Today I (re)watch: Gilmore girls, 1.10

“Forgiveness and stuff” is one punch to the heart after another.

But first, a summary: Emily uninvites Lorelai to their fancy Christmas dinner, and both ladies are too proud to talk it out. Richard has a heart attack. A lot of feelings happen in all directions.

SPOILER ALERT. I have seen all the seasons before, so I am reviewing retrospectively. SPOILER ALERT.

I am going to say this now because the scene where Rory is talking about Dean and her feelings with Lane makes me want to say it now: Rory is kind of a shitty friend to Lane. We saw this before in the “Love & War & Snow” episode where Rory keeps not giving a crap about Lane’s problems. This time I just notice it again because Rory will not stop talking about her love life and her feelings and her day of shopping. She is usually talking about herself all the time, rarely (if ever, I honestly don’t remember any instance at all but I could be wrong) asking about Lane’s life and problems. This is indicative, as I said on my first review, of the writers little interest in Lane. We assume that they always talk about Rory because there is more happening in her life (boyfriend, demanding private school, white girl feelings) but that’s not how friendship works. You don’t get (or shouldn’t, at least) get more airtime for being more entertaining. Especially since Rory is not that entertaining even.
I am sure Lane is having a lot of things going on in her life too: her mom is super strict and intense, her father (even though we never see him, we know he lives in their house) must have stuff to say too, her best friend is no longer in her school so she must be making some friends or having trouble doing so which either way gives her something to talk about. Basically what I am saying is: we all have problems, and we all have good, bad and ugly things to talk about. But all we hear in that friendship is about Rory’s feelings and I know the show is called Gilmore girls but would it hurt them both to be a bit less self-centered?

Now that we got that out of the way…

Emily is a proud motherfucker. And so is Lorelai. They had a pretty bad fight, true, but uninviting Lorelai to the Christmas dinner? That’s a bit too much, even for me, and I don’t care about Christmas. The way Emily makes things up to cover for the fact that she uninvited her daughter makes me want to punch walls, too. Anyhoo. I think I have some forgiving to do.

There is a reason why this episode is called “Forgiveness and Stuff”. Lorelai forgives Rory and Dean for falling asleep to The Portable Dorothy Parker (which is blasphemy, to fall asleep to that!) and not coming home that night after the Chilton dance. Lorelai forgives her dad for expecting different things of her than what she wanted for her life. Richard and Lorelai have that cute, heartbreaking, unspoken loving moment. That moment makes me cry every time because they have such a strained relationship and there is almost zero communication. Good, honest, loving communication. I know a bit how that is, and it is exhausting. You want to love someone, but you don’t know how. Richard looks so happy to see his daughter there, and to see how she is watching after him and cares so so much. There is so much love, and both Edward Herrmann and Lauren Graham are so good at portraying that here. Hospitals bring a lot of feelings to the surface, and this episode is no exception: Emily is extremely worried, Rory is extremely worried and confused, Lorelai feels guilt that she is not the perfect daughter and panic that she may never get a chance to try.

Luke and Lorelai also have some great moments of friendship and of caring about each other (especially Luke caring about Lorelai) in this episode as well.

When they tease each other about the fact that Lorelai tells Luke he looks good is just excellent. I will never not say this: I don’t understand how it takes them so long to have sex. Or why she is not in a triad with Luke and Max.

This episode makes me think of how much forgiveness means, how difficult it can be but also how necessary.

Le sigh.