About:
Gilmore Girls S3.E02 “Haunted Leg”
Gilmore Girls S3.E03 “Application Anxiety”
Drinks Taken: 41
Cups of Coffee: 5
We’ve reached Season Three and I can scarce believe it! We’re on Week 15 of our glorious Rewatch Project, and things are really starting to heat up big time. Who am I kidding – things have been heated up for ages. Business is on permanent simmer here in Stars Hollow.
So let’s get to it, 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!
3.1 “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days”
“Not fair!” you may cry upon seeing the above picture and then realizing it’s from a dream, but then you know exactly how I feel every time I watch this episode. It opens with Lorelai waking to the cacophony of a hundred alarm clocks. She grumps into the kitchen where she discovers Luke cooking her waffles in his adorably curmudgeonly way. He tries to get her to drink decaf coffee on the sly, they banter, he kisses her and then says goodbye to the twins that are growing in that flat tummy of hers. This idyllic tableau of domesticity – and trust me, it is idyllic – is of course nothing but a dream. Lorelai wakes and immediately calls Rory in D.C. to ask her what it means. Rory says it means that Lorelai is secretly in love with Luke and I mean HELLO DUH, but Lorelai demands a different interpretation. Rory sadly hazards that it means Lorelai is still grieving over Christopher and jealous that Sherry is having his baby, and well, I guess both interpretations can be true at once. Chris has been trying to call both Rory and Lorelai, but they’re freezing him out in solidarity – not that they’re mad at him, exactly, they’re just not ready to talk to him.
Rory’s summer in D.C. has been mostly uneventful, while Paris has spent her time terrorizing every member of the Senate and the House of Representatives. She’s in her element, let’s just say, even if she does rant in her sleep about Woodward, Bernstein and Monica Lewinsky, and she therefore catches the eye of tall, handsome, charming Princeton man Jamie, who asks her on a date while she remains blissfully unaware. Rory later fills her in that she was indeed asked out, and Paris becomes a bundle of nerves. I love the way they confide in each other as Rory helps Paris get ready for the date (and boy, does Paris look beautiful), because these two have become true friends. Rory, meanwhile, has been apparently trying to write a letter to Jess for two months and failing miserably, and she’s also dodging Dean’s “I love you”s during phone calls, so Paris is the only one getting any action in our nation’s capital.
Finally, Rory returns home and she and Lorelai greet each other like this:
I love how co-dependent they are! But the joyful reunion doesn’t last long – Lorelai is suspicious of Rory’s fancy wardrobe change just to go into town (for the newest Stars Hollow Festival, the End of Summer Madness Fest! – and may I just add that Rory is looking super grown up these days), and when Rory sees Jess doing some major tree-macking with a random floozy, she is stricken and tells Lorelai about their kiss. Lorelai gives her a long overdue Come To Jesus talk. She tells Rory that she’s been treating Dean like dirt and she needs to make up her mind between Jess and Dean, because she’s being unbelievably unfair. Amen, sister! Rory doesn’t take the talk well and storms off with Dean (all the while eyeballing Jess and Tree Floozy), while poor Lorelai has to go to dinner and tell her parents, who have been in Martha’s Vineyard all summer, that it didn’t work out with Chris. They’re so upset, and Richard is a real dick and completely blames Lorelai, while Emily acts slightly better and blames Chris instead. In all the blaming hubbub, Lorelai sadly sneaks out and heads to Luke’s, where they FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY (after, what, three months?) make up from their fight. Mostly because Lorelai is so devastated that even Luke’s cold, grudge-holding heart cannot stand against her. They’re friends again, and all the world celebrates! Now get to making twins, you two!
The episode ends as Lorelai heads home to discover an abashed Rory, who has decided Lorelai is right and she is 100% on Team Dean again. Apparently the Jess thing was just a crazy phase. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Tree Floozy, right Rory?
How many times do I have to drink?
19! Big episode.
How many cups of coffee do the Gilmore girls drink?
Just the one, and it’s really a dream cup of coffee, so I dunno if it counts. I counted it anyway.
Flirtation quota
Not all that much. Dean keeps trying to flirt with an utterly disinterested Rory, poor fella.
Best/most dated pop culture reference
Lorelai, complaining to Rory about her empty summer: “You’re gone and the house is quiet and Bill Maher’s canceled. The name of the show was Politically Incorrect, for God’s sake. Didn’t anybody read the title?! He was supposed to say those things, dammit!”
