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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."
Sookie and Lorelai are interrupted when another staffer comes in to tell Lorelai that there's a Zydeco band to see her. "A what?" Lorelai asks. The guy repeats that it's a Zydeco band. "Did I mishear him twice?" Lorelai asks Sookie, who says that if Lorelai did, she did, too. They go out and find that, yes, Bouzou Barnes and The Cajun Stompers have come for their audition. "Sorry," Lorelai says, "but I'm like a thousand miles behind, here." Bouzou explains that they set this up a while ago. "Bouzou!" Lorelai says. "You're that Bouzou." Sookie: "You know more than one Bouzou?" Lorelai shakes her head. The band was something Lorelai was considering for her wedding, and forgot to cancel. She tries to explain to Bouzou that she doesn't need to hear them play, but he shakes his head: "No, Miss Gilmore, no. It's like this. When the Zydeco band is at the instrument, they must play." Turning to the band, he tells them to launch into "Zydeco Boogaloo." Sookie asks Lorelai when she started liking Zydeco music. Lorelai says she just thought it might be fun and festive; she was also going to audition a Dixieland combo, and Led Zepagain, a Led Zeppelin cover band. ["How timely and not at all opportunistic that Lorelai should consider hiring not one but two bands that play music traditionally associated with New Orleans! Shut up, Palladino." -- Wing Chun] Sookie says that June 3rd is coming up really quick, and Lorelai says that all of this slipped her mind. Bouzou sees Lorelai's worried look and figures she doesn't like the song. He calls for "Early In The Morning," which is exactly the same song. Sookie tells Lorelai to smile, or Bouzou might never leave.
Afternoon dawns at Logan and Rory's apartment (gag). He is just waking up at 11 AM while Rory frantically looks for her Thucydides. "I don't see how you can function without your Thucydides," Logan snarks. "Hey," Rory answers, "I'm trying to squish four semesters into three; if I slow down, I'll get whoomped." ["Hey, I just thought of something. Does Rory still have that job at the Stamford paper that she begged her way into and (bullshit) actually got? If so, how is she doing that, editing the Yale Daily News, and doing four semesters' worth of classes in three if she can also afford to fuck off on vacation for a long weekend?" -- Wing Chun] He tries to convince her to come back to bed, but she can't. In that case, he says, they should go away for the weekend, just to spend some time together. She says that this is a particularly bad weekend: even if she has any time available, she already promised to get together with her mom, whom she says she hasn't seen "in ages." So...when was last week's episode supposed to have taken place? In June? Because wasn't it already February? "But she doesn't kiss as good as I do," Logan says of Lorelai. Rory: "You don't know that." Um...inappropriate. In any case, Logan suggests that they invite Rory's mom and Luke along to Logan's family's house in the Vineyard. Rory is surprised by this offer and says she'll mention it.
Later, at the newspaper office, Rory tells one of her staffers to make sure that every proof sheet is on her desk by 5 PM, and not a second later: "I know the boys in the lab can be jerks to women. But don't let that stop you. Girl Power, baby. Betty Friedan is dead and we've all got to fill the vacuum." Interesting. They had to have gone back and added this scene; she only died ten days before the episode aired. Plus, the rest of it seems so thrown together, even including the irritating Bill, the newspaper staffer best known for his Paris-hating. I don't believe I've taken time yet to smack on Bill's hipster nerd posturing, with his shirts and vests and painful hairstyle straight out of Fitzgerald. Shut up, Bill. He and Rory sit down to go over the editorial budget. He thinks he's got a story on amphetamine use on campus. Rory thinks it over. "Maybe," she laughs. "Hmm. It'd be ironic if my supply dried up based on an exposé I approved." Bill doesn't get it, and continues. "Professor Wallace wants a correction to the interview we printed with him," he says. "He wants to clarify that he, in fact, referred to his department's problems with the advisory board as a, quote, us and them thing, unquote." Rory asks what they printed originally. "'S&M thing,'" Bill says. Haaa! Bill says that he can have some of this stuff to Rory by Sunday morning, but thinking of her new weekend plans, she tells him to wait until Monday.
