Taylor Manifests Luke and Lorelai's Breakup

We Watch Episode 101 (Together!): "Say Something"

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

While Lauren Graham acts her HEART out in this episode, Alexis Bledel responds by talking in a… sexy baby voice?

What’s Wrong With Episode 101: “Say Something”? Behold: An Episode About a Big Dramatic Breakup With No Actual Breakup Conversation [Watch Party Edition]

The episode begins right where we left off, at the photographer’s flash going off on Lorelai and Emily’s confrontation at the elder Gilmores’ Vow Renewal. Lorelai books it away from the festivities and when Rory asks what’s going on, Lorelai doesn’t say anything about the fact that she just found out that Emily tried to break up her and Luke by pushing Christopher to show up there and pronounce feelings for Lorelai. Instead, she smiles and tells Rory “Luke is just bringing the car around.” Then gets a cab home. 

Maggie: Lorelai stuck once again with her feeling like she can’t tell Rory anything about what’s actually upsetting her. But then just keeping everything in until they inevitably all blow up later. The curse of the best friend mom!

Megan: Yep. They have a pattern. I also wish Lorelai’s dress was tailored better. It’s cute but it doesn’t fit her.

Maggie: Definitely seems like just one quick movement might result in her flashing someone at this extremely fancy vow renewal party. 

Megan: Maybe that’s why they added the shrug.

Back in Stars Hollow, Lorelai desperately tries to find Luke, who left the party as soon as Christopher mentioned the thing about him and Lorelai belonging together, and Emily’s conspiracy. She asks Caesar. No luck. She asks Babette and Morey. Everyone is extremely concerned that Lorelai looking for Luke means they have broken up. 

Maggie: Babette with the casual “you’re dressed up and walking on a sidewalk = you’re a hooker” reference. Cringe. “Big anal creep,” is kind of a good description of Taylor though.

Megan: It’s kind of weird that Caesar is so apologetic for… taking a break? Are there not labor laws in Connecticut?

Maggie: I guess not!

Lorelai pulls out her cell phone and leaves Luke yet another “Please call!” message. Meanwhile, Rory, back at her dorm, wakes Paris up at what I can only assume is a very late hour simply to ask her whether there are any PHONE MESSAGES for her. (Remember that awkward period of our lives when we all had both a cell phone and a landline and we didn’t realize we could just tether ourselves to a cell phone for all of our communicative needs forever and ever amen?)

Maggie: Once again we have the Gilmore Girls waiting desperately to hear from the men in their lives…

Megan: How many times have we witnessed this storyline? The suspense of WAITING FOR MEN TO CALL. Uninspired work from the Palladinos.

Maggie: Oh no Paris. “No one called … Male, female, or hermaphrodite?” did we really have NO more nuanced assessment of gender/sex at this point in time?????

Megan: Nope. Intersex didn’t really get mainstreamed until embarrassingly recently, even though it’s, you know, medically accurate.

Maggie: And we certainly weren’t even close to discussing nonbinary people on network tv. I doubt I even knew the word “nonbinary” as it related to gender in 2005, sadly.

Lorelai, still on the hunt for Luke, stops in at the arcade, AKA THE PLACE WHERE SAD MEN GO. 

Megan: This arcade again? I love Kirk’s whole vibe right now but this arcade is like the worst addition to the town.

Maggie: Haha! But there are so many sad, lonely men who have no other ways of expressing emotions!! They need to interact with the world somehow. 

Megan: Oh my god. Is the arcade Stars Hollow’s version of Bada Bing on The Sopranos? A chilling thought. Also it’s part of the movie theater? I feel like we’re missing some context.

Kirk tells Lorelai that Luke is in the movie theater, watching a film. Lorelai heads in and tries to talk with him. He clearly just needs some time to think. She is desperate to explain everything. 

Maggie: I feel extra bad for Lorelai in this moment. Especially because Luke looks very good in his suit with no tie. I understand Luke needing some time to cool off. But this is a sad moment for Lorelai, it’s hard to wait out romantic fights.

Megan: It is. I also feel like TV never really depicts the fact that people need time to process, and a moment like this is usually just shorthand for a breakup. Even though it’s totally normal to be like “let’s go think our thoughts elsewhere and come back together once we’ve had our feelings.” I like that Luke takes his space! It’s healthy!

The next day at The Dragonfly, Lorelai is in full professional mode and valiantly planning a 6 girl / 6 doll tea party. Michel is aghast that actual dolls will be at the party. 

Maggie: I really love Michel’s obsession with the dolls not being able to eat real food at this doll tea party. I agree it’s silly to make the dolls real food…but also people love miniature things.