Sookie’s best dish of the episode
Sookie is too busy LOSING HER MIND to cook this week. She wants to redecorate her house to make Jackson feel more at home – despite his urgent assurances that he feels perfectly at home in the house the way it is – and her attempts to turn the house “manly” instead turn it into something closer to “terrifying.” I present to you a before and after:
Lorelai’s craziest outfit
This pink paisley dress is okay, I guess, but good jeezy chreezy that bucket hat needs to be burned tout de suite:
Kirk insanity
Oh, Kirk. He’s decided he’s now an inventor of skin care products (drink!), and he created a line called Hay There, made of hay, because cows eat hay and cows hardly ever wrinkle. Obviously. It’s brilliant! Unfortunately, “with continual use, the cream develops some weird reactions to light. . .and air. . .and movement.” This may be his briefest career yet.
Michel madness
I just love Michel’s reaction to Kirk’s Hay There pitch. “So sad not to have a cocktail in your hand every time he comes by, no?”
Best Gilmore Gal witticism
I don’t know why, but I sure did chuckle when Rory’s first response to Lorelai’s twins-with-Luke dream is simply, “You’re gonna be so fat!”
Random observation
This season, everyone is really blooming into the people they want to be. Paris and Rory are becoming friends and crushing it in student council and applying to colleges, Lorelai and Sookie really buckle down in their mission to buy the Dragonfly Inn, Lane is becoming a drummer, Luke pushes his rigid boundaries for a change. I love Season Three. It feels like the full flower of Gilmore Girls, the best it ever gets. (That’s not to say I don’t love some later episodes! I just think the show is at its best here.)
3.2 “Haunted Leg”
Rory’s senior year has begun, and she and Paris have been sworn in as student body president and VP, respectively. Paris is being her typical Machiavellian self, firing 90-year-old librarians while they’re in intensive care, while Rory tries to do damage control – meanwhile, Francie of The Puffs is doing her best to undermine Paris and implicate Rory. Political intrigue abounds!
Lorelai is still dealing with Emily’s meddling over the Christopher situation, and they have a few very harsh words about it as Emily tries her best to push Christopher on Lorelai. However, when Christopher – who still hasn’t heard from Lorelai or Rory – shows up at Friday night dinner unannounced and starts yelling at Lorelai about how unfair it is that she won’t speak to him, upsetting Lorelai and Rory beyond words (although they certainly do a fair job of sticking up for themselves), Emily rears back and sends him home with the fierceness of a goddess of war. Love that ice queen! Looks like she and Lorelai have made up, while Christopher is still in Alienation Town, Party of One. Well, actually, it’s Party of Three, because Sherry’s still pregnant and he’s going to marry her. Poor Lorelai. At least she and Luke have made up SO ADORABLY, it’s like no time has passed between them!
Rory’s still doing her best to ignore Jess and Tree Floozy, until Jess tries to be friendly with her at Doose’s and they have words. Doesn’t seem like she’s trying all that hard to make it right with Dean despite last week’s vow, because she demands to know how Jess could start macking with Tree Floozy after their kiss at Sookie’s wedding, and I am 100% on Jess’ side when he points out that Rory kissed him, told him to keep it a secret, ran away and then didn’t contact him for two months, and, oh yeah, SHE’S STILL WITH DEAN. Rory storms out and says for the thousandth time that she’s done. We’ll see, won’t we?
And in case you were wondering, here’s how we got the most excellent title of this episode:
How many times do I have to drink?
11.
How many cups of coffee do the Gilmore girls drink?
3.
Flirtation quota
I am SO HAPPY to see that Lorelai and Luke are back to their old fight-flirting routine. They’re fight-flirting with extra verve this week, so it’s pretty clear they both missed it! As did we, you guys. As did we.
Best/most dated pop culture reference
Rory, trying to convince Lorelai to save a seat for Emily at the swearing in ceremony: “Hey, we are family.” Lorelai: “Yeah, well, look how great that worked out for Sister Sledge.”
Sookie’s best dish of the episode
She makes stuffed pork chops for the meat-eaters, but is APPALLED at being forced to create a boring pasta dish for a couple of vegetarians at the Inn.
Lorelai’s craziest outfit
Oh, satiny flowered bustier shirt, you’re not so good.
Kirk insanity
Aww. Kirk decides to ask Lorelai out on a date because she’s the prettiest woman he’s ever seen “outside of a really filthy magazine.” He gives her time to think it over, and Luke and Rory are SO TICKLED, but Lorelai is distressed. She eventually lets him down quite sweetly, and he handles it very well, and it makes me love Lorelai and Kirk each a little extra this week.
