoying: let someone else deal with them.
Over at the DAR office, Rory is once again taking charge. On the phone, she assures an applicant, Mrs. Tarkington, that merely finding a musket in an attic does not make you eligible for membership, "even if your Great-Uncle Nate swore on your Aunt Kissy's grave that it was so." Emily comes in during this conversation, and Rory puts poor ol' wannabe Mrs. Tarkington on hold to tell her grandmother all the latest inside information about the insufferable Constance Bedderton. "My own little Valerie Plame," Emily says, hungry for info. Rory says that one of the girls told her that, on a recent outing, Constance stumbled, causing her purse to spill forth the true contents of her Altoid box -- "enough funny-looking pills to fill a pharmacy" -- after which she threw herself to the ground to cover them up. "A cover-up," Emily says, all evil. "That's good! That's what took Nixon down." Emily is excited to have a mole in the office. Rory's plan is to invite Constance to lunch and pump her for info. "Who knew that behind such a sweet face lurked the soul of a spy?" Emily asks, full of pride. Who knew, also, that behind that same sweet face lurked a boat-stealing, life-ruining, self-esteem-deficient genius surrounded by poor familial role models and in need of a serious ass-kicking? Wait! I knew. I like the sneakiness and craftiness displayed by Rory here, but I wish she'd apply it to other pursuits like, say, ferreting out the real reason she's made such a series of stupid moves in the last two seasons.
During this exchange, Paris calls, glad to get Rory on the phone: "This hard-to-reach thing is getting old." Paris says she's calling because she has to go ahead and put down the security deposit on the place she told Rory about. Rory, frustrated, explains again that she is not coming back to Yale. "Is this about the boat?" Paris asks. Rory is surprised to hear that Paris knows about the boat, but learns that the news is well known -- apparently, Rebecca Thurston wrote about it on her blog. "I thought Rebecca Thurston's blog was just about all the guys she has sex with and how much she hates her mother," says Rory. Haaaaa! Wow. Somebody's been paying attention to the internet. Paris says that is true, but that the boat story came out because the boat Rory and Logan stole belongs to the father of a boy Rebecca Thurston had sex with. "I can't believe I'm in the blogosphere," Rory says. I take a five-minute break to laugh until I cry, never having identified so strongly with a TV character. (Thank God nobody on Deadwood uses the internet...although I sure would like to see what Al Swearengen would put on his blog, naturally to be found at "CocksuckersIKilledToday.livejournal.com.") Paris swears it's true, and tells Rory to "just Google 'Rory Gilmore sex boat'" to find it. Don't bother, young people. It will only lead you back here. Rory gets mad and tries to sling Paris off, telling her to go on and rent the place: "I'm not coming back to Yale." Paris says that Rory's put her in a very precarious position. What if she rents the room to someone who ends up being a rapist or a serial killer? Rory is unsympathetic: she told Paris over two months ago that she was not coming back to school, she says: "And besides, I think Yale is pretty good about screening for rapists and serial killers?" Ugh. How ridiculous and irresponsible. Plenty of rape is committed at Yale -- Google THAT -- just as it is on every other college campus and in every other environment. Paris says fine, but if she ends up on the front page of the newspaper, "BTKed to death," then it's on Rory's hands. Absolutely ridiculous conversation, and a waste of good Paris.
There's a party of sorts going on at Lorelai's. Luke comes in to find her entertaining the construction guys with her Daniel Day-Lewis retrospective. "You should see her rendition of My Left Foot," one of the guys says. Luke is not at all amused: "Yeah, I've seen it. Thanks." But no, Lorelai says, she's switched it up and now does it with her right foot. Totally different! Luke is even less amused to see Paul Anka's new trick. Lorelai: "Pizza!" Paul Anka: "Bark!" Lorelai: "Pizza Pizza!" Paul Anka: "Bark Bark!" Lorelai: "Salad." Paul Anka: "[Total silence.]" It is pretty cute, I must say, but I am a sucker for dogs. When Lorelai goes to the kitchen to get more treats, a petulant Luke reminds her that the guys are there to work, and that Lorelai is not required to give them a USO show. She says she knows; she just wants them to have a good time. I'm sure they are having a good time, actually, since they seem to be there twenty-four hours a day, which must mean she and Luke are paying them double and triple time, or something, for which they'll be willing to watch that dog do any number of tricks. Anyway, as Luke points out, "Half of them have seen you naked. How much more fun can they have?" Tom's in the kitchen, drawing up plans for real work, so Luke pointedly asks whether other clients feed their construction crews pizza and beer to win them over. "Nope," Tom says. "'Course, the 'naked thing' has been done to death." I love Tom. He goes on to ask what they'd like to "do" with the kitchen during all this remodeling, and is met by Lorelai's blank stares as he lists of innumerable options for islands and stools and counter space. "This strange man is scaring me," she says to Luke, who assures Tom that the kitchen is fine.
