Warning: Spoilers follow for the
second episode of the Gilmore Girls revival.
And, the image comes from The AV Club’s review of the episode.
Hey, Emily and Lorelai are in therapy! This seems like a great, adult
place for them to be, and to work out their issues. Well, at least, it kind of
did. Lorelai eventually gets something out of it, because the therapist makes
her realize that things aren’t really OK with Luke.
However, Emily eventually leaves the sessions because she (rightly)
thinks that Lorelai is just stonewalling the therapist. And while Lorelai does
eventually seem to have a realization in her sessions, the portrayal of therapy
isn’t great on the show, since Claudia the Therapist is later portrayed as a
loon trying out for the Stars Hollow musical. It was frustrating to see the
show treat the one person with training to deal with the tangled spider’s web
of mother-daughter issues as a loon.
Anyway, Lorelai keeps her individual sessions private from Luke, who in
turn keeps the money Richard left him to franchise his diner secret from
Lorelai. As you can imagine, this whole “keeping secrets” business eventually
bites them both on the ass, as Emily manages to spill the beans to them in
separate, individual conversations.
At this point, let me speak for the deceased Richard Gilmore, because I
don’t think the show did a good job of explaining his intentions – most likely
because it was through the filter of Emily. I took the money that Richard left
to Luke as a sign of confidence in the man, and I’m surprised it wasn’t portrayed
like that. It wasn’t just that Richard wanted Luke to be able to provide for
his daughter; it’s that he thought Luke *was the kind of man* who could.
This is a big friggin’ deal! But the show kind of glosses over this,
and instead shades it as an issue of the Gilmores trying to get Luke to do
something he doesn’t want to. While he doesn’t want to do it, I’d argue that
because Luke is in such stasis at times, it wouldn’t be a horrible thing for
him to stretch himself. His lack of growth is what causes some of the friction
with Lorelai. And as Emily points out, what about people like Cesar? What about
giving him an opportunity to stretch and grow too? And Zach or Lane (or both!)
could be franchisees too… I just think the show too quickly dismisses this
under the header of “Emily being too nosy,” instead of letting that plot thread
develop.
In other business:
- Rory is still the fucking worst, in outlandish and realistic ways. You
know, how she slept with (a) Chewbacca (cosplayer), and also completely bombs
her interview with the online journalism outlet “beneath” her. Rory comes off
as so inept in that job interview that it’s not surprising to me that she’s not
getting other job opportunities. You can’t even BS a couple of story pitches?
Almost any decent reporter has a couple good ideas bouncing around in their ole
brainpan.
By the way, I’m guessing that the whole Chewbacca-bedding killed her
drive for the Vanity Fair article,
since we never hear about it again during the four-episode run. She was writing
it without a contract, so that’s her choice, but even without that sleepin’
around incident, she seemed to have enough content to get something buyable to
Conde Nast. Also…
- Rory rejects the headmaster’s offer to teach journalism or English at
the school out-of-hand, which was depressing. This is another plot element that
isn’t returned to in the show’s run, even though I ultimately found it a better
idea than where they got to with Rory job prospects.
The return visit to Chilton does lead to what I’ve seen other
blogs refer to as Peak Paris, which I agree with and enthusiastically embrace.
Her bathroom meltdown with the empty briefcase is incredible, and the one time
in the Revival that Paris / Liza Weil really just gets to let loose. Oddly,
they didn’t get Chad Michael Murray to play Tristan, yet still had a brief shot
of the new actor in the Revival. The scene would have been more effective if
they had just started it in the bathroom, without the distracting, “Hey, that’s
not really Tristan!” moment for the viewers.
- Speaking of the reunion at Chilton, the visit does cause the three
most glaring omissions from the Revival, since the characters aren’t even
mentioned: Louise, Madeleine and Max Medina. I hope it was simply a matter of
the actors being unavailable, because all three of them could have been easily
shoehorned into the reunion scenes. (I’ll have a “Top Ten” of missing
characters in a future entry, since there are at least 10 noticeable ones
missing for various reasons.)
- Rory’s book deal with The Crazy Lady falling through is probably the
least surprising aspect of the first two episodes. Rory’s personality type
never seemed suited to deal with her, although the scene with the Crazy Lady’s lawyer
is fun times.
- Why didn’t Rory just ship all of her crap to one house? I forgot the
explanation given for that, if there was any. It’s not like she knows a family
member with a giant mansion that could accommodate all of her crap.
- Sneak peek: The third episode of the Revival is by far the worst.
Karen and I were in agreement on that, although for completely different
reasons.
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