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Lorelai breaks it to Sookie that her wedding to Luke has been postponed. She decides, with Sookie's support, to delay the postponement, just for a while. Things are still not going too well between Luke and Lorelai, mostly because Luke is a big, clueless baby, and Lorelai is too passive-aggressive to call him on it and instead just mopes around like this is all out of her control, hating every minute of it. Paris is truly, truly flipping out all over the Yale paper. The staff has had enough and organizes a revolt. Rory pulls the place together, with Logan's help, and they get the paper out. To celebrate, Logan and Rory kiss and stuff and, while I am barfing, get back together. The Grandparents find out about Christopher paying for Rory's tuition, and they are less than thrilled about it. Lorelai tries to convince Rory to reach out to them and try to patch things up. They go to the most outrageous Friday Night Dinner in Gilmore history -- an up and down, exhaustive evening of yelling, with a side of screaming, and a flambé of regret. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
It's a very early morning in Lorelai's house. She is sneaking out of the bedroom when Luke wakes up and wonders what she's doing. She apologizes for waking him, saying she even went so far to brush her teeth in the shower so that he wouldn't hear the sink: "Then it occurred to me that you could probably hear the shower running, so that defeated the purpose of the whole shower/toothbrush combo." It's too early for Luke to enjoy this banter. He asks why Lorelai's up so early. "Oh," she says, "you know me." He answers that yes, he does, and that's why he wants to know why she's up so early. She says she has early morning chores, you know, like milking cows, feeding chickens, and slopping pigs: "They're certainly not going to slop themselves." Luke's all surly now, saying that Lorelai's being evasive. She tries to say that she's just trying to be mysterious, so that he'll still find her interesting a hundred years from now. Frankly, I think there's quite enough mystery in this relationship right now, huh? Mysterious secret daughters all over the place, wedding plans mysteriously coming together -- it's a regular Agatha Christie novel in Stars Hollow these days. Finally, Lorelai gives in and tells Luke that she had made plans to meet Sookie at the flower mart, and had forgotten to call her to cancel. Luke cringes, apologizing for...I don't know, he doesn't really clearly apologize for anything. I know we're supposed to believe Luke's "sorry" for causing Lorelai to put the brakes on the wedding, but if that's the case, it isn't really coming across. Especially when he offers to help her cancel all the wedding plans.
Sometimes Luke is written too stupid, and I hate it. The interaction between them in this scene is so awkward and gross. WHY does Lorelai not punch him in the neck? Where is the neck punching? The nuts kicking? Where? Whatever, she loves him, I get that. But this whole sensitive-macho-man thing where he has to "take time" to figure out "where he is" in his "life" because he's "overwhelmed" is just so...offensive. I loathe it. And I loathe the way Lorelai is acting like she's this little girl and someone just walked in and stole her candy. If they're so in love that they want to marry each other, can't Luke just say to April, who swooped in out of nowhere, "This is my fiancée. We're getting married this summer. You'll be invited." I mean, the kid allegedly doesn't even really care that she has a dad, right? Haven't they beat us down with that? So, what's with all the gnashing about how Luke needs to try to figure out how to be a father and figuring that out is going to be such a process that he has to postpone his wedding to the woman whose bed he is still going to sleep in every night? Why is it that television loves to make us think that every bump in the road requires months on end of nebulous, undefined "time to work things out"? I know life is hard and that time heals all wounds and all that, but if Luke's going to take all this time, he needs to lay out a damn plan or something. If I were Lorelai, his mouth would be so full of curb, he'd be picking gravel out of his teeth for weeks until he could figure out how to get his ass in hand and come crawling back.
Anyway, Luke and Lorelai get all awkward, and when he gets up to kiss her goodbye, he knocks into her nose with his head. "It's fine," Lorelai says, practically running out of the room. "Hurts so good, as Mr. Mellencamp said." Luke sighs all dramatically, and Lorelai leaves.
