About:
Gilmore Girls S6.E06 “Welcome to the Dollhouse”
Drinks Taken: 27
Cups of Coffee: 4
Thank you so much to the great Mandy J, the Paris to my Rory, for covering for me in my absence last week! We have now reached Week 45 of our Rewatch Project, and I have to say, I feel like these episodes are just treading water until we can get Rory and Lorelai back together again, don’t you?
So let’s get to treading! But first – a reminder of our drinking game rules.
The Gilmore Girls Drinking Game Rules
Drink once every time:
Lorelai or Rory drinks coffee.
Emily gets flustered by Lorelai’s bizarre sense of humor.
Sookie is controlling about food.
Paris is controlling about anything.
Michel snubs a customer.
Luke is crotchety.
Taylor has an absurd scheme for Stars Hollow.
The girls acquire massive amounts of food and then fail to take even one bite.
Drink twice every time:
Kirk has a new job.
You see a town troubadour.
Emily gets a new maid.
On to the episodes!
6.5 “We’ve Got Magic To Do”
The DAR dames are all aflutter because an upcoming charity event to support the troops has been mishandled by some old biddy, and now they’re afraid they’ll have to cancel. There’s a week left before the event and Rory feels confident she can turn things around, using a little something called ingenuity and also a little something called The Internet. Emily finds herself growing very alarmed as Rory throws out the old menu and lands on a flashy new USO theme, but the event is a total success, and she’s so proud. The Huntzbergers show up at the party unannounced, and Rory very gracefully arranges for a table for them, although she’s thrown into a fit of rage upon seeing Shira and has a full-blown panic attack upon seeing Mitchum. Richard runs into Mitchum in the bathroom and Mitchum unwittingly confirms everything Lorelai has told Richard and Emily about the Huntzbergers: that they told Rory she wasn’t good enough to join their family and that Mitchum destroyed her dreams of being a journalist. Richard thunders at Mitchum impressively: “You CRUSHED that girl!”, but it’s nothing to what happens when he tells Emily everything. She marches over to Shira and delivers one of the greatest Emily Gilmore moments of the entire series.
GIRL, YES, YOU GO. She is a cold-ass queen of ice and I LOVE HER. I know you and Lorelai still have some making up to do, Emily, but consider our rift healed.
Also at the event? Paris! It turns out she’s now destitute as her parents have “flipped the bird at the IRS one too many times” and Paris’ trust fund doesn’t kick in until she’s 25. When Rory suggests a job – and even offers Paris one, as a server at the USO event – Paris agrees with her usual enthusiasm, and soon she’s quoting Karl Marx and planning the demise of the “commodity fetishists” among whom, not so long ago (like, yesterday) she once moved. Have I mentioned lately that I love Paris?
Luke has been extra, extra cute this week – he joins Lorelai for a double date dinner at Sookie and Jackson’s, which turns out to be super annoying because their kids are annoying and, love them as I do, they’re pretty annoying, too, but Luke handles it pleasantly. He cooks hamburgers for Paul Anka (medium rare, just the way Paul Anka likes them), goes shopping with Lorelai and cheerfully offers to attend Miss Patty’s recital with her, and Lorelai starts to fret that Luke’s losing his identity and just doing whatever Lorelai wants. So she makes him go camping the night of the recital, and he sits in the woods, brooding alone.
As that’s happening, Sookie and Lorelai are CRACKING ME UP because they cannot handle the kids dancing in the audience for the opening number of the recital, “We’ve Got Magic to Do” from Pippin (my own high school musical!).
My favorite is when Sookie yells, “This is so stressful!” Anyway, Lorelai sees that Luke has returned home early from camping, and she goes to talk to him. He tells her he felt like she banished him to the woods, and she apologizes, explaining that she just wanted to make sure he gets to do all the stuff he likes to do. Luke sighs, “Look… I like doing things with you. Surprised I have to tell you that. I like going shopping with you, I like having dinner with Sookie and Jackson. The actual shopping seems a little pointless, and Sookie’s kids drive me up a wall, but you’re there, and I like hanging with you. And I could have been fun at this recital. I mean, you’re probably sitting there mocking most of it. I can mock stuff.” IT IS SO CUTE. Dammit, I love this man! He and Lorelai make up adorably and he heads back to the woods, because, well, she’s right. He does like to camp.
