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Lorelai and Rory attend the first Friday Night Dinner of the season, and learn that Emily is in charge of this year's club cotillion for young girls. Lorelai realizes, after telling her parents about her breakup with Luke, that perhaps every move she's made in her life has been in direct, intentional contrast to what her mother wanted her to do. Rory's transatlantic love life is not going all that well. Paris suggests that she try phone or text sex to keep the spark alive. Rory, naturally, goes to the bookstore to read up on how to be sexy. Lane finally tells Zach about her pregnancy, and after a brief period of denial, they both admit that they're freaked out about their impending parenthood. Christopher shows up at Lorelai's and admits that he's in love with her and that he'll wait for her forever. After thinking it over, she calls him and opens the door to a potential relationship. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Lorelai and Rory arrive at the Gilmore manse for our first Friday Night Dinner of the season. Lorelai is about as exited about it as you'd expect. "Hey, punch me in the stomach!" she suggests to Rory. "Real quick! Jab jab! Not too hard, just enough to cause a little internal bleeding!" Rory says that sounds like she'll have to punch Lorelai pretty hard. Lorelai agrees about the flaw in this plan. Plus, she adds, internal bleeding is hard to prove, and Emily wouldn't excuse her from dinner for anything less than visible blood. So, she reasons, Rory is going to have to punch her in the face. "I'll heal!" she insists when Rory declines. "I'd much rather spend the night in the germy emergency room getting eight to ten stitches than go in there for dinner!" She also says that a punch in the face might give her a really groovy scar, which she's always wanted, and would come with the added bonus of being able to tell people that her psycho daughter drop-kicked her for no apparent reason. The only thing Rory can really drop on her is a little rational thought: they haven't had dinner with the folks in three weeks, so Lorelai needs to "suck it up." All of this happens in the first fifty-nine seconds of the episode, by the way. This show is on crystal meth with the chatter tonight. Lorelai reminds Rory that she missed the last dinner to go spend time with Logan. "Aw, I miss Logan," Rory says, wistful. Lorelai: "Yeah, me, too. Let's go somewhere and talk about him for four or five hours."
Rory tells her again that they're going in, but Lorelai delays the inevitable. This FND, she says, is going to be worse than ever because of the whole Luke debacle. "Just tell them really quick," Rory suggests, "like ripping a Band-Aid off." Lorelai rolls her eyes: "Like ripping a Band-Aid off that's been superglued, stapled, and surgically embedded in my arm!" Rory tells Lorelai just to tell them early so that they can all move on and talk about more pleasant things, "like the middle east." Lorelai continues to panic about the unknown results of the Luke revelation. Rory says that however the Grandparents come at her mom, Rory will deflect their negativity. "How will you deflect?" Lorelai asks, skeptical. Rory: "Well, I don't know. Maybe I'll talk about Bangalore." Lorelai excitedly suggests instead that Rory tell her grandparents that she's converting to Judaism: "That will throw the whole Friday Night Dinner thing in jeopardy!" ["Finally, confirmation that the Gilmores are not Jewish." -- Wing Chun] Good plan, but they are interrupted when the door opens...
