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Jackson discovers that the back forty is planted with the evil weed. He and Sookie hilariously flip out and try to dispose of it. Equally horrifying: Michel discovers he's been accidentally drinking 2% milk in his coffee! Liz shows up and tells Luke that (good news!) she's pregnant, and (better news!) she and T.J. have split up. Luke doesn't see the joy in the latter, however, and goes after T.J. to beat him up. Unfortunately, before Luke can take the first swing, he finds out that Liz is the one who ended things out of fear that their baby will grow up like Jess. They have a crazily ironic conversation about understanding your partner and reading between the lines to know what they're trying to tell you -- two things, as we know, upon which Luke is wholly unqualified to advise. He facilitates a reunion. Logan gets out of the hospital and is being very protectively cared for by Rory and her team of sentries. All is going well, until Rory sees a quote his dad made about her in the Wall Street Journal taking credit for her journalistic greatness. She gets pissed, and tries to get a clarification, but to no avail. Lorelai, who is openly avoiding Luke, is forced to drive a post-lasik Emily all over town, rollin' on dubs in an Escalade. It's a trial, but at the end of the day, Emily surprises her with a presentation at a realtor's office. The elder Gilmores want to buy Lorelai and Luke an amazing home. Emily is genuinely sweet about it -- it's Lorelai's dream house -- and Lorelai is so overwhelmed with emotion, she finally breaks down in tears, saying the wedding won't be happening. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
It's Friday night, which means dinner at The Grandparents' house...though, actually, we've hardly seen and FNDs in a while, and isn't Logan confined to bed in a full body cast, or something, thus needing constant bedside vigilance by Rory? Or, is that cast thing just wishful thinking on my part?
Lorelai and Rory are arguing, presumably over the changing hair color of Ashlee Simpson (or maybe Nicky Hilton, now that I think about it). Lorelai is shocked that Rory would think [whoever]'s hair looks better dark, and is so adamant about it, she waves her fork-spronged meatball around in the air for emphasis. "The dark hair makes it look like she is trying too hard not to look like her sister," Lorelai insists. "Plus, she does not have the nose for dark hair." Still brandishing the meatball, she continues, saying that dark hair is like a beacon highlighting everything wrong with your face, while blonde hair just makes it all blend together in a haze of beige. "Nuts," Rory says, shaking her head. "You're nuts!" When Lorelai tries to retaliate with a thrust of her fork, Emily has had enough. "All right, that's it," she says, standing. "No more spaghetti and meatballs." Emily orders the current maid to come and clear the plates, and says that she should have known better: Lorelai and Rory always fight when she serves spaghetti and meatballs. "No, no," Lorelai tries. "We're not fighting! We're just...bonding!" As if Emily would ever serve anything so banal as spaghetti, anyway. What's on Friday's menu, chili dogs? Emily has the plates cleared, despite Rory's protests that she is starving. "Spaghetti and meatballs," Emily says, "is just too much excitement."
Richard comes back from making a phone call and sees the empty table. "I told you not to serve spaghetti and meatballs," he says. "They always fight." Rory says that they fight just as much when they have Chinese, but Emily demands that they stop talking about food and talk about her. She tells them that, because she hates to wear glasses, she's going to have LASIK surgery. "Personally," Richard says, all sweet, "I like you with glasses." Lorelai: "It's that whole 'dirty librarian' thing, right Dad?" Hee. Moving on, Emily drops the minor bombshell that she and Richard have recently taken Christopher to lunch. Lorelai is not happy about it, but The Grandparents say that they just wanted to clear the air with him over the tuition hooha. Richard says that he and Emily figured it was time for a "sit-down." Lorelai squints. "A 'sit-down'?" she snarks. "What, did you get Clemenza to hide a gun in the bathroom first?" Richard ignores Lorelai's sarcasm and says that they just wanted Christopher to know they weren't angry with him anymore, and that they all had a nice time. Lorelai and Rory both look skeptical, but The Grandparents continue. Apparently, since they now have all this extra money laying around that they would have used for Rory's tuition, they figure that they'll just add a little to it and donate it all to Yale in Rory's name. Immediately, they start rhapsodizing about the buildings, wings, or auditoriums they'll name after Rory. "The Rory Gilmore Cultural Center!" Richard says. "The Rory Gilmore Observatory!" Emily says. Rory tries to interject, saying that while she is very grateful, the fact that she is still a student at Yale might make it awkward to have her name on a building, but they ignore her and continue the daydream. "The Rory Gilmore Library!" Emily shouts. Richard has a stroke of genius. "The Rory Gilmore Medical Research Laboratory!" he says, but Emily thinks not. "No!" she protests, "that sounds like monkey testing. People will picket!"
