Gilmore Girls: Teach Me Tonight
February 3, 2025 11:13 AM - Season 2, Episode 19 - Subscribe
Luke asks Rory to tutor Jess, leading to Jess and Rory getting in a car accident, leading to Luke and Lorelai having their biggest fight yet. Kirk scores a screening for his short film.
Alright, we're now in the endgame for Season Two, so let's hit the road!
Rory and Lorelai are in line at Doose's Market (Lorelai feels silent judgment from the masses for not doing crossword puzzles (even though as a big crossword-fan I could assure her that we are a people who want our hobby to look like magic to most people) when they run into Taylor running the cash register. He's touting the annual film festival, which will apparently be screening The Yearling for the fourth year in a row. Lorelai objects, and Taylor saddles her with picking the movie instead.
While the gals brainstorm movie ideas, Christopher calls Rory to let her know that he can't actually talk right now and will have to take a rain check. He doesn't want to talk to Lorelai and Lorelai won't tell Rory why they're fighting. Rory runs off to her fancy prep school, while at the rough-and-tumble Stars Hollow High, Jess is bugging Lane during an exam. (He asks her for a pen and the test answers, though he doesn't actually have an exam booklet, so he just goes back to reading his Vonnegut book.)
This seems to be de rigeur for Jess, and the principal calls Luke in to talk about the little delinquent. They come to an agreement that Jess needs a tutor. At the diner, Rory and Lorelai are narrowing down their options (a little) when Taylor presents them with the book of films that they can actually choose from. This narrows down their options considerably. They go with The Yearling.* After getting nowhere with Jess, Luke comes by the house with a box of brownies for Lorelai and goes in to talk with Rory on her own, asking her to tutor Jess (or, more to the point, to influence him into actually attending class.) Rory agrees, but when Lorelai finds out about the arrangement, she's less enthusiastic.
At the diner, Kirk approaches the gals about screening his short film before the movie. He considers himself something of an Akira Kurosawa. No, wait, an Asaad Kelada. Lorelai will take a look. Rory asks Lorelai to not tell Dean that she's with Jess in case he asks, which worries Lorelai further.
Jess plops down at the table ready for his study session, by which I mean ready to screw around and do card tricks and flirt. He talks Rory into going out for ice cream, then he'll buckle down, and she eventually relents. If they were flirting at the diner, it's nothing to how they're vibing in the car post-ice-cream-cones, though, and when Jess asks if they should return to the diner or just keep driving around, Rory opts for the latter.
Cut to: Lorelai at home getting a call from Rory, in the hospital with a hairline fracture on her wrist. She'll need to wear a cast for a couple of weeks, and as much as she assures her mother that she's fine, and that the accident was just that - an accident - Lorelai is now on the warpath. She freaks at the hospital staff, orders more tests, and then storms into Luke's trying to find Jess (who isn't there.)
Luke is upset to hear about the accident, but Lorelai just wants to yell at him for allowing Jess into their town in the first place and pushing him and Rory together. It's ugly and nasty and ends unresolved as Luke heads out to find his nephew and Lorelai sees the wreckage of the car dean built for Rory.**
Lorelai dotes on Rory before putting her to bed and falling asleep in a chair in Rory's room. She awakes to find Christopher asleep in a chair next to her, having rushed around to the hospital and elsewhere trying to find them after the accident. Christopher is also ready to go to town on Jess, and Rory's parents end their current feud. Luke finds Jess on the Jess Bridge and sits down with him.
Christopher sticks around for the outdoor movie screening. Lane gives Rory a cool Emily the Strange sticker for her cast, and Rory worries about what she's going to tell Dean when he gets back in town. Before the movie, though, we get to see Kirk's Short Film, which is an avant garde masterpiece. Between the screenings, Rory and Lorelai overhear Babette and Miss Patty gossiping about how Luke but Jess back on a bus to his mom's in New York.
We're in the thick of it now, folks!
* This is a very funny bit so whatever, but there are a lot of classic movies that are in the public domain due to negligence in renewing their copyrights. This is actually how It's a Wonderful Life became such a holiday classic starting in the mid-seventies. So they wouldn't have been as stuck as it appears here.
** While I feel like Lorelai is very much in the wrong here, refusing to listen to Rory herself over her own now-justified hatred of Jess, she's not entirely unsympathetic either. Luke has been pushing those two together, openly hoping for a while now that Rory could be a good influence no Jess and not really thinking about the effect that he might have on her. So it's at least complicated.
A.V. Club Review - David Sims
Woman in Revolt Review - Lindsay Pugh
Soundtrack:
"Car Song" - Elastica
"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" - Grandmaster & Melle Mel
Random Guest Star Watch: Mary Lynn Rajskub and Jon Polito as the daughter and father, respectively, in Kirk's film.
Alright, we're now in the endgame for Season Two, so let's hit the road!