...not at the nervous hands of the maid of the week, but at the tiny hands of a little girl. "Hello," she says, very politely, inviting Rory and Lorelai in and offering to take their coats. "Maybe Mom has run out of adults who will work for her," Lorelai conjectures. Oh my God, this scene is going on forever. We haven't even gotten to the part where we learn that the kid is there in training for the cotillion Emily is hosting for the DAR. "Well done, Charlotte," Emily tells the child. "C.Z. Guest couldn't have done it better herself." She goes on to introduce Rory and Lorelai to Charlotte as "our granddaughter, Rory, and her mother." Ugh. Rory and Lorelai try to make nice with the kid, telling her cutely that they love the book Charlotte's Web, but this Charlotte is in no mood for baby talk. "Can I offer anyone a cocktail?" she asks, sweetly. "Uh, okay..." Lorelai says, concerned that a ten-year-old is about to play bartender: "Is that legal?" Emily goes through everyone's drink orders, sending Charlotte over to the booze. She returns with the drinks, passing Lorelai her straight-up martini. "Thanks," Lorelai says. "So, nothing for you? You driving tonight?" Charlotte laughs a tinkling laugh: "Oh, Lorelai, I'm only ten!" Her moment of cuteness is short-lived, as Emily notices that the ice cubes in her glass have already melted, and bitches Charlotte out for it. Charlotte is full of remorse, and when Emily gets up to repair her own drink, Lorelai grabs the girl's hand: "This is your chance. Get out while you still can! I can show you all the good escape routes!" Charlotte merely laughs again: "Mrs. Gilmore warned me you'd be full of smart remarks." She should have warned you that this scene would be full of endless words and chatter that would cause me to write a TWO-PAGE SUMMARY of it, even though it lasted less than five minutes. You're killing me, non-Palladinos. Also, what is this aerie girls stuff you're pushing on us? These chicks don't watch Gilmore Girls! "Like, Christopher? Is totally hot! I love Lorelai's like, hair, and stuff? You know? Totally. And Logan's highlights totally bring out his eyes!" Or whatever they're saying. I'd ban their dumb asses from the forum in about 2.9 seconds. I totally hate them.
Back from commercial, the FND is STILL going on. Emily is talking, eight to the bar, about more cotillion stuff, giving Charlotte directions on the use of all the silverware. The kid handles the information ably, prompting Rory to say that she thinks Charlotte will have a great time at the event. Charlotte asks if Rory ever attended a cotillion. "Nope," Rory says. "But I did have a coming out party." Lorelai nods: "And I fully supported her decision. She shouldn't have to hide her love for women." Charlotte's eyes go wide, and Emily steps in to admonish: "Lorelai, there's nothing funny about being a lesbian." Tell that to Ellen DeGeneres. Never knowing when to shut up, Lorelai tells Charlotte that cotillions are not fun parties: "They're boring rituals to train a whole new generation of snobs." Instead of telling her daughter not to use a ten-year-old in her nonstop struggle against family oppression, Emily reminds Lorelai that she herself has never even been to a cotillion, so she has no evidence for her negative claims. Lorelai smarts back, "You don't have to jump off the Empire State Building to know it's gonna hurt." Poor Charlotte is wondering how she ever got involved with these damn freaks and the dysfunction that overrides every occasion they share.
The G-Unit quizzes Rory on her summer plans, asking if she has any exciting social engagements coming up. "Not really," Rory says. "Logan's in London, so..." Right, right. I forgot that this brilliant, beautiful twenty-one-year-old was somehow incapable of having a life outside her boyfriend. Because she's an aerie girl.
Finally, the elder Gilmores ask what's new with Lorelai, and she is forced, after much hemming and hawing, to reveal that she and Luke broke up. This is met with...no response whatsoever. Lorelai's parents react with the most minuscule noises, like Lorelai has just told them she had a splinter in her finger, and move immediately back to the cotillion instruction. Lorelai jumps back in, rolling her eyes, smartmouthing that she knows her parents have thoughts on the subject and might as well let them out now so that they can all move on with their lives. "I've moved on," Emily says, all innocence, and Richard adds that he can't think of a thing. They change the subject again, to Rory's delight and Lorelai's disappointment: she busts back in, demanding to know why they're avoiding the subject of her breakup. Emily sighs that there's no point in discussing it. "We couldn't possibly say anything right," she says, quite correctly. "So, why say anything at all?" Even Charlotte, who barely knows the difference between a salad and roast fork, knows it's rude to be held hostage by your hosts' long history of emotional paralysis. As the Gilmores continue to fight, mostly spurred by Lorelai's demands that someone care about her for five minutes, the kid looks desperately to Rory, who tries to get her mother to let it go. "Lorelai," Richard adds, "your mother is simply expressing our regrets that you've ended your relationship with Luke. I hardly see how that's offensive." Excellent point, Grandpa. Except Lorelai is now doubly offended, and starts the "you never liked Luke!" argument. Emily gets mad, and starts bitching that they were, indeed, supportive of the relationship, even willing to buy the couple a huge house. This leads to yet another outburst from Lorelai, prompting Rory to bust out the safe word: "Bangalore! Bangalore! Bangalore." Though the thrice-repeated mantra does not conjure up a demon, as I'd hoped, it does at least end this infernal, eternal scene.