Lorelai finds Sookie at the flower market, scoping out the deals. Sookie gets right to it, explaining that they will be avoiding one vendor, who is anti-haggle. She likes Miguel, who is "very haggle-friendly," though his roses, she says, suck. She pulls Lorelai over to show her some bluebells, which she thinks would make a nice bouquet. Sookie, by the way, is wearing a houndstooth hat, a look made famous by Coach Paul Bryant, a man who, in my family, ranks only slightly below the Holy Ghost in spiritual significance. Lorelai finally is able to interrupt Sookie, and flatly tells her that the wedding has been postponed. "What did you do?" Sookie asks immediately. "Did you get cold feet? You can't get cold feet. We need to put some nice, wool socks on those feet, because Luke is perfect for you." Lorelai says she knows, but Sookie goes on. Luke waited for her to get over Christopher; he waited for her to get over Max. Lorelai is nodding throughout and trying to cut in, again, but Sookie goes on. "Why do you do this?" she asks. "Why do you want to make yourself miserable?"
I know Lorelai surely would like to dump a flower bucket over her friend's head, here, but instead, she tells her Luke has a kid. Sookie can hardly believe it: "A kid...like a goat?" Hee. No, Lorelai says, an actual kid, named April. A horrible thought occurs to Sookie: "I wonder if Jackson has a love child?" She says she saw a kid around town the other day who looked and sounded exactly like Jackson. Lorelai rolls her eyes, saying she doesn't think Jackson has any secret kids out there. "You think Jackson was a monk when I met him?" she asks. "He had seed and he passed it around." Ew. Lorelai is pained by this point, and Sookie apologizes. Lorelai explains that Luke is overwhelmed and asked to postpone the wedding. "That sucks," Sookie says, and she's absolutely right. Lorelai says she knew everything had been too perfect, like the church and the invitations and all that, and that now Lorelai has to call all of them and cancel. Sookie says no, believing Luke will figure everything out and that all of these plans will go back to normal. Lorelai says yeah, maybe, and then talks herself out of canceling everything right away. Maybe, she says, Luke will wake up tomorrow and feel okay about all of this. Sookie supports this idea, and I would too if she had come up with it while talking to Luke just five seconds ago. Instead, he's coming off like an ass, and Lorelai's coming off like a manipulative liar. Why take these characters, who we all liked so much, and make them suck?
At Yale, Rory walks through a courtyard, reading something from her notebook. Before she crashes into a trash can, Logan calls out to her to look out. She smiles at him, thanking goodness that she has a guardian angel hanging out by the coffee kiosk. "It's the only place that safe to stand with a maniac like you running around," says Logan, and adds that it's also the place where he'll be guaranteed to run into Rory at least three times a day. She notes that he's been hanging out there all week, and while he admits that's sad, he says it'll be worth it if it helps him win her back. This whole exchange is all wink-wink and smiley, and you know, the world must be coming to an end, or something, because it almost makes me like Logan. Rory tells Logan he's too slick for his own good, but he disagrees: "Excuse me, but this is not slick. This is a Nora Ephron movie. Louis Armstrong should be warbling as we talk." Yes, clearly lions are about to start lying down with lambs, because with that line, I now like Logan better than I like Luke. I hope you have a good supply of duct tape on hand, because you'll need it when the hellmouth opens. Logan reminds Rory that she promised to let him take her to dinner, and she way too easily suggests that they go out Thursday night. "And do not think of backing out," he says, "because then I will cry and eat a pint of Rocky Road while watching An Affair To Remember with Rita Wilson."
Lorelai arrives home to find that Paul Anka has once again rearranged her bookshelves. "You know," she says, "some dogs dig. That might be a nice change of pace." She plays her answering machine messages while she cleans up and, after a goofy message from Babette, suddenly hears her father's voice. He's concerned that Rory's tuition check came back to him in the mail. He thinks it's a clerical mixup, and says he will take care of it. Lorelai makes a worried face...
