Gilmore Girls: Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers
January 25, 2025 11:33 AM - Season 1, Episode 16 - Subscribe
Luke's ex-girlfriend Rachel swoops into town. Rory and Dean celebrate their three-month anniversary. Lorelai ends up on the balcony for the second week in a row.
The plot continues to heat up! (relatively-speaking, of course. This is still Stars Hollow and not King's Landing, after all.) But it's Stars Hollow around the time of the Founders Day Festival! (Will this come up again in any future seasons? My money's on "no" but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong here.*) Miss Patty tells the likely-apocryphal story of the Romeo + Juliet pair that met up at the site of the current gazebo, and there will be a bonfire.
As Lorelai and Luke grumble about this, that and the other, who comes through the diner door but Rachel, Luke's fabled ex-girlfriend. She's a photojournalist who just came in from the Middle East, and Lorelai feels like she embarrasses herself talking about work at the inn with its faulty coffee-makers. Luke doesn't know what to think, since this woman has hurt him before, implicitly more than once, and is presumably the source of a lot of whatever he's got going on, hang-ups-wise.
But who has time for any of that when Dean's got a three-month-anniversary planned for Rory?! On Friday night! When he knows she has a standing weekly commitment! But whatever, because Emily is, to the shock of the world, fine with letting Rory off the hook for the week (though Lorelai, of course, still has to come to dinner.)
Lorelai has to come because Emily has dozens of barbs at the ready about how much of an accomplishment a three-month-long relationship is compared to Lorelai's romantic history, and because Emily has also invited Chase Bradford, son of Hartford and self-described rising star of the insurance industry. Chase is a man who makes Jackson's cousin Rune seem like a fun night out by comparison - he's rude, boring, pretentious, self-obsessed, and oblivious, all within a coating of smarm that makes the whole package that much worse for seeming so true-to-life.
So Lorelai sneaks out her bedroom window once again, not for sexy balcony times, but to run home to Stars Hollow. Richard catches her in the act and sympathizes, sweetly covering for her exit. Back at the bonfire, Lorelai talks Luke through his trepidation about getting back together with Rachel, and sublimates her ego to be a rock-solid sounding board for him.
Rory's date with Dean is cringe, but just for viewers who've aged out of their teens. It's pitch-perfect in depicting the way that teenagers can pretend to be grown-ups for a little while and almost but not quite get it right. Dean orders her three different pastas because she can't decide, which is a kind of cute thing to do, but also precisely the sort of thing one can picture Max doing for Lorelai, and that kind of puts an icky perspective on it (though Max is emotionally stunted where Rory and Dean are romantically inexperienced, but it's still not the world's most complimentary comparison.)
After dinner, Dean takes her to the salvage yard and shows her the car he's been building for her. Cuddled up in the front seat, blissed-out by the perfect-to-them evening, Dean says "I love you," and an overwhelmed Rory needs time to respond, so Dean turns on a dime into tantrum-town. As a lonely Lorelai calls up Max back at home (reaching his machine), Rory walks through the doors and announces that they've broken up.
*Not that I fault the show too much for this, mid you. There's just a thing in a lot of shows that I love where some of the quirks of the setting become traditions of that setting in a way that's fun to see. Like the Halloween Heist in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or the Paintball games in Community, where the show finds different stories to tell within the bounds of the repeated set-up. I've currently seen through about the first half of season 3 of this show and don't recall anything like that happening here, despite how many weird traditions we learn about Stars Hollow having.
AV Club Review - David Sims
Woman In Revolt Review - Lindsay Pugh
Soundtrack:
"La Forza del Destino" - Maria Callas
"Oh My Love" - John Lennon
Random Guest Star Watch: David Huddleston as Mayor Porter, I guess? He's been on the show once before, but best as I can tell this is his final outing, with Town Selectman Taylor Doose filling that role from here on out, which is a shame. Huddleston is great.
The plot continues to heat up! (relatively-speaking, of course. This is still Stars Hollow and not King's Landing, after all.) But it's Stars Hollow around the time of the Founders Day Festival! (Will this come up again in any future seasons? My money's on "no" but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong here.*) Miss Patty tells the likely-apocryphal story of the Romeo + Juliet pair that met up at the site of the current gazebo, and there will be a bonfire.