Later that night, Rory is awakened by her ringing cell phone. It's Logan, calling at the start of his day in London. They proceed to have the awkward conversation of a long-distance couple, one of whom has been awakened in the middle of the night. Rory tries to tell Logan the story of the guy she's tutoring through Paris's program, but she can't think of what's funny about the story and yada yada yada, it's awkward and they have to hang up when Logan has a meeting.
In the morning, Rory comes out of her room to find Lorelai in deep contemplation of her Pop-Tart. She's wigging, she says, because of her parents' non-reaction to the breakup story: "It's almost like the absence of their reaction was worse than any freakout they could've had." She says it made her wonder why she cared so much how they reacted to things: "And then I thought that maybe their freakouts are like some sort of compass for me. Like I know I'm doing what I want to do, because it freaks them out!" Here eyes are googly as she explains that it made her wonder if she even really likes the things she likes, or if she only likes the music and movies and food and men she likes because her mother doesn't like them. She remembers, for example, the first Pop-Tart she ever had: "I knew my mother would recoil at the very idea of me having a Pop-Tart. I thought it tasted like freedom. It tasted like I was my own person. It tasted like freedom, and rebellion and independence." Rory: "Wow, that was some Pop-Tart. What flavor was that?" Lorelai goes on, wondering if she would ever like Pop-Tarts if the Gilmores had made her eat them every day, and to test this theory, she's eaten every one of them in the house, much to Rory's chagrin. "If it makes you feel any better," Lorelai says. "I don't know if I like them!" As Rory goes for the substitute Fruit Loops, Lorelai asks how her conversation went last night with Logan. "I don't know if it's the trans, or the Atlantic," Rory says, "but Helen Keller and Stephen Hawking could have a more connective conversation." Oh, snap. That shouldn't have made me laugh, at all, but it did. What's , some man-with-no-legs jokes? Damn. Rory says that her conversations with Logan are awkward and pause-y, and that the more she tries to connect, the more disconnected she feels, and that the feeling makes her go into a spiral of self-consciousness. "Maybe it's just the salt in the ocean that corrodes conversations, or something," she concludes.
During the commercial break, these damn aerie girls say some stupid shit that I can't even repeat. Shut up, CW.
Luke is serving lunch to Babette and Miss Patty, who are desperately trying to figure out what's different about the diner. He assures them that nothing has changed. Miss Patty says that he must have done something to the windows. "Yeah," Babette screeches. "It's a lot less gloomy than it used to be!" Luke: "Identical level of gloom, people!" Babette, bouncing in her seat, decides that Luke must have bought new chairs. "I knew my butt felt more comfortable." Luke insists that Babette's butt feels exactly the same. Heeee. I don't have time, praise Jesus, to think any further about Sally Struthers's butt, because Rory walks in. She and Luke exchange friendly, though stilted, pleasantries. She congratulates him on his reopening. "New hat?" she asks, noticing what really is new around the place. Luke comments that he didn't think she was going to make it back to Stars Hollow this summer. "Oh, I wasn't," she says. "But...then, I did." Luke gives Rory a half-smile. "Things change," he says, full of meaning. Rory nods uncomfortably, and I yell loudly. Please do not freaking tell me that after six seasons of buildup, those two words will be the sendoff of this relationship. PLEASE. I will not be able to keep my eyes from absolutely rolling right out of my skull.
