Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life: Summer
November 25, 2016 2:32 PM - Season 1, Episode 3 - Subscribe

Netflix summary: Rory tries to save the Stars Hollow Gazette from shutting down. Lorelai sits on the advisory committee for Taylor's musical. Rory worries about Emily.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero (32 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Broadway people on TV make my heart sing! And here I thought Kerry Butler might be wasted.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 3:41 PM on November 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Pretty displeased by the many fat jokes in this episode. Aside from being deeply unfunny and offensive, they didn't seem in line with the usual Gilmore Girls humor. In fact that whole pool scene seemed way off to me.
posted by dysh at 4:01 PM on November 25, 2016 [21 favorites]


That sort of humor seemed sprinkled throughout the series in so many ways- "Eeee, other people, we are better than them".
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:06 PM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't know what series you've been watching, but the Girls always were kind of terrible to other people. And to be honest, that's why I love Gilmore Girls. I'm weird that way.
posted by Pendragon at 4:24 PM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


For sure they have been terrible to other people throughout the series, but in my recollection it wasn't in this particularly shitty way. It just seemed unlike them to me, that's all.
posted by dysh at 4:52 PM on November 25, 2016


I recall an episode where Rory recoiled in disgust and refused to shake someone's hand just because he was missing a few fingers.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:42 PM on November 25, 2016


also this may be the only time we have ever seen Stars Hollow in the summer
posted by likeatoaster at 6:09 PM on November 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


It was surprising to see Christian Borle and Sutton Foster together- years ago, they were married, and although the Broadway community is small, I don't think they've done anything together since their divorce.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:16 PM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Okay so why doesn't Taylor pay her for running the Gazette? This nagged at me throughout the episode.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:22 PM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


I admit, I completely lost it during the shot with Lorelai and Violet facing each other like one of those old '70s TV show split-screens when someone played their own twin. I don't know whether it was intentional, but it slayed me.

The musical held this episode together better than at least the first two as an individual episode, but it still felt more like a penultimate "set everything up" than its own story.
posted by Etrigan at 7:04 PM on November 25, 2016


Now I can't remember if the Logan montage was summer or fall, but I hated it either way. Illustrates the worst behavior and reinforces this pattern of male relationships lead to change, but the female relationships seem secondary and stagnant. How Paris isn't running the world...
posted by armacy at 7:21 PM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow. Did they really start this episode with five minutes of body-shaming? Really?
posted by jacquilynne at 10:37 AM on November 26, 2016 [7 favorites]


I'm about 20 minutes in and the body shaming is really putting me off. I realise that the Gilmore way is often putting other people down, but it's not usually so often in such a short period of time.

Anyway, yuck. I am continuing on, but wanted to register my displeasure.

Taylor and Rory do have a very quick conversation about the pay at the Gazette when he's asking her about her credentials (he asks something about how much she's expecting to be paid, and Rory says "I'm guessing nothing", and he says she's hired in response). The economics of Stars Hollow often don't make sense, but that whole thing is really stupid. Rory's pretty much exhibited no sign of any business sense at all in this so far, and her previous level of book smart seems to have deserted her entirely. How is she even financing all these trips to London?
posted by minsies at 7:15 PM on November 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


How is she even financing all these trips to London?

I was thinking that she inherited some large chunk from Richard, but that wouldn't explain the previous years (unless Richard and Emily were always supporting her).
posted by Etrigan at 7:24 PM on November 26, 2016


I'm sure that they probably were - at least, that's the only way that it makes any sense!

I don't know if I'm just in a bad mood, but I am getting increasingly more frustrated with these as I go. I think I am taking these episodes way more seriously than I should, and I've been watching this one with the same face that Lorelai has during the musical, so I am now taking a break at the halfway point of this one and I'll pick up with it when I'm in a better frame of mind. (I will say that the episode is at least well-structured, in that the interval of the musical preview is exactly halfway though the episode.)
posted by minsies at 7:47 PM on November 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Hated the body-shaming (would they have done that if Sookie were still around?), loved the musical.