Just when we think we're safe, T.J. rolls in from the most recent wild goose chase these people have sent him on: a trip to find the hard-won "Mystic hammer," which he had to drive all day to buy in, of course, Mystic, CT. I love the whole concept of the Mystic hammer and all, and if the scene ended here, I'd be fine. Instead, we all must suffer more tedium in the form of T.J. than I can even recap. For no reason at all, he goes over to the door off the kitchen that leads to Rory's room, and starts going on and on about the unused room and how, if you knocked out that wall, you could make more space. Sensing Lorelai's extreme discomfort, Luke tries to shut T.J. up, but he continues: "You could turn it into a weight room, or a workshop. Or, hey, a pork-smoker room!" Yes, certainly, a pork-smoker room. ["I'd far rather have one of those than a Rory these days." -- Wing Chun] T.J. goes on for several minutes on the benefits of having a pork-smoker room in your house -- his uncle had one; they called it the "dead pig room" (which, okay, is kind of funny). He says he could have it up and running for Lorelai in a week. "All I'd have to do is drive over to Boston to get one of those special sledgehammers Tom was telling me about," he goes on, before Lorelai finally shuts him down, super-annoyed, yelling at him to leave the room alone and stomping out. Seemingly mortified that he has insulted her, T.J. asks Tom, "Is she Jewish, or something?" Siiiiigh. Build me a "dead T.J. room" and we'll talk, Palladinos. ["But, shout-out, of sorts, since Pamie was always as convinced of the Gilmore's Judaism as she was that the Independence Inn was in Hartford, and neither was the case, bless her heart." -- Wing Chun]
In some Adventist rec room somewhere in America, Lane's band Hep Alien rocks the house. (I should mention up front that Todd Lowe, a.k.a. Pamie's friend Todd Lowe, or pfTL, is no relation to me, whatsoever, and though Todd Lowe and I are both friends of Pamie and share the universally esteemed and respected last name of Lowe, we have never met. Which, of course, is a terrible shame, seeing as how he is right now standing on stage with Sebastian Bach, who I cannot help loving.) The band is banging out a cover of Blondie's "Hanging on the Telephone," a great song and a gutsy choice. My husband, who is a drummer, is glad to see that the fabulous Keiko Agena has picked up some really decent drumming skills. I have to say up front that I loooooved this scene. Anything with the band, I'm going to love -- not because they sound great, but because being in a band is so fun, and I just feel like this is something the show got right. The whole quirkiness of them touring Seventh-Day Adventist churches is so silly, it worked. As dumb as it is, I'd totally do the same thing, just to get to perform. They finish the song and thank the crowd, giving shout-outs "first and foremost to Pastor Tim," says pfTL. Gil interrupts to say he got into some very heavy talk with the pastor about his soul and Ecclesiastes and stuff after sound check: "And I gotta say, if Christ comes back, in fulfillment of Prophecy, he's gonna be hooking up with you first, dude, because YOU are AWESOME." pfTL also thanks the decoration committee for making the A.V. room look so cool. Hee. Gil, who gets all the best lines, interrupts again: "I've played the Whiskey before, man, and it's got a similar vibe." pfTL thanks the crowd again for making them feel welcome, encourages them to buy t-shirts, and the group congratulates each other for a tour well done. Brian says that they were as tight as the Foo Fighters. No, Gil says, they were tighter. He justifies it this way: "Listen, if that pretentious little snot from Coldplay can walk around comparing himself to Bono, we can compare ourselves to the Foo Fighters." Yay! Lane smooches pfTL in celebration, and Gil warns her to watch it: Pastor Tim is still hanging. They're starting to break down their stuff when Pastor Tim comes over to remind them that the committee needs to set up for tomorrow's Bible study, and need to use the stage for the giant crucifix. pfTL is glad to see they're selling some t-shirts, which means they'll be able to eat that night.