As Babette returns to attack Luke about the curtains -- which are, he says, exactly the same -- Rory is distracted from the man who was about to be her stepfather by Lane. They sit down at a table, and Rory quizzes her about how Zach took the pregnancy news. "Oh, that," Lane says, casually. "I haven't told him yet." Rory is a bit surprised, and asks how long Lane plans to wait. "I don't know," Lane says. "A couple years." She smilingly justifies the delay, saying that most women wait a full twelve weeks before telling anyone they're pregnant. "Not the husband," Rory says, but Lane says that she needs a little more time to process all of this. "You could wait until the baby comes out," Rory jokes, "and have her tell him." Lane wigs: "'Her'?!" "Or," Rory says, "him!" Lane is fully wigging: "'Him'?! Oh, God, I'm not ready for a him!" Rory assures Lane that she and Zach can have a baby and handle it, though I am not sure how she could have come to that conclusion, considering Zach's behavior about...everything, ever.
Lorelai has arrived at work, looking superfly in navy blue, with her hair up. Sookie calls her Miss Fancy Pants. "I'm just trying out a new look, seeing if I like it," Lorelai says. "Serving no master but myself!" Sookie asks if she's going to try pigtails : "Because that's kind of my thing." Lorelai shakes her head. She's never realized how her mother's reactions influenced everything she's ever done, even down to the way she tied her shoes: "I've always been a fan of the bunny ears, you know? But this morning, I decided not to bunny-ears." It turns out that the bunny ears take a lot longer than the regular way of tying shoes. (How bad are y'all flipping out that there's a whole website where a guy studies shoelace knots? The internet: it never fails to delight and...alarm. Incidentally, I found this just in time for y'all to practice and use the Halloween knot. You're welcome.)"I saved like, three seconds this morning!" Lorelai says of her newfound shoelace knowledge. Sookie, clearly worried, asks what Emily has to do with bunny ears. Lorelai rants, "My mother is everywhere. In my shoes, in my clothes, in my food." Michel walks in to make an announcement: "Your mother is here." Lorelai is aghast, wondering how Emily, who seems so busy messing her up over shoelaces and Pop-Tarts, could also be at the Inn. Sookie innocently reports that Emily is there to taste the menu for the tea. Seeing the blank terror on Lorelai's face, Sookie turns to Michel: "Why doesn't she know what I'm talking about?" Michel: "I was going to tell her. Then I considered what it would be like if I did not tell her, and I thought it would be more fun. I was right." Just as I'm congratulating Michel for being the biggest bitch in the room, Emily breezes in. "Lorelai," she frosts, "do you normally keep your guests waiting like that? It's very rude." Finally, after Lorelai has to yell, Emily reveals that she's bringing the cotillion girls to the Inn the day for tea as part of their etiquette training. She snits about wanting to take them to town for afternoon tea at the Pierre Hotel, but being shocked and appalled by the hotel's substandard version of what constitutes high tea. She's using the terms high tea and afternoon tea interchangeably, but we know better, right, internet?
Emily moves on from berating Lorelai to berating Sookie, who, though some of her tea dishes are divine, has made the inexcusable mistake of suggesting spinach quiche, which might result in unsightly spinach getting stuck in the girls' teeth. I don't mean to make light of a serious tragedy, but uh...it also might result in their deaths, so yeah, don't serve spinach. Sookie excitedly presents her offering: mini PB&J sandwiches. "I just thought that since the girls were only ten," she gushes, "that they'd enjoy it more than the smoked salmon sandwiches." Emily recoils: "They're ten, they're not animals. This is a proper tea, Sookie. I'm not interested in circus food." Sookie is appropriately ashamed. "Stings, don't it?" Lorelai whispers in support, and Emily moves on to be escorted by Michel, her true soulmate, to see the room where the tea will be held. Emily does, however, take one parting shot on the way out: "I like your hair like that, Lorelai." This causes Lorelai to frown visibly. I guess we'll never see her hair up again.