Meanwhile, there’s another fire at the Inn, this time at the Dragonfly! Fortunately it’s just a little stove fire, but Lorelai has to consult Richard for their insurance reimbursement, and it’s awfully awkward. It’s also pretty uncool of Lorelai, because he’s there to help her and she immediately starts ragging him about Rory: “How’s your big plan for Rory working out? Is she back at Yale? Are you planning to trick her into going back? And how are the Huntzbergers?” etc etc. It all feels rather unnecessary, but it seems to stick after Richard’s talk with Mitchum. He sees Rory onstage at the USO event, the perfectly coiffed darling of the DAR, and we see it dawn on his face that Lorelai is right.
How many times do I have to drink?
13.
How many cups of coffee do the Gilmore girls drink?
1.
Flirtation quota
Luke just wants to hang out with Lorelai, you guys! LET HIM HANG OUT WITH YOU, YOU IDIOT.
Best/most dated pop culture reference
Paris, on the first day of her first job: “And I’m prepared too. I was a little nervous last night about making small talk with co-workers, so I went to the video store and rented Working Girl and the first season of Just Shoot Me. Got a couple of Wendie Malick bon mots that have already come in handy.” Paris, you’re my fave.
Sookie’s best dish of the episode
While the stove is broken: “We’ll show ’em you don’t need fancy stuff like stoves in order to make a delicious meal. We’ve got salads. Lots and lots of salads, caprese and endive and arugula and…Ooh! Cold sandwiches. And beef carpaccio and tuna carpaccio and vegetable carpaccio and oh my god, I need my frigging stove back. I’m dying here!”
Lorelai’s craziest outfit
Nope.
Outfit MVP
This look sure suits her.
Kirk insanity
Good lordy, I love this recital. Because also this happens:
Michel madness
Michel has no patience for Sookie’s melodrama about the stove. “She’s been Scarlett O’Hara for two hours. It’s sickening.”
Best Gilmore Gal witticism
All of Paris’ Karl Marx stuff is so good. “I bet you the Romanovs never RSVP’d either. They got theirs. Capitalist scum. I hate the rich. A hard rain is gonna fall, you know what I’m saying?”
Random observation
Two observations: first, when Emily’s panicking that Rory will mess up the DAR event, Richard says calmly, “Emily, please. It’s Rory. What she tackles, she conquers.” While this is a charming point of view, it’s also sort of what got them into this mess – his belief in Rory’s infallibility. My other observation is that it occurs to me that Rory’s just trying to groom herself into Huntzberger material: she drops out of Yale, quits her job, starts wearing preppy little suits and joins the DAR. This is just what Shira was looking for in a wife for Logan.
6.6 “Welcome to the Dollhouse”
Taylor has a crazy scheme (drink!) to change the names of Stars Hollow’s roads into their old-timey names of yore, cute names like “Constabulary Road.” Unlike the rest of Taylor’s schemes (and we get a running list, it’s so good: “It’s not like the time you guaranteed the tourists a mosquito-free summer and then released hundreds of bats all over town.” “Or how about when he was trying to attract families to visit the town by driving his van around other towns and beckoning kids with candy!” “What about when he had us re-enact the Boston Tea Party in the lake?” “What about the museum of rocks that looked like famous people?”), the townspeople are all about it, including Lorelai – until she, Sookie and Michel discover that The Dragonfly will now sit on Sores and Boils Alley. They are DISMAYED, to say the least, and Lorelai decides to pull some Norma Rae business to force Taylor to change it while still keeping The Dragonfly on the Historical Stars Hollow map.
