(S07E04) Damn you, Dave Rosenthal! You're making me start to like the idea of Christopher and Lorelai together. I can't believe I'm actually thinking it, much less writing it; but tonight's episode showed why that couple has always been so good together over the years. I just wish we didn't have to see those two be cute and laugh and have banter about Snakes on a Plane together at the expense of Luke.

But Luke's OK, sorta. He's got the Tortured Plot Device -- known to most people as April -- in his life.

So it looks like we're starting to get past some of the angst and into some lighter territory, which is good for everyone, from the writers to fans like me who have been rending their garments for the last year at the show's depressing turn. In an article about the show in last Sunday's New York Post, Sara Stewart found out that most of the fans just didn't think the show was flowing as well as it had in the past. She even quoted some doofus as saying the show wasn't built for emotional angst.

That doofus is right; even under Team Palladino, the flow of the show was creaking under the weight of surprise children, freeze-outs, family issues, and overall mopitude. There were too many emotional outbursts and not enough fun, and fun is what makes this show go.

But we had some fun tonight. We're six weeks past all the tsuris of the Luke/Lor breakup and the Logan departure (we kind of knew time passed due to Sookie's overflowing gourd harvest and the fact that Yale was back in session, but for some reason, they had to work the words "six weeks" into the dialogue), and it shows. Chris and Lorelai, who are taking things slowly, go on a fun date that only Chris and Lorelai could go on. A lonely Rory finds a couple of new friends at a Yale art show; even though the friends aren't really her type, she's just happy to have someone around. Luke, still a little lonely himself, is getting used to having April around, even shopping at Tar-shay for the first time (can we declare that "Target/Tar-shay" joke officially dead). Even Richard is happy; he's going to teach economics at Yale. Lots of smiles, lots of banter. Everyone's doing OK.

Well, except for Emily. During that whole scene when she's driving and talking to Richard on the phone, I was thinking, "Pheh, on TV, you're allowed to talk on your cell while driving and not get caught." Little did I know that five seconds later, she not only was going to get caught, but was going to refuse a Breathalyzer test and get hauled off to jail. Lorelai's glee at having to bail her mom out was palpable; I especially liked how she took pictures of the cops and the police station with her camera phone. It seemed like a very GG-ish topper to the "showing of Funny Face on the side of the barn" night that Lor and Chris had.

That being said, I was happy that both Sookie and Rory sounded warning bells. Christopher isn't a rebound guy, a "bouncy ball," as Sookie put it, he's a big "bowling ball", mainly because of the whole thing about being Rory's dad and everything. Rory just doesn't want her mom to get hurt again. Even Lorelai wanted to take it one step at a time, as we saw right after the movie ended. She demurred, something she never did with Chris. Then the call from the cops came and all bets were off. I'm still not overly happy the two of them are together; I think the writers have Lor going way too fast yet again. But I'm starting to warm to the idea of the two of them being a couple, even if it's just for half the season, before the inevitable comeback of Luke into the picture.

Poor Luke looks adrift right now, doesn't he? The diner looks empty without the Gilmore girls' presence. Even having Kirk complain about the women in his life and Miss Patty talk about kneecapping ballerinas didn't really help. Now we've got April to anchor him for a while (Anna dropped her off to go tend to her mother). It was cute that April wants to set Luke up with someone, but you just know that he's still a little heartbroken, trying to convince himself as much as April that it wasn't meant to be. This isn't as painful to watch as the Lor/Rory split of last season, but not seeing either Gilmore in the diner is just wrong.

Rosenthal and his staff seem to like giving Paris her moment in every episdoe; this time it was her bragging about Doyle's fact-checking job at the Hartford Courant. In true Paris style, she calls the Yale Daily News a joke, then blows off Rory to go have drinks with Doyle's work buddies, hoping that the Style editor might show up.

But it allowed Rory to meet her artsy new friends. They're kind of annoying, but anything to help her deal with LSA (Logan Separation Anxiety) helps, as we saw when Rory blew off Logan when he called. Not sure if I want to see more of them, but at least Rory's not reading Henry Miller books to figure out how to text dirty to her boyfriend anymore. That's the type of thing a woman shouldn't have to do until at least 30.

Overall, not bad. Things are normalizing. Is it classic GG from the peak of Team Palladino? No. But it's sure as hell a lot better than what we've been seeing. Hopefully, we'll stay light in tone until at least January.