At the Yale newspaper office, Paris is laying waste to both her hired tutors and the kids they're teaching. Liza Weil is, as usual, brilliant. She knocks one guy for coddling a student, another for being too slow, and Rory for allowing hers to develop a crush on her. "Gilmore, do you see any of my students falling in love with me?" she demands. "No. And you know why? Because you don't fall in love with people who make you want to crap your pants." Awesome. Paris dismisses the rest of her staff, insisting that, the time they tutor the kids, she expects to see terror in the students' eyes. She then sits down with Rory: "Okay, I'm not your boss anymore. We can do five minutes of friend time." Rory says she appreciates the offer, but that she's got to go call Logan. Paris, messing around with her Blackberry, asks how the relationship with Logan is going. "It's good, you know. It's fine..." Rory says, causing Paris to jump to her own conclusions: "So, it's awful....You downgraded from 'good' to 'fine' in under two seconds, so I figured I'd cut to the chase." Rory says that it really is not awful; it's just hard because of the distance. "Uh huh," Paris says, distractedly. "How's the sex?" Rory says that, you know, since Logan is in London, there isn't any. "You've got a phone," Paris tells her. "Use it." (Thank you, Lord, that this was not the episode I had to watch with my in-laws. Hello, yes, I did date your son long-distance for a year before we moved in together to live in sin prior to getting married. Right. Classy lady.) Rory shudders: "I can't do that. I talk to my mother on that phone!" Haaaa! Paris suggests "texting" as an alternative. "No, no thank you," Rory says, but Paris persists: "Why not? You say stuff when you're together, don't you?" Rory says that she guesses they do, sometimes, and I have to pause the TiVo and guffaw at the idea of Rory talking dirty in bed. Duuuude, that's funny. Thank you for not showing it. "So," Paris concludes, "text it. Texting's great. And you can do it while you're doing other things. Doyle and I are doing it right now." Rory is alarmed, and looks at Paris's Blackberry screen. "Oh my God," she gasps, but Paris assures her that she and Doyle are advanced in the art of texting: "All you're looking to do right now is create some intimacy. Stick to the basics." Rory says she doesn't have any basics. "Write what you know," Paris says. "Doyle thinks it's a great idea." Rory shudders anew. "Okay, can you not talk about me on that thing," she says, "when you're doing that with him? Sheez."
Zach moodily strums his guitar as he laments to Brian about his relationship with Lane. She's avoiding him, he says, and he's sure she's divorcing him. "I'll admit, it's not the best marriage I've seen," Brian says, supportively. "Although I only have my parents to compare it to, and they are unusually happy." Zach says that he and Lane were happy once, but that it was all ruined by the horrible honeymoon: "Ever since she came home, it's like she's a different person." Brian postulates that perhaps the parasite crawled into her brain and ate the part of it that once was in love with Zach. "I just can't believe it's over," Zach sighs. "I mean, we haven't even written our thank-you notes yet." Brian: "I was gonna say..." Zach plays a few more strummies in his sorrow, and Brian compliments the start of the new tune. "Yeah, the pain is totally helping my music," Zach agrees. They are interrupted by Lane, bursting through the door. "We need to talk," she says, clearly frustrated. Brian slowly begins to creep to a standing position, ready to sneak out of the room. Zach, panicking that this will be the end, stops him with a hand to the knee. "Anything you have to say to me," Zach tells Lane, "you can say in front of Brian." Lane squinches up her face and cuts to the chase: "I'm pregnant." While Brian inches away, Zach's face goes blank. "With a baby?" he asks, frozen in his seat. "But we only did it once." Lane says that once is really all it takes, causing me to throw my remote at the ceiling. Zach's mouth is hanging open as he stands and quickly walks from the room. Lane asks where he's going. Zach yells back, "Brian must be freaking out!"
At the Inn, Lorelai is wearing what is possibly the most unflattering dress I've ever seen her wear -- it makes her look somehow pregnant and assless at the same time -- when Emily arrives with about twenty girls for the tea. Now, how did Emily transport all these children to the Inn? Is she driving them in a bus? If so, I desperately wish I could see that. Emily asks if everything's ready for the tea. "Yes, the tables are set," Lorelai says, primly. "The tea is brewed. And I've hired some extra poor people for the girls to look down on." As the girls titter, and Emily bristles, Charlotte turns to the friend behind her in line: "She's the one I told you about. A regular Imogene Coca." Lorelai smiles as Michel croons over the girls, saying that they're just like Madame Alexander dolls. I, personally, had two Madame Alexander dolls, Victoria and Rebecca, one of whom (okay, it was Victoria) rose to fame by playing Jesus in my school's 1978 Nativity. As Michel sighs, Emily directs the girls to glide to their tables. Lorelai grins when she sees one familiar-looking brunette who, rather than gliding, cracks up the other little ladies by doing a chicken walk.
