Help Wanted
Season 2, Episode 20
Original airing: May
7, 2002
My Rating: 60
The Good:
I really enjoyed seeing Lorelai and Richard’s interactions
this week. Lorelai stepped in to help her father and he got to see a whole new
side of her. Their interactions in the office were entertaining, to a point. I
did get a little annoyed when Richard started to treat Lorelai as an employee.
But I do think it fit with Richard’s personality to put himself in charge and
be hurt when Lorelai pushed back on his assumptions. It was nice to see them
make up at the party and have this not be a two steps forward, ten steps back
storyline.
Lane’s discover of her passion for drumming is a good thing.
I found it kind of strange in retrospect that she’s never tried playing drums before.
I suppose it has to do with starting to be more and more comfortable rebelling against
her mother as she gets older. Of course, it only goes so far; it’s extremely
cute when she asks Sophie to turn off the lights so she can play in the dark.
The best part of this storyline is how natural it feels for Lane to start
playing rock and roll. It suits her perfectly.
It was a small scene, but really funny, when Kirk tried to
get a job at Sophie’s Music. He’ works everywhere else in town! He probably
just assumes he’ll have good references.
I also thought the scene of Lorelai annoying Michel was
pretty cute. You can tell he’s planning to never return to that diner ever
again.
On Rory’s side of things, I liked her standing up for
herself. She’s trying to take responsibility for her part in the accident (it
was her car and she chose to let Jess drive it), but no one will let her take
ownership of her choices. It was great to see her exert her own agency. She’s a
young woman now and she can be held responsible for her actions. She wasn’t driving,
but she was part of the situation.
The Bad:
I was really disappointed with how the show handled telling
Dean about the accident. I thought the letter was a weird choice and having
Dean read it while Rory stood there watching him was extremely awkward. It felt
to me like it was intended to be a humorous scene with Dean’s constant “Whats?!”
but it fell really flat for me. I would have vastly preferred to see an actual
conversation between them where we got to see what Rory chose to tell Dean and
what details she chose to hold back.
While I appreciate the touch of having a musician play
Sophie (the theme song writer, Carole King!), it didn’t really work well. The
character seemed strangely written and it all just felt disjoined. She went
from insisting Lane keep her hands to herself to insisting Lane sit down at the
drums in four seconds flat. And she caved at the end rather abruptly as well.
In the end, I just didn’t feel like Sophie and Lane played off each other very
well.
The biggest disappointment in this episode was the general
lack of pop. It felt like the whole thing was missing the spark that makes a
Gilmore girls episode really engaging throughout. A lot of the humor fizzled
for me and the drama surged past too quickly.
Favorite Moment:
I really liked the final scene where Rory and Luke were able
to connect on a simple level. After being crushed under the weight of
expectation all day by the town, Rory is able to rather simply express herself
to Luke and he acknowledges her. It’s nice to see the only two people in town
who cared about Jess bonding together.
The Bottom Line:
This wasn’t a bad episode, but it wasn’t great. There were
plenty of strong stories, but there were several general things that just didn’t
fall in to place.
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