...and immediately calls Rory. "He thinks it's a clerical error," Lorelai says. Rory: "Huh." Lorelai: "They're gonna find out, kid." Rory: "Yeah." Lorelai asks if Rory's getting charged by the word on her calling plan, but Rory says no; she just has nothing to say. Lorelai says that when her parents find out that Christopher is paying for Yale, they aren't going to like it: "It's going to go over badly. It's going to be the opening night of Taboo all over again." Rory says that The Grandparents had to find out sometime. "Yes," Lorelai says, "but shouldn't they find out from you, and not some office clerk at Yale?" Rory shrugs it off sarcastically saying that, gee, it would suck if she and her grandparents were no longer speaking. "Wow," Lorelai reacts. "Ice, ice baby." Rory says she doesn't mean to be cold, but that she doesn't think she should have to feel guilty because Christopher is paying for Yale. Lorelai agrees, but says that her parents do have feelings: "You saw my mom when the gardener butchered her box hedges." Rory takes the coward's way out, saying she'll send them an email. Lorelai encourages her to call, instead, but Rory doesn't have time to think about it -- she's just opened the Yale paper to find a huge blank box where a picture should be, with a large-type note in it reading "PHOTO TO COME: Paris to Approve!!!"
Speaking of Paris, she's at the paper, crazily harassing and yelling at her reporters when Rory comes in. Paris is losing it. Rory asks what happened with the blank photo space in the paper. Paris says that the paper's photography has sucked lately, so she sent out two photographers to cover the same story: "They each came back with about forty of the crappiest pictures ever committed to film. Completely unusable." Rory says that it was supposed to be a picture of a football game: "Was there a picture of a guy in a helmet holding a football? Because that's really all we need. Guy in helmet holding ball." Paris says the photos were all substandard and predictable: "I wanted something more. Something that said something about the game." Rory: "Like 'we forgot to go'?" Paris continues her insanity -- she says that when the photographers found out that she double-booked the game, "they threw Naomi Campbell-level hissyfits, and quit." She says it was then up to the sports editor to inform her that no picture had been approved. Rory takes a hard line, though, saying that they cannot be publishing papers that have blank spots, nor can they have all the photographers quit. Paris is too nutso to hear any of this, though. She drops a big stack of stories on Bill's desk, telling him they all have to be rewritten. He says they are locked stories, and that getting all the writers in for rewrites would take hours of time they definitely do not have, seeing as the paper comes out tomorrow. Paris demands that it be done, however, and goes stomping off to her "office," which she has now completely surrounded in cardboard. Bill tells Rory that all the writers have been calling in sick, and that he expects there'll be a lot more of the same: "[Paris] is out of control. She's a mad dictator. She's the kind of dictator they don't just like to kill. She's the kind they like to drag through the streets and then hang from a lamppost for a month and a half." Rory looks worried.
Even though she just told Rory to do it, Lorelai takes matters into her own hands and calls her father. Emily picks up a second line and both senior Gilmores react with their usual detached rudeness when hearing their daughter's voice. She finally gets it out that the return of the Yale check was not a mistake. She tries to put a happy spin on the fact that Christopher is paying for Rory's tuition, but...well, The Grandparents are not happy. Lorelai explains about Chris's grandfather leaving him the money, but Emily slams down the phone, and Richard takes the news like a slap in the face. Lorelai goes overboard thanking him for everything he's ever done for Rory, sincerely saying that their taking the tuition from Christopher isn't at all a snub, and that both she and Rory are exceedingly grateful to The Grandparents: "If it weren't for you, she would never have gone to Chilton. She would have graduated Stars Hollow High and gone to...community college, and...beauty school!" Richard, deflated, says he appreciates Lorelai's call, but wishes it had come before he called every person in the Yale bursar's office a moron. "If it will make you feel any better," Lorelai says, "odds are, at least two of them deserved it."
Later, Lorelai and Rory walk out of Rory's dining hall after having lunch together. Lorelai is wearing an extremely colorful Muppet-style scarf and hat, and is upset that Rory reneged on their plans to "dress crazy." Rory says she agreed to no such thing, and that Lorelai's suggesting that they dress crazy did not automatically mean Rory would do it. Lorelai says that, for years, her saying "hey, let's dress crazy," was all it took. "Well, for years," Rory says, "you bought all my clothes for me, so I had little choice in the matter." Good one, Rory. Lorelai jokes that this is typical: "Kid grows up, goes to a fancy school, becomes a snob, and is suddenly ashamed of her mother," she says. "You totally Mildred Pierced me." Rory rolls her eyes, and they get more coffee. She tells her mom, excitedly, that she is going to have dinner with Logan. Instead of pouring coffee over her head, Lorelai has the unmitigated gall to act excited. I consider it a personal betrayal! I know I was just saying up there how Logan was making me like him, but y'all, it was just for dramatic effect. I don't actually like him, good Lord, and nor should Lorelai. Has she forgotten the boat-stealing? The "Ace"-calling? The hair-frosting? Has she no memory of the Birkin-giving? The family-relating? The love-making? The awful-friend-having? Why must I must I be forced to scream out these important hyphenations to the TV, which heeds not my warnings? Lorelai waves her Muppet scarf, asking if Rory wants to borrow it for her date. "Save it for the wedding night," Rory tells her.