Rory has assumed boss lady duties and is taking Logan home from the hospital. She quizzes the doctor about what sort of physical therapist Logan should see. "That's if I need physical therapy," Logan says. Hello? Did they not say last week that Logan had torn up both knees? It's ridiculous to give him that injury and then act like he's not going to need rehab. That shit is so painful, a more realistic storyline would show him hobbling around for the decade, addicted to Oxycontin. Rory chides him about following doctors' orders and he finally gives her a smooch, saying something melodramatic like "thanks for being who I wanted to get out of the hospital for," or something stupid like that. He must have caught the Bledelis Mumblitis from Rory, because I can't really understand him.
At the Dragonfly, Michel (in, seriously, his best storyline ever) is jogging in place, threatening someone over the phone with a lawsuit. "Why is he prancing?" Lorelai asks, getting her morning coffee. Sookie, who seems to barely notice Michel's histrionics, just shrugs. He finally slams his phone shut with an emphatic "kees my toosh!" and declares to Lorelai and Sookie that "you can trust nothing and no one, ever!" Lorelai asks him to quit with the jogging, but he shakes his head: "Oh, I cannot. I cannot stop this for a very, very long time." He says that he has been buying organic milk from his market, always getting the cartons with the blue top, since that is the non-fat variety. But today, to his horror, he found out that for the last two weeks, the dairy has accidentally put blue tops on the 2%, and red tops on his preferred non-fat. "For the last two weeks," Michel says, nearly hysterical, "I have been drinking 2% meelk in my coffee, every single day!" Lorelai is less than sympathetic. "Insert gasp here," she says, but he just rages on, still jogging. "I've been consuming an extra billion calories a week," he says. Lorelai rolls her eyes, saying that at least this tragedy has not affected Michel's math skills.
As Michel continues to bounce, Lorelai takes a call from Luke on her cell phone. Apparently, Luke and Lorelai haven't been able to get together lately. She makes all sorts of excuses, but he doesn't get it. Luke asks whether they can get together that night, but Lorelai lies, saying that there's a staff meeting that night. Overhearing this, Sookie and Michel freak out about their childcare/gym schedule situations. "I have a session with my trainer tonight!" Michel laments. "I'll have to pay full price if I cancel this late! It's like two zeellion dollars!" Lorelai tries to wave them off, indicating that she's making it up, and goes back to Luke, who wants to know if they can get together tomorrow. "Sure," she says. "Well...maybe. We'll talk in the morning." Sookie immediately begins her protest about this out-of-the-blue staff meeting. She says that she'll have to get a sitter, and that Becky, the good one, is at her grandmother's: "So, I'll have to use her crazy goth sister, who wears a snake around her neck and eats all my Eggos!" Wearily, Lorelai tells her that there is not, in fact, a staff meeting that night. "Oh, thank God," Michel groans, and jogs out of the room. Alone, Sookie asks Lorelai why, if there is no staff meeting, she lied to Luke about her schedule. "I don't want to get into it," Lorelai says, and she is saved from doing so by Jackson -- who charges in, in a panic, asking to see Sookie alone.
Jackson pulls Sookie through the Inn to an empty room and demands that she smell him. "You smell like Jackson," she says, "and something else...it's not zucchini, it's not sprouts...what is that?" Frustrated, Jackson reveals the truth: "I smell like marijuana!" Apparently, the back half-acre is now a giant field of pot, because he had not planted there for a few years. "Every square inch!" he says. "Hundreds of plantings. It looks like Harrison Ford's backyard!" He's figured out that the wicked Templeton brothers, who he recently fired, probably planted it right before he let them go. "I told them to weed the back half-acre!" he says. "They're not the smartest of fellas." Sookie says that along with being dumb, they also listened to the Allman Brothers, which should have been a clue. Jackson is freaking out, asking what they're going to do with a full half-acre of marijuana. I can think of a few things. Sookie says that they can't keep saying "the M word," or someone will overhear, and that they need a code name. "How about 'evil crop'?" Jackson asks, but they decide on "pickles". He keeps on wigging, saying that they're both felons for being in possession. "If the cops came to my field today," he says, "we'd both go to jail. We'd lose everything we own! We'd lose the kids!" Sookie gasps: "All because of pickles." He says he's going to send his staff home early and go to the back field and pull up every last "pickle." They try to be cool and walk out of through the restaurant like nothing's going on, but their pickle-jones is too strong and Jackson wrecks a table.
