Gilmore Girls: I Get a Sidekick Out of You

(S06E19) While I was watching this episode, I noticed something weird. Every one of the main female characters in this episode (well, except for Mrs. Kim) looked absolutely radiant. Keiko Agena looked beautiful. Alexis Bledel looked beautiful. Lauren Graham looked especially beautiful.

Was it the way the episode was shot? Different make-up artists and hair stylists? Nope, it wasn't any of that stuff. Know why everyone looked so good?

They were all smiling.

You remember when the girls on Gilmore Girls used to smile, right? I almost forgot, considering how many episodes had Lorelai, Rory, and, yes, even Lane sport sourpusses over the states of their respective relationships.  These normally assertive and independent women were becoming simpering and sullen, letting their beaus give excuses and act like jerks, all in the name of relationship preservation.

Oops. Wait a second. Lane didn't do that. She dumped Zach when he started acting like a jerk, and he responded by asking her to marry him. Their wedding is what is bringing on all the smiles, and is the centerpiece of the episode. Mrs. Kim is frantically preparing, manning the kimchee factory whose smell permeates her house ("Wow, you can almost see that smell," says Lorelai when she enters). But she finds out that her Buddhist mother, who hasn't been out of Korea in 45 years and knows nothing of the Kims' 7th-Day Adventistism, and freaks out.  Looks like she's hiding something from her mom just like Lane had done with her (the mother-daughter symbolism in this show is not very subtle, is it?).

So, to satisfy her grandmother, Lane and Zach have a Buddhist ceremony, then, after piling her in a cab (after a fusillade of yelling in Korean between Mrs. Kim and her mother), they run to the church for the 7th-Day Wedding.  When Lorelai asks why she's running, Rory tells her and Christopher "Because there are 58 seats and 62 Koreans!"

Christopher? What's he doing there? Seems like Mrs. Kim demanded Lorelai come to the wedding with an escort, even though Luke is still on the trip with April (danger ahead there...), just so Lor doesn't look like a hooker to Kim's Korean relatives. Michel backs out rudely (he probably brushes his teeth rudely) at the last minute to go to a Celine Dion concert. So through some very quick-looking Sidekick communiques between Rory and Chris (he got both of them Sidekicks and used it... often), he steps in.

Everything's going well... all the Koreans leave (after eating kimchee and giving money in a very efficient manner), and Mrs. Kim goes to bed. That's when Kirk's "Yummy Bartenders" take over and the rock 'n' roll portion of the evening begins. Hep Alien plays, Zach is digging the Bhuddist wedding robe he wore, and everyone's still smiling. (Oh, and kudos to whoever designed Lane's dress; it went from traditional to drummer-appropriate with just a few snaps). Then Rory accidentally shows her mother a picture she took with April when they accidentally met at Jess' show in Philly.

Oh, crap.

Smiles? Gone. Happiness? Over. Sourpuss? Back with a vengance. Lor is justifiably pissed that now everyone close to her has met April but she still hasn't, officially. She takes out her anger on a half a tray of tequila shooters (Chris gladly drinks some of the other half) and gets up on stage after the toasts to lament to the crowd about how her daughter's best friend is getting married, and soon will Rory, and then her granddaughter, but nope, she'll never get married. No wedding on June 3 for her.

After Rory and Chris carry Lorelai back home, Rory gets a call that Logan got badly hurt during his Life and Death Brigade Costa Rica excursion and runs out to go to New York to where he was airlifted. The episode ends when a severely hungover Lorelai takes a call from Luke in the middle of the night.

Until Lorelai found out about Rory and April, I was loving this episode. There was no relationship strife, just the old happy-go-lucky Gilmores bopping about Stars Hollow, just like in the old days. The depression that pervaded the last 15 minutes of the episode brought everything to a screeching halt, and that was a shame. It was a startling contrast; I hadn't realized how bad the current state of the show was until I saw the Sourpusses and the Happy Gilmores in the same episode. It made me miss classic Gilmore quite a bit.

I really hope the Palladinos come back next year, something that's still up in the air. They need to see the show to completion, just to reward loyal viewers for sitting through this uncharacteristically difficult season.