This episode starts with the promised therapy session, and Lorelai looks AWESOME (as does Emily). I'm not sure she's the Fluff Out My Skirt With Deep Precision type, but then I fanwanked it as, maybe she was so uncomfortable in the session that she fidgeted with it until there was nothing left to do. When she can't word-vomit, maybe she fluffs.
Kerry Butler, of the Xanadu Musical (yes that really happened), plays the therapist in a series of pussy-bow blouses. And if you just arrived on GFY by searching for something especially inappropriate: WELCOME. You could not have clicked into a post that would disappoint you more.
Rory and Lorelai appear to disagree mightily about what the weather is like today. (Do not look to Luke for guidance, as he wears the same thing no matter what the climate.) Given that this is basically right as winter becomes spring, and they're in Connecticut, I'm guessing Rory is being VERY OPTIMISTIC here and could use a cardigan.
Lane's mom shows up with some Korean kids' choir she's training, and they're terrible, and... honestly, I just wish this show didn't play her ethnicity for yuks. A decade ago it was still dicey, but in the here and now it REALLY feels tone-deaf.
I thought you should know that Jackson is here, mostly to perpetuate the excuse that Sookie is PRESENT but very busy examining things she found growing in their yard to test edibility. I had thought she was AWAY somewhere doing whatever scientific farming yada-yada, but the idea of her being close and just not seeing Lorelai or interacting with her or Lorelai even having one-sided phone conversations with her is sad and strange. This could've been handled better. Just have her in Europe for two years or something hunting for a rare truffle. SOMEthing.
Julia Goldani-Telles, formerly of the Amy Sherman-Palladino joint Bunheads (and currently of The Affair), plays Sandee, and we are clearly meant to think that because she is young and wears belly shirts and has an eponymous website and appears very busy, she must also be a vapid milennial. Rory is so contemptuous of this website that's CHASING HER BARELY EMPLOYED RUMP that she hardly gives Sandee the time of day, and bless her, Sandee still persists. See, Rory? THAT is drive.
Instead, Rory is at another lunch with Alex Kingston, who talks with her hands and drinks with abandon. Is she my soulmate?
Rory and Logan are horrified at the thought of being caught out together and having their sexffair exposed, so ... they go out to lots of restaurants, namely one that Mitchum Huntzberger owns. Great plan! Naturally, they run into him, and naturally, he makes sure to namedrop Logan's fiance. Logan finds Rory's panic about being discovered smugly amusing, because ugh. And, Ugh, The Sequel: Rory admits to Mitch and Logan that her Conde Nast meeting keeps getting pushed, and Mitch offers to hook her up with it. Later in the episode, she accepts this. So a meeting with CN that they supposedly initiated now can only come to pass if Mitch goes to bat for her? I freely understand that there's nothing wrong with taking favors where you get them, but Rory is so ineffectual everywhere else -- and did NOTHING to improve her standing before consenting to this help -- that it just feels like she's relying on being rescued.
Babette is shocked to hear how frustrated I am with Rory. SHOCKED, I say. I also just read that she and Liz Torres (Miss Patty) are best friends in real life, which I love. Liz was barely in these at all, sadly.
As usual, Lorelai looks pretty cute, although I never had her pegged for a denim capris person. Ten years can do a lot to a person, I guess. I also applaud Captain Side-Eye up there in the front, who HATES the way grandma next to her smells.
Where does Lorelai keep all her clothes, and why haven't we had a running D-story gag about how she online shops in the dead of night and is CONSTANTLY receiving and returning boxes via FedEx? That seems like how Lorelai would roll. She'd have been running that shit like a business from Rory's room. Or from another room in her two-story house that apparently only has one bedroom upstairs despite looking really big from the outside.
This is how I felt all day yesterday.
Lorelai looks as sad as if she just realized the horse on her sweater is Ann Romney's dressage steed Rafalca. There's a lot of the two of them seeming a bit bored, and watching TV together as if he's just her surrogate Rory. These are two people we're meant to think, at one point, might have wanted a baby together. And that, as of last week, at least partially considered using a surrogate. It's tough to feel beholden to a pairing whose chemistry, since the last two seasons of the original show, has been flatter than a Diet Coke that's been open for two weeks. These things happen, but Lorelai deserves fireworks.
I like that dress -- it's very Boden to me -- but do we think Logan would have the same Anthropologie Union Jack photo frame on his dresser that I do?
Love it. I love these actresses too, so much that I'm a it crushed to have been so frustrated with their storylines. At least they can still act the shit out of it.
Sorry, Kerry. I didn't mean to catch you mid-face-change. But your blouse is again great, and not seeing Xanadu on Broadway with you and Cheyenne Jackson is one of my great regrets in life. I know all the words to the soundtrack from the movie! I was IN New York while it was playing! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.
Logan says nice things about Sandee's website, because I guess Rory can't act without endorsements from at least two people.