Y'all, seriously, one thing I am not going to miss when this season is over is having to watch these One Tree Hill commercials. Now there is a show that needs some pitiless recapping. I don't know why I have such a hate-on for Chad Michael Murray, but I really do. If Logan had a Mr. Hyde, it'd be that dude. Take one look at his monkey head and three o'clock shadow and tell me I'm wrong.
Back from commercials, the Troubadour is jangling out a nice cover of "Me And Julio," on the sidewalk. Inside, Luke comes to Kirk's table to take his order. Kirk, however, is more interested in talking about his beard, which he is growing out. Kirk says that he often finds himself rubbing his chin in a ponderous way. Luke ain't in the mood, and says that he'll come back later. Through the door comes Liz, who has apparently been off at some renaissance faire or another, selling jewelry by the handful. "I've got all this money now," she says, "but I got no idea what to do with it. Not a clue." Luke suggests putting it in a bank. Liz has got bigger news than her sales success, though. She's pregnant. Luke is thrilled. She is very happy and says she's going to do all the healthy things this time that she didn't do when she was pregnant with Jess. "Like," for example, "not binge-drink." That explains a lot. Luke says that T.J. must be really excited and asks where he is. "Oh, he's gone," Liz says, all casual. "Gone, the big Gone, out of my life." Luke, who should close the diner and hire a brass band to celebrate this news, instead gets very upset: "T.J. can't be gone. He's your husband!" Liz shrugs: "Since when has that kept guys from leaving?" Luke -- not smelling the irony about getting mad over a man mistreating the woman he loves -- gets furious. Liz tells Luke that he's getting mad over nothing, and that she needs him to stay calm. "It's all good, really," she says. "Really."
Logan wakes up in his apartment to the dulcet tones of Paris reciting all the portions of the male reproductive tract. He asks what she's doing. "Boning up," she says, "pardon the pun. Got my MCATs coming up." Paris says that Rory stationed her there to look after him. "It's necessary," Paris says. "You seem like the kind of lunkhead who would get up too soon and inadvertantly push a broken rib bone into his spleen." Which is what my brother -- who I mentioned in the last recap once sustained injuries scarily similar to Logan's -- did. And now, as a result, he is spleenless. Don't jump off cliffs or get into carwrecks, readers. I know I'm like a one-woman PSA, but your spleen and like, knee cartilage? That stuff comes in handy in your day-to-day life. Ahem, anyway, Logan is equally disturbed to find that Doyle is also in the apartment, watching the Penguin movie. Rolling his eyes, Logan attempts to stand up to walk to his bathroom. Paris, however, immediately puts on the kibosh, saying that Rory said he was not to get up, and Paris intends to follow orders. Logan asks what she suggests as an alternative, because he really has to pee, and she goes off in search of Tupperware to use as a homemade bedpan. Ewwww.
Frustrated, Logan calls Rory at the paper office and begs her to call off her sentries. "They're there for a reason," Rory says. Logan: "To reenact their favorite scenes from Misery?" From the kitchen, Paris calls out that Logan's cabinets need reorganizing. Rory asks Logan what she's doing in there. "She's looking," Logan says, "for a bedpan substitute." Rory realizes the magnitude of the situation, and with Bill hovering over her shoulder with something for her to read, she agrees to allow him to get up to go to the bathroom, but with Doyle's help. Doyle is all too pleased to be of service. "You know," he says, gesturing to the television. "This is very life-affirming; very penguinesque." Aw, Doyle. You may be like a penguin, but if anything, Logan is like...a polar bear with highlights who sleeps in a snow drift of gold dust. Or something. Okay! So I'm reaching. I'm just saying: Logan is no penguin, and Morgan Freeman would back me up on that.
When Rory finally hangs up, Bill is there to see her reaction to the thing he wants her to read. "I highlighted the appropriate section," he says, gleefully handing over a copy of The Wall Street Journal. Slowly, a look of consternation creeps over Rory's face, and when she does not burst into a fiery rage, he walks away disappointed.
