Gilmore Girls: Red Light on the Wedding Night
January 28, 2025 12:17 PM - Season 2, Episode 3 - Subscribe
Sookie throws Lorelai a bachelorette party.
We open on Rory and Lorelai defrauding an elderly woman, prompting a brief discussion of ethics in which free cake is determined to be an appropriate case for moral relativism. Later, after hiring on Kirk as a wedding photographer (essentially paying him in exposure), Lorelai suggests that Max stay at the Gilmore house while his place is being painted - a big step considering that I guess he's never stayed the night there before.
To celebrate this oddly momentous occasion, Lorelai wants to go on a double-date with Rory and Dean, the latter of whom briefly objects because it's on what he considers to be their new "anniversary" (or, as Pedantzilla notes, their lunaversary.)
Night One of Max staying over, he watches a Billy Jack movie with Lorelai and Rory, they head to bed, and Lorelai wakes up Rory because one of them is wigging out over this situation and it isn't the teenager.* Lorelai then tries to fall asleep in Rory's bed, so that's a good sign.
At Luke's in the morning, Max has trouble getting into the rhythm of things again, nearly making Rory and Lorelai miss out on their blueberry pancakes. Luke does his best to play nice with him, but then runs outside to flip out at Taylor for getting the town's first traffic light installed right at the diner's corner without informing him first.
At the end of the double-date, Dean has a talk with Max to give him a nice Cliff's Notes version of how to assimilate into the Gilmore's lives. But when they get home, and Rory and Dean want to hang back outside for a bit (past 11:00, those hoodlums!) Max brings up a lot of questions about what his role in Rory's life, and Lorelai's life, is going to be. These are good and important questions to be asking! And it'd be better if Lorelai hadn't tried to bring them up two episodes ago and had Max blow her off, especially since he treats her as immature for not having immediate answers here. Then Max kinda throws Dean under the bus a little.
Taylor holds a grand-opening for the traffic light, where Luke throws stuff at his head before launching into a diatribe against marriage. They arrive at the drag club (Michel initially objects and then spends most of the night having a ball hanging out with the Queens), talk Rory inside, institute a "no calling boyfriends" rule, and find Emily at the table already, wonderfully game about the whole situation.
Emily is surprised by Lorelai's composure, and while all but Rory get drunk, Emily talks about how nervous she was before her wedding day, trying on her dress every night and feeling safe and thinking about Richard constantly. Everyone simultaneously breaks the rule and calls/texts their fella. Which, in Lorelai's case, means drunk-dialing Christopher.
Christopher is surprised to hear about the engagement (which is weird, right? Rory had told him about Max's existence, but we've jumped a few months since the last episode now, and we've been told that Rory talks to her dad about once a week) and rags on Max a bit for being basic before telling Lorelai that he's happy for her.
Everyone (except Max, whose bachelor party was waylaid by his idiot brother getting a concussion) is hungover the next morning. Max gets angry at Lorelai for putting off making him a set of keys and harshly accuses her of only thinking of herself. Luke drops off a gorgeous chuppah at the Gilmore house and talks with Lorelai, easing off of his earlier anti-marriage sentiments.
Cut to: Lorelai telling Rory to pack for an impromptu road trip. No destination in mind. Rory presses as to what's happening and whether the wedding is still on, and Lorelai says no, breaking down from her manic state and explaining that she "didn't want to try on her wedding dress every night."
And so the girls hit the road. And get stuck at the traffic light.
*This whole sequence works for me, because while watching the movie, we get several low-key examples of the work Max has ahead of him in terms of getting into the established rhythm of things there. He seems up for it, and it's all very light and genial, but you can imagine it causing issues down the line. When she comes down to Rory's room, Lorelai is doing that thing we repeatedly see Lorelai do where she can't look her own issues and insecurities in the face and so channels them through concerns about Rory's well-being that Rory makes clear are entirely unnecessary. From the jump in this series, we are shown that Rory is, while not fully grown up, very astute and responsible and capable of communicating her needs to her mother for the most part, but it makes total sense that as a by-product of her self-emancipation and having to raise Rory on her own, Lorelai is not in tune with her own emotional needs and only feels justified in expressing them through what she imagines might be the needs of her daughter. It's not healthy, but it's well-drawn and sympathetic.
A.V. Club Review - David Sims
Woman in Revolt Review - Lindsay Pugh
Soundtrack:
"Get Happy" - Judy Garland
"True" - Spandau Ballet
"Church of the Poison Mind" - Culture Club
Random Guest Star Watch: Let's give it up for those Drag Queens, huh? That's Alan Luzietti as Judy Garland, Brian Palmetto as Mae West, Maximilliana as Marylin Monroe, Scott Kaske as Bette Davis, Michael Harrington as Gwen Stefani, Bijoux Deluxe as Uma Thurman, and Jazzmun as Janet Jackson.