Back at the Inn, the Zydeco band is still playing when Rory calls Lorelai. "That's my new friend Bouzou," she explains, "which is Cajun for 'won't leave.'" She tells Rory about the whole thing, saying that this is the final nail in the coffin for June 3rd, and that the cut-off dates for all her deposits have passed as well: "Do you know anyone in the market for a wedding? It's all planned and paid for." "Mom," Rory sighs, "you'll have your wedding." Lorelai says she doesn't know anymore, though, because Luke has been so busy with April. "I'm bummed, kid," she says. Rory says she knows and is there to cheer Lorelai up: she extends the invitation to go with her and Logan to Martha's Vineyard. Instead of throwing down the phone and declaring that she would not be caught dead in the home of the family who led her child down the ego-crushing, boat-stealing, not-good-enough-for-us path, she smiles and says she's always wanted to see the Vineyard. Rory is delighted, saying that if Luke acts like a sourpuss while they're there, she and Lorelai will at least have each other. "And you're sure you have room?" Lorelai asks. "Me and Luke, plus five?" Rory: "Plus five?" Lorelai: "Well, I'm not coming without Bouzou and the boys!" Rory says she'll see her Friday, and we cut away as Lorelai tries to wrestle her dining room back from Bouzou.
All right, we come back from commercial and...now, listen. I am not oversensitive, and I am all about creative license. I like a good off-color joke, and I think it's great when people can take it easy and know the difference between something that's meant in fun and something that's intentionally offensive. And, I'm not saying that this scene is intentionally offensive to gay people. No. What I'm saying is, it's intentionally offensive to...well, English-speaking people who possess the ability to hear and understand words, and have perhaps a thimbleful of wit. Even Lauren Graham goes through it like she's in a high-school production of Showboat and is self-consciously trying to show the crowd that she, the actress, is not personally a racist but is being forced to say these words by the writers. Lorelai and Luke come down the stairs of her house. He's carrying several pieces of luggage while she reads him off a list of activities to be found at Martha's Vineyard, such as canoeing, snorkeling, and sailing. "That's mostly summer stuff," Luke grumps. "It's the dead of winter." He busts on Lorelai for bringing too many bags, but she has a perfectly good explanation: "It is the dead of winter. The question is, do you have enough stuff?" He says yes, he has packed enough. Lorelai consults her fact sheet again, saying that the big-time Vineyard thing is whaling. "They have whaling?" asks Luke, incredulous. "Not anymore," Lorelai says. "It's just a fun fact." She reads on, saying that, indeed, Martha's Vineyard was once one of the world's largest whaling ports, and that people used to use every part of the whale, one of the most important parts being spermaceti, which was used to make candles. "Ugh," she says. "Couldn't think of a less gross substance to use for candles?" Luke is ignoring her, still messing with all the luggage. She goes on, saying that Herman Melville once shipped out of the Vineyard. Her fact sheet even has a quote from Moby Dick: "Oars! Oars! Grip your oars, and clutch your souls now. My God, pull, men!" She pauses: "It isn't the pulling that they had to do to get the spermaceti, is it?" Luke says he doesn't think so, and grouches that they need to go. "Coming," she says, in a beautiful throwaway line, which I didn't even get until I had watched this five times. Unfortunately, and I hate to be nitpicky, but the joke doesn't even work. Spermaceti is apparently taken from a whale's actual head. Damn, you know? How did anybody every figure that out? Let's take this goo from a whale noggin and heat it up or freeze it or whatever and then stick a wick in it and light it. Voilà! The mysteries of the sea are many, and each one is more gross than the last.