Lorelai is at the Inn, trying to fend off the constantly aerobicizing Michel, when Emily calls in a panic. Apparently the LASIK went bad, and Emily thinks Lorelai already knows about it. "Your father called you," she says, bobbing and weaving through the house, trying to shield her eyes from sunlight. "Tell me he called you." Before Lorelai can tell her anything, however, she gets another call from Richard, who is in South Dakota. He says that Emily's eye surgery went badly, and though she is all right, she can't see a thing. "That doesn't sound all right to me," Lorelai says, but Richard says the whole thing is only temporary and that Emily is on painkillers. He's trapped in South Dakota. "The most boring state in the nation," he says, obviously never having seen an episode of Deadwood. "As I was flying in, I swear I saw one of the heads on Mount Rushmore yawn." Richard says that Emily has a battery of help, but just in case something goes wrong, she might need Lorelai to come over. She does. Back on the other line, Emily is playing it as big as Bette Davis in Dark Victory. She tells Lorelai that she's all alone and desperately needs to run some errands. Lorelai asks whether there's anyone else to help her. "I don't remember being in labor for fourteen hours with anyone else," Emily snaps back, "so no, there's no one else." Lorelai tells Emily that she'll be right over. "I'll be waiting," Emily says. "Blind...and waiting!" Awesome.
At Sookie and Jackson's, the paranoia is setting in. Jackson pulled up all the plants and brought them all back to the house in trashbags. "What was I to do?" he asks. "If I put it in the garbage, the garbage man could see it." Sookie says yeah, and the garbage man looks like a fink. Jackson says that they can't put it down the disposal for the same reason -- if it clogs, they'll have to call a plumber and then he'll see it. "That guy," Sookie says, "seems like a big fat fatty fink." They fight over the situation, which seems to have no escape route. "Burning it seemed like a really bad idea!" Jackson says, and I agree, though, man oh man, I'd love to see Taylor mellow out a little. Or a lot. It might take all four of Jackson's huge trash bags just to get the job done. They decide that they simply have to get rid of it, but will have to wait until dark.
At Logan's, Rory is ranting over The Wall Street Journal. Turns out, it's an interview with Mitchum, in which he pats himself on the back for giving so many Ivy League editors their starts, including Rory. "I could kill him," Rory says. Logan tells her that she'd have to get in a very long line. "The man," she says, "should be drawn and quartered." She decides that, no, quartering is too good for Mitchum. "He should be eighthed!" she says. "Sixteenthed!" She lists off several other methods of torture that might be tried on Mitchum, alarming Logan with the breadth of her knowledge. "Eh," she says. "I did a paper on the Attorney General." Thanks, Palladinos, for making my joke for me. She can't believe the WSJ would print the article. "If he said it to them," Logan says, "they get to print it." He says that it's one of his dad's things to grab credit wherever he can, even if it's undeserved. Logan tells Rory that the beauty of the daily paper is that it's in everybody's recycling bin the morning and will soon be totally forgotten. Rory is unconvinced. "I remember everything I read," she says, and launches into such a blabfest about stuff she reads and remembers that it causes Logan to rise from the dead to shut her up. Logan tells her that what Mitchum said in the article is in now way a dis, and that she should just let it go. Rory: "Never!"
Lorelai arrives at her parents' house and finds it dark and empty, not unlike their very souls. Calling out, she hears Emily answer with a weak "I'm here." Lorelai finds her stretched out on the couch wearing huge black glasses. "Oh, I'm sorry Mrs. Onassis," Lorelai says. "I was looking for my mother." Emily is not amused, and snaps back: "Will you at least promise to keep your comedy set at my funeral to under five minutes?" She dramatically recounts her eye surgery -- the doctor, after finishing with one eye, told her that the new LASIK procedure did not conform to the anatomy of her other eye, so he'd have to revert to the old procedure, something she very much did not want. "Because," Lorelai mock-comforts her, "it's so last year." Lorelai wants to locate the alleged army of servants are that her dad talked about. Emily says that they're all gone, and Lorelai asks to where. "To hell, I hope," Emily says. "One person more incompetent than the rest." I'm pretty sure she means "one person more incompetent than the ," otherwise we'd no doubt now hear a diatribe against this Most Incompetent Person. The nurse was shady, the housekeepers were eating everything, and the errand boys wore pants that hung below their underwear. How she saw any of this is anyone's guess, but she's hilarious, so I don't mind the inconsistency. "And no one was worse than the driver they got me," Emily adds. "Have you ever met the cab drivers in Prague? Well, they would hide their wallets from this man. Plus, I think he had a gun in his pocket." Quietly, Lorelai jokes that maybe the driver was just happy to see her. Good one, Lorelai. Emily swans out a hand, asking to be helped up, and says that she doesn't need all those people, anyway; Lorelai can just take her around for her errands. Lorelai's eyebrows nearly shoot off her head and she scrambles to get out of it, offering to just take the list of things to be done and do them herself. But no, Emily insists that Lorelai will be the driver, and they head out to the driveway.
