Episode Report Card Al Lowe: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Up A Creek
By Al Lowe | Season 7 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.19.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Paris and Doyle have taken up yoga! Okay, there's more. Lorelai shows up at Rory's dorm at 6 AM to break the news that she and Christopher have broken up. Meanwhile, things are going no better Chez Gilmore. Emily is duking it out with the hired nurse, who is going a few rounds with Richard, and all of them are ganging up on the maid. Richard is being uncharacteristically jerky about his new dietary recommendations, and Lorelai uses this to, for the time being, avoid telling her parents about her marital split. She can't put it off for too long, she knows, because Emily is about to have a heart attack of her own planning the party for the Lorelai-Christopher marriage that she does not yet know is over, and dealing with ol' Bitchard. Lorelai comes to the rescue She recruits Sookie to make healthy meals, and then helps Emily with Richard's accounts. Luke is alarmed when Liz and T.J. show up (with Doula) to "hang out," by which they mean "move in" while their apartment is fumigated. It takes them approximately nine seconds to get on Luke's nerves. Speaking of nerves, Mitchum takes Logan and Rory out for Logan's birthday, and once again inserts himself into their business and, basically, acts like a butthole. When he has Rory alone, Mitchum tries to rope her in to Team Logan Manipulation, but she ain't having it. Later, she and Logan really celebrate his birthday with a real cake and real party games. (Not like that!) Unfortunately, while Rory is out of the room, Logan finds out that his recent business deal has totally tanked. Over raw booze, Lorelai breaks it to Emily about Christopher. They bond over the ridiculousness of husbands, in general, and in her roundabout, evil way, Emily actually comforts Lorelai. Sadly, their newfound connection is short-lived. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
It's very early morning when Lorelai arrives at Rory's Yale apartment. She looks quizzical when she hears floaty, woo-woo music playing behind the door and tentatively knocks, calling for Paris. "Come in," Paris says, zen-ly. "The door is open." Lorelai walks in to find an even more dream-like sequence playing out. Paris and Doyle are...doing yoga. "I didn't really take you two as yoga types," Lorelai says, kind of skeptical. Doyle explains, while pushing Paris through a pose I used to know the name of, that it was a circuitous path that lead them to yoga. Paris says she only signed up for the class to help her when she had to BS her way through her med-school interviews when they asked her about homeopathic crap. "Plus," Doyle adds, "we thought it would be funny to goof on, but now..." Paris: "I guess the cosmic goof is on us." Lorelai, while no doubt transfixed by their awesome, tranquil choreography, is there to see Rory, and asks if Rory's still asleep. "You mean spiritually, or literally?" asks Paris. Lorelai says she means literally (though I would have voted for option A) and goes to Rory's room.
In fact, Rory is not asleep, but just finishing getting dressed. Rory doesn't seem at all freaked out that her mother has just shown up unannounced at 6 AM, whereas I would immediately assume that someone had died. Lorelai apologizes for not calling first. She says she left her phone at home and has just been driving around for a few hours. Now Rory's worried: "Mom, what's going on?" Lorelai takes her by the shoulders: "Want to go for a drive?"
Moments later, in the Jeep, Lorelai breaks it to Rory that she and Christopher have split up. "Mom, I'm so sorry," says Rory, full of sympathy. "Are you okay?" Lorelai says that she's okay, but kind of frantically goes through her spiel about her marriage with Christopher just not being right. She asks Rory what she's thinking, and Rory repeats that she's sorry, but that she isn't totally surprised: "At first, I was so excited that you guys were getting together because it seemed like something that was meant to be. But then I guess, to me, it kind of never felt right. I'm so sorry." Wait. What? It seemed like destiny! But it never felt right! Well, did it or not? See what you have done, Palladinos et al, with your loony storyline? You have your characters making conflicting statements within one line of dialogue. Lorelai sighs that Rory shouldn't worry -- Christopher will always be in their lives, as will Gigi: "I mean, your dad is still your dad, you know?" Yes, well, he's still your dad in the way that he's always been your dad, which is to say...not much of a dad. Rory asks who else knows about the split, and Lorelai says that she's the only one: "Well, you and the Quickie-Mart guy. I was standing by the magazines; I didn't want him to think I was verklempt over Nicole Richie, so..." Not that Lorelai could be blamed, of course. There are a lot of things about Nicole Richie that make me cry. Lorelai says that she wishes she could leave it between her and the gas-station dude, since the thought of telling Emily makes her shiver. But the thing is, while the Quickie-Mart guy may have been great at providing comfort, apparently he was not so good at providing gas -- because all of a sudden, Rory and Lorelai run out. Note to people who drive cars: if you ever are about to run out of gas, you will know about it before it happens. Your car will surge and act crazy, and usually this will happen just as a gas station appears on the horizon to torture you. All right, maybe that second part only happens if you're me. And if you were the one driving past that lady shoving her car along Northwest Highway that time, a hundred yards from the Texaco...you should have stopped and said hello. I needed some help! No one is driving by in Gilmoreville, however. The Jeep gives one muted clunk and stops on the country road -- no phones, no one around for miles. "Okay, it's okay," says Rory. "We can do this. So...we're walking?" Rory and Lorelai get out of the Jeep and head toward Route 68, down the same stretch of CW backlot where we saw Rory pick up trash during her yacht period. It's a very pretty scene, the two of them walking together, if sort of random and slightly boring. "I guess it's walking distance," says Rory. Lorelai: "I hope it's walking distance."