Megan: Yes. Britney Spears would love.

Back in the kitchen, Lorelai tells Sookie she’s upset because of what happened at the party, and that Luke has told her he needs time to think. Sookie tries to console her by telling her an upsetting story about soulmates who breakup and get back together 40 years later that she saw on the news.

Maggie: “I hate when men do that, it’s so vague.” I know Sookie is just being a supportive friend here, but this episode has already made like a billion blanket statements about “men” and “girls” and “women.” etc etc.

Megan: Ah yes, the two genders, according to Gilmore Girls: “vague” and “waiting for a phone call.” Ooh, I like Lorelai’s take on Katie Couric. She really can be bleak sometimes.

Maggie: I’m sad about this whole scenario of Lorelai being so sure Luke is her one guy, so much that she doesn’t want to name “the other guy” in the breakup scenario as though it’s unthinkable! Meanwhile, we all know the other guy is going to be Christopher. 

Megan: I’m pretty alarmed by Sookie’s romantic advice: Things just worked out and they were madly in love forever? Cool, I guess no one needs to work on their relationships or communication skills. Very healthy!

Rory and Paris are discussing their love lives over breakfast in the Yale dining hall. Paris is upset that Doyle hasn’t called recently and Rory is annoyed that Logan hasn’t reached out since their rendezvous in the bridal suite was rudely interrupted. 

Megan: Ooh, I agree about Wheat Chex being the pumpernickel of cereal. Cereal combos are such an art.

Maggie: Awww Rory’s “reading is sexy” Urban Outfitters tee. Such a time capsule.  

Megan: She’s learning how to dress herself! We love to see it. I love that Paris says they’re booksmart but don’t know how to handle relationship stuff. It’s a good insight. I love when smart people are aware of the ways they aren’t smart.

Maggie: Am I having deja vu or confused on timelines…haven’t Paris and Rory sought boy advice from other girls before? Maybe I’m just thinking of spring break last year with Madeline and Louise? 

Megan: I think last season with the laundry guy maybe? I mean they do need guidance.

Cut to Stars Hollow. Lorelai is walking down the street and realizes that storefronts have either a pink or blue ribbon on the door. Gypsy walks toward her wearing a pink ribbon and explains that Taylor is passing out the ribbons because of “the break up,” which has not actually occurred.

Maggie: Oh no. I hate the ribbon thing. Come on Taylor, just announcing a breakup that hasn’t actually happened!!!! I’m very upset on their behalf. However, Gypsy’s crush on Lorelai is extra great when considering this moment, “I’m on your side, Lorelai!” 

Megan: Yeah, she’s great. “Lots of money in ignorance. I’m with you.”

Lorelai tracks Luke down at Doose’s and tries to force him to have a serious relationship conversation right there in the supermarket even though he says he still needs “more time.” Lorelai, desperate to not be the couple that breaks up from Sookie’s story says to Luke, “I need to know what you're thinking right now.” Luke, exasperated, responds, “Fine. You want to know what I'm thinking right now? That I can't be in this relationship. It's too much.”

Megan: I kind of hate that they’re having this fight at all. Christopher is always doing dumb shit. Anyone who dates Lorelai is going to have to be aware of this. And it’s silly that Lorelai wasn’t just honest with Luke from the beginning. The night at Christopher’s is only scandalous because she FEELS like it is. It feels like really manufactured drama.

Maggie: Yeah, she should have been honest and she should have been more supportive in defending Luke to her family….but do we really buy that Luke would say “I can’t be in this relationship, it’s too much”? He knows everything about Lorelai already… he’s madly in love with her. 

Megan: Yeah, but it kind of is too much in this episode. Lorelai is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on him and not really giving him space to have his own reaction to everything, on top of the awfulness of the Gilmores last ep. It’s hard to watch.

Maggie: That’s true.

At Yale, Rory takes the breakfast girls’ advice and calls Logan to ask him to “hang out,” he says she could come over right now. She arrives thinking it’s a date. 

Maggie: Logan just called Rory “kiddo.” And invited her to a poker night. And: “It’s just money,” he says. 

Megan: What a prize. We are obsessing over this guy why? Why does Robert look familiar?

Maggie: Life and Death Brigade? I don’t know!

Megan: He’s a character actor who works a lot. That explains it.

Cut to what is clearly the next morning. Even though Rory was clearly annoyed that this was a poker night and not a date, she apparently has stayed the night, and is just waking up on his couch. The boys are still playing poker.

Maggie: RORY STAYED AND SLEPT ON LOGAN’S COUCH? Come on. This does not feel like her. 

