Stopping By Stars Hollow: A Critic’s First Watch of 'Gilmore Girls' - Season 1, Episode 6

Say what did you do this weekend? Go out and get your drink on? Hit the beach? Fall in love?

Oh, you spent your weekend binge-watching Gilmore Girls and drinking too much tea to be legally healthy…whelp, guess it’s time to stop by Stars Hollow.

Season 1, Episode 6: “Rory’s Birthday Parties”

It’s the return of backbone Rory and I’m still as in love with her as I was when I first met her.

The main focus of this episode is the development and circular nature of Emily, Lorelai, and Rory’s relationship—and boy howdy, does it really develop.

If anybody were to do to research in order to define Emily, Lorelai, and Rory’s relationship, this is the episode to turn to. Throughout the course of the episode, the same cycle keeps being repeated over and over again, with Emily trying to be more lenient then falling back into her controlling ways, Lorelai embracing any opportunity for her mother to change, then putting her defense right back up the moment she lets her guard down, and Rory bottling up her inner conflicts when she thinks things are going well, letting things build until she eventually explodes.

What makes this episode so interesting, and not like watching someone paint the same wall over and over again, is that it is if we are watching a bottle of champagne be shaken; we know it’s going to pop but we don’t know when. Emily and Lorelai’s to and fro between friends and enemies shake the champagne bottle labeled Rory, and we are left chomping at the bit. The moment she says that she’s not going to tell her mom about Emily inviting her entire class I am on the edge of my seat just waiting to see when the cork pops and who gets soaked.

The audience has been trained by Amy Sherman-Palladino to have this response. We know that when Rory bottles up, Rory bubbles over, but don’t always know how. In a beautiful revelation, Rory bubbles over onto her grandmother; putting her in her place for being so presumptive as to invite the entirety of Chilton.

The best thing is, however, that instead of stopping there with Rory’s explosion as they did with the Shakespeare exam, they move forward and show us the reparation process—the aftermath and what emerges from it. This aftermath takes place in the form of a supposed end of the cycle with Emily and Richard coming to Stars Hollow for Rory’s at home party.

Seeing the posh Richard and Emily converse with the masses and learn how little they know about Rory and Lorelai is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Heartwarming in that Emily and Richard going forth and trying their darnedest to be a part of Lorelai and Rory’s lifestyle gives us some adorable moments, such as Richard reading a Cosmo magazine. Heartbreaking in Emily’s last lines of the episode as she and Richard drive away, “She's right. I don't know my daughter at all.”

The writers are letting us know that while there is some progress being made between Lorelai and Emily, they are a long ways away from having anything close to a functional mother and daughter relationship. It also juxtaposes Lorelai and Rory’s relationship as Lorelai knows almost everything about her daughter. Well everything, that is, until the end of the episode when she catches Rory and Dean holding hands.

Ahh, to be young and in love.

With the tumultuous rapids of Lorelai and Emily’s relationship more accessible for us to navigate, let’s head farther down the river of season one and…

On to Season 1, Episode 7: “Kiss and Tell”!