Justice for Lane and Friendships in General

Maggie watches episode 133: "That's What You Get, Folks, for Makin' Whoopee"

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I would watch an entire series of an actual friendship between these two. Instead, we get something else entirely.

What’s Wrong With Episode 133? Lane Deserved So Much More

By Maggie

Legend has it that when Amy Sherman-Palladino had her pitch meeting with the WB (soon to become the CW) she had several ideas that were shut down immediately. At the last moment she threw something out, desperate: “A mother and daughter who are best friends.” Obviously, that’s the one that stuck. Now, I know we are firmly in the post-ASP-era as we enter Season 7 here but this episode had me thinking about that construct, and how the complexity of the idea really is so ripe for exploration. But so often, as happened in early 2000s television, instead of exploration, the show often portrays a glossed-over version of the idea. A mother and daughter who are best friends? How fun and quirky!! We’ve discussed here before (many times!) how this parent-child dynamic seems potentially harmful, parentifying Rory from a young age, and causing Lorelai to sometimes lose the boundary of where she ends and her daughter begins. But while the glimmers of these problems are alluded to the show doesn’t really ever go there.

What I really dislike about the fact that the show held so tightly to this construct, though, especially in these later seasons, is that Lane never gets her due as Rory’s actual best friend. Rory runs off to Lane when she has a heartbreak or a fight with her mom or whatnot, and Lane always drops everything for her. But Rory never really returns the favor, does she? (OK, there is that time that Lane lives in Rory’s dorm, but after that Lane never visits Rory at Yale again!? Like! Come on! She is your best friend and she lives 20 minutes from your campus!) This is, of course, just like how Lorelai can show up at Sookie’s house in the middle of the night to cry about Luke, but when Sookie’s going through it, Lorelai just heads out, letting her get drunk on the lawn and watch Jackson deep fry a turkey by herself. The reason, of course, is that the construct of the show, that Lorelai and Rory are BEST FRIENDS, gets in the way of these other friendships ever really taking center stage. But this is both unrealistic and troubling, especially given how much close attention the romantic interests of the Gilmore girls’ receive.

While I think trying to be best friends with your mother is probably a bad idea, psychologically, I also think, there’s so much damage done to us by this seemingly constantly promoted idea that we all need one person to complete us: whether that’s a best friend, a boyfriend, a mother, or a child. During this episode I kept thinking about one of my longest friendships, my Lane, so to speak. A best friend from childhood who I could call on whenever. Growing up, we were very different in many ways, friends because we lived near each other and playing was easy. But also, we made each other laugh. We listened to music together in our rooms for hours on end, saying nothing or talking nonstop. We also always had other groups of friends, other close friends who cycled in and out. We often didn’t go to the same schools. But I remember thinking at some point, you know, I could be jealous that she has other close friends, or I could just be happy she’s in my life and allow this relationship to have its ebbs and flows. Later, I went away to college. She stayed home. I lived on the east coast, she stayed out west. She got married young. She got pregnant, by accident. With twins. (Wow, OK, the parallel sounds eerie here!) Like Rory, that moment hit me hard, when she called to tell me she was pregnant, and that she was scared and she didn’t want a baby yet. 

I could have let that be it and gone on living my early-20s life in Brooklyn while she became a wife and mother and just somebody I used to know. I could have just channeled all of that into some other best friend. Friendships, after all, end all the time. And apparently, many friendships do end when one friend has kids and the other does not. Instead, I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to let her go through this without me and that even if I wasn’t there all the time, there was still a special way I could show up for her, and her for me. I checked in regularly. I made sure there was time on every visit home to spend time together, to get to know the babies. To get to know my friend as a mom. When I moved back to Seattle five years later, I went over twice a week to help her with bedtime when her husband had late-night class. When my kids were born many years later, she scrubbed my bathroom and brought the best calorie-filled snacks. All to say, friendships are just as enlightening, life-changing, and mysterious as romantic relationships can be. They go through phases but they do require commitment. And to quote Mindy Lahiri of The Mindy Project, “Best friend isn’t a person, Danny, it’s a tier.”

Anyway, I will always love an episode in which Lane and Rory get to have a real friend moment. And seeing the two of them laying on Lane’s bed and discussing celebrity babies* ** and simply being there for each other, the way they were there for each other when Rory and Lane used to do Lane’s cousins’ wedding makeup, or listen to illicit CDs together in Rory’s room, genuinely warms my heart and gives me those season 1 cozy fall vibes. It’s also proof that a show about Rory navigating her friendships would be just as interesting (Dare I say MORE INTERESTING) than one in which we have to pretend Dean was a *perfect first boyfriend* ad nauseum. We are on the record here at Gilmore Women that Rory’s friendships should have been given just as much drama and airtime as her boyfriends received  — and while we love the tension between Rory and Paris and also wish that relationship was further developed — this particular episode is proof of how Lane’s character is one of the most disregarded of the entire show. By the plot, yes, but also by Rory. 

