Gilmore Girls: The Bracebridge Dinner
January 30, 2025 1:14 PM - Season 2, Episode 10 - Subscribe

Christmas in Stars Hollow! A last-minute group cancellation at the inn allows Sookie and Lorelai to throw a festive sleepover for all their friends and family. Christopher calls Lorelai to invite Rory to Boston. Dean tries to break up a fight. Jess and Rory take a sleigh-ride together. Rune can't get his pants on. And Richard is in mysteriously high spirits.

Oh thank God, it's not just a great episode, but an important one to boot.

We open in the town square, where the gals are participating in a snowman contest (first prize: a set of new quarters! Remember when folks were collecting the state quarters?!) Rory is concerned about the magnificently sculpted Scrooge snowman that some rando is etching, but Lorelai thinks he's a ringer and that the judges will see past the showiness and perfection of it to award the honors to their more-deserving alien-looking-thing.

At the Independence, Michel and Rune (Rune!) look for an appropriate place to bicker, while Sookie informs Jackson that he'll be playing the role of the Bracebridge Squire in a big fancy period dinner party that they're throwing for big fancy group of big rich fancy guests.* Lorelai gets a call from Christopher to ask whether Rory has any time over the winter break to come out to Boston and stay with him. (Side Note: his response to the not-Drella harpist in the background - "Where are you, heaven?" made me chuckle out loud.) He's super reasonable about it, running it past Lorelai first, admitting that it's last minute, and saying that it's fine if it can't work out. Lorelai says she'll have to run it past Rory.

At the Hartford House, Friday Night Dinner is chillier than usual, with Richard rebuffing basically any attempt at conversation with his sullenness over being phased out at the firm.

Sookie is coaching Jackson, Rune and Kirk on their "Old English" characters when Lorelai comes in with the news that the Bracebridge group is snowed in. Sookie is crushed, but they decide that, with everything already paid for (sure, why not), they should just invite everyone they can think of to sleep over at the inn and do the dinner anyway. After school, Lane and Dean confirm that they'll both be there. Dean pretends to understand a Pixies reference, and then rushes in to break up a fight that Jess is having with some other kid. Jess still has some punching energy built up, though, and Dean seems as good a target as any, so that's their dynamic settled now.

Rory is going through Christmas cards as she and Lorelai mock the ugly baby pictures in them, when she comes across the one from Christopher and Sherry. Lorelai does not mention the phone call. Rory has kept a room at the inn open with the idea of inviting Emily and Richard, Lorelai puts up a little bit of a fight, and then says ok.

The guests arrive, as does Paris, bringing some school stuff for Rory. She sticks around at Rory's invitation, and demonstrates some fluency with Portuguese. Dean arrives with his little sister Clara who is written roughly half the age as the actress playing her. Dean is unhappy to see Jess there and tells Rory about the fight. Sookie is in the kitchen freaking out about the meal (she forgets the word for "salt") and Rune changing his pants in there isn't helping matters.

But then Emily and Richard arrive, and Richard is all smiles and warmth and seems like an utterly different person than he's been all season to this point. Even Emily doesn't know the reason for this, but she'll take it. Rory and Jess check each other out. And as a surprise, Lorelai has arranged for a fleet of horse-drawn sleighs for all the guests somehow. It's two to a sleigh, and Clara wants to ride with Dean, unconvincingly trying to tug him towards the door already (this isn't the actress's fault, mind you, the director just chose a framing that makes it very awkward for this action to be blocked realistically and it bugs me.)

Lorelai talks Luke into riding with her, and he's endearingly grumpy until he shares with her the "Secret of Parenting" that he jsut learned. It's essentially just "The Secret," but with less self-deception and more deception of children. Specifically, Jess' mom never got in touch about his coming in town for the holidays, so Luke spared his feelings by saying that she wanted him to come home, but that Luke thought he should stay. Lorelai, who is more practiced at lying to her kid about a parent wanting to see her, says that Jess knows the truth.

Emily and Richard share a cute ride together, and agree to go on a roller-coaster. Jess jumps into Rory's sleigh and the two spark like crazy. He's unapologetic about the fight earlier, he does, in fact, know the truth about his mom's disinterest, and he immediately clocks not just which snowman (ahem, snow-woman) is Rory's, but also that it's supposed to be Björk. And he agrees that the Scrooge snowman is overdone and that Rory and Lorelai should win. He asks what the hell Rory and Dean talk about, and gets no satisfying answer.

Everyone has a grand time at the dinner, the actors have various degrees of success staying in character, Mrs. Kim asks Babette if she said grace, Paris critiques the anachronisms, and a lively Richard tells a story and then drops the news that he quit his job.

After dinner, Rory ponders that she would have expected to hear from Christopher by now, and a petulant Lorelai finally owns up to the fact that he did call but that she doesn't want to give up any of her time with Rory over the holidays and she's jealous of Sherry. Rory is very understanding, especially considering that Lorelai's 100% in the wrong here and Rory knows it. She doesn't make a decision about whether to go or not.

Emily insists on staying in the gals' room, since she and Richard aren't speaking now. After like ten seconds of trying to sleep, she gets up to take a walk around instead, and runs into Richard downstairs. Here, Edward Herrmann gets a pretty great monologue in which he apologizes to Emily and explains how much he needed to leave the firm and how much better he felt upon doing so. The two go to bed, and come downstairs in the morning with an expression that leads Lorelai to pose some very inappropriate questions.