At the Inn the day, or some other day, Sookie is revealing the wedding cake she has made for the upcoming wedding at the Inn. It is...unbelievable. Lorelai and I both gasp as if confronted with an angel from Heaven itself. "What is that?" Lorelai asks. "And where can I get one?" Sookie calls it her "dark chocolate s'mores wedding cake." Lorelai: "You've been reading my diary." Exactly. The cake -- which could feed at least six hundred guests -- came to Sookie in a dream in which she was running late for a final in cooking school and opened the oven to find the cake, causing her classmates and professors to weep. "Then, of course, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes come leaping out of the cake screaming about how AMAZING it is," she says, sadly, "so that made the whole thing a little creepy." Sookie asks Lorelai if she thinks the bride and groom will like the cake. Lorelai says that they will, of course. Sookie: "Well...do you think you'll like it?" Lorelai rolls her eyes at this attempt to wheedle a wedding date out of her. "Look, Captain Ahab," she starts (though I do not get the reference to Moby Dick at all, and feel stupid as a result), but Sookie interrupts: "Agreeing to marry somebody is just as big a commitment as actually marrying them, so don't think it's not." Pushy, Sookie, but true. Lorelai says again that she is committed, and it's clear that she's losing her patience. Sookie says she just wants Lorelai's wedding to be perfect; otherwise she wants nothing to do with it. "Oh, really?" Lorelai says. "Because I was hoping for one of those disastrous weddings where we lose both rings minutes before the ceremony, and I get a nosebleed walking down the aisle, and then later, at the reception, Luke is found in the coat-check room, Jude Lawing it with one of the bridesmaids." We don't have time to laugh at this, because Michel comes in to let them know that the wedding party has called to say they won't be arriving until midnight, and someone will have to be there to greet them: "I would do it, but I don't want to." Lorelai says she'll do it. Suddenly, Michel says he is aware of an evil presence. He hums the Wicked Witch theme from The Wizard of Oz before they finally catch on that Paris has arrived. Sookie is pissed, but Lorelai assures her that, today, she is cutting things off with Paris. Good thing, too, because as Lorelai goes out to meet her, the wait staff flood into the kitchen like scared little children.
Lorelai overcompliments Paris, saying that something seems different about her, and Paris says it must be the gasoline she accidentally sprayed on herself on the way over. She's all flustered after interviewing potential roommates, none of which meet her standards: "All I can say is, build an ark, because it is seriously time for a flood." She snaps off the head of a waiter trying to serve her tea, and Lorelai points out that she sounds really busy. "I am," Paris says, and Lorelai passive-aggressively says that she feels really bad for "making" Paris drive all the way out to have these lunches with her. "Talk about self-centered, huh?" Lorelai says, pointing to herself in mock self-mocking. "Think about someone else for a change, Lorelai." GOOD IDEA. She goes on to say that she'll be totally fine if Paris has to cut back on these lunches, and Paris sighs. She wouldn't even have to be dealing with this, she says, if Rory were going back to Yale, and reveals that she talked to Rory about it just yesterday. Lorelai looks struck at the mention of Paris's talking to her daughter, and Paris says that she had called Rory at her office. "'Office'?!" Lorelai asks, shocked. Paris says, yes, she called Rory at "some job at an office with her grandmother." Lorelai is further shocked: "Well, her grandmother does not have an office. This makes no sense to me at all." She starts a game of Twenty Questions with Paris about the office, wanting to know details, and Paris finally gets pissed, unfairly accusing Lorelai of just having these lunches to pump Paris for information about Rory. Lorelai goes overboard the other way, apologizing profusely, saying it isn't true and that she loves their lunches. She ends up begging Paris to stay when it is the last thing on Earth she wants to do, and Paris grudgingly does so after insulting the food and the service. Congrats, Lorelai. Wouldn't want this girl who gets on your nerves anyway to be mad at you.