Not only does Lane end up having to marry a terrible character like Zach, who not only books a TERRIBLE honeymoon for them, he doesn’t try to fix it once they arrive in an awful place. He thinks sex on the beach for Lane’s first ever sexual experience is a good idea (and obviously doesn’t talk to her about it after!!!). And he’s so racist and paranoid that he tries to assault the guy they are staying with for speaking “in code” (read: in Spanish) because he thinks he’s speaking “lasciviously” about Lane! (SO MANY RED FLAGS WE ARE DROWNING IN RED HERE). Lane also doesn’t get to explore her music professionally, beyond their band’s Korean church summer tour. On top of all of that: Lane is continuously denied a real friendship with Rory, because she just keeps choosing her mom or her boyfriend over her. Which sucks for Lane, sucks for Rory, and sucks for all of us viewers, because the messages this show ended up sending were: MEN WILL COMPLETE YOU and WOMEN ONLY HAVE ROOM FOR ONE BEST FRIEND. And that’s a damn shame, because I could watch seven seasons of Rory and Lane talking about music and books and walking around Stars Hollow as their lives evolve and they are sometimes closer and sometimes less close, and probably be happy.

*Minus the horrific shaming of Britney Spears…. which in light of all her book had to say about her children makes me want to ugly cry right now. Truly. Britney, I am so sorry for how the media did you so dirty when you were a young mother. Britney is a prime example for why you should stay friends with your friends who have children even if you do not have them! They need you! 

** Also in case you were wondering, “Tom and Katie’s Pillow” referred to the time that Katie Holmes was pregnant with her and Tom Cruise’s baby, Suri, but the gossip rags all suggested it wasn’t a real pregnancy and she was faking her bump with a pillow!! They did not actually name a child Pillow.

10 Other Things Wrong With This Episode

• This episode opens with Luke punching Christopher, wordlessly, at his home. And I don’t know. I think that makes the devolution of Luke into a terrible misogynist complete? 

• Alexis Bledel is SO freckly in this episode! Has she always been this freckly? Is she avoiding proper sun protection in pursuit of a tan like we all were in the early 2000s? Did the lighting just change massively with this season? 

• Luke acts all mad that TJ drank the coffee he got for him, but Luke doesn’t drink coffee!

• I’m sorry but there is no way Taylor would allow Kirk’s to be open on some public town green space! The red tape would be overwhelming! Also the scene at Kirk’s features more Black people in one scene than have ever had a speaking line on this show! #GilmoreGirlsSoWhite

• Sookie just has time to show Lorelai how to make sushi in the middle of the work day? Are they not busy doing other things??? Also the way they talk about sushi is a great introduction to how racist the rest of this episode is. More on that below:

• For example, when Rory gets to Lane’s place, Zack says some very concerning things about the Mexico trip, and then when she gets inside, Brian is wearing a gigantic sombrero and says “Hola Rory,” I guess for laughs…. (and I think it’s actually not the real actor who plays Brian???) 

• Yes, as Megan has written about before, this episode absolutely should have talked about abortion. Also, like birth control beyond condoms???? And while I’m glad Rory at least tells Lane sex can be pleasurable, the whole discussion they have is so strange that it reminds me of the very puritanical way sex was introduced on this show as something to be talked about in circles when Rory was interested in sleeping with Jess and also the reason Paris didn’t get into Harvard?!?! Then Rory says that her “first time had some weird aspects” and like… yes, we remember, Rory, it was with your MARRIED EX-BOYFRIEND. 

• Back to racism: The whole Lorelai turns their house into “Asia” gag is so cringe. There’s a Mao poster (OK, potentially funny?) but then it’s next to one of Sandra Oh? Because she’s Asian-American?! Like, Lorelai and Rory are clearly sort of making fun of their own (or at least Lorelai’s ) naïveté. Hey, they even point out the very racist Mickey Rooney performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s  — but the fact that Lorelai is SO blasé about being that ignorant about an entire continent and basically boiling down everything about the vast diversity of Asian cultures to Hello Kitty, kimonos, and sushi is really problematic! (Sidenote: Asia is a VERY LARGE continent also physically. How long were Rory and Logan planning to be gone to get all over China and to Thailand, Cambodia and Japan and who knows where else???)

• This extremely fat-shaming show referenced that Gwyneth Paltrow made a mistake for making Shallow Hal, and somehow I wonder if they meant it the way I would mean that…

• The scene in which Lorelai and Luke meet at the grocery store that is NOT Doose’s is just so strange. Obviously because they’ve never been in this grocery store before and it’s clearly off of the show’s normal set, but also because apparently they have both made a full emotional arch regarding the end of their years-long relationship in ONE DAY. That morning Luke asked Lorelai to elope with him and then drove to Boston to punch Christopher. Later the same day, they ran into each other in town and Luke acts like he DGAF about the breakup. Then in the grocery store he’s ready to be friends? Talk about economy with a script!

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