Megan: So begins the slow death of Rory’s personality.

Rory gets a call on her cell phone from Sookie, who has discovered Lorelai in bed totally heartbroken. She’s even missed the doll tea party!! She says Rory should come home ASAP. Rory’s car is at the dealer. So Logan offers her his car and driver. *eyeroll*

Maggie: “You took your car to the dealer? They so rip you off there,” is a funny one-liner, but so begins Logan becoming romantically attractive to Rory because he uses his money to help her out??

Back in Stars Hollow, Rory finds Lorelai in bed and tries to comfort her mother. But for some reason this results in her voice getting higher? And continuously offering Lorelai bourbon?

Megan: Oh NO. This is the scene where Rory starts taking in a baby voice. It’s not her natural voice anymore, which we know is kind of low. And it carries into the rest of the series. The one thing I can appreciate about the revival season is the return of Alexis Bledel’s real voice.

Maggie: That really makes me want to do some side by side video playing.

Megan: I’ve done this. It’s possible I have too much time on my hands. This episode is when the shift begins!

Maggie: I can hear it, it sounds a bit breathier. 

Megan: Oh, Rory said bourbon. She’s learning.

Maggie: Must have been all that time at Logan’s poker party with a private bar. This is one of my favorite things Lane does, though, adding the cookie dough and the toothbrushes to the order Rory puts in at Doose’s, because cookie dough is the ultimate breakup food, and she’s sure Lorelai hasn’t changed her toothbrush often enough. Though the “How ethnic” line about chocolate covered matzoh is a cringe from Rory.

Megan: It’s the proximity to Logan. It’s making Rory WASPier.

Maggie: And Rory just thinks it’s cool to use Logan’s driver ALL day long for whatever she thinks she needs? 

Megan: I am so confused. I thought he was just supposed to give her a ride home?

Maggie: Look at how Rory seamlessly uses “they” as a non-gendered pronoun. 

Megan: All this talk about the dealer is weird to me. I get my car serviced at the dealer because it’s free. Maybe Logan has never bought a car.

Maggie: Haha! I’ve never bought a car. So maybe that’s why I think it’s funny. 

Megan: Maybe it depends on the dealer? I don’t know.

Maggie: I do think dealers charge you more when it needs fixing, but maybe the regular service checks are free? 

Rory serves Sad Lorelai a proprietary cereal mix: “Five different kinds, three sweetened, with a mix of nonfat milk and half and half. It’s a Paris recipe.” Lorelai is into it.

Maggie: Why would we mix nonfat milk and half and half??? Just use whole milk like a normal person!

Megan: Yeah I don’t get that at all. Whole milk is a creamy treat. Does the dining hall at Yale not have whole milk?

Maggie: Ooh, that could be a possibility. There was a dearth of whole milk during that era because everyone thought fat was awful for you. 

Megan: It’s true. It was a skim milk reign of terror. We missed out on so much.

Lorelai leaves a deeply emotional voice mail for Luke, a torch song of a voice mail, the kind you leave when you’re being dumped and really not taking it well. Lorelai realizes this as she leaves the message, then intrepidly commits some light breaking and entering at the diner to get rid of the evidence.

Maggie: “Please … come over.” Is one of those lines from this show that echoes in my head a lot. This is a very good Lauren Graham acting episode. It’s one of the reasons this show is is much more than just a slapstick comedy. She can do this kind of really nuanced deep emotional acting just as well as her comedy.

Megan: I love that she goes to the diner to retrieve the tape, too. That shows a self-awareness she didn’t have earlier.

Meanwhile, at Yale, Rory confronts Logan: Why did he invite her to poker night when she OBVIOUSLY wanted to go on a romantic date? Logan acts like he doesn’t know what she meant when she said she wanted to hang out, because Logan is deliberately obtuse. “‘Hanging out’’s a little vague,” he says unconvincingly. “It’s not a specific boy-girl thing.”

Maggie: “BOY-GIRL THING”

Megan: WTF. Are they in middle school? Are they going to a boy-girl party? YOU ARE ADULTS.

Maggie: Ugh. why would you WANT to call the girl you’re interested in KIDDO anyway? That is not good.

Megan: Especially when they’re the same age? It makes Logan sound like he’s trying to be a suave older gentleman and it just comes off as cringe. Also… he knew what she meant. If you tell a guy you want to hang out, he knows what you mean. Stop being so gullible, Rory!

Back in Stars Hollow, Luke shows up at Chez Gilmore. He and Lorelai actually talk to each other, but it’s the most evasive, weird conversation. They seem to have broken up without ever actually… breaking up? It’s unclear.