Rory is performing the essential community service of moving the needle on the record at a retirement-home dance. She compliments them on their dance moves and makes sure that no one gets too handsy with his or her dance partner. Suddenly, Logan returns from wherever the hell he's been that I don't care about. Okay, he's been in Europe with his dumb friends. He kisses her too forwardly, and one of her charges tells Rory to "watch those hands." Thus ends the cuteness of the scene. They kiss again, or something. I don't know, because I put my head in the oven.
We cut directly to a post-coital scene in the poolhouse. Rory is wearing Logan's shirt as they lounge on the living room couch under blankets. I will now recap it as fast as I can. Rory says she missed "this" while he was gone, and he says he did, too. Apparently, he and his friends didn't do too much cuddling on their trip: "It was mostly hand-holding." I refuse to laugh. Also, I refuse to be at all charmed by his story of their activities at the Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling Festival, at which Logan sustained an injury. Oh, those crazy Brits, how I love them. Logan goes on to say that Colin fell in love with an actual milkmaid who had an actual cow and pails, and has been holed up with her ever since, they haven't heard a word from him and wonder if he'll even be back in time to start...uh.... Logan stops, like an ass, sighing dramatically and saying he doesn't want to bum Rory out by mentioning school. That's dumb, and she says so, insisting that she's fine with the whole thing: "Yale was a wonderful chapter in my life, but I've moved on." She says it pretty convincingly, which blows my mind as well as Logan's. He doesn't believe her, but she still insists that hearing about school doesn't bother her. He says fine, and since she's so cool with it, invites her to come over to school tomorrow to see his new apartment and have lunch. She can't, she says. She has her DAR induction luncheon, but agrees to go to breakfast instead. Logan does not bother pointing out how depressing that is.
Hep Alien is filling the gas tank for the journey home. They are impatient and crammed into the van. Brian has a cymbal stand in his pancreas. Lane tells them to calm down; they are only an hour away from home, and to hang in there. They're all hungry, so Lane tells Gil to hurry with the gas and they head out on the highway. "Everybody," Gil says as he starts the van, "lean forward." When they get on the road, Lane asks where he put the map. He waves vaguely toward the door, and she asks if he's okay to drive. "Yeah, I just...uh...." pfTL tells Gil not to do that thing where he doesn't finish his sentences. Gil says he's just weak from hunger: "The guy I got gas from? I was talking to him and he suddenly turned into a giant turkey leg." Lane tells them to think positive thoughts, and asks what they'll each do when they're finally home. "Wash my hair," Gil says, "hug my kids, set 'em up in front of a Harry Potter movie and then do my wife for like, an hour." How the rest of them can keep from laughing every time he talks, I don't know, because the dude kills me. Lane has a surprise. She's been scrimping and saving all through the tour -- practically starving them -- because she wanted them to come out of this tour with something. Well, it worked, she says, even if she had to fib a little along the way, because they came out ahead with (somehow) $9,000. They guys are, at first, less than thrilled. "We haven't eaten a full meal in over two months," pfTL cries. Brian had to give up brushing his teeth, and Gil washed his hair with bar soap. They don't get it, Lane says. With $9,000, they can record. Nirvana, for example, made Bleach for $600. This changes their minds. They get excited about recording, but Gil is still so tired he can't talk. "Then just drive, Gil," Lane says. "Thirty miles. Thirty miles to home." We cut away on that note, and it's a tad weird, making me wonder if there isn't some foreshadowing here, and something bad is going to happen to the band. If so, I will be in a rage. Taking Sebastian Bach away from me will make the children cry. (Wait a second, did he even sing that song about the children crying? I don't think so. But does it matter?)