Emily and Lorelai emerge from the house, with Emily shrouded in a huge black hat to shield her from the painful sun. "Mom, the sun can't even find you in that hat," Lorelai assures her. "If we put that hat on Frosty the Snowman, he'd be living in Miami right now." Lorelai is alarmed to find out that Emily does not intend to ride in her Jeep, though...how is she surprised? What worse vehicle is there to ride in if you're trying to protect your eyes? Instead, they're to take the monstrous black SUV parked nearby. "Mom," Lorelai says, "that's not a car. That's a rap video set." In fact, Emily says, the rental place told her it is the car Jay-Z uses when he comes to town, and it even has bulletproof glass. "As if that's a selling point," Emily says. "I told them I was not paying extra for bulletproof windows. I haven't been strafed in years!" (Can we please take a moment to imagine Emily Gilmore rolling up on Jay-Z? My God, the vision I am having. "Who is this 'Jigga Man' and where are my dubs? Richard! What on earth is a hizzay? I think the maid has been drizzling with various and assorted nizzles! Yo?") Lorelai does not want to drive the crazy huge vehicle, but Emily insists, saying that if she does not get her prescriptions, infection will set in her eye, thus blinding her for life. "And," Emily says in conclusion, "you will be doing this more than just today." Beaten, Lorelai opens the door for her mother, mumbling about her melodramatic, Sarah Bernhardt behavior. "My hearing," Emily says, sticking her head back out the door, "is just fine, Lorelai."
Luke barges into a dark roadhouse to find T.J. at the bar. "Now," Luke says. "I am not here to listen to you explain your side or rationalize things or justify your actions. I am here for one reason only: to punch you out." And as much as I'd like to see him do it, I can't help laughing along with T.J., who jokes that Luke is acting like he's in an old Western. "Don't be cute," Luke says. "Just get ready to be hurt." T.J. says that he wishes he had been drinking faster, so getting punched might not hurt so much. Luke tries to get him to put his arms up so that they can fight, but he won't. "I'm not hittin' you, Luke," T.J. says. "I got nothin' against you. Plus, there's no fightin' inside. It's Lanny's top rule along with not burnin' down the place." He tells Luke he just has one question before Luke drags him outside to clobber him: "What the hell is this about?" Luke is flabbergasted. He says it's about Liz and how T.J. abandoned her and their newly-created baby. T.J. says no, he'd never do that; he loves Liz and she threw him out when she told him about the baby: "I turn to grab the phone to tell the family, and an ashtray hits me in the head." Luke says he doesn't understand, so T.J. continues. He says Liz went off, yelling that the kid wasn't going to turn out well, and how it will grow up with no discipline and they'll have to send it away. T.J. says that he told Liz he would do whatever it took to be a good parent, but she wouldn't hear of it and threw him out. "She told you to go?" Luke says, slow on the uptake. He buys T.J. a beer and proceeds to give him some relationship advice. He says that Liz wasn't talking to T.J. when she was saying all that stuff about the baby; she was talking to herself. "I'm pretty sure she was talking to me," stupid T.J. says. "She kept saying my name." Now's the part where Luke should really punch him, I think, until Luke starts talking again, and I want someone to punch him, and I get all mad and confused and I nearly throw a lamp at the television. Luke has the gall, the unmitigated gall...it's so galling -- I have to call it the Charles de Gaulle -- to explain to T.J. that often times, women will not say exactly what they mean: "You have to try to tune in to what your partner means, as opposed to what she's actually saying. They sometimes won't tell you how they're feeling, but your job is to figure out what she's saying from what she actually says." Yes, Luke, you're a relationship genius. He pats T.J. on the back and says it is all going to be okay.