At the tea, Emily goes over the rules of the cotillion and how best to sit and behave. "Such elegance," Michel whispers to Lorelai, as they stand watching. "Such a sense of decorum. Manners. Grace. Charm. Everything my childhood could have been but wasn't. Oh, to go back and do it right." Our favorite chicken-walker commits the ultimate sin of leaning over to her friend to touch a pin the other girl is wearing, declaring it so cool. She is, of course, immediately admonished by Emily: "Caroline, we do not grab or grope our dinner partners. Always maintain proper spacing and distance." Lorelai rolls her eyes: "Oh, it's all coming back to me. Other kids were hugged and kissed. I was taught to maintain proper spacing and distance." Suddenly, Michel is overcome. "Take me!" he says, turning to Lorelai. "Oh, Michel!" she demurs, teasingly. He says no, he means she has to take him to the cotillion: "I have be there. I want to go back and do it right." Lorelai says that there's no way she's going to the cotillion, but Michel insists that she owes him one. Last November, apparently, she asked him to keep Paul Anka for the day, during which he traumatized Michel's dogs, got into Michel's closet, and pooped in his Prada loafers: "When I returned your foul creature, you...wrote an IOU on several little Post-Its, thinking it was oh so clever." Lorelai claims that she does not remember this incident. "I thought as much," Michel sneers, and runs away, only to return with the Post-Its in question. "I'll buy you a car!" Lorelai suggests as an alternative to the cotillion, just as Emily jumps on "Carolai" for being silly with her food. Nope, Michel demands to go: "Pick me up at 7, and wear your hair like you had it the other day."
Lane wakes up from a long pregnancy nap at her apartment and comes out to find Zach playing videogames. "I'm so tired all the time," she tells him. "It's weird." Zach doesn't even look at her, suggesting that her fatigue must be from the heat, or maybe beer. She says uh, no, she doesn't think she will be drinking beer for a while, though I don't know why she should bother abstaining, since beer could only make any child of Zach's smarter. Is the lovely Keiko Agena actually pregnant? I know she got married last year, right? There are a few scenes in this episode where she looks, from some angles, like she might truly be knocked up. Very exciting, if so. Zach remains clueless as Lane hints around about needing to consume more calcium, and having cravings for certain foods. "Oh, man," Zach interrupts, still only watching the game screen. "You know what I'm craving right now? Pizza bagels." Lane stares at him incredulously and goes out to see Rory at the book store...
...where Rory is reading up on how to be sexy while Lane peruses a book on how to be pregnant. Both of them are alarmed and disgusted by what they've found. "I can't write this stuff to Logan," Rory says. "I can barely read it to myself!" Lane, even more upset, says that no one ever tells you the details about childbirth "because the details are gross and scary and unacceptable." Lane says that apparently, in about three months, she can look forward to dark spots on her face, "because it's not enough to just get fat." Rory tries to reassure her, saying that it's not fat, it's a baby, but Lane rants on. She used to be all into the fact that Zach is big and manly: "Which means that I'm gonna have a big, manly baby, and I'm a small woman!" Rory gives Lane a quizzical look: "I never thought of Zach as big and manly." Lane says that compared to Henry Lee, who her mother wanted her to marry, Zach is. "Yeah," Rory says, "but he was your second cousin. I think you would have had other problems with those babies." Lane says that the baby will have to figure out some other way to be born, because she's not doing it. Plus, she says, Zach doesn't seem to remember hearing about the baby at all: "I don't know how things get lost in the recesses of Zach's brain, but I think he forgot." I am pretty sure he forgot because he does nothing but sit around smoking bowls all day. There, I said it.