"I talked to your grandparents last night," Lorelai tells Rory. "Oh," Rory jokes. "So now they're my grandparents." Cute, but Lorelai goes on. She told them about Christopher paying for Yale, she says, and they did not take it well: "Here's how I see it. You and your grandparents are at a huge crossroads -- a precipice, if you will. They are The Bridges Of Madison County, and you are Meryl Streep." Rory rolls her eyes: "...as the paper pages go flying off the calendar!" Lorelai stops her. She knows Rory and the G-units are playing freeze-out with each other, but something has to give. Rory is clearly not interested in any of this, but Lorelai goes on: she says that she remembers the first year after she took Rory and left Hartford, and how she got an invitation to her parents' Christmas party. She should have gone, she says, despite how awful it would have been: maybe it would have kept her relationship with her parents from turning into what it did. "Maybe," Rory says. "Maybe not." Lorelai says she just wants to make sure that Rory does not ruin her relationship with her grandparents, who she loves. "Okay," Rory finally says, cutting her off. "I hear you." Lorelai looks at her. "Do you?" she asks. "Because...my scarf is screaming as loud as it can." Love it. Rory says she'll think about it, and Lorelai smiles, telling her she has until 6:45 Friday night to think about it, since that's when they'll have to show up in Hartford for dinner. Rory tries to protest. "Come on," Lorelai interrupts. "Friday night dinner! Cocktails. Mozart. Mind games. Good times!" Rory is not so sure, but Lorelai says that Emily had said that she's really into the idea, and Rory reluctantly agrees.
That night, Rory heads into the paper office, all dressed up for her dinner with Logan. She tells Bill that she never heard back from any copy editor on her piece for the day's paper, and just needs to confirm that everything's okay before she goes on her date. Bill says that Michael is her editor, but that Michael, along with almost the entire rest of the staff, has quit. Rory is upset, but says that's fine; she can have Bill look over her article with her. "We could," he says, "but I quit, too. Right after Joanie. I bowed out. I actually bowed -- physically bowed." Rory is annoyed. She asks what Bill's even doing there, if he quit. He gets that look of pure schadenfreude, and says that he stayed to "have a ringside seat for the event of the century." He says that tonight will mark the first time in history that the Yale Daily News does not come out: "D-Day, the paper came out. Kennedy gets shot; paper comes out. But three months of the Gellar reign of terror, and the whole damn institution comes tumbling down." Rory does not skip a beat before telling him, "You suck, Bill," and going off to Paris's crazy, Unabomber fort.
What Rory finds there is not pretty. Paris is in the dark, surrounded by paper. She is freaking out. "No one can write a lede," she says. "No one." Rory asks if Paris has any idea of what's going on with the staff. Paris says she can't think about any of it right now, that the staff is a "ship of fools," and that she can put the paper out by herself as long as she sticks to her schedule. Rory can see that the madness here is deep. Looking at Paris's schedule, she says that there's about a hundred hours of work and five hours to do it. Paris says she'll get it done. "Well," Rory says, "you'd better get bitten by that radioactive spider pretty damn fast, here." Paris loses it, yelling at Rory not to distract her and putting on a pair of earmuffs. Rory looks scared and leaves the cave, going out into the staff room where the few remaining staffers are hanging out, waiting on the meltdown. Where the hell is Doyle, now? I mean, couldn't he have been helpful in all of this? It's weird and wrong that they've made no reference to him.