Anyway, back to this painful scene. Lorelai is still rocking her fact sheet: the first people on Martha's Vineyard were members of an Indian tribe, the descendants of which still make up the town, originally called Gay Head. Insert what should be a snicker, here, but what instead turns into yet another irritating joke. "Figures," Lorelai says. "The Indians survive poverty and disease, and then get stuck living in a place called Gay Head." Luke is over it, sighing and harrumphing like he's getting a root canal. "Do you think," Lorelai goes on, painfully, "that there's any connection between Gay Head and spermaceti?" I...am I being too whatever about this? Because it just isn't funny. Luke isn't amused either, but more because he is humorless in general. It occurs to him that since the Vineyard is an island, they'll have to take a ferry over. "Augh!" Lorelai says. "There is a ferry to Gay Head? That is just too easy." Yes, exactly. It IS. That is what I am SAYING.
After what seems like nine hours of Lorelai rattling on like a thirteen-year-old, Luke tells her she doesn't have to keep talking the place up; he's fine with the trip. "I just want you to have fun," she says, wistfully. "I just want you to relax." He fusses, saying he'll try, but that he has his concerns about Logan: "Where do we even stand with this guy? One day we like him, day we hate him, day we like him." Lorelai says that they have a sort of truce, and that everything is okay. "What if they break up while we're there?" Luke asks, and Lorelai says that they aren't going to break up. No, we should be so lucky. "Our bedroom isn't sharing a wall with theirs, is it?" Luke asks, and Lorelai says she has no idea. Luke: "You don't know the layout of the house?" Lorelai shrugs, saying that she thought spermaceti was a pasta until three minutes ago. Luke says that it's just weird to stay at other people's houses, "tiptoeing around and using their sheets, drinking their weird tap water." God, shut up, you old man. Lorelai says again that she doesn't want the trip to be work for Luke. He grudgingly says that it will be fine, and then remembers that he put April's bike in Lorelai's garage; he was going to fix the wheel, he says, but has not gotten around to it. The mention of the Secret Daughter makes Lorelai cringe a little, but she holds it together. Luke says that they should go; they have a ferry to catch. "And please," he says, "don't add anything to that." Too late! Lorelai says that there are several historical lighthouses on the island. "Hey," she says, dragging this already-awful joke over the broken glass of my soul, "I wonder if there is a connection between the shape of lighthouses, ferries, spermaceti, and Gay Head!" She slaps her knee as I slap my head and, damning this scene to hell, we finally move the eff on.
After a full minute of what I assume is stock footage of Martha's Vineyard in anything but the "dead of winter," Luke and Lorelai arrive at the house. Logan greets them politely, saying, "This must be Luke," which confuses me, since I thought surely they'd met before. "Oh, no," Lorelai says. "I dumped Luke. This is Clem. I picked him up at a truck stop on 95. We were at the registers, paying for our blue plates, when our hands reached for the same Dixie Chicks cassette." Luke interrupts, introducing himself, and Rory shows them around the house, which is pretty swank: dining room seats twenty, wet bar, etc. Logan asks if they're hungry, but Luke says they ate on the way up. Rory ends her tour with a few things of note about the house. It's an old place, so there are some kinks. The hardwoods have some buckling, the French doors get warped in the cold, and there's a raccoon, Stan, who makes noise outside the window. "He's been living on the property longer than my family has," Logan explains, "so we give him free rein." Rory continues her Little Miss Hostess routine, telling Luke and Lorelai that the showers will go cold if they run at the same time, and that the breakfast place down the road opens at 8. "7, actually," Logan says, and Rory nods, saying yes, that's right, it's just that they never make it there before 8. She shows them their room. "We call it the King & Queen Suite!" she announces, excitedly. Lorelai asks why. "Because," Rory says, "you're our honored guests, and I just named it that a second ago." After she gives them the rundown on the stuff in the room, she heads out, saying that she'll see them later. "I'd really like to tip you," Lorelai says. "But I only have a twenty." Rory laughs: "Just add it to the bill, ma'am."
