It wasn’t a bad episode, but it also wasn’t an amazing one either
8.6
"Great"
It wasn’t a bad episode, but it also wasn’t an amazing one either. The episode opens at the Gilmore residence with everyone celebrating Lorelei and Chris’ marriage. Emily has a couple of good remarks at Lorelei for eloping, the best being the one about how Lorelei told her. The message the Lorelei left was seemed to me vintage Lorelei, trying to do everything to avoid telling her mother. I thought the gift seemed a little odd, when it was Luke and Lorelei, they were going to get a house in Star Hollow, and a pretty damn big one, or so it seemed to me anyways. Now that it’s Chris, the man they tried to use in season 4 to split up Luke and Lorelei they just get them an etching? This one thing seemed to set to tone for the entire Chris and Lorelei story for the episode.
The rest of their story is kind of lack luster until the end of the episode. Stars Hollow is having a knit-a-thon to rebuild the bridge yet again. Lorelei is of course taking part and practicing. Chris and Lorelei take a stroll through the town and all they get is a very nice polite welcome for Chris and a mediocre (according to Lorelei) welcome wagon, it’s even in a real wagon. Luke goes on a man-date with Jackson, they seem to connect, and later at the knit-a-thon the town seems to be a lot more accepting of Chris. Chris of course when he hears that the town might not get to the money level they have to in time steps up and donates the rest of the money that’s needed to rebuild the bridge. This causes the knit-a-thon to close early, and the rest of the town to go back to being ambivalent about Chris. Lorelei gets a little ticked off, and Chris fires back with why does he have to go through all of this extra stuff? like backgammon and darts. He tells her a farming metaphor that Jackson used when they went out, and then tells Lorelei that the town will grow to like him because he’s really a very likable guy and because he is going to be there loving Lorelei 24/7.
The Rory story was pretty simple, she moves back in with Paris, signs a lease with Paris so Paris can’t just boot her out again. The lease of course has some very Paris like aspects making Rory sign saying that whatever Logan uses he has to pay for, though of course Sunday’s are free. It’s Lucy’s 2002 themed 21st birthday this episode so of course Marty is there, and bartending of course. So Marty is still being all grumpy about Rory, so Rory goes and basically says suck it up, be nice because he put Rory is a bad position back in the day. They share a nice moment on the couch near the end where we almost think that things are going to be cool, until Marty goes and tells Rory that she just keeps getting more beautiful. The viewers all knew this would happen when he was reintroduced, but I think doing it here might have been a little much, if I had written the scene, I would of ended it before the beautiful thing, maybe have him say something else about Rory changing, maybe something about being the former Yale Daily News editor, and then gotten up to go dance with Lucy. It would of lulled the viewer a little more, created some more tension for us anyways.
Finally we come to Luke, Anna, April, TJ, and Liz. Liz has he baby home birth style near the end of the episode, with Luke and TJ there supporting her. When Liz says to Luke that April will hopefully be babysitting her cousin a lot that prompts Luke to go do something, the viewers have seen coming for a while. So at the start Anna tells Luke she and April are moving to New Mexico, Luke seems fine with this, he’s a little put off and hurt but over all he’s fine. Once he sees how upset April is at this he starts to realize that he can’t just let his daughter go without a fight, and he has to at least try to help her out, if it is only having her come for spring break, and part of the summer, or staying in Connecticut until the end of the school year. Anna gets mad tells Luke to butt out it isn’t his place tell April anything like that. Luke kind of just walks away with his tail between his legs there. It isn’t until Liz and TJ’s baby is born that he knows what he has to do. So Luke finally goes and fights for something, when it isn’t too late to fight for it. He tells Anna she can’t just dictatorially decide what’s up with April and he needs to be involved. He says he never to got to see any of the major moments in Aprils early life, because Anna decided not to include him but now that he is in her life he isn’t going to let go without a fight. It seemed to me by the look on Anna’s face that this is what she wanted to happen when she told Luke about moving to New Mexico, I don’t know why, but it seems like this is something she was trying to get him to do.
So in conclusion the episode was pretty good. Not stellar but it was so much better then the season premiere where there was something missing that I just couldn’t put my finger on. We had a lot of plot and character development, especially the Luke/April/Anna plot, and the Rory/Lucy/Marty/Logan plot. The latter could have been handled a lot better in the way it moved forward. The former plot though, it was great, just how it should of happened, I would like to see Luke come to some of these realizations on his own one day without someone giving him a little push like Liz and TJ did.