I am annoyed at Rory's misunderstanding of "write what you know" (which, granted, is a common one). You are allowed to write things that are not autobiography, and you could go and do something other than sit around Stars Hollow. And her shock that for the first time, her mother isn't there saying anything she did was perfect.

I hope that she doesn't write this memoir, that she understands that her mother doesn't just mean "please don't talk about how I left you in a bucket" but that she means "I want my story to be my own, I want to be the one to choose who to tell what to" (though Lorelei tends to choose no one a lot, more than is good for her -- her taking time to decide not to keep everything so separate, to decide to trust Luke, would be great, but I am not sure I trust where this story is going to wrap up). That story is a really good, interesting one, which I am not sure they have time to deal with properly.

The episodes 100% do not stand on their own, which is fine -- I don't think they ever really intended to.
posted by jeather at 10:00 AM on November 27, 2016 [5 favorites]


This episode felt completely nonsensical to me. I guess the musical was funny but it felt like filler, as did the newspaper job. Argh.
posted by purenitrous at 2:44 PM on November 27, 2016


I think the point of the newspaper job was to absolve Rory from responsibility for failing at journalism when clearly journalism itself is dying.

I felt like the more interesting comment on modern journalism was when she was talking to the line people, and they were already able to describe themselves in New York Times Style Section soundbites, because they were living their lives essentially as clickbait. It was public consumption for public consumption.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:32 PM on November 27, 2016 [5 favorites]


And yet Rory was still falling asleep online as her subjects were writing her story.

Also, Rory's female office mate was (under)played by the amazing Jackie Hoffman
posted by armacy at 6:05 PM on November 27, 2016


Having finished this episode, it was a mess, but the added song was perfectly designed to make me tear up (because it is just going to be me and a dog) and it did that very well.

I was glad to see the moment with Rory and Lorelai in the cemetery, because Rory's idea was terrible and she needed to hear that directly. I also liked Lorelai's convesation with Michel, which felt real in a way that very few of their conversations ever have. (Taylor being called the 5-O also made me laugh; there was very little in this episode that did.)
posted by minsies at 7:03 PM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


The scene in the cemetery drove me crazy because the quote on the headstone is Wordsworth, not the attributed Longfellow. I kept waiting for Rory, who should have spotted this, to say something.
posted by OolooKitty at 9:50 PM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


These people are AWFUL.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 1:08 AM on November 28, 2016


WATERLOO!
posted by leotrotsky at 6:36 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, Carole King!
posted by leotrotsky at 6:44 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


The fat-shaming was 100% fucking awful and this entire show deserves to be stabbed and beaten over it.

The derisive punchline of "the 30 something gang" is hypocritical ick.

And JESUS FUCKTHEWHAT the phrase Rory is looking for is "Just visiting!" You are, literally, "back," my sweet dipshit self-absorbed summer child.
posted by desuetude at 8:57 PM on November 28, 2016 [6 favorites]


This was the worst fucking episode of the four by far in my opinion. Hated the pool scene. And sorry to those of y'all who liked the broadway stuff but it was so bad. Sometimes its fun to have a bit that is comically bad while you and the surrogate (lorelai) scoff at it, but not for 18 fucking minutes. The only saving grace was I was binging them so this gave me an opportunity to use the restroom and get another beer.

The Stars Hollow play felt to me like the pilot that ASP and Lauren Graham used to pitch Netflix or something. It's a self contained 18 minutes, it only has Lauren and a few other second tier characters who could probably clear their schedules, and I think the writing is a lot weaker. I think there were 4 Hamilton jokes? and at least one was Taylor going "yea, remember we talked about Hamilton?" which isn't really a joke if you're just saying "hey remember our earlier joke?"

I won't spoil future episodes, but I liked the new episodes as a group! But holy cow, from the good episode 1 to really good episode 2, then starting episode 3 with the secret bar joke, which was my favorite thing in the whole series and hardest I've laughed in a while, then hitting this stretch was so unbearable. For me it killed all the momentum, then we had Rory having her "not talking to Lorelai now" meltdown which was easily the worst episodes of the original 7 seasons for me so I'm sooo glad they brought that back. I don't think the new stuff got its groove back til halfway through episode 4 and that's a shame.
posted by DynamiteToast at 10:30 AM on November 29, 2016


Hated the body-shaming (would they have done that if Sookie were still around?)