I know it seems like the natural thing here would be to pour a cooler full of Haterade over Rory's head for acting like this is her house she's showing off, but I can't, because -- and I know this upsets you, ladies, and you know it upsets me, too -- every ounce of it has to be saved for Luke, who begins his bitching immediately. Lorelai says that the place is nice; Luke says that it's too dark to tell. He wonders if they're supposed to stay in the room for the rest of the night; Lorelai tries to laugh that off, to no avail. "What do you think they're gonna do out there?" he asks. "I don't know," Lorelai says, jokingly taking on a conspiratorial whisper. "Do you think they're gonna do something?" Luke harrumphs, "I don't know, it's your daughter and your daughter's snotty boyfriend." Now, Luke, in our former life together -- say, three episodes ago -- I would have gotten up to high-five the television, so deep would my love run for your astute nailing of Logan. But now, not so much. You're the one being an ass. Lorelai says she didn't think Logan was being snotty at all, and that he seemed very nice. "You call that nice?" Luke asks, in disbelief. "The way he embarrassed Rory?" Lorelai doesn't know what he's talking about, but he says that Rory was humiliated when Logan corrected her about the time the café opens in the morning. "She wasn't humiliated," Lorelai rightly says, and Luke sighs yet again, saying that they just need Logan and Rory to "hold on" and not break up for three more days. Lorelai assures Luke that that won't be happening on this trip, but he says there's a lot of tension here. Instead of ripping off his baseball cap and throwing in the fireplace, Lorelai nicely says that she'll go out and check out the "lay of the land," and see what Rory and Logan are going to be up to.
Lorelai finds Rory in an easy chair, reading Joan Didion (weirdly enough, as I just remember mentioning her and this particular book a few recaps back). Lorelai asks if she and Luke are supposed to stay in their room all night. Rory says no, that they can stay in there or come out to the den with her, and asks why she's whispering. Lorelai says that it's just weird being in someone else's house, and Rory agrees that it's a little weird being a foursome. Lorelai says that they'll adjust, and they say good night.
The morning, Lorelai emerges to from the powder room, talking about how much she likes the beach in winter, to find Luke sitting on the edge of the bed, eating a Power Bar. He's eating, he says, because he didn't know if "they were gonna serve food or not." Frustrated, she comes over and looks through his luggage, which pretty much contains everything a man would need if he was dropped from a helicopter into the jungles of Vietnam. The crowning glory is the huge Bowie knife to, as Luke says, "cut fish, cut tree limbs..." Lorelai looks alarmed: "Amputate a leg?" Luke says no, you couldn't use it to cut off a leg, but "you could do a foot." Lorelai asks why Luke brought his back-country bag on this trip. "I didn't know what this weekend was," he says, on which I call bullshit along with Lorelai. "You didn't know we wouldn't be performing surgery on each other?" she says. He says that he just wanted to be prepared. Lorelai says that she thought his bag was full of clothes, and that she's afraid he's going to freeze. "I'm warm-blooded," he insists, and Lorelai says she knows: "You're warm-blooded, check it and see."
Lorelai goes out and finds Logan and Rory sharing a newspaper, having breakfast. She says that Luke is around the corner, waiting for her signal to come out. Rory yells that he can come in, saying that he doesn't have to hide. He blows that off, saying that he wasn't and, seeing his obvious discomfort, Lorelai suggests that they go for a walk on the beach before they eat. Logan says that Luke will probably need a coat, but Luke grumbles that he is fine, and they head to the beach...
...where we see Luke walking. In a coat. Lorelai is having a nice time. She says that the air smells great: "Sea-y." Luke grouches that he smells sewage somewhere, too. Gamely, Lorelai says that she's loving this, and that it's been forever since she was at the beach. Luke scoffs at the big houses, saying that the real estate market must be out of control, and betting that the average Joe can't afford it, "meaning if you work here, you can't live here, so you have to commute hours every day." Lorelai tries again, saying that it would at least be a pretty place to work. Luke's not finished, though. He complains about the waves keeping him up last night and that just when he was about to fall asleep, Dan showed up. "'Dan'?" Lorelai says. Of course, Luke means Stan, the raccoon, who he says was playing a Sousa march on the trashcan lids: "That is what a Bowie knife's for." Lorelai sighs, and I wish she'd take this opportunity to shove him right into the ocean, but they are interrupted by Rory. She says that Luke looks like he's freezing, but I don't get it. He's wearing just as many clothes as either of them is, which make all the comments about the weather seem weird. Rory throws them the keys, saying that she and Logan are heading to the gym. "I'm sorry," Lorelai says, feigning deafness. "The ocean's awfully loud." Rory repeats that they're going to the gym, and tells her mom to stop mocking, because it's a good thing. Lorelai's so amused, she says she wants to go, just so that she can see Rory at a gym: "Great. Let's all go to the gym. That'll never stop being funny."