Rory tries to distract Lane from her frustration by reading aloud a passage from Henry Miller: "'Where is the chair you sit in? Where is your favorite comb, your toothbrush, your nail file? Trot them out that I may devour them at one gulp.'" Now it's Lane's turn to look quizzical: "You want to eat his toothbrush?"Haaa! Is that what the kids are calling it these days? Rory says it's supposed to be metaphorical -- that she's trying to convey how she misses Logan. "Sounds like you miss his toiletry kit," Lane says. Poor Rory. "It's supposed to be evocative," Rory insists. "It's Henry Miller." Lane says that Henry Miller has way better stuff than that: "That is not why they banned his books." Rory says that she's certainly not going to write the part about hands groping for burning flesh! Why the hell not, girlie?! What is wrong with you? You slept with a married guy and then had sex with this one in your Grandma's pool house! Burning flesh it is! Lane agrees: "That's way hotter than the 'eating his comb' stuff." Exactly. Rory says that though she and Logan talk every day, she's not sure it will be enough keep the relationship going without any physical intimacy. She gets more and more upset about it as she talks, and finally grabs up her phone, typing furiously. "Desperate measures," she says. Lane nods her support: "Burn that flesh, sister." Rory sends off the text, cringing, and gets an immediate ring back. Except, awkward...it's her dad asking her to dinner the night. Blargh. Yeah, Christopher makes my flesh burn, as well -- except in, like, a rashy way.
Back at home, Lorelai comes in to run several potential cotillion dresses past Rory. "Wow," Rory says, holding up one pretty black dress. "Can I keep this?" Lorelai says that first she has to help Lorelai to find something to wear, and that then she can have whatever she wants, "except that," she adds, about the black dress. "I'm getting buried in it." Rory still doesn't get why Lorelai is even going to this thing, joking, "Does Michel have compromising photographs of you that I don't know about? Like some snapshots from your perm year?" As if there exists a bad photo of Lauren Graham! Lorelai tells her the story of the Post-Its, trying to trick Rory into going to the cotillion in her place. Rory says that she can't, because she's made "plans with Dad." Lorelai: "Your dad?" Rory says she's not in the habit of calling other people's dads "Dad," (though [insert evil cackling] she might get into that habit if this sex-texting thing takes off with Logan) and that yes, she and Chris are going to dinner. Lorelai says she's glad they're going to dinner, and asks Rory what's up with her clinging to her phone. "I sent Logan a text message yesterday," she says, and "he hasn't written me back." Lorelai assures her that he probably hasn't had time to write back, and asks if she can wear a skank dress to the cotillion. Rory gives her a firm no.
At the house of Lane and Zach, the new would-be parents are practicing avoidance at the dinner table. Finally, Lane insists that they talk. About the baby. Zach takes a moment, and then says, "I'm cool with the whole baby thing. I think Brian might be freaking out a little bit, but that's his problem." Brian allegedly had just gotten used to Zach and Lane being married, and might not be quite ready for a baby. Lane recognizes Zach's attempts at transference, and says that maybe she should talk to Brian, since it sounds like they share the same concerns. She says she's kind of freaking out too, since this is not how she expected their lives to go: "You know, being married for, like, a day, and then suddenly having to take on this new responsibility." Zach finally breaks. Bringing a child into the world, they agree, is major, right? "So you're not all psyched about being knocked up?" Zach asks, tentative. "Are you kidding?!" Lane yells. "This baby sucks!" Yay, it's agreed! The baby totally sucks! Lane whips out the book of grossness, and they both squick out. "Dude. You know how the baby is connected to you by that hose?" Zach asks, squeamish. "And I'm supposed to cut that hose? No way I'm cutting that hose!" Lane is totally relieved: "No way I'm letting you in the ROOM when that thing comes out of me!" (Totally on your team, Lane. I know it's become the thing to have the fathers in the room nowadays, but if I ever have a baby, it's me and, like, one nurse in there, like I'm in the wilderness, or something, and that's it. Who wants their husband in the room?! I don't understand it! My husband is super-sensitive when I say this, and insists that he could handle it like a pro and I'm SURE he could, but, well, hell no. Yada yada yada, mystery of birth, circle of life, etc., whatever -- I'm going it alone. My husband can fold himself onto a two-cushion couch like my dad did when I was born.) Having agreed that their offspring will be a nightmare, Lane and Zach leap into each other's arms, in love.
