Lane Kim Should've Had an Abortion (Or at Least the Option)

Megan Watches Episode 134: "Lorelai's First Cotillion"

Welcome to Gilmore Women: Two journalists discuss everything that’s wrong with every episode of Gilmore Girls & why we still love it.

Before we get to what feels like the millionth cotillion in Gilmore World but somehow isn’t, a few announcements: First, starting today, our merch will be discounted for Black Friday! Yay! Instead of shopping at Schmamazon and/or Schmalmart the day after Thanksgiving, consider supporting our continued deconstruction of Gilmore Girls. Have we mentioned that snarky inside-joke shirts make the best kind of holiday gifts? Until the end of the month, 10% off all orders of $50 or more. Just use the code: DEEPFRIEDTURKEY at checkout.

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She deserved so much better.

What’s Wrong With Episode 134? Lane’s Pregnancy is a Logical Setup for an Abortion Storyline, But The Show Doesn’t Go There

By Megan

Wanna know something weird? I really liked this episode, and the Palladinos’ departure is part of that. I don’t miss them. They were getting sloppy, and one of the things I love about season 7 is the return of continuity to the universe of this show. In “Lorelai’s First Cotillion,” there are clear callbacks to previous seasons — and previous coming-out parties — brought on by Emily teaching a group of little girls how to use salad forks and make polite dinnertime conversation in advance of their cotillion. One of these girls is mildly rebellious, and Lorelai sees her younger self in her, in what I read as a callback to this scene all the way back in season 1, as Rory and Lorelai watch a little girl at the inn get yelled at for running around in a $500 dress at a wedding:

LORELAI: God, I must have had a million dresses like that when I was a kid.

RORY: It doesn’t really scream you.

LORELAI: No. I did all the screaming.

RORY: Thank you for not putting me in a dress like that.

LORELAI: You’re welcome. Of course, wearing those dresses — not all bad.

RORY: No?

LORELAI: Oh no. They really fly up when you twirl around.

RORY: Huh.

LORELAI: And if you're wearing that ruffled underwear — big crowd pleaser.

Not only that, but Lorelai’s wacky outfits have returned, and so has her weird monologuing about silly nonsense. I’ve missed them both! The cotillion and the Elder Gilmores’ nonchalant reaction to her breakup with Luke triggers an existential crisis for Lorelai, forcing her to reflect on her choices and whether she’s made them in service of her own joys and interests or just as an ongoing smear campaign against everything her parents hold dear.

And while I think this is a silly false binary (horrifying her parents sparks joy for Lorelai, so it’s obviously both/and!) it’s fun to see an identity crisis brought on for Lorelai not by last season’s half-baked melodrama but by… a Pop-Tart! Here we get the symbolic root of the Gilmores’ junk food preferences in Lorelai’s recollection of her first Pop-Tart: Like the Charlie’s Angels plates and monkey lamp, the Younger Gilmores’ penchant for eating delicious artificial food-science miracles originates with Lorelai’s fascination with all things she knows her parents would find tasteless.

“I knew my mother would recoil at the very idea of me having a Pop-Tart… And I opened the little silver wrapper, and I took a bite, and I thought nothing had ever tasted so good,” she says. “I thought it tasted like freedom. It tasted like I was my own person. The Pop-Tart tasted like freedom and rebellion and independence.”

OK, silly! But also: This is the most enjoyable product placement I’ve ever encountered aside from 30 Rock’s “Can we have our money now?” joke, and one that, as a Seattle kid raised on Healthy Foods who still enjoys sugary children’s cereals occasionally as a direct result of my upbringing, I found deeply relatable. Pop-Tarts do taste like freedom! This post was not sponsored by Pop-Tarts.

Not only do we get Lorelai’s self-inquiry over breakfast food in this episode, we also start to see one of the joys of season 7: region-specific references that reveal the new writers actually understand the geography of New England. What a relief after last season’s deranged winter trip to Martha’s Vineyard! In this episode, we get references to Tanglewood, which is used correctly as a bougie shorthand. What’s next? Acknowledging that New Haven is a real place where people live and delicious pizza can be procured? I can dream!

Other highlights for me: Absolutely no acknowledgment of Rory’s involvement with the DAR (byyyyyeeeeeeeee!!!!), very little Paul Anka (I love pets but I do not miss pet-as-storyline!), Rory learning to sext via Henry Miller (not where I’d start, but good for her!), more BFF chats between Rory and Lane and Lorelai and Sookie, and a very funny Madame Alexander joke.

We also get this exchange between Lane and Zack about Lane’s pregnancy, and it’s maybe the realest this show has ever gotten about the ambivalence of potential parenthood:

LANE: Zach, this is not how I expected our life to go — be married for like a day and then suddenly having to take on this new responsibility. Bringing a child into this world, it’s so...
ZACH: It’s major, right?
LANE: It’s very major.
ZACH: So, you’re not all psyched about being knocked up?
LANE: Are you kidding? This baby sucks!
ZACH: Yeah! This baby totally sucks!
LANE: It does.
ZACH: It so does.
LANE: Do you know what afterbirth is?
ZACH: No. [Lane shows him a picture] Dude.
LANE: I know.
ZACH: You know how the baby is connected to you by that hose and I'm supposed to cut that hose? No way I'm cutting that hose.
LANE: No way I'm letting you in the room when that thing comes out of me.
ZACH: Oh, man, you are so awesome. I love you so much.
LANE: I love you, too.