At the gym, Lorelai and Rory are taking a water break after their strenuous jog from the locker room to the front desk. "That was some gnarly cardio," Rory says. Lorelai wonders what it is about cucumber water that makes it so much more refreshing than plain water. "I think it's the cucumber," Rory says. They wander through the weight machines, trying act like they know their way around a gym. Aren't the machines crazy intimidating? I go to a gym, myself, but I get terrified every time I think about using an unfamiliar machine -- I try to act all cool about it, but I am always afraid I am about to sit on something backwards and lift when I should be pushing, or whatever. Rory says that she wants to be sure Luke has a good time while he's there with them. Lorelai says that he will; he's just not used to traveling much. Since when is that an okay excuse for being an ass? I don't understand it when grownup individuals cannot roll with the changes.
On the basketball court, Logan and Luke are playing a little one-on-one, and it is not going well for the old man. Logan says that it's probably because the shoes Luke had to buy at the gym gift shop are too small, hampering his game. Luke's ego gets the best of him, though, and instead of just having a good time, he has to challenge Logan, who is already beating him, to play all-out. Yeah, good strategy. "You're overestimating my skills," Logan says, "if you don't think I'm playing all-out." He scores on Luke again and, perhaps being overly polite, says that he charged and fouled Luke and shouldn't get the point. Luke insists that he didn't, and they keep playing.
Later, Luke and Logan find the ladies downstairs in the gym receiving shoulder massages from Ron and Jerry. Logan says he didn't know the gym had masseurs. "Ron and Jerry work for the laundry service," Lorelai says, "but they missed their calling." Luke is amazed that they got the laundry guys to give them massages. "Never underestimate the persuasive powers of Lorelai Gilmore," Rory says, and asks if the guys had fun "throwing the old hoop around." Logan laughs, saying it was something like that. Luke starts to bitch about the shoes, but Logan interrupts, saying that they had fun, and that nobody won. Lorelai jokes that Luke looks like a billboard for the Martha's Vineyard chamber of commerce, and he cringes, saying that the sweats were all they had. The guys hit the showers together (not like that!) and, to fill their spare time, Lorelai calls Ron and Jerry back over for more massaging.
Back at the house, in his and Lorelai's room, Luke is keeping up the ass behavior. He's complaining about the cold, complaining about their dinner plans, complaining about the fog, complaining about the house, and complaining that the sweatpants he bought at the gym have already ripped. He blames it on Logan, who he claims was playing rough, charging, fouling, and cheating on the score. Lorelai is trying her best to fend off all this negativity, but finally can take it no more. She says that Logan seemed nice when they came back from playing, and that they said they had just been playing for fun. "It wasn't fun," Luke drones. "Believe me." Lorelai has had it. "Maybe you shouldn't have come with us to the gym," she snaps. "Nobody forced you to go." Luke is surprised by her reaction and her frustration. She goes on, saying that it's Valentine's weekend, and that maybe Luke should shut up about all this stuff that he finds so frustrating. "Sure," he says. "Okay...fine," like she's the one being unreasonable, and I feel my blood boil.