We open on Rory and Lorelai defrauding an elderly woman, prompting a brief discussion of ethics in which free cake is determined to be an appropriate case for moral relativism. Later, after hiring on Kirk as a wedding photographer (essentially paying him in exposure), Lorelai suggests that Max stay at the Gilmore house while his place is being painted - a big step considering that I guess he's never stayed the night there before.
To celebrate this oddly momentous occasion, Lorelai wants to go on a double-date with Rory and Dean, the latter of whom briefly objects because it's on what he considers to be their new "anniversary" (or, as Pedantzilla notes, their lunaversary.)
Night One of Max staying over, he watches a Billy Jack movie with Lorelai and Rory, they head to bed, and Lorelai wakes up Rory because one of them is wigging out over this situation and it isn't the teenager.* Lorelai then tries to fall asleep in Rory's bed, so that's a good sign.
At Luke's in the morning, Max has trouble getting into the rhythm of things again, nearly making Rory and Lorelai miss out on their blueberry pancakes. Luke does his best to play nice with him, but then runs outside to flip out at Taylor for getting the town's first traffic light installed right at the diner's corner without informing him first.
At the end of the double-date, Dean has a talk with Max to give him a nice Cliff's Notes version of how to assimilate into the Gilmore's lives. But when they get home, and Rory and Dean want to hang back outside for a bit (past 11:00, those hoodlums!) Max brings up a lot of questions about what his role in Rory's life, and Lorelai's life, is going to be. These are good and important questions to be asking! And it'd be better if Lorelai hadn't tried to bring them up two episodes ago and had Max blow her off, especially since he treats her as immature for not having immediate answers here. Then Max kinda throws Dean under the bus a little.
Taylor holds a grand-opening for the traffic light, where Luke throws stuff at his head before launching into a diatribe against marriage. They arrive at the drag club (Michel initially objects and then spends most of the night having a ball hanging out with the Queens), talk Rory inside, institute a "no calling boyfriends" rule, and find Emily at the table already, wonderfully game about the whole situation.
Emily is surprised by Lorelai's composure, and while all but Rory get drunk, Emily talks about how nervous she was before her wedding day, trying on her dress every night and feeling safe and thinking about Richard constantly. Everyone simultaneously breaks the rule and calls/texts their fella. Which, in Lorelai's case, means drunk-dialing Christopher.
Christopher is surprised to hear about the engagement (which is weird, right? Rory had told him about Max's existence, but we've jumped a few months since the last episode now, and we've been told that Rory talks to her dad about once a week) and rags on Max a bit for being basic before telling Lorelai that he's happy for her.
Everyone (except Max, whose bachelor party was waylaid by his idiot brother getting a concussion) is hungover the next morning. Max gets angry at Lorelai for putting off making him a set of keys and harshly accuses her of only thinking of herself. Luke drops off a gorgeous chuppah at the Gilmore house and talks with Lorelai, easing off of his earlier anti-marriage sentiments.
Cut to: Lorelai telling Rory to pack for an impromptu road trip. No destination in mind. Rory presses as to what's happening and whether the wedding is still on, and Lorelai says no, breaking down from her manic state and explaining that she "didn't want to try on her wedding dress every night."
And so the girls hit the road. And get stuck at the traffic light.
*This whole sequence works for me, because while watching the movie, we get several low-key examples of the work Max has ahead of him in terms of getting into the established rhythm of things there. He seems up for it, and it's all very light and genial, but you can imagine it causing issues down the line. When she comes down to Rory's room, Lorelai is doing that thing we repeatedly see Lorelai do where she can't look her own issues and insecurities in the face and so channels them through concerns about Rory's well-being that Rory makes clear are entirely unnecessary. From the jump in this series, we are shown that Rory is, while not fully grown up, very astute and responsible and capable of communicating her needs to her mother for the most part, but it makes total sense that as a by-product of her self-emancipation and having to raise Rory on her own, Lorelai is not in tune with her own emotional needs and only feels justified in expressing them through what she imagines might be the needs of her daughter. It's not healthy, but it's well-drawn and sympathetic.
A.V. Club Review - David Sims
Woman in Revolt Review - Lindsay Pugh
Soundtrack:
"Get Happy" - Judy Garland
"True" - Spandau Ballet
"Church of the Poison Mind" - Culture Club
Random Guest Star Watch: Let's give it up for those Drag Queens, huh? That's Alan Luzietti as Judy Garland, Brian Palmetto as Mae West, Maximilliana as Marylin Monroe, Scott Kaske as Bette Davis, Michael Harrington as Gwen Stefani, Bijoux Deluxe as Uma Thurman, and Jazzmun as Janet Jackson.