I don’t think I’ve ever liked Lane and Zack together more than in this scene. They’re young, broke musicians — a baby really is the last thing they need, and given Lane’s deeply tragic sexual debut, I’d love to see a storyline where instead of a child, she gets to have a healthy and fulfilling sex life! Maybe I’m just feeling sensitive because I saw Priscilla recently, which contains a similar and even more depressing plotline, but I wanted a lot more for Lane than this season is willing to give us.

More isn’t what she gets, despite a setup for it from this scene. This kind of exchange isn’t what happens before you full-on commit to starting a family. It sounds a lot more like a conversation you might have with a partner before you decide you’re going to have an abortion. “This baby sucks!” said with relief that your partner feels the same way? There’s a realism to that. A big-yikes-no-thank-you moment is a prelude to a storyline in which we see these characters navigate the decision to have an abortion, and what that means for their relationship and their future as individuals — not one where they decide, with little explanation, that having an unplanned and deeply unwanted pregnancy is actually fine and a good idea that will end well.

I wouldn’t expect this show to actually go there, but that’s what this scene seems like it’s teeing up. So given what happens next, I think this scene actually doesn’t work at all in the context of the show, because all babies should be wanted and loved, and later this season, Lane and Zack will have twins, and we’ll have to remember that neither of them wanted to have their children at all in the first place, nor will we have any compelling explanation for why Lane chose to go through with the pregnancy anyway. And that’s pretty dark!

The issue for me isn’t just that Lane doesn’t have an abortion, though I think it would make narrative sense. It’s also that her storyline was terrible to begin with, and the possibility of an abortion is never even mentioned, not even in a veiled, metaphor-laden way — which actually has happened on this show — and there’s never a great explanation for why that conversation never takes place.

And there could have been! This could have been an opportunity to mine the difficulty of becoming a parent and navigating the severely mixed feelings that can come with it when it’s not what you planned, even if you end up going through with the pregnancy. Controversially, I am a fan of Miranda’s Brady-was-almost-an-abortion storyline on Sex and the City for this very reason! Sometimes people change their minds and that can be interesting!

It also reflects real life.

Something I know from my work is that most people who are turned down for abortions who go on to carry their pregnancies to term don’t regret doing so, even though they’re more likely to have poor economic and psychological outcomes than their peers who did access care. And even when a baby is what you really want, most people I know who have given birth weren’t universally pleased by the process it took to get there, or never getting to sleep in again, or worrying deeply about another person’s wellbeing for the rest of their life. You might say it’s not a decision to make lightly!

But there’s a huge difference between not having a choice at all — or feeling conflicted about parenthood and pregnancy, which is a form of body horror — and being totally unequipped to care for a baby you actively don’t want to have, and then just going through with it. What makes Lane and Zack’s trajectory unbelievable and odd is that they go straight from “This baby sucks!” to Lane carrying the pregnancy to term. There is no discussion of making a different choice, or even a clear explanation for how they come around to parenting or manage their deep denial and fear about it, and this is a case where that omission, a long-running problem with Gilmore Girls, just doesn’t make any narrative sense at all. As always: Justice for Lane.

9 Other Things Wrong With This Episode

• I’m alarmed that Lorelai has, out of spite, tied her shoes with the bunny-ears technique for 39 years.

• Luke’s reopens after the surveillance state parable that destroyed it, and Babette and Miss Patty get into a discussion about how “something’s different about the place” and Miss Patty says “the light is much better,” which feels like a reference to the distinct change in lighting between Gilmore Girls’ later and earlier seasons. You know what though? I miss the darker, more naturalistic lighting of the early seasons. The lighting is NOT much better, Miss Patty. It’s washing everyone out and making these sets look extra fake!

• I would like to know what Luke’s parental leave policy is. Or, given Luke’s discomfort with the concept of breastfeeding, maybe I wouldn’t actually.

• Sorry but I think Imogene Coca is too deep a cut for even the most precocious 10-year-old.

• In the cotillion scene it looks like Lauren Graham’s dress isn’t fully zipped? I mean, a realistic plight for single women everywhere, but I don’t think that was the intent!

• Rory’s eyebrows are so thin! I was just talking with a friend of mine recently about how the extremely thin brow trends of the Gilmore era destroyed many an innocent eyebrow. I find a lot of Gen Z makeup trends baffling but I’m glad fluffy full Gandalf brows are back.

• In this episode, Lane is wearing her hair in a pouf. Hey do any of you guys remember bump-its? I wish I didn’t!

• This is the most I have ever liked Logan and Rory, and that feels wrong to me.

• Christopher is about to come back in a big way and I would prefer that he stay wherever it is he spends his time when he’s not dropping by to ruin Lorelai’s life!

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Gilmore Women is a biweekly newsletter from journalists Maggie Mertens and Megan Burbank examining everything that’s wrong with Gilmore Girls. All of our episode recaps are free for now, but paid subscribers get special BONUS newsletters, on everything from the politics of Stars Hollow, how Dawson’s Creek and GG compared, and the show’s strange relationship to Judaism.

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