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| Lane leading the parade of potential in-laws |
Star-Crossed Lovers
and Other Strangers
Season 1, Episode 16
Original airing: March
8, 2001
My Rating: 42
The Good:
Wow, that was disappointing. Most of this episode falls into
the Bad category for me. I will say, I love the little moments with Sookie and
Jackson. It’s nice to see them becoming comfortable as a couple in the kitchen
scene and during the bonfire.
The Bad:
Overall, I was really frustrated by this episode. The main
focus of Rory and Dean’s date never felt real, their break up was really
forced, Emily’s set up was beyond awful, and the one interesting aspect (Luke
and Rachel) was primarily ignored.
This episode is all about Rory and Dean and the “magic” of
their first anniversary. Oddly enough, I thought Jared Padelaki nailed this
much better than Alexis Bledel. Rory just never really seems all that excited
at any point. She can across over and over again as if she was trying too hard.
I’m guessing it’s a life-experience thing that perhaps Alexis had not had at
that moment. But either way, it made the entire story line feel extremely
unbelievable.
Worse was the supposed break up. It seemed very strange for
Dean to go from “I love you” and I’m building you a car from scratch to “Get
out my face!” I wish we had seen the actual break up. The presentation of the
moment when Rory enters the house and announces it’s over felt very poor. The transition
from their awful “I love you” conversation wasn’t clear enough. It seems like breaking
up would be something Rory would get in words, not just infer. I wonder if it
was Dean or Rory who actually said it.
Lorelai’s storyline was almost as bad. After no mention of
Max for five episodes since their break up (S1E11 Paris is Burning), suddenly
Lorelai is pining for him. They try to push it off as she’s been too busy… but
it seems like she’s just been too busy flirting with Luke and having sex with
Christopher (S1E15 Christopher Returns). If she’s pining for anyone, at this
point it should be Luke. Especially after his flirty little lean in at the
diner.
I actually really liked the idea of Emily jumping on the
chance to set up Lorelai with a society man, but surely even Emily can admit
that Chase is an incredibly boring (and at times, creepy) choice. Poor Chase
gets no good representation in this episode. It’s really hard to believe that Emily
thinks this is a good idea when even Richard is obviously lashing out at the
man. This felt almost like another Rune joke (S1E12 Double Date). Chase is so
boring and creepy as to have no redeeming qualities. It gets old fast to see
him leer at Lorelai and attempt to one-up Richard.
This also led to a sort-of cute, but actually incredibly
poor character moment for Lorelai. First of all, it’s absurd to believe that
Emily put Lorelai’s coat on her childhood bed and not in a guest coat closet
(where I’m sure Chase’s coat is residing). But putting that small logic hole
aside, it makes Lorelai look really bad to have her climb out the window at the
end of the evening. It’s after dinner and desert. She could stay for ten to fifteen
more minutes to have a cocktail and then leave by the front door. It’s indescribably
rude to Emily and coerces Richard into lying to cover for her. It almost makes
it worse that Lorelai acknowledges that this is the exact behavior from when
she was sixteen that helped drive the wedge in between herself and her parents.
It makes it look like she hasn’t matured at all since then and would not, in my
opinion, support her claim to her father that she is a grown adult capable of
making her own, smart choices.
But, the most frustrating aspect of this episode was the
reintroduction of Rachel. This is the exact reverse moment of Christopher
arriving two episodes ago (S1E14 That Damn Donna Reed). Luke and Lorelai are
getting along famously and here comes an ex to derail everything. While I actually
find both Luke and Lorelai’s ex’s to be pretty fascinating, this is just too
close on the heels of Christopher. It’s repetitive. And the show adds insult to
injury by introducing her and then ignoring her for the whole episode.
Favorite Moment:
A small highlight of the episode was the visual callback to
poor Lane and her “date” with the prospective chiropractor… and his entire
family. Seeing everyone troop past Luke with equally suffering, bored
expressions was a great joke.
The Bottom Line:
This episode focused very strongly on Dean and Rory. Unfortunately,
Alexis Bledel’s acting isn’t quite strong enough yet to support the highly
emotional storyline. And it wasn’t presented very well, either. On top of that,
we have two retreads of stories we’ve seen within the last five episodes –
Lorelai’s bad blind date and the returning ex. It’s frustrating to see the show
pulling out the same joke themes while still in the first season.