Rory takes a look around and becomes filled with ambition. She briskly hands out instructions: she orders one guy to get on layout, another to call in all the heelers, and another to find some of the resigned editors. "Come on, people," she yells. "Move! We've got a paper to get out."
Meanwhile, back in Stars Hollow, Lorelai and Sookie at coming home to Lorelai's house. Apparently, Sookie is going to take the dog home for the night to give her family a dog test-run. ["Lord, do we need to find someone to lend us a dog for just this reason. Glark's got puppy fever, and he's got it BAD." -- Wing Chun] Lorelai tells Sookie to keep Paul Anka occupied while she puts on his leash. Apparently, he freaks out if he sees it: "He's totally fine having his personal freedom slowly stripped away, just as long as he's completely unaware that it's happening. Just like a true American." Awesome. That whole set-up was worth it for that payoff. As Sookie gets ready to head out with the dog, Lorelai hits her message button, and they hear Luke. He's says that April is coming to the diner tonight until 8, and so he'll see Lorelai there after 8. "After 8," Sookie repeats, and Lorelai looks embarrassed. "Yeah," she says. "That's what he said." Sookie says that she guesses they decided that Lorelai won't meet April just yet. "Yeah," Lorelai says. "I guess we did." Sookie cringes, and asks if Lorelai wants her to leave Paul Anka. Lorelai says no, Sookie should take him, and that she's great. "You are?" Sookie asks. Lorelai, rolling her eyes: "Yeah, I guess that's what we decided."
Later, Lorelai wedges herself into the soda shoppe to spy on Luke through the glass. Some bitchy woman in the endless line accuses her of trying to cut for the free chocolate. Babette sweeps in, pushing Lorelai to the front and grabbing some free chocolate for the both of them. Lorelai tries surreptitiously to sneak back to the window to watch Luke, but Babette and Patty horn in. Lorelai is mortified to find out that the whole town knows about April. "That was page one news around here for a week," Babette says. "So what's the scoop?" Lorelai is, of course, unwilling to give them any scoop, since she doesn't have any, and hems and haws as the two busybodies pick the situation apart. Miss Patty says that April looks like a reader, and that she can't imagine Luke with a reader. They go on and on about how they can't even imagine Luke with a kid. "He's not a hundred-year-old eunuch, or anything." Lorelai says. The dozens of other town rubberneckers now decide to crowd around, and the rumors begin to fly. They ask if April and Anna want money from Luke; if he's going to try to get custody; if they're really sure it's even his kid; and make further jokes about the unlikelihood of Luke's having a child who reads books. Lorelai can finally take no more, and excuses herself.
Back at the paper, Rory has got the staff back, and the place is hopping. Russell, the printer, calls to tell them that they're about to lose their print time, and she cajoles him into giving them an extension: "We've never asked for it before, and we never will again. By the way, you sound like a very handsome man, Russell. Do you work out?" Very cute work by Alexis Bledel, here. She admits that she's using her feminine wiles, but that they really need the extension. They get it, and she continues to put out fires all around the newsroom, finally telling Bill to work or get out. In the midst of all this, Logan arrives, and Rory realizes that she's forgotten their date. She explains the complicated and frenzied situation, while Logan looks on, smiling. "I can't believe you didn't call me," he says. "I know this crap backwards and forwards." Rory says she didn't think Logan would be interested in helping, but in fact, he is. He launches into newspaper mode; he may hate working on the paper, but being around a newsroom his whole life has prepared him for all of this. He says he has some stuff ready, and that he can edit a lot of the stories, and tells Rory that if it comes down to it, they can cannibalize what they already have for Friday's issue and use it for this one. "Robbing Peter to pay Paul," Rory says, intrigued, and Logan says yep: Peter's asking for it.
Back at Lorelai's, Luke is going on and on about April and her huge brain and how amazing it is that he has a kid who reads and is smart. He says he bought Geometry For Dummies to try to help her with her homework, but that he still doesn't get it. Lorelai is trying to match his excitement about April, but she's having a hard time. Luke says he can't believe how the whole town is staring at him all the time, and how much he hates it. He thanks Lorelai for "getting" that he needs some "alone time" with his kid -- and I am so, so, so beginning to hate the word "kid" -- and Lorelai cringes, saying yes, she gets it.