As Lorelai and Luke grumble about this, that and the other, who comes through the diner door but Rachel, Luke's fabled ex-girlfriend. She's a photojournalist who just came in from the Middle East, and Lorelai feels like she embarrasses herself talking about work at the inn with its faulty coffee-makers. Luke doesn't know what to think, since this woman has hurt him before, implicitly more than once, and is presumably the source of a lot of whatever he's got going on, hang-ups-wise.
But who has time for any of that when Dean's got a three-month-anniversary planned for Rory?! On Friday night! When he knows she has a standing weekly commitment! But whatever, because Emily is, to the shock of the world, fine with letting Rory off the hook for the week (though Lorelai, of course, still has to come to dinner.)
Lorelai has to come because Emily has dozens of barbs at the ready about how much of an accomplishment a three-month-long relationship is compared to Lorelai's romantic history, and because Emily has also invited Chase Bradford, son of Hartford and self-described rising star of the insurance industry. Chase is a man who makes Jackson's cousin Rune seem like a fun night out by comparison - he's rude, boring, pretentious, self-obsessed, and oblivious, all within a coating of smarm that makes the whole package that much worse for seeming so true-to-life.
So Lorelai sneaks out her bedroom window once again, not for sexy balcony times, but to run home to Stars Hollow. Richard catches her in the act and sympathizes, sweetly covering for her exit. Back at the bonfire, Lorelai talks Luke through his trepidation about getting back together with Rachel, and sublimates her ego to be a rock-solid sounding board for him.
Rory's date with Dean is cringe, but just for viewers who've aged out of their teens. It's pitch-perfect in depicting the way that teenagers can pretend to be grown-ups for a little while and almost but not quite get it right. Dean orders her three different pastas because she can't decide, which is a kind of cute thing to do, but also precisely the sort of thing one can picture Max doing for Lorelai, and that kind of puts an icky perspective on it (though Max is emotionally stunted where Rory and Dean are romantically inexperienced, but it's still not the world's most complimentary comparison.)
After dinner, Dean takes her to the salvage yard and shows her the car he's been building for her. Cuddled up in the front seat, blissed-out by the perfect-to-them evening, Dean says "I love you," and an overwhelmed Rory needs time to respond, so Dean turns on a dime into tantrum-town. As a lonely Lorelai calls up Max back at home (reaching his machine), Rory walks through the doors and announces that they've broken up.
*Not that I fault the show too much for this, mid you. There's just a thing in a lot of shows that I love where some of the quirks of the setting become traditions of that setting in a way that's fun to see. Like the Halloween Heist in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or the Paintball games in Community, where the show finds different stories to tell within the bounds of the repeated set-up. I've currently seen through about the first half of season 3 of this show and don't recall anything like that happening here, despite how many weird traditions we learn about Stars Hollow having.
AV Club Review - David Sims
Woman In Revolt Review - Lindsay Pugh
Soundtrack:
"La Forza del Destino" - Maria Callas
"Oh My Love" - John Lennon
Random Guest Star Watch: David Huddleston as Mayor Porter, I guess? He's been on the show once before, but best as I can tell this is his final outing, with Town Selectman Taylor Doose filling that role from here on out, which is a shame. Huddleston is great.
I love this series, but Rory's romantic interests were always my least favorite parts. Dean sucks, Tristan sucks, I dislike Jess which I know is controversial, and think Logan sucks too. Thanks for posting these! so nice to go back and remember a series.
posted by Carillon at 2:06 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]
posted by Carillon at 2:06 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]
Side note, just b/c it's one of my personal pet peeves: a "three-month anniversary" is a lunaversary, an anniversary being by definition an annual occurrence.
posted by Pedantzilla at 5:56 PM on January 25 [2 favorites]
posted by Pedantzilla at 5:56 PM on January 25 [2 favorites]
I hate this episode. Parts are good but Dean getting mad and breaking up with her because Rory isn't ready to say "I love you" after 3 months is ridiculous.
I'm m on Rory's side all the way. She didn't feel it so she didn't want to say it. That's a good boundary! I kind of (but not really) get Dean being upset but his reaction is so out of proportion, I feel like in the real world (not Gilmore Girls world), he wanted something else to happen that night.
