Slouching Towards Stars Hollow
Megan Watches Episode 147: "Will You Be My Lorelai Gilmore?"
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What’s Wrong With Episode 147: “Will You Be My Lorelai Gilmore”? Forget Logan, I Wanna See Rory’s New York Times Interview!
By Megan
I complain a lot about how Gilmore Girls depicts journalism, but I genuinely loved Rory’s career development in this episode, which opens with her excitement over getting a call from the New York Times—“and not the subscriptions department!” (She’s so real for that!)
It’s just an informational coffee interview with an editor, but you have to start somewhere, and I remember getting extremely excited about similar interactions when I was first starting out in my career. I also love how she tempers her excitement, because she knows how competitive the internship she’s applying for really is, even if delulu Lorelai is convinced (as always) that Perfect Fairy Princess Baby Angel Rory can’t NOT get it. Rory also says that the internship includes bylines, which suggests a better understanding of how journalism internships work than whatever was going on in season five.
But unfortunately, we never actually get to see Rory’s interview! Now, I understand that it’s very normal for TV shows from this era to leave a lot of the action offscreen (consider Carrie’s exposition about her “Carrie necklace” on Sex and the City, which is somehow sturdy enough to support an entire emotional arc about a lost necklace and a lost identity! Sex and the City is a rich text!), but this is one situation where I WANT TO SEE THE INTERVIEW. Instead, we get all these garbage storylines about how Logan’s company is falling apart so he’s coping with substance abuse and going to Las Vegas with noted bad influences Colin and Finn, who Lorelai says “got kicked out of Argentina with the Bush twins.” Remember when the first daughters being party girls was what constituted political intrigue?
Anyway, we spend a lot of time on Logan’s devolution. He stays out late drinking and WAKES RORY UP in the middle of the night before her interview and though annoyed, she makes him a sandwich, because he is too drunk to figure it out himself, and I just gotta say, like, relationships are complicated, but if you ever find yourself making a midnight snack for your party boy boyfriend who woke you up before a professionally important event because he’s having a hard time at work for the first time in his life, you should probably break up with that person. I know there are some Logan apologists out there, but come on, I’m so glad she rejects his marriage proposal later on this season and I wish he wasn’t in the revival at all. It feels good to speak my truth! To her credit, Rory also hates Logan’s plan and tells him. Good for her!
In addition to this time-wasting Logan storyline, we also get an annoying B-plot about Liz and TJ and Luke’s boat. I’m sorry, but I am so sick of TJ and Liz and their weird baby naming choices and disgusting attempts at cooking that I actually had to pause the episode and take a break when they appeared on my screen. I simply don’t care! I am not even going to relay any information about the boat storyline, except the only redeeming thing about it, which is that Kirk buys Luke’s boat. “It does suit me,” says Kirk winningly. He calls the boat the S.S. Lurk, after himself and Luke. Cute, although I think it’s actually bad luck to change a boat’s name? Any ancient mariners wanna sound off in the comments?
The heart of this episode is a very sweet Rory/Lane dynamic, which, thank god, I love their friendship and it’s always given short shrift. Rory has been tasked with planning Lane’s baby shower, which she doesn’t want to mess up like the low-effort baby shower she hosted for Sookie, but given the New York Times development, Lorelai takes over the party-planning and also ends up running interference with Mrs. Kim and Lane, who are beefing over Lane’s looming parenting decisions. Lane quite understandably doesn’t want her children to grow up the way she did, and Lorelai gracefully helps Mrs. Kim come around to the reality of not being an absolute Emily Gilmore about her daughter’s parenting choices, which may or may not include fried shrimp.
“My mother missed so much,” says Lorelai. “I don’t want that to happen to you.” It’s a statement of fact, and a message from the future about what Mrs. Kim could actually end up losing if she continues her reign of terror into the next generation.
Then Lane has to go on bedrest and she panics because she thinks moms can’t have parties and she doesn’t want to miss this last chance at fun, her baby shower, even though moms can definitely have parties, and Lorelai, a mom who has parties kind of a lot, disabuses her of this tragic notion, and then somehow Lorelai, Mrs. Kim, and Zack take Lane to her baby shower by wheeling her in her bed across the town square, and it’s a cute moment. Listen, say what you want about season seven, and let’s definitely razz most of the writing choices in Lane’s storyline, because YIKES, but I like the bedrest baby shower, not least of all because it’s something that I have encountered in my own family, albeit with slightly less whimsical logistics. I’m just saying: You can totally have a baby shower where the guest of honor is in bed or on the couch. And sometimes you have to!