Michel madness
While he’s searching for a mouse loose in the Inn, he overhears Kirk’s proposal. Lorelai tells him not to say a word, and Michel replies, “I am doing nothing. Ben, however, has dropped dead from laughter.”
Best Gilmore Gal witticism
When Lorelai’s trying to distract Emily’s Christopher Crusade by telling her that someone they both know murdered her husband, Emily replies sniffily, “At least she had a husband to kill.” BURN!
Random observation
I love so much when Lorelai wakes Rory up on her first day of her senior year and hands her a piece of paper. “It’s your bill. I’ve been crunching the numbers, you know, adding up what you’ve cost me over the years – raising you, clothing you, feeding you, etc etc etc. I’ve itemized everything here by years and income ratio. I thought you could factor it into your student loan. One thing that’s painfully obvious here – you’ve used an extraordinary number of diapers. Really, it’s cost a fortune. What were you using all those diapers for?” hehe!
3.3 “Application Anxiety”
Rory receives her application to Harvard, and at first she and Lorelai are all smugly convinced that she’s got it in the bag, until a discouraging college application adviser (Rory) and Emily Gilmore (Lorelai) convince them otherwise – then they start to big time panic. Lorelai arranges a lunch with a Harvard alum and his family so Rory can ask some questions, and the alum’s family is suuuuuper boring and lame, obsessed with trivia the way boring and lame people often are. Rory meets the Other Daughter on her way to the bathroom, and Other Daughter skipped college and has multiple jobs, plus she’s fun and cool, so of course the boring family hides her upstairs. Rory later tells Lorelai how much she appreciates that Lorelai never pressured her to be anything in particular, and it’s really quite sweet. Rory of course impressed the alum’s cravat off, so right when she and Lorelai are both feeling good about Harvard, Dean and Jackson make some faux pas about Rory going so far away, and it starts to hit the ladies that they won’t be within codependent distance once Rory heads to Cambridge. They cancel their afternoon plans and decide to spend the day together, like the mutually needy little lovebugs they are.
Meanwhile, Taylor has a scheme (drink!) that’s making Luke pretty crotchety (drink!) – he wants to open an old-fashioned soda shop in the space next to Luke’s diner, a space that Luke owns. Luke is bound and determined to refuse him, until Lorelai mentions in passing that she likes ice cream, and all of a sudden it’s a go. Aww. And excuse me – according to the sign, it’s a soda shoppe.
And finally – Lane’s put out an ad as a drummer seeking a band, and you know what that means…Dave Rygalski! Yes, that’s right, the impossibly adorable Adam Brody stops by to woo Lane into his band, and of course he’s also wooed his way right into her heart, and into the hearts of ALL OF US.
How many times do I have to drink?
11.
How many cups of coffee do the Gilmore girls drink?
1.
Flirtation quota
Well, Luke’s willing to let Taylor open an old-fashioned soda shoppe just for Lorelai, so that counts, right? Dean and Rory actually do some light flirting for a change, until he ruins it by asking if they’re going to break up when she goes to Harvard.
Best/most dated pop culture reference
When Rory’s application arrives, she and Lorelai are watching The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, to their chagrin. They decide to tell people instead that Rory was reading Dead Souls and Lorelai was looking at a really big globe when the application landed.
Sookie’s best dish of the episode
Not so much, but she and Jackson sure do enjoy the little soda shoppe model Taylor made, complete with Jackson holding a tiny zucchini. (dirty!)
Lorelai’s craziest outfit
These striped pants, Lorelai. LORELAI. No.
Kirk insanity
Taylor sends Kirk to ask Luke for a chocolate phosphate to convince him the town needs a soda shoppe. I enjoy typing the words soda shoppe, if you hadn’t noticed.
Michel madness
No Michel, more’s the pity.
Best Gilmore Gal witticism
Rory’s too scared to call the Harvard alum and set up a meeting, so Lorelai does it for her, pretending to be Rory in this weird, breathy, bimbo voice. Rory: “Not so breathy!” Lorelai: “That’s how chickens talk!”
Random observation
Here. I made you this.
So there you have it! Meet me back here next Wednesday morning for “One’s Got Class and The Other One Dyes,” “Eight O’Clock at the Oasis” and “Take the Deviled Eggs…” I’m looking forward to it!
And I leave you with a question, dear FYA readers: how do you feel Lorelai and Rory are dealing with this Christopher situation? Are they justified? Is he? Also – how cute is Dave Rygalski? The cutest, right?