As a former teenage girl, I had boys say "I love you" way too soon and it was always part "they're saying this because they think I expect it and then want to manipulate me into something I don't want" and part "yeah, we're really not on the same page about this whole thing."
posted by edencosmic at 7:31 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]
I'm m on Rory's side all the way. She didn't feel it so she didn't want to say it. That's a good boundary! I kind of (but not really) get Dean being upset but his reaction is so out of proportion, I feel like in the real world (not Gilmore Girls world), he wanted something else to happen that night.
As a former teenage girl, I had boys say "I love you" way too soon and it was always part "they're saying this because they think I expect it and then want to manipulate me into something I don't want" and part "yeah, we're really not on the same page about this whole thing."
posted by edencosmic at 7:31 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]
I feel like in the real world (not Gilmore Girls world), he wanted something else to happen that night.
I feel like even in Gilmore Girls world, that was in the mix there. When Rory is explaining her hesitance and he says "Nobody ever got pregnant by saying 'I love you,'" it's manipulative and equivocating and making the subtext text, I felt like.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:15 PM on January 25
I feel like even in Gilmore Girls world, that was in the mix there. When Rory is explaining her hesitance and he says "Nobody ever got pregnant by saying 'I love you,'" it's manipulative and equivocating and making the subtext text, I felt like.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:15 PM on January 25
And I guess that's why I hate it -- Rory is the daughter of a teenager mother. She has, overall, known her whole life about the consequences of sex (also ... this is a world where there's no abortion? The number of unplanned pregnancies are exhausting). So grow up, Dean, and understand Rory 100% knows what the consequences may be (this is post this dance fight, after all, but yeah, Rory should have gone on birth control. I mean, not against her will or anything).
I do agree than Dean started out as the "nice" boy but became more and more toxic. Yeah, some of that was bad writing & ASP tendency to think men being violent was good.
But Dean was always the boy who was going to be who a girl wanted until he got her. And he was. But I also think that was a darker story Gilmore Girls didn't tell.
posted by edencosmic at 10:15 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]
I do agree than Dean started out as the "nice" boy but became more and more toxic. Yeah, some of that was bad writing & ASP tendency to think men being violent was good.
But Dean was always the boy who was going to be who a girl wanted until he got her. And he was. But I also think that was a darker story Gilmore Girls didn't tell.
posted by edencosmic at 10:15 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]
this is post this dance fight, after all, but yeah, Rory should have gone on birth control. I mean, not against her will or anything
Yeah, it's a little maddening that we never see Rory and Lorelai expand on this conversation after the one time it comes up (in anger!) Like, Lorelai should absolutely have sat down at one point to calmly be like "Hey, I trust you kiddo, and I know you're responsible, but things happen and when they do you might not be wanting to tell me all the details, so let's figure it out ahead of time."
posted by Navelgazer at 8:14 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it's a little maddening that we never see Rory and Lorelai expand on this conversation after the one time it comes up (in anger!) Like, Lorelai should absolutely have sat down at one point to calmly be like "Hey, I trust you kiddo, and I know you're responsible, but things happen and when they do you might not be wanting to tell me all the details, so let's figure it out ahead of time."
posted by Navelgazer at 8:14 AM on January 26 [1 favorite]
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So he starts off star-eyed for Rory and nothing else, and then a couple episodes ago we added in "defensive about mid-twentieth-century gender norms" and now we've thrown "pissy and entitled" into the mix. TL;DR: Dean sucks, and it'll be a good while before we're done with him, but at least (SPOILER) we've got Jess coming to town soon enough. But we still have to trudge through Tristan to get there. Sorry.
On another note: Lorelai really is pretty great in her talk with Luke at the end here, and it's a really nice performance from both Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson, convincing himself that having been hurt by Rachel before just means that he knows that he can live through it again if it comes to that. Of course, Lorelai-being-Lorelai, her adventures in selflessness just leave her feeling shitty enough to phone up Mr. Medina, a choice which we'll all have to live with for the next little while.
BUT ALSO: while I applaud Lorelai setting herself aside at the end here, Rachel is a photojournalist. Seemingly a successful photojournalist. She travels a lot, at least, and goes to capture stories in places of conflict. Instead of reacting to that news by thinking of how much you must suck in comparison, Lorelai, why don't you instead think of your daughter, the aspiring journalist who dreams of being, like, a war-correspondent? Why does this never come up?! It makes me angry, it does. If Lorelai gets over herself here, Rory could make a very worthwhile connection with a valuable mentor-figure. But this never crosses her mind (nor, seemingly, the writers' minds.) Grr.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:56 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]