This is Kirk's homage to the movie Eraserhead, though first we sit through his short Lynchian film debut about the death of his piglet. (Who is not actually dead.) It's not as long as the detour that's coming in "Summer," thank God, but it does go on a bit -- however, I giggled at some of the deliberately bad filmmaking, like flagrantly switching the pig for a stuffed one, and then the real pig running into the shot and having to be yanked away. This is the only Lulu sighting, too, and I forgot to screen-grab her. Sorry, Lulu. I think you might be too perfunctory for Stars Hollow.
I love this color on Lorelai, and the Inn kitchen is always so cute and well-stocked. (Shouldn't at least half that food be properly stored?) This week's guest chef is Rachael Ray, who gives Lorelai great advice about life and makes divine sandwiches but gets fired anyway for I Don't Even Know. How does the Dragonfly afford celebrity guest chefs, and why aren't they all blackballing her with their friends? WHO IS FEEDING ANYONE.
I love this skirt so deeply. Also visible: Berta, Emily's new maid, played by Rose Abdoo (Gypsy). The idea of Berta is that she just sort of shows up and starts working, and slowly her enormous extended family starts filling up Emily's life and almost enveloping her with their activity and warmth. That's... fine. But there's all this problematic stuff where Emily carps on about how no one can understand what the hell language Berta is speaking -- not even her UN Translator friends -- as if being from elsewhere is so troubling. Also, the bits I heard (she mumbled, but she wasn't speaking, like, Urdu mixed with Pig-Latin) were intelligibly Spanish. I know Emily Gilmore is supposed to be an insulated snobby blue-blood, but... again, in 2016, it comes off as too xenophobic and blinkered to be amusing. Emily Gilmore is not Lucille Bluth. Unless she IS and I don't realize it.
Speaking of which: Someone in the comments of "Winter" noted that Jessica Walter (Lucille) should play Emily Gilmore's sister, and oh my God, I need that to happen so badly. Can Lucille Bluth actually BE her cousin? CAN WE DO A CROSSOVER? Oh my God. Buster Bluth would be in HEAVEN in Stars Hollow. Even though Michel would eat him alive. Paris and Lindsay in the same scene, GOB pissing off Taylor with unlicensed curbside magic shows, Tobias and Taylor bonding... And Annyong is Korean, so he can placate Mrs. Kim's obvious and understandable need to complain about how terrible everyone is, but on the down-low, in her native tongue. It's perfect
Lorelai, by the way, has crashed this dinner. Emily only invited Luke and Rory. BURN. (Emily also doesn't know what any of Berta's food is, but it's all apparently tasty. But so FOREIGN. Sigh.)
More wrap dresses, more therapy. It comes out that Emily thinks Lorelai wrote her a truly awful birthday letter that was left on her bed, but Lorelai insists she didn't. It starts a rift that eventually pushes Emily to stop coming -- well, there's also more resentment about Lorelai's pregnancy and talk of how she and Luke don't count if they're not wed -- and sounds an awful lot like a smoking gun, right? Wrong. The awful letter of mysterious origin is never dealt with again. I decided it was from one of Emily's maids. SUCH a weird thread to dangle and then snip.
Paris and Rory go back to Chilton for some kind of career day, and while Paris's pants are still of questionable precision, her jacket is the bomb.
I just saw this actor in Waitress -- he's absolutely lovely in it -- and had completely forgotten he's also the headmaster of Chilton. He basically senses CORRECTLY that Rory is unmoored, but loves the way she talks to the students about how Chilton gave her persistence and fresh perspective and academic curiosity (too bad she doesn't still use the first thing, or the second) so suggests she go get her Master's and then come back and teach at Chilton. Rory reacts to this as if she's been shot. I thought that actually sounded like a perfect fit for her, but Rory would rather snow plow toward greatness. Sigh. This guy gets it and no one's listening.
There's an amusing gag about how Paris TERRIFIES her entire seminar, telling them that the world is full of evil that's waiting to strike. They end up sobbing and needing the headmaster to soothe them out of their despair. It's exactly right.
Gilmore-Girls-recap-spring1
This is supposed to be Tristan, aka the Chad Michael Murray cool boy, this being the show that launched The WB/CW's obsession with making him happen. But they either couldn't get him (why) or didn't want to pay for him (fair), because all he has to do here is lean, and not in a Jordan Catalano kind of way. It's just so Paris can see him and get palpitations and flip her lid in the bathroom.
Being back at school messes with Paris's head, I guess? I lost the plot of this rant, honestly. She and Doyle are divorced, and in this moment she decides she's still in love with Tristan -- SAY WHAT? -- and then confesses her briefcase is empty and she only carries it to look impressive. Maybe I blanked out; that's fairly possible, because I love Paris, and this scene annoyed me. But of all the things: a) TRISTAN?!? ("Him?!?"), and b) why can't Paris carry a full briefcase? She's the Queen of Uterine Magic! She has all KINDS of stuff she could legitimately need to tote around in her briefcase. She also, as the High Priestess of Womb Fruit, doesn't need a briefcase to be impressive because she is PARIS F'ING GELLER, and I feel like her iron streak and her hilarity could still be intact without giving her weird neuroses to make Rory look better. PARIS IS MY QUEEN.