Michel escorts Lorelai and her gorgeous orchid corsage into the cotillion, complaining that she did not provide him with a boutonnière. Lorelai is inappropriately wearing a summer white dress, complete with a daisy design, and though she is stunning, as usual, I can't get behind it. Michel and Lorelai see her doppelganger, Caroline, in her pretty party dress, complete with some tiger-print Chucks. Lorelai looks at her wistfully as Michel blathers on about the children and how one of them could be a future President. "You're very odd," Lorelai tells him as Emily walks up. Michel gushes about the perfection of the cotillion, and Emily beams. Charlotte runs over and introduces her grandparents to Lorelai. "Charlotte told us you were a card," the g-daddy says. "She also told us you were a delightful dining companion," says the grandmother. "Like Noel Coward and Slim Keith rolled into one." Lorelai tries to return the compliment, saying that Charlotte is "like Shirley Temple and Mother Teresa and someone with very good table manners rolled into one." When her grandparents walk away, Charlotte confides that she and Caroline will be doing a hip-hop dance later, ending with a somersault. I am sure Emily will love that. Charlotte goes off to dance with a little boy, and Lorelai sees Caroline, waltzing around with her own dance partner. She happily shares a wave with Lorelai as Michel comes over to comment that everyone seems to be enjoying the cotillion. "Yeah," Lorelai says, clearly surprised, "they really do, don't they?" Michel insists that she dance with him, citing the favor she owes, and with much reluctance, Lorelai joins him on the dance floor. Much to her surprise, Lorelai has a lot of fun. "I see you're having a terrible time," Emily says, wandering by. Lorelai laughs: "The worst."
Back at the Crap Shack that night, Chris and Rory are back from dinner and feeding Paul Anka the leftover key lime pie. Now, people, I don't mean to be a stickler, but that ain't right. Unless you want your house to be wall-to-wall dog diarrhea, please do not feed him pie. Or anything besides dog food. I'm telling you. Learn from the tragic errors of my youth. Paul Anka seems to understand this, if the people don't, and this disaster is further averted by the arrival of Lorelai. She and Christopher immediately have awkward, pause-y conversation, and Rory makes a quick exit to walk Paul Anka. Lorelai apologizes for not calling Christopher back after his message from the last episode, and asks if he'd like to have coffee. After saying yes, Christopher finally has to come clean. He can't just sit there and have coffee with Lorelai...because he loves her. "I know the other night didn't mean for you what it did for me," he says, but he can't stop thinking about it: "Not just because it was great, which is was, but because it was right." He says that if he has to wait until he's eighty for Lorelai to see that they belong together, he will. "This is it for me," he says. "You're it for me, and I can't pretend to feel any less than I do." With that, he walks out, leaving Lorelai standing in her white dress.
In bed that night, Rory finally calls Logan and wakes him up. "I just...I sent you a text the other day," she says, nervous. He laughs, dare I say it, sexily. "I know," he says. "I texted you back." The word "texted" is bothering me, big-time. Rory suddenly notices that, yes, she has a text message on her phone that she didn't see before. "Oh...wow," she says. "Whoa, yours is really good." She says she'll let him go so that he can sleep, but no, he's awake now and, well, ready to bring sexy back, if you know what I'm saying. He insists that she text him back: "You started this." Rory's all shy: "I know, but I don't have my books with me." Aw. I want to tell her to shut up, but that's just cute. "You don't need your books, Ace," Logan says, all full of desire. "I miss you, Rory." They hang up and get it on, new school-style.
Upstairs, Lorelai sits in her room, looking at the corsage Michel gave her. Pensively, she picks up her phone and makes a call and breaks all our hearts: "Hi, Chris."