Lorelai calling Christopher is classic chaotic, self-sabotaging behavior, but that's just who she is.
Discussing this show with my wife, I threw the word "narcissistic" around somewhere and she was quick to jump on that. She was diagnosed aith ADHD a couple of years ago and has been reading everything she can about it since then, since diagnoses for ADHD in women are such a relatively recent thing. And basically, her readon on Lorelai is that she ticks basically every box for ADHD as we now know that it presents in women (and which we knew little to nothing about when this show was being produced.)
But yeah, it all makes a lot of sense through that lens: the hyperfocus and competence in some areas of her life, the seeming scatterbrainedness in other areas, the self-absorption while still being regularly very generous, the self-sabotaging and compulsive risk-taking and rejection-sensitive dysphoria and on and on. Even her fashion choices read like dopamine-dressing once you're noticing such things. It's kind of wild how much they nailed this down before medical research really had much of a handle on it.
(For what it's worth, I also have ADHD - makes for a fun household! - so while I recognize some of these aspects in myself, I didn't know about all of them.)
posted by Navelgazer at 3:49 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
Discussing this show with my wife, I threw the word "narcissistic" around somewhere and she was quick to jump on that. She was diagnosed aith ADHD a couple of years ago and has been reading everything she can about it since then, since diagnoses for ADHD in women are such a relatively recent thing. And basically, her readon on Lorelai is that she ticks basically every box for ADHD as we now know that it presents in women (and which we knew little to nothing about when this show was being produced.)
But yeah, it all makes a lot of sense through that lens: the hyperfocus and competence in some areas of her life, the seeming scatterbrainedness in other areas, the self-absorption while still being regularly very generous, the self-sabotaging and compulsive risk-taking and rejection-sensitive dysphoria and on and on. Even her fashion choices read like dopamine-dressing once you're noticing such things. It's kind of wild how much they nailed this down before medical research really had much of a handle on it.
(For what it's worth, I also have ADHD - makes for a fun household! - so while I recognize some of these aspects in myself, I didn't know about all of them.)
posted by Navelgazer at 3:49 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
I had never really thought about Lorelai having ADHD but that follows.
(I probably have ADHD but I've never been formally diagnosed. I've just kind of figured I've made it nearly 45 years this way without knowing one way or the other. But my therapist -- with whom I've only just started -- was offering up some ADHD-adjacent resources so ...)
I just think Lorelai blows up her life because that's the only way she's learned to get out of things. I don't even mean that as a criticism of her. Clearly, it works.
posted by edencosmic at 5:40 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
(I probably have ADHD but I've never been formally diagnosed. I've just kind of figured I've made it nearly 45 years this way without knowing one way or the other. But my therapist -- with whom I've only just started -- was offering up some ADHD-adjacent resources so ...)
I just think Lorelai blows up her life because that's the only way she's learned to get out of things. I don't even mean that as a criticism of her. Clearly, it works.
posted by edencosmic at 5:40 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
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Max is probably right to ask questions about how he's going to fit into Rory's life in terms of being a step-parent but a week before the wedding is a little bit late for it. Dean filling in Max about how these women work is one of the few times I really like him.
The bachelorette party stuff is fun, even the bouncer just being "whatever' and letting Rory in (clearly he didn't buy the whole model thing. Emily being there is also a delight and her story about trying on her dress is very sweet. For all of Emily's flaws, she truly loves Richard.
Lorelai calling Christopher is classic chaotic, self-sabotaging behavior, but that's just who she is. More than just the Long Island Ice Teas & Emily's story, she's clearly thinking about the conversation Max tried to have the night before.
And then Max getting mad at her for not having a key (when, exactly, was she supposed to make one between her bachelorette party and the next morning? Why couldn't she just loan Max's hers and he could go make a copy?) pretty much is the beginning of the end (or the middle of the end). Her conversation with Luke pretty much seals that one.
I think we all knew Lorelai was not actually going to get married this early in the show and she and Max definitely rushed into the whole thing (they weren't really together that long and Max was gone most of the summer). But Lauren Graham plays the whole "I didn't want to try on my wedding dress" bit with such sorrow that I really feel for Lorelai.
I have a lot of problems with this show but when it lands, it lands. This episode is so great. (And also shows that Daniel Palladino can write a good episode when he wants to.)
posted by edencosmic at 3:22 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]