I love all of the interactions between Rory and Lane at this baby shower, but this one especially:
LANE: You didn’t hear about the fight? Me and my mom, classic Kim family grudgefest? If not for your mom, we might have gone the way of Pretty Girls Make Graves. They were so young and had so many killer albums left in them.
RORY: So my mom brokered peace?
LANE: Hardcore. Listen... here’s the thing. Um... my kids are gonna need that, too —you know, when they’re hiding bibles and they can’t stand me. So what I wanted to know is... would you be their Lorelai Gilmore? I guess that’s the proper term.
RORY: Really?
LANE: I can’t think of anyone who would be better. Plus, you already have the name.
RORY: I’d love to.
Lorelai beams as she looks on at this interaction. And yeah, it’s kind of cheesy, but you know what? Lorelai Gilmores are so important to the raising of children, and this moment feels deeply aligned with Gilmore Girls’ larger themes about what family can look like. Rory and Lane, after all, grew up in sort of a village of quirky aunts; Rory’s always had Sookie, and Lane always had Lorelai. It makes sense that as Lane becomes a parent, Rory would step into the role Lorelai had in Lane’s adolescence. I don’t really think we see much of this in the revival season, and I wish we had.
The episode also features a muted but gentle interaction between Luke and Lorelai, as they look at a childhood photo of Rory and Lane. “Seems like yesterday she was taking up three tables at the diner with those giant books of hers,” says Luke. “She was something. Is something.”
And I actually think this is one of season seven’s strengths: It shows how Rory gets back to herself after the wilderness of season six. She’s not the same smart little antisocial grump we loved in the first season, but neither is she the totally lost person she was when she was bunking with her grandparents and being a repressed society lady 30 years too early. She’s retained the ability to plan parties, but she’s pursuing her journalism dreams again, this time through a more realistic lens. She’s finding ways to support and connect with Lane. She’s changed in meaningful ways, and she’s grown. I would’ve loved to have seen the Rory with this character development carried into the Netflix revival.
Not for nothing, this is also the Rory who breaks up with Logan, and the show never suggests he’ll be coming back. When Amy Sherman-Palladino crafted A Year in the Life, she seems to have jettisoned most of what happened in season seven, and I understand why. But I wish she’d kept this version of Rory.
11 Other Things About This Episode, Not All of Which Are Wrong
The faked vasectomy plotline is revisited in this episode, and I would prefer to never think about it again!
Gill says “You gotta feel pain to create the really good stuff,” which is actually not true at all, and seems weird coming from Gill, a man with a stable day job and family life. I’m not seeing a lot of tortured artist behavior from him, and that’s what I like about him!
Hearing Lane’s married name makes me sad.
I like the sign at Lane’s baby shower that says “Congratulations it’s a boys!”
Zack says of his own baby shower that “there won’t be anything weird or queer about it at all,” which is not how we use that word and also… I’m sorry, have you been to a baby shower? They are often very normative gatherings unless you are my friend who once had a coed baby shower that was just an excuse to eat yeasted waffles in a cheerful backyard in Portland. The waffles, I still dream of them.
“I do not work with memos,” says Mrs. Kim. “I work with money.” Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss, Mrs. Kim!
Don’t ask me how I know this but you actually can order off the kids’ menu as an adult.
I like Rory’s Anthropologie journalist outfit and her little Uruk-hai hairdo when she has her editor meeting.
Mrs. Kim is an early adapter of the seed oil panic. Devastating.
Lazy set deco alert: The “view” from Logan’s “New York” apartment looks so fake.
Babette doesn’t get much screen time in this episode, but her onesies dialogue reminds me that she’s such a David Lynch character and I love her.
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Have you ever thought about expanding beyond GG and looking into other shows that have the same cast member(s)? I am specifically thinking about Lauren Graham guest starring in NewsRadio as Andrea. She's in the 4th season, but it's well worth the ask IMHO!