Much honking is heard, as Lorelai weaves nervously down the road in the big truck. "I'm not used to driving a missile silo down the street," she says to her mother's great annoyance. They're both annoyed, actually -- Lorelai's been driving her mother around all day, and now Emily won't even tell her where they're going for this last errand. They snipe at each other, until Emily asks whether Lorelai's talked to Christopher lately. Lorelai says no, as Emily begins waxing fond on how handsome Christopher is, and how great his hair looks and blah blah blah. Lorelai tries to blow it off, but Emily won't give up the subject. As a matter of fact, Emily says, she's been trying to think of a nice girl to set him up with. So insane. I could never see Emily telling anyone that she's setting up the man who knocked up and then abandoned her daughter. I'm sure all the DAR ladies will think that's a great idea. Emily throws out a few suggestions that she's been thinking over, and Lorelai snittily shoots them all down, saying that they're either too stupid, not Christopher's type, or have no sense of humor. She seems very jealous, or perhaps just annoyed by Emily's classic interference, and concludes that Christopher does not need Emily messing around in his love life. Emily tsks and says that Rory thinks Chris is lonely, too. When a fellow motorist dares to honk at her, this time Lorelai is not so skittish. "I'm in a tank, pal," she says, honking again to show her supreme irritation. "Come and get me."
Back at the Yale paper, Rory has the WSJ reporter, Kimberly, on the line (and this woman must be like, the editor-in-chief of the galaxy or something, because she has an office rather than a desk in a crowded writers room) and tells her that she's calling to request a correction. "Of what?" the writer asks. Rory answers, squinching her nose, "Of everything that Mitchum said about me." Kimberly pulls up the piece. "He didn't say much about you," she says. Rory says that he may not have used many words but he said a lot. Kimberly reads back the quote, which is about Mitchum giving Rory an internship and her going on to be the editor of the Yale Daily News. "What part of that is wrong?" Kimberly asks. "None of it," Rory says, "technically. But essentially, it's all a lie." Rory says that the impression that Mitchum gave Rory her start is not true. "Here's our thing," Kimberly says. "We can't print corrections to impressions. That would be chaos." Rory tries a few more tacks, but can make no headway. "It's just gonna bug me forever," she says, "that he put this out there." The reporter tells her that's just the way it is, and Rory sighs: "You're right. I guess it's going to be in people's recycling bins by tonight and totally forgotten by tomorrow, right?" Kimberly says that, actually, she hopes that the things she works on won't be that disposable. Embarrassed, Rory backtracks, trying to form a collegial bond, but finally has to hang up.
Back at Luke's, Liz has brought her women's therapy group over to the diner to meet. One of them complains about her crappy husband's crappy job that won't even pay for them to go to Dollywood sometimes. Hee. Man, even I have never been to Dollywood and I both live fairly near it and absolutely worship Dolly Parton. Why would anyone in Connecticut ever go there? I don't care, it's hilarious. Liz halfheartedly tries to commiserate. "Yeah, that's not good," she says, "not going to Dollywood...it's...rude." Luke comes in and asks what's going on. "They're the support group of single moms I hooked up with," she says, cringing. "They're horrible! All they do is bitch, bitch, bitch. I'd have left every one of them, too!" Luke tells her to listen to him. He tells her she's going to be a great mom, that Jess turned out fine and is now doing great, and that she's going to do great with the one. "I'm scared," Liz admits. Luke says that she's got help, though. T.J. is a good man and will be a great dad, if she lets him. "If he'll forgive me," she says. Luke points outside, where the doofus waits, jacketless, and Liz runs to him. "Oh, yeah," Dollywood says. "He looks like a real winner." The other women nod bitterly, as Luke comes over to the table. "Say," he says, "can I get you ladies anything? Compassion? Perspective?" Hilarious, but uh...Luke could use about two steaming bowlfuls of both of those himself, plus some freeze-dried packages of it for later.
Lorelai pulls up in front of an office building and turns, exasperated by Emily in the back seat complaining about spending the last hour and a half watching her mother get a manicure. Emily says that it was her standing appointment and she couldn't miss it. "Yes," Lorelai says, "except I was the one standing, because there weren't enough seats." Emily says that if she had missed the appointment it would have been weeks before she could make another (which is the opposite of what "standing appointment" means) and she'd be walking around with "hobo hands." She tells Lorelai to stop being so surly and that this is the last stop. When Lorelai protests about the distance they've driven that day, Emily gets even snappier: "Well, I'm sorry, Lorelai. time I have some sort of illness, you can put me on an iceberg and float me out to sea."