The paper staff has hit the final countdown. They are all gathered around Rory as she cuts and pastes the final story into the layout when the phone rings. It's Russell, giving away their spot. Rory wigs, but Logan shoves the pessimistic Bill aside, and takes the call. When he introduces himself as Logan Huntzberger, it is clear that Russell is listening. Logan smoothly claims that they have already sent in the issue, which is a lie, but since it is for the greater good, I will allow it. Rory's still trying to finish it and signals for him to stretch -- he asks for Russell's name and how to spell it, rattling on that he's looking for a pen -- and just when he finds out that Russell's last name is actually "Smith," Rory signals that the issue is sent over. The staff whoop it up in celebration until Paris emerges from her cave, looking crazy. "All right!" she says. "We got the paper out! Good hustle!" They ignore her. Rory tells Logan that he saved her ass and, should the Earth ever be threatened by a huge asteroid, she wants him in the fighter jet. He laughs, thanking her for the vote of confidence. She awkwardly kisses him, causing my stomach to lurch, and Logan pulls out a brown bag with sandwiches and wine for a celebratory dinner. Oh, fine. I like Logan. FOR NOW. It won't last, people. Don't get excited.
It's Friday night, and Lorelai and Rory stand before the gates of hell. Hold on, no. They stand before the doors of The Grandparents' House. Lorelai tries to psych Rory up, who is, for the first time in the storied scarf history of this show, wearing what can only be described as kind of an ugly scarf. A rare misstep from the wardrobe department scarf division. Lorelai gets dramatic, making up a fairy tale about the house: "All the animals in the forrest were scared of the house. Maids go in, but they never come out!" Rory tells her to keep going. She does, talking about "a beautiful, young cow herder...ess" who jumps over the walls of the house and is faced with the evil queen. Exhausted, Lorelai says that these stories never even worked on Rory when she was four, so she doesn't know why one would work now. Rory sighs, resigned to her fate.
Rory and Lorelai ring the bell and are invited in by the maid du jour, and are then met by the cool and appraising Grandpa. He ignores them while he finishes his book chapter, then asks if they'd like a drink. Happy to be back in the routine, they say yes, but their faces fall when he does not get up to fix it for them, as he usually would. He does, finally, offering them a martini, and they have extremely awkward chit-chat until Emily comes in from the patio. She casually says that she'll be in later, after she finishes up a moonscape she's painting for the DAR art show. They are surprised to hear that she's painting, rather than coming in to talk to them before dinner, as has been her habit.
The awkwardness continues. Richard barely lets them sip of their martinis before interrupting them to make more. Rory is upset that her grandparents hate her, and Lorelai asks Richard if something is wrong. Richard neither confirms or denies this, and Lorelai demands that Emily come inside so that they can all talk about the Christopher-paying-for-Yale thing. The Grandparents passive-aggressively say that all of this talking is unnecessary, but when Rory tries to explain, saying that she let Chris pay for school because he is her father, they both burst out laughing. "Perhaps your 'father' can reimburse me," Richard says, "for the five cases of Scotch I had to send to the man in the bursar's office." Emily says she finds it very amusing that Lorelai and Rory are talking about Christopher like he's some kind of great guy all of a sudden: "It seems to me that when I was in cahoots with him, everyone thought that I was a villain. And now suddenly you're in cahoots with him, and that's perfectly fine." Lorelai asks her to please stop saying "cahoots," and denies that she's being hypocritical. Rory finally busts in to all this yelling, tears in her voice, and says that she didn't want The Grandparents to continue paying for school, anyway. Emily is triumphant, saying that proves that Rory just wanted to hurt them, and she, Richard, and Rory all try to stomp off in a huff. Lorelai, however, ain't having it. "Hey!" she yells. "This is not going to happen. We all agreed to have Friday-night dinner, and we're here, and I smell dinner. And, yes, apparently there are some issues to be worked out, but no one -- and I mean no one -- is leaving here until we do."
