Emily's an Unhappy Trad Wife, Will Rory Become One, Too?
Maggie watches Episode 146: "I am Kayak, Hear Me Roar"
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Trad Wives, White Supremacy, & Kayaks
By Maggie
There’s a new energy in this episode which I can only attribute to the fact that the writers have finally written their way out of the whole, “Oh yeah Lorelai and Christopher got married in Paris problem. Oops.” Now, finally, he’s gone. Like really, really gone. They even give Lorelai some nice continuity and have her drive away aimlessly with Rory to give her some space to deal with the breakup, a la “Roadtrip to Harvard.” But I also feel like it’s suddenly trying to make up for lost time. We have exactly eight episodes left of this show before the series finale hits, and it’s clear we are RUSHING to the end now.
And to what end will we be rushing? Well IMHO, this episode distills the central tension of the show’s final narrative arc to this: Will Rory be a tradwife like Emily or a (relatively) independent lady like Lorelai?
One of my favorite things happens in this episode: Emily and Lorelai have a very on-brand interaction, the kind when it’s just the two of them, some kind of emotionally vulnerable thing has happened and they really connect. In this case the thing that happened: Richard has opted out of basically everything in life, because he’s, I guess, bummed that he survived a second heart attack and now is being fed gourmet fish at every meal and ordered not to drink alcohol? So Emily has been left to do not only all of the things in their household that she typically takes care of but also the things Richard usually takes care of. Emily is, in other words, overwhelmed and lonely, and Lorelai is there for her. Emily needs to get some financial documents over to their accountant but has no idea where any of her and Richard’s financial documents exist, nor even really, what is going on with their finances. (“I didn’t even know we owned windmills!”)
Lorelai uses this moment to finally tell Emily that she and Christopher have split. Emily takes the news without surprise and, like in the best of times between these two, they actually have a really beautiful and supportive interaction. Lorelai doesn’t just download the few documents Emily needs, she teaches Emily how to access her financial information herself. Then, Emily tells Lorelai how her divorce won’t be the end of her life, that Lorelai will be just fine. It’s both a way to comfort Lorelai, who is clearly upset by the end of the marriage, and a way for Emily to process what’s happening in her own life. Emily explains that when she was a girl, she was raised to be a wife. That she may have gone to college and gotten a degree but she certainly wasn’t expected to use it, she was expected to “bolster her husband while he earns a living.”
Like many women of her era, race, and class, Emily was supposed to live in one sphere, while her husband lived in another. She was supposed to be in a canoe, is how she puts it. Which is nice in theory, but now that Richard has opted out, she’s just paddling the canoe in circles. Meanwhile, Lorelai, Emily says, has always been in a kayak, with a double-sided oar, so she can paddle by herself.
It’s a sweet metaphor. And I will always stan an Emily - Lorelai connection moment. Of course, the following morning, Emily acts as though none of this has happened. She’s salty about not getting her whole deposit back from the venue for the wedding party, and also has sobered up, (and btw gives a spot-on Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly impression as she tells Lorelai about this while not looking up from the newspaper). But I think why I really love this metaphor here is because it’s not just about Emily and Lorelai.
Elsewhere in the episode, Rory is helping Logan celebrate his birthday. Even though he tells Rory that his family doesn’t normally celebrate birthdays because they aren’t “earned” his dad invites him and Rory to a fancy dinner. I think it’s actually pretty rude for Logan to expect Rory to not only put her own planned celebrations for Logan on hold to go to this dinner, but also to make Rory go to this dinner with his dad at all, since he’s treated Rory terribly forever.
But the twist comes when Mitchum actually does want to talk to Rory at this dinner. When Logan takes a work call and has to excuse himself (oh my god so rude), Mitchum takes the opportunity to tell Rory that she’s the reason he’s made something of himself and turned from frat boy to baby business mogul. Mitchum wants to keep this momentum going, he says, and tells Rory that they need to sit down sometime to figure out next steps for Logan He also tells her that of course there’s something in it for her, she can have a job at one of his newspapers. It’s very gross, and Rory tells Logan later about it, but in the end the gross thing isn’t just Mitchum. It’s that Mitchum wants to put Rory in a canoe with Logan.
Because Mitchum and Richard and many other people still to this day in our society, especially those who cling to “traditional families” and love to pretend that inherited wealth makes people better and smarter than others, know that women aren’t unnecessary. In fact, they are very necessary, so long as they stay in their assigned role — as support staff.
It’s interesting that this is also one of the only episodes in which a Black character (besides Michel) has both multiple lines and a name. Francette is the nurse currently being employed to take care of Richard, but that doesn’t stop Emily from treating her like a maid. Which, given that she is a Black woman in a house of a WASPY old white couple in Connecticut feels very intentional.
When Emily tells Francette to go tell the actual maid to tell the chef that they were ready to eat, Francette replies coolly: “Look, Mrs. Gilmore, I have to reiterate, I am here as a medical professional, not a carrier pigeon.” Later, Emily will even call Francette by the maid’s name by accident. This show has always had a problem with racism, but I find this blatant portrayal of Richard and Emily’s racism interesting here in an episode that is outwardly grappling with the way that marriage is necessary to the patriarchal power structure. Because marriage for women, which has so often required subservience to men in exchange for some creature comforts and found within the heteronormative white supremacist patriarchy, has long been a way that white women especially have been implicitly upholding these power structures.
So when I hear Mitchum tell Rory she can have a little newspaper job so long as she helps keep Logan, the heir to the Huntzberger fortune, on track, I see the continuation of this long tradition. Just as Emily, by ignoring her conversation with Lorelai the night before and going back to the comfort — and restriction — of her life, is a symbol of what many women are willing to give up for a sense of stability, safety, and even power of its own kind.
Lorelai is not perfect by any means, she certainly likes to maintain the illusion she has zero ties to these power structures even while taking her parents’ money when she needs it, but she is an example of choosing not to find comfort and stability through marriage.
None of us are truly independent, of course, Lorelai’s kayak is actually supported by a community — a flotilla? — of other folks in boats that show up for her when she needs them. But she does show that divesting from the culture that tries to box women into one role: of wife and husband-supporter, can have many more of its own benefits.
Five Other Things Wrong With This Episode
I get that it’s a cold open, but I am very shocked every time they just cut the scene where Rory and Lorelai have to walk to a gas station because they drove until they ran out of gas and didn’t bring their cell phones with them? I want to see this play out!!
One thing that has certainly changed since this aired in 2007: mocktails have become a real actual thing. Richard would be so much less grumpy if he could have a phony negroni, or a nice shrub instead of a Shirley Temple!
OK I feel it’s a very large plot hole that Rory supposedly has no idea that Logan doesn’t really celebrate his birthday? This would not be the first birthday they spent together? Wouldn’t she have asked him about his childhood birthday parties years earlier? This feels like a Rory type line of questioning, truly.
Emily asking Lorelai why “everything is a corporation” is such a stupid question, and Emily is not stupid! I know they are trying to set this up like these are things Emily doesn’t know about, but the woman reads the newspaper every morning, and is married to a “businessman” she would know what a corporation is and why businesses have to incorporate!
The conversation in the diner between Miss Patty and Babette in which they use codenames for Christopher (the beagle), Luke (the rooster), and Lorelai (the hen), and then Kirk interrupts to say “I'm sorry, but I can't in good conscience let this perverse conversation continue. Are you insinuating that a hen could mate with an ostrich? Because even ignoring the question of biological feasibility, it's completely morally reprehensible,” feels to me like someone trying to write the quirky town characters without getting it fully spot-on. I dunno!
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