Taylor agrees to change the street name back to boring old Third Street if they’ll donate a hundred bucks to the historical society, but then he pats Lorelai on the head and says “good girl,” so you can guess what happens next – Sores and Boils Alley it is!
Emily discovers that Richard and Lorelai communicated last week about the stove fire, and she’s jealous, so she starts mailing random shit to Lorelai to get her attention: an antique clock, an antique bellows, a gigantic antique urn (delivered to Luke’s Diner as an extra twist of the knife). Lorelai continues to ignore her until Emily finally calls and says she wants to get rid of Lorelai’s beloved dollhouse, and Lorelai has one day to pick it up or it’s being donated. Lorelai tells Emily that if she’s that mean-spirited, to go ahead and get rid of it, and she hangs up with Emily looking very dissatisfied.
Meanwhile, Richard’s been concerning himself over Rory’s comings and goings ever since realizing that she’s morphing into a little Emily. He tries to find out from Logan what she’s been up to, and Logan misinterprets the conversation and thinks Richard’s asking Logan about his marital intentions toward Rory. The misunderstanding is cleared up, and Logan makes his affection for Rory known by buying her a Birkin bag. From what I can tell from the Internet, this particular model is FOURTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, and while I think it’s a sweet gesture, it’s also sort of clueless. Rory obviously has no idea what to do with this Birkin bag, and all it succeeds in doing is inciting Emily’s envy, since Richard has never taken to any of her many hints about wanting a Birkin bag herself.
Anyway, it is sweet, and Rory tells Logan that she loves him. He doesn’t quite respond, but she tells him that’s fine because she doesn’t want to pull a Dean. They kiss, and it all seems nice and fine.
Finally, Richard shows up on Lorelai’s doorstep with the dollhouse. “I thought you’d want this. And…we need to talk about Rory.” The credits roll!
How many times do I have to drink?
14.
How many cups of coffee do the Gilmore girls drink?
3.
Flirtation quota
A fourteen thousand dollar purse, people! That is some pricey flirting. Plus Luke and Lorelai are just ceaselessly cute.
Best/most dated pop culture reference
When Logan hands Rory the box containing the Birkin: “Wow, you did it. You brought me the head of Alfredo Garcia.”
Sookie’s best dish of the episode
When freaking out over the menu now that they’re on Sores and Boils Alley: “White sauce looks like pus! Salsa Verde looks like infection!”
Lorelai’s craziest outfit
Two eps in a row of sane outfits!
Outfit MVP
They both look so cute this week, I couldn’t decide. Get back together, girls!
Kirk insanity
So many things, but mainly this.
Lorelai: “But you and I talked about the street names only this morning! How could the Dragonfly already be off the map?”
Kirk: “You know the old saying: cross the Don in the morning, sleep with the fishes in the afternoon. Plus Taylor has one of those really fast laser printers.”
Michel madness
He is so grumpy when he’s short on sleep.
Michel: “I’m not at my best if I don’t get my model’s twelve.”
Sookie: “Well, you hide it beautifully.”
Michel: “It’s the Kiehls. Absinthe serum with ginkgo extract. Like you’re washing your face in a bowl of diamonds.”
Sookie: “A bowl of diamonds? Doesn’t that just cut up your face?”
Hah!
Best Gilmore Gal witticism
Michel again, when Lorelai asks if he ordered the antique clock that arrived mysteriously at the Inn. “Yeah, right. Like I’m going to buy an analog clock. Do I look two hundred and five?”
Random observation
Guys. A FOURTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR PURSE. I cannot.
And that’s it for this week! Meet us back here next Wednesday morning as we cover “Twenty-One is the Loneliest Number” and “Let me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out,” aka – the last episodes of Rory and Lorelai’s estrangement!
And I leave you with a question, dear FYA readers. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to harp, but what was Logan thinking with that bag? Is it sweet or totally out of touch? Also let’s talk about how much Emily kicks ass for that Shira speech!
