Hello! Welcome to Return to Stars Hollow - a spoiler-free, retrospective podcast about Gilmore Girls! This is the podcast for Season 6, Episode 21 - Driving Miss Gilmore.
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The next podcast will post on April 5, 2018 for S6E22 - Partings.
Am I too late for the podcast? I probably am. Even with a long weekend I can’t get my comment in on time. But I really want to talk about this episode. When are you usually recording these anyway?
ReplyDeleteThis is another episode that I used to really hate but now I found myself loving it. Maybe I am just so tired of this dumb Luke storyline that I’m happy anything is finally happening at all, it doesn’t matter what. They finally give Lorelai some agency back and her motivations, both here and in the last half of the season, becomes clear.
We know this is the last of the Palladino‘s episodes, at least for these 7 seasons. I still can’t help but Think that Lorelai sleeping with Christopher feels like a giant Fuck You from them to, maybe not the fans, but to the network and whoever would come after them. In a ,we‘re going to really destroy this thing on our way out and you can see how you deal with it“ way.
But, and I cannot believe this either, I guess I am here now to defend Lorelai and Chris. Ok, maybe not that last bit with Chris taking off his bathrobe and climbing in bed again. That was gross and I can’t exactly explain why. And I do have a lot of questions for Chris, much more than for Lorelai. Because he knows she’s in a relationship with Luke, engaged in fact, and how long did it take for him to sleep with her? Maybe that’s part of the reason that last shot of him putting his arm around her is so upsetting. I do like how they’ve started and ended the episode with very similar shots/scenes of Lorelai though, even though so much has changed inbetween.
As for Lorelai, I may not like her decision but at this point, I can’t blame her. And I can understand the decision to go to Chris. She doesn’t want to be alone but what I think is even more important is that she is so tired of waiting for Luke and it hurts so much and she knows that if she doesn’t do something drastic to destroy this and any chance of it, she is just going to go back to waiting again. And she can’t do that anymore. So she hits the self destruct button in a way.
It’s only because you/we discussed this topic at length with regards to Logan, that I just noticed that what Lorelai does here is not that different. She’s technically not together with Luke anymore because she broke up with him and she immediately goes and sleeps with someone else. And she knows that this will hurt so Luke so so much if he finds out. And yet, where I was on Rory‘s side in that situation, here I am with Lorelai. Please don’t ask for my logic here.
As for the Rory side of things, I also really enjoyed this, surprisingly enough considering I am not terribly invested in this relationship. But both of them, and especially Alexis Bledel I thought, sold their goodbye scene really well.
Just so that this doesn't turn into another argument, I realize that Logan didn't "immediately" sleep with those other girls. So maybe I should be judging what Lorelai does here even more harshly than I did with Logan but I just don't.
DeleteSee, I can't argue with anything you two and all the other commenters said about the finale, I agree with almost everything actually. I just didn't bother me the way it bothered you. I feel like on this rewatch, I have reached acceptance of this storyline. Both Luke as a character as well as his relationship with Lorelai are things I haven't really been invested in for a while. And they dragged this Luke is an idiot plotline out so much, and really felt endless, that I just wanted it to end, I don't care how. So in the end, I was only really interested in Lorelai and her side of things.
I would love to know how ASP would have continued after this, if she had gotten the chance. The season ends in such a mess for everyone and it does feel somewhat different than other finales even when those weren't all fun and games either.
As for the season as a whole: A lot of people hate season 7 and I always want to remind them that season 6 exists. Even though I've grown to love the first part of the season, the split between Lorelai and Rory was really well done, almost everything after April's introduction is terrible. Or not everything in every single storyline, but because the Luke stuff and what it means for Lorelai's relationship with him takes up so much space, in hindsight, it overshadows everything else.
I'm really excited to get into season 7. As I've said I don't hate it. I am really curious if the change in showrunners is really so remarkable, not just on a story level but mostly in writing and style.