The guests file out, Clara doesn't want to see Rory and Dean kiss because she presumably is watching the same show as the rest of us, and Rory and Lorelai take a sleigh ride back to the house, passing by the town square, where somebody seems to have knocked the head off of the Scrooge sculpture overnight.

*Small vague spoiler: This "committing someone to play a role that they didn't want to play" thing that Sookie does here is pretty par for the course in Stars Hollow, but it reminds me of a later episode where Taylor will essentially do this exact same thing to Rory. When Taylor does it, it makes me want to see him punished by catapult. I give Sookie a pass here, though. For one thing, Rory is always game for whatever while Jackson is always kinda whiny, but mostly I just think that Taylor is being wildly presumptuous about his relationship with Rory there, while Sookie and Jackson are in a long-term relationship by this point, which makes a big difference.

A.V. Club Review - David Sims
Woman in Revolt Review - Meg Ringler

Soundtrack:
"Human Behaviour" - Björk

Random Guest Star Watch: It's all established characters this week, so I'll just give it up for Max Perlich's third and final outing as Rune. Bye Rune! I'll miss your impression of what Luke might come off like if he weren't as attractive!
posted by Navelgazer (7 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This is truly one of the great episodes of this show. We have small-town quirkiness, but it works! Everyone is in character but it also works! We get some character revelations (like Richard quitting!) but also some character development (Lorelai being jealous of Chris and Sherry! Luke learning the "secret" to parenthood! Paris learning to relax a bit more and maybe have fun!).

It's not quite a bottle episode but it feels like one. It's small in its scope and it works. It's fun.

I love Emily and Richard here. Emily truly loves Richard, as I've said, but he doesn't always let her in. Their talk downstairs is really sweet and I love the two of them together.

Clara is pretty exhausting and I have no idea what age this character is supposed to be. Neither do the writers.

Jess and Rory have such good chemistry. He's kind of written to be the anti-Dean but they're so clearly attracted to each other that it's fun.

(I'll be busy this weekend and I'm trying to keep up -- I have watched the show many times but I have at least skimmed the episodes to remind myself of what happened. I may not comment on every post but I'll still be following along.)
posted by edencosmic at 6:02 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]


It's not quite a bottle episode but it feels like one. It's small in its scope and it works. It's fun.

I completely agree. Like, it's definitely not a bottle episode by any technical definition - the horse-drawn sleighs must have been a hell of a production expense, plus they had to cover the backlot in snow, and include basically every recurring townie in the cast - but it's written like one, with a lot of care going into how these small character moments occur, such that they feel a lot bigger than they necessarily are. Even tiny things, like Mrs. Kim interacting with Babette, or Rune having a little bit of fun being part of the community, just work gangbusters for making this world feel bigger and more lived-in than just our title characters.

The most concrete thing that happens here in terms of the broader story is, of course, Richard having quit his job. But the most important scene is really Jess & Rory's sleigh ride, where they demonstrate all the chemistry that she's never had with Dean, and he plants the seeds of doubt in her head about that relationship. (Spoiler: Jess is, of course, not a great guy, and won't be a good boyfriend, but he's a great character for this show, and not only does the show need him, but there's a good case to be made that Rory needed him if only for the life experience.)
posted by Navelgazer at 9:53 AM on January 31


I love this episode dearly but I just sort of hoot at "Paris critiques the anachronisms" because, much as the writers don't know how old Clara is supposed to be, they certainly don't know what time period this event is supposed to be, either.

I just checked a transcript to make sure I was right that Sookie says at the beginning that it's an "authentic 19th century meal," and oh yes she does. And then everything else--music, costumes, language (btw, that ain't "Old English" they're speaking, Sookie) seems straight out of the Renaissance, several centuries earlier! If Paris is calling out anachronisms from the 19th century, she's got a whole lot to talk about, and not just the server's wristwatch.

(As I said, I love the episode despite this mishmash, and my favorite moment in it--the kind of small character moment that Navelgazer talks about--is Rory watching Lorelai and Emily put on face cream with identical gestures and saying "Behold my future." That's the Gilmore Girls world I love.)
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:27 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]


If you've ever wanted to attend a Bracebridge Dinner...well, good luck getting tickets but it's a real thing. I think the period confusion is because it's supposed to be like the Yosemite Bracebridge Dinner, a loving reenactment of a "Renaissance themed" dinner thrown by rich people in the 1800s.
posted by potrzebie at 2:46 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]


it's supposed to be like the Yosemite Bracebridge Dinner

Oh, that's a TRIP. And I'm sure you're right (they even mention Washington Irving in a throwaway line). Makes a lot more sense now!
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:13 AM on February 10


Oh my lord. ANSEL ADAMS ran the thing for 44 years! How did I not know about this?
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:17 AM on February 10


It's soooo weird that it was (and remains!!) a thing. I've always vaguely wanted to go but also felt like it would be really hard to take. Like every time I almost try to get tickets I'm like "ugh but think who else would want to go to this" and close the tab
posted by potrzebie at 12:21 PM on February 10


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