Friends, we have now come to the last five minutes of the episode. Let's talk about it for a moment before diving in. The folks at our beloved Gilmore Girls decided to get funky in these last few minutes, and I must say, what they achieved is pretty impressive. Hand-held camera shots and quick cuts; interesting blocking; lots of yelling. I think it's all great. The last five minutes are a series of fights and make-ups between members of this four-person family and while it is truly awesome, it's tough to recap. Bear with me, because I'm just going to run it down, piece by piece. It's the only way I can think to do it.
Fight 1
Setting: At the dinner table
Instigator: Rory
Rory says that things were "out of control" between her and her grandparents. Emily shrews that that was not the point, and lists the many things they did for her when she was going through her post-boat-stealing phase. Rory says that she didn't ask for any of those things, and Emily points out that she never stopped them from doing any of them. Richard throws in that Rory then moved out of the house without telling them. Emily lowers the boom: "I never realized how spoiled you were, Rory. But I guess that's to be expected. Only children are always spoiled." Rory bitches that she's sorry she didn't leave a note, and that there's nothing she can do to make them believe she's sorry. Lorelai jumps in to say that Rory was going through something terrible and was emotional -- which, she adds, Emily should understand, since she let her own emotions overtake her to the point where she almost bought a plane when Rory moved out. The maid comes in with the salad, and ding, round one is over.
Winner: Emily
Fight 2
Setting: During the main course
Instigator: Lorelai
Lorelai is furious that her parents betrayed her when she asked for help after Rory got slammed by the Huntzbergers, setting her off on a life of crime that ended with her dropping out of school. Emily says that if they'd known the extent of the issue, they would have been able to help. "I tried to tell you," Lorelai screams. "I came here and I told you exactly what happened with Mitchum and you didn't want to hear it." Richard says he doesn't remember that, which we all know is a complete lie, since he admitted as much to Emily during the DAR party. Lorelai cannot BELIEVE that her parents are denying that they knew about all this, now.
Winner: Undetermined
Fight 2b
Setting: Continued after dinner removed
Instigator: Still Lorelai
Lorelai reenacts this entire scene, even more brilliantly than she did it the first time, dramatically closing with her final lines: "Thank you so much! Thank you! And...SCENE."
Winner: Definitely Lorelai
Make-up 1
Setting: Dessert
They all agree that the sorbet is delicious.
Fight 3
Setting: Post-dinner coffee
Instigator: Richard, backstage with Emily
Rory and Lorelai silently enjoy their coffee while Richard and Emily battle it out off-camera about Emily almost buying a plane. "I didn't buy it," she shrieks. "I LOOKED at it!"
Winner: Undetermined
Make-up 2
Setting: After-dinner drinks in the parlor
Everyone hoots it up as Emily tells the story of how she headsnapped Mrs. Huntzberger at the DAR party. Richard almost chokes when Emily repeats the part about Shira being a two-bit golddigger, and makes her recap the ruthless weight insult. They're all drunk and laughing their asses off. "I only wish I'd remembered to call her a cocktail waitress," Emily says, and Lorelai nearly screams. "That's my mother's version of the C-word!"
Fight 4
Setting: More coffee, in some hallway
Instigator: Rory
Rory tells her grandmother that she refuses to quit the DAR. "I know the rules backwards and forwards," she says. "Plus I'm in contact with more members than you are." Emily says that is not true, but Rory insists that she talks to Tweenie Halpern all the time, and that she is helping Tweenie's daughter look at colleges. Emily is alarmed, but Rory says she's not quitting. "Oh, yes you are," Emily announces, shrilly, and they stomp back out, leaving Lorelai and Richard on the couch. "So, how's Luke?" Richard asks, casually. Lorelai: "He has a kid."
Winner: Rory
Fight 5
Setting: Later that evening
Instigator: Emily
Emily and Lorelai resurrect the old family fight jewel off-camera while Richard and Rory, exhausted, wait it out: "We were sixteen!" Lorelai yells. "We didn't want to get married!" Emily says that when a girl gets pregnant, she gets married, that a child needs a mother and a father. Lorelai: "OH. MY GOD."
Winner: Lorelai
Finally, the night is over. Bloody, but unbowed, Lorelai and Rory stagger out the front door. "Well," Lorelai says, looking like she just went nine rounds with a tiger, "I think we've officially reinstated Friday Night Dinner."