Spoilers for "Gilmore Girls" just as soon as I figure out who inherits my comic book collection...Whatever the failings of the post-Palladino writing team are, these people know what to do with Richard and Emily -- which makes their absence from about half this season's episodes feel really unfortunate. (Is this a "Veronica Mars"-style budget situation where only certain actors are signed for all 22 episodes, or is this just Rosenthal and company trying to navigate a show with too many regular actors?)
Their handle on the elder Gilmores is so solid, in fact, that I spent a good chunk of this episode trying to figure out whose side they expected me to be on in Lorelai's increasing frustration with Emily. Having just been through a loved one getting surgery (which turned out fine) and obsessing over all kinds of minutiae, I was firmly with Emily throughout. (Even in her dealings with Luke, where her manners were terrible but she took him at his word about wanting to do anything to help.)
Yet I couldn't help shake the feeling that the writers intended me to, like Lorelai, be frustrated or appalled by Emily's behavior until the big heart to heart in the gift shop, at which point it was all supposed to make sense. Instead, it was Lorelai and her inability to understand her mother's needs that was bugging me. Now, Lorelai's always been an intentionally flawed character, so I could be misreading how I think the writers wanted me to respond, but Emily's explanation for why she was doing what she was doing was so blindingly obvious that I think even Zach would have figured it out by the second commercial break.
That gift shop scene featured the episode's only blatant call-back to season one's superior "Forgiveness and Stuff" (the first time I realized how well Amy and Lauren Graham could handle heavier material), but obviously there's a through-line with Luke again showing up to be there for Lorelai and company. As the hour was going along, I was prepared to cut Christopher some measure of slack: he just had a bad fight with his wife and stormed out, and who's to say he was even checking his voicemail for a while, when he could only assume it was Lorelai calling to in some way continue that fight? But then he had to go and be a total jackass when he saw Luke there, so no slack for him. The unraveling of this marriage is going to get uglier and uglier, and I'm not sure I want to see this show go to that place for very long. Here's hoping Chris and G.G. exit stage right within the next episode or two.
In obvious contrast to Chris was Logan. I still don't like the guy, but it felt very in-character for a crisis to bring out all of his best, most selfless qualities. Marian, on the other hand, started getting suspicious of him being so perfect in this situation, and of the constantly-buzzing Blackberry, and worried that there was going to be some revelation that he was with another woman or something equally damning. Doesn't look to be going that way.
What did everybody else think?
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