Lorelai sighs, saying she's going to go find Rory and will see him out there. She is shocked to find Rory in the kitchen, surrounded by food and looking exactly like Nigella Lawson on the cover of her last cookbook. Lorelai is in disbelief. "You're wearing an apron," she says. "You've not worn an apron since you saw The Sound Of Music and you put one on so you'd look like Sister Maria, and you made a big crucifix out of popsicle sticks." Rory laughs and stuns her mother further by juicing an orange. Lorelai says that she wants to help, and starts grabbing up stuff on the chopping block. "This would definitely do a foot!" she says, wielding a knife. They are interrupted by Luke. "Rory's gonna let me chop something," Lorelai tells him. Luke: "Is that wise?" Lorelai is excited, though, and after pushing off the dinner knife Rory tries to make her use, picks up the big knife again, saying she's Mario Batali and Ina Garten's love child. Rory tells Luke that Logan is outside grilling the lobsters, and may need some help. "He kept them very well hidden from me," Rory says, "when they were, let's just say, not dead." Lorelai grimaces: "Not dead, ugh. I don't like all this behind-the-scenes food stuff." Luke heads out to check on Logan as something suddenly occurs to Rory. "What did you mean," she asks Lorelai, "it would 'do a foot'?"
Outside, Logan is, indeed, working at the grill. It's a time-honored Huntzberger tradition, Logan says, to cook lobster just right. Luke says that he's never head lobster, and Logan says he's sure Luke will love it. "So, FYI," he continues, "I'm probably going to do the present thing at dinner." Luke looks confused. "Just wanted to give you a heads up," Logan adds. "Don't want to complicate your life." Luke is only vaguely catching on: "You got Rory a present?" Logan says he did, for Valentine's Day. Ah. Luke, of course, has nothing for Lorelai, and for the first time in this episode, I am kind of on his side, seeing as how, as he says, Valentine's Day is not until a few days later. ["Not that he was planning to get her anything regardless." -- Wing Chun] Still, he looks chagrined, and asks if there's someplace open nearby. "Only if you want to buy her a windbreaker," Logan says, "or some boating equipment." Logan sees his pain, and comes to Luke's rescue. He went overboard, he says, and got Rory both a tennis bracelet and a necklace: "Let me give you one to give to Lorelai." Luke says he couldn't possibly accept that, but Logan presses: "Dude, it's Valentine's Day. You gotta give your girl something." Ick. I think Logan's being awfully nice, but I hate how chummy he is with someone so much older. Also, wouldn't the solution to this problem, if it is even really a problem, be Luke's asking Logan not to give Rory her gifts at dinner, and waiting, instead, to do it in private? After all, it isn't even Valentine's Day. Logan convinces Luke to take one of the gifts, though, and Luke reluctantly but gratefully says he'll take the necklace: "Mainly because I have no idea what a tennis bracelet is." Logan is glad to do it, and says that, in a minute, they can sneak out to the car where he's hidden the gifts: "We men have to stick together."
Lorelai is still really enjoying all the cooking prep in the kitchen. Rory warns her against over-mashing the potatoes -- "[That's] called potato soup" -- but Lorelai shakes her head: "You know, you can put on the apron and shout out things like 'dice the carrots,' but implying you can over-mash potatoes proves you're a phony." Rory: "You're the one who thought the potato masher was a waffle-shaper." Rory gleefully tells her mom that she and Logan are thinking of going to Asia for six weeks at the end of the school year. Nothing's set in stone, she says, but she's bought the books and is researching everything. I suppose we can all assume that Logan is paying for this trip? I guess. Lorelai says that Rory has become too fabulous to hang out with her, and they continue their salad and potato hijinks as Logan and Luke come through, saying they have to dig some lobster tongs out of the garage. "It's weird, you know," Rory says, when they leave. "It just hit me: these could be The Ones." Lorelai looks at her. "'The Ones'?" she repeats, looking wary. "The Ones," Rory says again. Totally dazed, Lorelai says, "Yeah...yeah."
