Stopping by Stars Hollow: A Critic’s First Watch of 'Gilmore Girls' - Season 2, Episode 9

Happy Wednesday, folks! The sun is shining, the weather is warm, it’s time to get on your flippy floppies and bathing suit because summer starts tomorrow! Whether you’re a beach bum or an indoor kid, I hope this summer goes amazingly for you. I hope you get that job you wanted, meet your true love, and spend quality time with your friends and family. Summer is an amazing time as the air is pleasing, everything is growing, and everyone seems happier.

Unless you work in a tourist town because let me tell you: that shit is torture. Oh well, let’s skip the torment and focus on summer fun as we stop by Stars Hollow!

Season 2, Episode 9 “Run Away, Little Boy”

Hey, Amy Sherman-Palladino? Did we really need this episode? The last episode was so spectacular with its complexity and development of characters. Did we really need this episode to follow that? I guess I didn’t invent that time machine, because if I had this episode wouldn’t have existed. If my time machine did work I would have already told you to make Dean more of a person rather than a plot device and to make Tristan less of a douche nozzle. If my time machine did work I would have had to watch this absolutely eye-rolling narrative about teenage jealousy that ends with a sputter.

Season 2, episode 9: “Run Away, Little Boy” exists for only one reason: to write Chad Michael Murray’s character out so he could focus on his role in Dawson’s Creek. At the end of season one, there was hope for Chad Michael Murray’s Tristian. We got to see a softer side of the asshole playboy and for a passing moment thought that perhaps he and Rory could work out. Even when Rory got back with Dean and Tristian resigned himself to let them be, we felt for him. We were proud of how he grew. Sure he was still a teasing, pull-on-her-pigtails type of flirt, but the end of season one gave us hope that maybe, just maybe, Tristian would learn from his mistakes with Rory and become a better person.

And this episode squashed that hope like a spider in an arachnophobic’s household. All of this episode was dedicated to make Tristian look as horrible as possible, and to cause drama in Rory and Dean’s relationship. However, it’s not hard at all to cause drama in Rory and Dean relationship because Dean’s character’s only goal seems to be to cause drama and turmoil for Rory.

This entire episode keeps building and boiling a sickly stew of teenage angst, with Rory not having told Dean about her one kiss with Tristan, Tristan using this as a tactic to drive Rory and Dean apart as he and Rory play Romeo and Juliet, and Dean… being unnecessarily macho considering the fact that Rory needs to do this project for a grade and if he’s so threatened about one small kiss then maybe he needs to check his priorities.

The worst part about this whole episode is the ending. I could have suffered through this love Bermuda triangle if perhaps the episode had ended with Tristan spilling the beans about the kiss and ACTUALLY CAUSING A RIFT IN RORY AND DEAN’S RELATIONSHIP. But no, instead this entire episode ends, despite all of its build up, with Rory’s problem completely disappearing: Tristan gets sent to military school.

All of that bickering, threatening, bargaining, and machismo was all for nothing. And as I’ve said before: I hate overly dramatic episodes about nothing.

Remind me to try and build that time machine again as we move…

Onto Season 2, Episode 10: “The Bracebridge Dinner”