Then someone tries to come in the bathroom and LOOK AT THAT NINJA MOVE. Can Liza Weil get an Emmy JUST for this?
Francie reappeared and acted snotty with Paris, if you care about such things.
Do we think Paris would put her feet up on her expensive sofa? The gag here is that Paris and Doyle's brownstone has so many stairs that they are afraid to ask anyone to go up and down them more than once and keep losing nannies over it. Because The Help is lazy? I don't know; it is not as well-thought-out a gimmick as the set is. I love Paris having a photo OF Paris in her living room. Doyle, by the way, is a douchey Hollywood screenwriter, which is a clever play on Danny Strong's actual flourishing career in that industry.
Dan Bucatinsky (Scandal) shows up as the GQ editor that meets with Rory. They want a story on lines -- as in, the culture of people who will wait in line for stuff. This feels like a story idea ASP had like six years ago and was waiting to use.
Rory nods politely, and does little to sell herself, though she tries harder here than she does later -- like, she at least mentions the book with Alex Kingston. It's not much of a meeting. I can't tell if this was what Logan's dad got her, or her original Conde meeting, or... I mean, Rory is a terrible fit for GQ; what is happening here?
That blouse is Kate Spade. I know because I bought the dress version from Gilt and it was a bit too filmy and a bit too big, and not cheap enough to validate spending the money at a tailor to change either of those things. Back it went. Oh, the sadness.
I think we know from whom Lorelai gets her taste in patterns.
Emily looks so PERKY for a woman who has to spend the day dragging a sullen Luke on an unwanted errand. Kidnapping is her jam, I guess.
I DO NOT KNOW what Alex Kingston is wearing here in this scene where she fires Rory, but she is drinking a Bloody Mary, which feels important. I also want to know what's happening at the table to the left. Let's cut to THAT show.
Also: What is Jason Mantzoukis doing here? I feel like he's too much of a working actor to pop in as Alex's agent and have two lines. Did he owe someone a favor? Or is he playing his Brooklyn Nine-Nine character, going DEEP AS HELL undercover?
Rory reacts to this by seizing the day with GQ -- FINALLY -- and deciding to do the "lines" piece. It's as close to gumption as she's shown lately. Three cheers for that, and for her shirt.
For a confusing moment I thought this was all-black camo.
Rory invites her mother to come report on Lines with her, which basically just leads to a gag wherein Lorelai pops up in every line with the item they're waiting for, because she just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately she wasn't present when Rory assembled her outfit for the day, or else I bet that would have gone differently.
However. THOSE SHOES. Those are correct, if ENTIRELY impractical for a day of walking, standing, interviewing, walking, and standing. Here, though, she sits and falls asleep in the middle of talking to someone. Strike one, Lois Lane. I must vent: This all builds to a moment where they ask a dude why he's waiting in line and he says, "I don't know." They keep walking, and at the front of the line are four guys eating salads in a stairwell, the idea being that everyone saw them gathered there and assumed THEY were waiting for something, and so on and so forth. Does she act on it? No. She just laughs at them and moves along. RORY. THAT IS YOUR STORY. There is your entry point, or exit point, or crescendo, or SOMETHING. THEY ARE WAITING IN LINE BECAUSE OF FOUR LEAF-EATING WALL STREETERS OCCUPYING SOMEONE'S BASEMENT STOOP. THE CULTURE OF LINE-WAITING IS RIGHT THERE. I am kind of incensed by this obliviousness
Mae Whitman tries to brighten things up with her lovely, adorable face and person, and it briefly works.
But what gets Rory to admit to Lorelai that she's feeling lost is that she bangs a Wookiee. Yes, when Lorelai went back to the hotel to relax in her HAPPY sweatshirt, Rory ended up with some cosplayers and then went to a bar, or something, and yada yada yada she and a dude in a Wookiee costume had random sex. OKAY. Although, I mean, I guess that MIGHT be rock bottom, if you're Rory Gilmore. But... sigh.
Rory does not even iron her shirt-dress before showing up for her I'm At Rock Bottom interview with this successful website that wants her. She acts indignant when they don't hand her the job without her having to prove herself. Girl, of course you have to show her something. That's how job interviews WORK, especially after you turned them down like six times. I really do understand Rory being at this weird crossroads, worried that she's failing and aware she's at least flailing, but it is really hard to sympathize with a person who is doing the absolute minimum on her own behalf. If someone is scrambling to change her fate and having no luck and drowning in THAT, then okay. But Rory is a bystander in her own life and doesn't seem to know that, and I'm sad that was the creative vision for her. Also did she ever call GQ and tell them to reassign the story? RUDE.
Lorelai is zoned out, alone on the couch, when a homeless and unemployed Rory abruptly descends and announces she's moving back in. So "Spring," it turns out, was not a very happy season for any of the Gilmores.