On the deck, they all bask in the glow of their delicious dinner. Even though they have repeatedly said how freezing it is, no one is wearing particularly heavy clothing. Luke says that he loves lobster, and cannot believe he's never had it; he congratulates Logan on crustacean well-cooked. "And, not to toot my own horn, here," Lorelai adds, "but how 'bout that celery I chopped, huh?" They give her a round of applause as well, and Rory asks if they should go ahead a clear the table. "Well," Logan says, smooth as can be, "it's so pretty out here, the sun'll be down soon, so...before it gets dark, Happy Valentine's Day." With that, he presents Rory with the present. "Oh, my God," Rory says. "You humanely killed lobsters and you got me a present?" The merest hint of worry and jealousy goes across Lorelai's face as she watches her daughter open the box containing a very pretty bracelet. "It's a tennis bracelet," Luke says, to everyone's surprise. "Well," he says, "my sister makes jewelry, so I've picked up some terms." Rory and Logan smooch, and Luke makes his big move. "Well," he says, trying also to be smooth, "I guess it's my turn." Lorelai is shocked to see Luke passing her a gift box, and is blown away to see the necklace. When Rory notices that the two pieces go well together, Logan is quick to step in and say that he and Luke snuck out and found a little place to buy them, at the same time. Lorelai is very moved and says she loves it.
Later that night, Lorelai is in bed while Luke talks from the bathroom. He is still riding high from his lobster experience, saying it is now his favorite food from the sea: "It kicks tuna's ass. Kicks salmon's ass." Lorelai distractedly says yeah, lobster's great. Luke goes on, saying that Logan did a good job with the lobster, and that they've got to find a good place for it near Stars Hollow: "We'll probably have to go to Litchfield. I'm not even going to attempt the lobster at Al's Pancake World." Cute. What's not cute is Luke's hair, which I would bet money is a hairpiece, and I believe I've stated my feelings on that before. He notices that Lorelai is distracted, and asks her what's wrong. "Lately," she says, "I've been feeling like it's not going to happen." Luke isn't catching on. "Our wedding," Lorelai explains. Luke immediately moves to reassure her: "Of course it's going to happen." She asks him if he really wants it to. "Yes," he says, sincerely. "We're engaged. That hasn't changed. The wedding has just been postponed, that's all." Lorelai says it just doesn't feel like it's been postponed, and Luke is having a hard time understanding. He says he thought the necklace, which she is holding, would make her happy, but it seems to be making her sad. She says it's just that she had to cancel a lot of her June 3rd plans this week, is all. Luke's confused, still, but she explains that she was holding out hope that once things calmed down with him, he would change his mind. She acknowledges that that was stupid, and tells him that she lost all their deposits. "That doesn't matter," Luke insists. "We'll just put down new deposits." ["'You will,' I yell at the TV." -- Wing Chun] Lorelai sighs. "Really?" she asks, and Luke says yes, they are getting married. Lorelai says that she really wants to believe that, and Luke interrupts her, saying that he knows he's been preoccupied. "I don't like that about myself," he says. "I get in my own head and forget about the people around me." Lorelai says that's why she thought this trip would be good for him, but then when he got there, he complained about everything and everybody and was generally miserable: "I think the trip was a dumb idea." Luke shakes his head, with feeling, insisting that it was a good idea. "Hey," he says, all serious. Lorelai, still sad, answers, "What?" Luke: "You know I love you, right?" Lorelai says she really needs to hear that once in a while. (GIRL, so do the rest of us. Damn, I think this is the first time either of them have ever said the words, and it causes me to squeal like a forum poster.) He goes on: "I love you, and I'm gonna marry you, and at our wedding, we are having lobster." Lorelai smiles a sad smile and says okay, and lord almighty, they actually kiss. Like a real kiss, with feeling. "I really love this necklace," Lorelai says. ["Oh, the hell that he is going to have to pay when she finds out Logan bought it." -- Wing Chun]
We see Luke and Lorelai waking up in the morning, both saying that they slept better last night than they had in months. Lorelai puts on her robe, saying she's going to go check on Logan and Rory, and finds that they've left breakfast for them on a tray outside the room. "Breakfast Santa," Lorelai says. "The service here is so excellent." They sit in bed eating breakfast, sharing stories about their childhood trips to Harvey's Beach. It is one of the most natural moments Luke and Lorelai have ever shared onscreen, and I really like it. Lorelai tells a story about having a crush on the guy who ran the snack stand. "We used to do cartwheels to get his attention," she says. Luke says it's possible that they could have been there at the same time, on the same day. "Nah," Lorelai says. "We never were. 'Cause you would have distracted me from the snack stand guy, and no guy ever did." Luke laughs. "What about eloping?" he asks. They talk about eloping -- which is the kind of wedding I would have though these two characters would have had all along -- and Luke says they can even come back to the Vineyard for a few weeks in the summer, to celebrate. Lorelai is thrilled with that idea, I've completely made up with Luke, Lorelai is happy, all is right with the world, and this scene is so sweet, I wish it would never end.