At Lorelai's, Luke is having a chat with Tom in the front yard. Apparently, an important water pipe has been hit, and Lorelai's water had to be turned off. Luke says she can stay with him, and that he'll gather up some of her stuff, since she has to be at the Inn to greet the wedding party coming in. "Last time you 'gathered some of my stuff,'" she says, "you brought me four bras, and no pants." Luke: "That could have been intentional." Hello! Lorelai says she'll get her own stuff, thanks; her only problem now is to try to figure out what to do with Paul Anka. She goes on a long spiel about how she's never left him alone so late and covers her options on what to do with him, some of which involve building a warp engine out of dilithium crystals in order to be able to get to a kennel, drop him off, and get back in time for these wedding people. Luke is staying quiet, but finally gives in and says he'll handle the dog: "And points for the dilithium crystal reference." Lorelai: "Well, when you sleep with geeks..." ["Giiiiiiiiiirl, I hear that." -- Wing Chun]
T.J. arrives at this moment with dinner for the crew, and a little news: he's talked to a buddy of his who's an actual contractor, and learned what real contractors do, none of which T.J. has been doing on this job: "And Tom, there is no such thing as a Mystic hammer!" He says he's starting to think they've been pulling a sham on him, and that he's not really the contractor on the job. Tom steps in to say that they did it for his own good, and that he should look on the bright side. T.J. is justifiably pissed, and says that they can keep their stupid, phony contracting job, because he's through. Before storming off, he realizes that he's still holding one of the dinner bags, and turns back to give the final kiss-off: they'll all have to "reach in [there] and pull out [their] own condiments."
We cut immediately to Luke's diner, where T.J. is drowning his sorrows in milkshakes. Luke tries to cut him off after four and says it's no big deal that he's not a contractor -- that it's not his "thing," anyway. "Yeah," T.J. says, "it's not my thing. I don't have a thing. I have...nothing." He goes on to say that he has no dream and no future. Luke rallies, pointing to the shelves T.J. built for the diner. Luke tells him he should be proud of those shelves, since they are actually good, and not everybody can build stuff like that. "So," Luke concludes with real enthusiasm, "you're not a contractor; you're a craftsman!" T.J. likes the sound of that. "I'm a craftsman," he says, "like Jesus. He built stuff for a while." Luke is glad to see that his speech is working. "Yep," he says, "you're exactly like Jesus -- that was my point." Wrong. Jesus would never chew scenery like T.J. does. Luke is just glad to have cheered T.J. up, no matter how stupid he is, and ushers him out the door, breathing a sigh of relief.
Oh, but that relief is short-lived after all. Upstairs, Paul Anka has somehow scored himself a huge block of baking chocolate, and has chowed down. ["Why does Luke keep giant hunks of baking chocolate in one of his tiny apartment's four cupboards when he lives over a restaurant? It's a mystery." -- Wing Chun] Luke freaks. He grabs up the dog and takes off, finally waking up the vet, who comes to the door in his robe. Luke explains what happened and that he cannot possibly let anything happen to the dog, because his fiancée loves the dog so much: "She named him Paul Anka, which, on the surface, may not seem like a sign of love, but if you knew her, you'd get it, and, believe me, there's a lot of ways that I could screw up this relationship, but I cannot lose her over the fact that I killed her dog." Hear that? Thousands of 'shippers just burst into flames. The vet says he'll get the ipecac, and all is well.
The morning, Rory is describing her recent community-service ordeal to Logan over mimosas. Mmm. We learn that Rory has completed 125 of her hours, and has 175 to go, which is a little off her goal, she says, but she's confident that she can get it all done. Logan looks at his watch and says he has to go. He has a meeting with his faculty advisor, allegedly, at which he has to convince her that this is the semester he's finally going to make something of himself. Why bother, dude? You have millions and can steal boats and shit with no consequences while your silly girlfriend on whom you are probably cheating peels potatoes for your mutual crime. What's your nickname for your faculty advisor? Let me guess: "Doc"?
Luke and Lorelai wake up, and he breaks it to her about his experience with Paul Anka. He tells the whole story while she looks on in (beautiful) abject horror. The vet had given the dog the vomit-inducing medicine after which Paul Anka hurled for a few hours, while Luke stood by him, making sure he rehydrated himself with water and then chocolate-proofing the apartment and the diner: "And now, I'm going to go downstairs and make Paul Anka some scrambled eggs, because the vet said kibble might be a little hard on his stomach for a couple of days." After hearing all this, Lorelai squints, concentrating, and looks at him. "Luke," she sighs, "I don't want to set a wedding date until things are right with Rory." Luke must be used to such outbursts by now, because he doesn't even flinch -- just nods and says "Okay" and goes off to make eggs for Lorelai's dog, while she smiles.
Back at Yale, Rory stands out in the commons area watching the new students arrive and orient themselves. She smiles wistfully, and we fade out...
...and back into her induction into the DAR where, surrounded by her grandparents' friends, she looks miserable as she is applauded and welcomed to the club.