Lorelai doesn't understand why Emily wants her to come into this random real-estate office with her, but Emily shirks all discussion by telling her to come on, stepping out of the car. Lorelai acts like a moody teenager the whole time, complaining all the way and being a jerk in front of the real-estate lady. Emily tells the lady that Lorelai has headaches that tend to make her babble, and then the realtor offers her some aspirin. "Oh, no thanks. I'm okay," Lorelai says. "I've had the headache for thirty-eight years." Emily interrupts and tells the realtor that they're anxious to see "the pictures." Lorelai is still badgering her mother, asking repeatedly what this is all about, when the realtor leads them to presentation in the back. The realtor stands in front of a series of pictures of a gorgeous house, talking about how the owner will likely throw in any furniture or appliances with the home, and how this is only the second time the house has been on the market in a hundred years. Lorelai is so over it, not understanding what they are doing there, or why Emily is looking at houses. The house is large and roomy with a library and a fishing pond and stables for horses. Emily agrees that it's a very special property. Finally, Lorelai breaks and asks why Emily is looking at this house. Mrs. G asks the realtor to excuse them and asks Lorelai what she thinks of the house. Lorelai shrugs, saying it's fine, but not at all Emily's type of house. Emily says that doesn't matter; she wants to know what Lorelai really thinks of it.
Lorelai gets a guarded but dreamy look on her face as she glances over the pictures: "Well, I think it's a beautiful house." Emily nods. "So do I," she says. Lorelai: "You already have a beautiful house, Mom." Emily: "Oh, I know. This house is not for me. It's for you." Lorelai's face goes through about nine hundred emotions, as Emily talks about how the house is for her and Luke. Emily says that she thinks Lorelai's house is very nice and knows she's put a lot of work into it, but really, it's too small for both her and Luke, especially if they have children. "If you have children," she's quick to add, making sure (for once) there is no pressure. Emily says that there's a fishing pond for Luke and stables, because she knows Lorelai's always wanted horses. Lorelai just listens, rapt, as Emily continues to discuss the house's many benefits and charms. "I know you're not going to let me give you a wedding," Emily says, "so I thought a house would do." Poor Lorelai. She looks so sad as she realizes the size of this gesture Emily is making. Tears well in her face as Emily lays out her plan of how they will convince Luke to accept the house. Finally, Lorelai breaks down. "It's not gonna happen," she says. "Luke and I. The wedding. It's not gonna happen." Seeing her daughter cry, Emily makes an even larger gesture. Instead of going on a tirade, she comes to Lorelai and puts her hand on her shoulder.
In the town square, Sookie and Jackson lug the huge bags through the park, trying not to draw attention to themselves. "Jackson!" Sookie says, breathless. "Stop trotting!" They fight over the best way to go about their plan, until a car drives by. "Narcs!" Sookie says, and they take off again. "What the hell are the Petersons doing out this late?" she says. "They're bad," Jackson gasps. "They're bad people." Sookie: "Said the people trying to ditch a kilo of weed! Pickles! Pickles!" They take off again and immediately run into the Troubadour. He tells them that a tour manager heard him sing and wants him to open for Neil Young at a bunch of east coast dates. "Great," Sookie and Jackson say. "See ya." They run again, and Sookie wonders aloud that if Neil tokes, they could give all the grass to the Troubadour to take on the tour. "I think if Neil tokes," Jackson says, "he's already got a connection." They're still moving when they run into Reverend Skinner and Rabbi Behrens. They get nervous, especially when the two holy men mention that their evening walks are a great time to talk about God. "Yes," Jackson says, "it's a great time to talk about God." Sookie: "He's a good guy, that God." The preacher and the rabbi ask whether they'd like to join the walk. "NO!" they shout, and start off again. "We're going to hell!" Sookie says. Jackson: "Just keep running!"
Back at home later, Sookie and Jackson are surprised to get a visit from Lorelai: "I just need to hang out for a while." They all sit in the living room, staring at each other in silence until finally, Lorelai looks up. "What's that smell?" she asks. Sookie tells her that it's sixty-eight pounds of marijuana, and the writers miss the easy joke of Lorelai asking for some. Instead, she just looks so sad, yet again, as the screen goes black.