Maggie: UGH I HATE THIS. I DON’T BUY THAT LUKE ACTUALLY WANTED TO BREAKUP. Am I just being a Luke and Lorelai apologist? 

Megan: No. I think it’s bad storytelling. They could make us believe that if they wanted to. It’s pretty ridiculous that they don’t even have a breakup conversation. He says he needs space and that maybe the relationship is wrong for him but they don’t actually show them breaking up. But that’s what I mean: In TV world, “needing space to process” is used as a shorthand for “I AM DUMPING YOU” even though they are two different things.

Maggie: Yes, and then at this moment, when Lorelai is finally lucid and Luke is clearly not angry, they have the perfect opportunity to have a real talk and reconcile, but he just takes her telling him that she’s not going to try to cross his boundary anymore as she doesn’t want to be together? For a guy who just spent an entire season reading about communicating well in relationships, that’s really missing some opportunities to… talk.

Megan: Yeah, and I honestly don’t even think they need to stay together. But when you break up with someone, you typically need to have a conversation like the one you’re describing when you’re in a place to talk and process together. Instead it’s almost like Lorelai assumes Luke doesn’t want to be with her, rather than actually asking what he wants. And worse than that, they actually don’t really even seem at all aware of what they want for themselves.

Maggie: YES they just let Taylor decide they were broken up and went with it???? That seems like a really bad idea! Especially for two people who don’t really even like Taylor.

Megan: It seems really implausible to me when they were such a united front against him initially. And again: I don’t think it had to be like this. I think even if Luke had been like “The reality of your family is stressful for me even though I care about you,” that would have made sense. Instead it’s like… subtext that we’re responsible for filling in as viewers. Which doesn’t feel like a bad narrative choice so much as an attempt to avoid making a narrative choice at all.

Maggie: Completely. I get that. Even though I think they could work through that, if Lorelai was just willing to be the defensive person or like lay down the law with her family. But yes, they did not actually discuss anything. And this version makes it feel like — ONCE AGAIN — the writers are just looking for ways to throw hurdles in the way of Luke and Lorelai so we’ll keep watching this show. 

Megan: For sure. And I understand how network TV works! I get why they would feel compelled to do that! But I also think that if they were so committed to breaking up Luke and Lorelai, they needed to find a more interesting way to do it that’s more believable in the universe of the show.

Maggie: Don’t worry, Megan. There are SEVERAL MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO WATCH THIS BREAKUP, UNFORTUNATELY. Also, like, this is a comedy ostensibly? (Or at least that’s the reason given as to why the show never won serious acting awards). Comedies do great when there’s a lovable couple to watch? My biggest note for the Palladinos has always been they should have left Luke and Lorelai alone in these seasons, we could have cute odd-couple banter all the time, and then let the romantic drama be Rory’s as she’s the one in college and trying out stupid things. 

Megan: Yeah, my only explanation for why the Palladinos thought they had to break them up is that they wanted to have a will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic, like Diane and Sam on Cheers, which is like the gold standard. But Cheers is just a much better show than Gilmore Girls in a lot of ways, and I think if they had just stayed in their winsome family-comedy lane and let Lorelai and Luke be together, that actually would’ve been more interesting. Or, I don’t know, give them some real conflict! I’m not opposed to watching a relationship be tested in interesting ways. But don’t go for this attempt at suspense when (a) we all know where this is going, it’s obvious from jump and (b) watching people break up and get back together indefinitely for vague reasons is almost as unpleasant on TV as it is in real life.

Maggie: Yes! And Luke and Lorelai would have a lot of interesting issues to figure out, as they kind of feign at later in the show — where would they live? Would they try to have kids? How would they bring Luke into the Gilmore fold without traumatizing him? I think my takeaway from this episode is: JUST LET SOMEONE BE HAPPY. Or at least not just run away from conflict when things get hard? 

Megan: Totally. I also think that this episode shows why the revival season, for all its flaws, was kind of good? Not only does it flesh out the challenges Lorelai and Luke encounter as an established couple, but it also banishes Rory’s baby voice once and for all. I’m grateful for that if nothing else. The musical is still unforgivable, though.

Maggie: Maybe we should add an element to the newsletter from now on wherein we rank Rory’s baby voice badness in each episode? 

Megan: I think we have to.

Maggie: Fin.

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Gilmore Women is a weekly newsletter from journalists Maggie Mertens and Megan Burbank examining everything that’s wrong with Gilmore Girls. All of our weekly episode issues are free, but paid subscribers get special BONUS newsletters — like our most recent, from Thulasi Seshan on the electoral politics of Stars Hollow.

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