Unfortunately, it does. Luke and Lorelai hear the front door open, and call out to Logan and Rory that they are upstairs, "and in the interest of full disclosure," Lorelai adds, pulling her robe around her, "we're fairly casual." Unfortunately, again, it ain't Rory. Mitchum Huntzberger lunges through the door, asking who they are and saying that he's looking for Logan. Speak of the devil, Logan and Rory arrive home at that moment and the badness begins. Mitchum, mad as dammit, asks where the hell Logan has been, saying he's been ignoring Mitchum's calls and pages. Logan says he got all the pages, but that his dad didn't even need him that weekend. This is where they really get into it. Apparently, Logan was supposed to be in London over the weekend, meeting with his father's business clients, but he skipped it. They start screaming at each other, Logan saying he didn't need to be there, and his father saying that's not Logan's decision to make. It is a vicious, impressive fight, and Lorelai, Luke, and Rory look on, embarrassed. Mitchum gives the big finish, saying that Logan is getting on the plane today, and that he'd better get used to it, since he'll be in London for at least a year as soon as he graduates, as they discussed. "You discussed it," Logan says, to no avail. His dad does everything but grab him by his ear, and throw him in the car. "I have guests," Logan says; Mitchum says his guests can stay, but Logan's leaving.
Ten minutes later, Logan says his goodbyes. He and Lorelai have an awkward moment at the door. She tells him not to worry about it, and adds that no one understands letting family down better than she does. I wish they had had more time to talk about their evil families.
Logan is grim as he goes out with Rory. He doesn't want to talk about the full year in London. He says they don't have to think about it now, and that she should take the Porsche home, and keep planning the Asia trip. He gets into the car as Lorelai walks up to join Rory, who is watching Logan go. "So," Lorelai says. "That's Mitchum, huh? He's just like I imagined him." (Note: when the limo they're in pulls out of the driveway, you can almost see the Hollywood sign on the hills.)
Lorelai and Luke arrive back at the diner. Cesar greets them, saying they're back early and trying to remember something he was supposed to tell Luke. "I made some coffee," he says. "Maybe that was it." Luke: "Was that it?" Cesar says no, but that maybe he'll remember. When he goes to the back, Luke wonders what he's going to do with all the stuff he had to buy in the Vineyard. "Keep it. It looked good on you," Lorelai says. "Especially the sweatpants. You got a nice Mass-ass." Luke doesn't get it. "Massachusetts ass!" Lorelai explains. Luke nods, saying maybe he'll keep the sweatpants.
Cesar rushes out, saying he's remembered what he needed to tell him: April will be coming over the day at 3. "She kept calling to remind me, like I wouldn't remember to tell you," he says. "Which I almost didn't. She's smart!" I love Cesar. Luke thanks him, and seemingly doesn't notice Lorelai's fallen face. He says that April's mom will probably pick her up around 7. "So..." Lorelai says. "I guess I'll pop up sometime after that." Luke says that sounds good. What on Earth is wrong with this man? I want to strangle him. Why won't he introduce his secret daughter to this woman he has just re-professed his love to? Hate. Forget what I said about us making up, it's back off. Lorelai says that she's tired and will be heading home, and as a matter of fact, she'll just walk. They share one of their old-school awkward, non-love kisses, and she heads out.
Arriving home to her dark house, Lorelai hits the answering machine and is surprised to hear her Aunt Alice's voice saying that she has seen that beautiful engagement announcement in the paper. Lorelai freezes. She throws down her mail and scrambles through the paper, looking for the social pages. She stares in disbelief at a huge photo of herself above a column about her June 3rd wedding, and listens in horror to the several other messages congratulating her on her upcoming nuptials.