Gilmore Girls Sucked.

I'm sorry I have to be the one to say it, but that episode was terrible. It's time to put my communications degree to work and analyze all the ways the show failed last night. Let's go straight to the graph.

DPCTR = Dave's Percieved Closeness To Reconciliation

There's a lot to analyze here. First, note that last night's episode has been streched was out so we can see it better. Also note that this is not to scale anywhere anyways. Thirdly, DPCTR is the only thing I care about right now, and (I'm guessing) the biggest concern of everyone. I'm going to go through this by the points labeled with letters.

A) The reason the season has been so great thus far has been its momentum. As you can see, before this week, the DPCTR has been not only going up, but accelerating. Every episode made great strides, every week I was sure that next week would bring us to the smiley face line (no one knows how far along the DPCTR axis the smiley face line really lies, but it marks the point at which Loreli and Rory make up, Loreli and Luke get married, and all is right with the world). A marks the beginning of this week's episode.

B) This week's episode began looking up, Loreli was talking about Rory, Rory seemed chipper, everything was moving along. But then it just stopped. The show slipped into some dumb filler with Loreli and Luke, and Rory set off orginizing her dumb DAR event. Who cares? Nothing happened this week, the initial spike at A was just wishful thinking.

C) The way I see it, C was sometime around when Rory was texting her assistant at dinner with her Grandparents. Or it may have been way earlier. Maybe when Paris showed up. I can't remember which of those two meaningless events happened first. Whatever point in the show this was, it was early.

D) Death valley. The vast majority of the episode. The entire "Loreli wants Luke to want to camp" plot line? Yikes. We all want Luke to want to camp, but couldn't we assume he still does these things off camera, or just throw in a mention of him doing them, or whatever. It didn't warrant that much screen time. This also held all of Rory's "Gee wiz, I sure am good at planning dances for old people," nonsense. This did hold a couple of fun things, like the shot of Luke in the woods pissed and bored, and Kirk's dance.

E) E is right around when Richard finally finds out that the Huntsburgers were really mean to Rory, and gets all mad. He tells Emily, and it looks like things might actually happen! DPCTR turns up a little bit again here - perhaps this will be the catalyst that starts things in motion. Richard and Emily are mad, Richard goes outside to avoid face-punching (I was really dissapointed by the lack of physical violence here), and Emily strides over to Mrs. Huntsburger. Oh man, here it comes, the pay off for all that junk in D.

F) You can see that the peak flattens out, and sort of holds just for a second. This was due to the back to back events of: 1) Emily's telling-off. Yawn. NOT a good triumphant moment. I think a big problem with it was that she basically told Mrs. Huntsburger that Rory and Logan aren't splitting up. But this is part of the problem! It's like she went over to Mrs. Huntsburger and said, (Grandma voice) "Rory and Loreli are going to keep fighting for as long as they want!" It was bad. But, delaying the down turn just for a moment, was 2) Richard's face as he came back in to punch somebody, but is calmed by seeing Rory. This face may have been important (more on the face to come soon).

G) After the possibilities of the ending, I was unfortunate enough to see the scenes from next week. Now, my dvr cut off part way through the scenes, so maybe there's good stuff I didn't see. But from what I saw, we're moving backwards. You all know I am not a Logan-hater. I like Logan, but I think he's part of the bad new life Rory's chosen, and she needs to split with him to truely come back. But from next week's scenes, it looks like they're together for a long time to come. Maybe that's okay, maybe she'll work him into her old life somehow. But I was very saddened to see no Rory - Loreli interaction (after an entire episode with none).

h) In case you're wondering, h was the point when Rory and Loreli were looking at each other outside the church before the baptism.

So, seeing what happened at G, I must offically withdraw my predictions for reconciliation. I no longer anticipate the event. I really hope next week's episode reignites the fire, but right now I'm afraid they're settling into a very D-like pattern for the rest of the season. You can see my DPCTR has dipped below the starting point of the episode, and is now dropping, rather than rising.

The Possibilities of the Face
This entire episode was setup to get to Richard's face at the end. Because of this I am hoping that it will mean something important. Think about it: the episode starts with a random kitchen fire, which results in Richard having to speak to Loreli, and they basically do a little recap for us of what happened between Rory and the Huntsburgers. Thanks, guys. Then there is a huge ammount of run around getting Rory, Richard, Emily, and the Huntsburgers (but not Logan) in the same room together. The entire plot was a device for Richard and Emily to learn the truth and show their teeth a little bit. So where's the pay off?

I'm hoping that Richard saw Rory and sort of realized what was happening to her. I am hoping that starting next episode Richard is going to become a force of change. Perhaps he will push her to return to Yale, maybe he'll go see Loreli and apoligize for not believing her, and tell her he wants to help, if we're lucky Emily and Richard will start putting the family back together and get Rory out of the pool house.

This is the only glimmer of hope I can see from this episode. It was such a huge ordeal just to get this one moment setup, and nothing else happened, so if it doesn't pay off I think this will prove to be a major stumbling point for the season. This was not the time for a filler episode. Because it's the Gilmore Girls, I will give them the bennifit of the doubt. (crosses fingers)