Rory and Lorelai are in line at Doose's Market (Lorelai feels silent judgment from the masses for not doing crossword puzzles (even though as a big crossword-fan I could assure her that we are a people who want our hobby to look like magic to most people) when they run into Taylor running the cash register. He's touting the annual film festival, which will apparently be screening The Yearling for the fourth year in a row. Lorelai objects, and Taylor saddles her with picking the movie instead.
While the gals brainstorm movie ideas, Christopher calls Rory to let her know that he can't actually talk right now and will have to take a rain check. He doesn't want to talk to Lorelai and Lorelai won't tell Rory why they're fighting. Rory runs off to her fancy prep school, while at the rough-and-tumble Stars Hollow High, Jess is bugging Lane during an exam. (He asks her for a pen and the test answers, though he doesn't actually have an exam booklet, so he just goes back to reading his Vonnegut book.)
This seems to be de rigeur for Jess, and the principal calls Luke in to talk about the little delinquent. They come to an agreement that Jess needs a tutor. At the diner, Rory and Lorelai are narrowing down their options (a little) when Taylor presents them with the book of films that they can actually choose from. This narrows down their options considerably. They go with The Yearling.* After getting nowhere with Jess, Luke comes by the house with a box of brownies for Lorelai and goes in to talk with Rory on her own, asking her to tutor Jess (or, more to the point, to influence him into actually attending class.) Rory agrees, but when Lorelai finds out about the arrangement, she's less enthusiastic.
At the diner, Kirk approaches the gals about screening his short film before the movie. He considers himself something of an Akira Kurosawa. No, wait, an Asaad Kelada. Lorelai will take a look. Rory asks Lorelai to not tell Dean that she's with Jess in case he asks, which worries Lorelai further.
Jess plops down at the table ready for his study session, by which I mean ready to screw around and do card tricks and flirt. He talks Rory into going out for ice cream, then he'll buckle down, and she eventually relents. If they were flirting at the diner, it's nothing to how they're vibing in the car post-ice-cream-cones, though, and when Jess asks if they should return to the diner or just keep driving around, Rory opts for the latter.
Cut to: Lorelai at home getting a call from Rory, in the hospital with a hairline fracture on her wrist. She'll need to wear a cast for a couple of weeks, and as much as she assures her mother that she's fine, and that the accident was just that - an accident - Lorelai is now on the warpath. She freaks at the hospital staff, orders more tests, and then storms into Luke's trying to find Jess (who isn't there.)
Luke is upset to hear about the accident, but Lorelai just wants to yell at him for allowing Jess into their town in the first place and pushing him and Rory together. It's ugly and nasty and ends unresolved as Luke heads out to find his nephew and Lorelai sees the wreckage of the car dean built for Rory.**
Lorelai dotes on Rory before putting her to bed and falling asleep in a chair in Rory's room. She awakes to find Christopher asleep in a chair next to her, having rushed around to the hospital and elsewhere trying to find them after the accident. Christopher is also ready to go to town on Jess, and Rory's parents end their current feud. Luke finds Jess on the Jess Bridge and sits down with him.
Christopher sticks around for the outdoor movie screening. Lane gives Rory a cool Emily the Strange sticker for her cast, and Rory worries about what she's going to tell Dean when he gets back in town. Before the movie, though, we get to see Kirk's Short Film, which is an avant garde masterpiece. Between the screenings, Rory and Lorelai overhear Babette and Miss Patty gossiping about how Luke but Jess back on a bus to his mom's in New York.
We're in the thick of it now, folks!
* This is a very funny bit so whatever, but there are a lot of classic movies that are in the public domain due to negligence in renewing their copyrights. This is actually how It's a Wonderful Life became such a holiday classic starting in the mid-seventies. So they wouldn't have been as stuck as it appears here.
** While I feel like Lorelai is very much in the wrong here, refusing to listen to Rory herself over her own now-justified hatred of Jess, she's not entirely unsympathetic either. Luke has been pushing those two together, openly hoping for a while now that Rory could be a good influence no Jess and not really thinking about the effect that he might have on her. So it's at least complicated.
A.V. Club Review - David Sims
Woman in Revolt Review - Lindsay Pugh
Soundtrack:
"Car Song" - Elastica
"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" - Grandmaster & Melle Mel
Random Guest Star Watch: Mary Lynn Rajskub and Jon Polito as the daughter and father, respectively, in Kirk's film.
I generally love Kirk, and while this isn't quite cat-Kirk levels, that video is amazing.
posted by Carillon at 1:52 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
posted by Carillon at 1:52 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
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Lorelai is understandably upset but she's so mean to Luke. He rightfully calls her on it, though, and I like that. But at the same time, I don't really blame Lorelai, except that her anger is kind of misplaced and she just wanted to yell at someone.
(Also, where is this hospital, exactly? The doctor said Rory's X-rays would be about an hour and Lorelai had enough time to go back and yell at Luke? Time works oddly in Stars Hollow, apparently.)
But before the crash, that was some great flirting between Rory and Jess.
And while he still looms over the episode, it being free of Dean is helpful.
posted by edencosmic at 12:17 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]