They've done some fat jokes before, to my recollection--the best I can recall right now, though, is a scene where Lorelai goes shopping and accidentally picks up someone else's bag, which contains some really large women's underpants, which she and Luke proceed to riff on at the diner (I believe they both expressed fear of the woman who would own them).

It's a weird thing, really, given that the show as a whole has been better about fat women than most--not only Sookie (whose weight I don't think was EVER mentioned during the course of the show), but also Miss Patty and Babette.

and why on earth has no one said anything about the fact that the actress who plays Miss Patty has lost a TREMENDOUS amount of weight and is nigh-on unrecognizable? I just watched some older episodes and thought she was actually prettier when she was fat but I'm weird that way.)
posted by dlugoczaj at 10:34 AM on November 29, 2016 [7 favorites]


How is she even financing all these trips to London?
After his fiancée moves in with him, Logan offers to put Rory up in a five-star hotel when she comes to London, which makes me suspect he is also paying her airfare. (And the New Yorker might have paid her expenses for a previous trip if she flew there for her Talk of the Town interview, but that was before the first episode.)

In general this miniseries does a poor job moving characters from place to place. They just sort of appear in different locations, even when it doesn't make sense for them to be there. In this episode, Rory says she doesn't have a car or her license, but somehow shows up alone at Emily's house and later at the cemetery. Is that her Toyota hatchback we keep seeing? Who knows? The passage of time is also hard to follow throughout the series; at least this episode had the odd “1 week later” title card.

They barely paid lip service to the running gags (pop-up restaurant chefs; forgettable Paul) this time around. Most of the stand-alone comedy bits (poolside scenes; paper delivery scene) fell flat for me.

I thought the musical was funny, though very cringeworthy. The “new” song was a good way of conveying an emotional breakthrough Lorelai. The Jess scene was good too, and it got Rory's character arc moving again. (But it weirds me out how Jess’s face has changed so much while his voice is exactly the same.)
posted by mbrubeck at 8:50 AM on December 1, 2016


also this may be the only time we have ever seen Stars Hollow in the summer

We did see the End-of-Summer Madness Festival once upon a time. But that may be the closest we've come.
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:42 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


This was, by far, my least favorite of the four episodes. I was marathoning it with a group of friends and I kept checking to see how much time was left (always way too much time) because uuuuugh. (Amy, girl. Stop letting Daniel write episodes.)

I still hate Logan with the fire of a thousand white-hot burning suns. Good to know. I really like Matt Czuchry though, so he's not the problem. It's the character and how he's written. HAAAAAAAAAAATE.

This was the most I've ever liked Jess though. (Which is to say: at all. I've historically loathed all of the Loreleis' boyfriends.) I'm amused though that Milo Ventimiglia's biceps are so huge he can't hold his arms down to his sides. How did no one ask him if he's, like, a personal trainer or a bodybuilder these days?

The song at the end was great, though, and made me cry.
posted by Aquifer at 7:14 PM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


OK, I get that hey had REAL broadway people, but did the goddamn musical have to drag on and and on and on and on? How many shots of Lorelai looking disgusted and everybody else having a good time do we really need?
posted by signal at 5:47 AM on December 29, 2016


Finally got around to watching it. In a perverse way I sort of liked it, though I concur with everyone else on the fat-shaming.

The musical was Kirk-level bad at least at first. Once they finally got to "modern times" (oh yeah, and the Hamilton!) it was more of what I expected from "Stars Hollow: The Musical!" but what was with the damn incest and other weirdness? Freaky, folks.

On the one hand: Rory got a job! On the other hand: now she's finally broke with no money coming in, a computer system older than the one I learned on at a newspaper in 1999, and she's day drinking at work like it's the 1950's. But hey, she broke it off with a taken dude, so there's that.

Really what got to me was the last song, though I cannot for the life of me figure out why Lorelai would think going "Wild" is a good idea. Her of all people. Find some other way to soul search, girl.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:53 PM on January 3, 2017


« Older Gilmore Girls: A Year in the L...   |  Gilmore Girls: A Year in the L... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster