(S07E17) When Dawn Ostroff, the CW's president of entertainment, was doing her "state of the network" press tour session in January, she said this about Gilmore Girls: "(David Rosenthal) was painted into a corner into with a storyline that he got out of. The second half of the season is much stronger, and I think viewers will be surprised."

I scoffed a little when she said that; nothing about the season to that point had suggested that the show was going to improve. But I've got to hand it to Rosenthal and company; the show has been on an upward trend, giving us about a month's worth of entertaining episodes that, while not quite up to the level of the show's creative peak, certainly give me hope that the show won't go out with a whimper, whether it's this season or next.

The key? Keep the Gilmore girls together. All three of them.

The key to the show's chemistry has always been the interaction between Lorelai, Rory, and Emily, and since Richard's heart attack, we've been seeing more of that lately (don't ya just love how great a plot device open heart surgery is?). The almost-musical interplay between Lor and Rory, the admiration and love Emily and Rory have for each other, and the chilly-but-somehow-loving interaction between Emily and Lorelai have all carried the emotional load for the entire series; no matter what silliness is going on in Lorelai's or Rory's love lives, the most emotionally satisfying scenes have always explored how the Girls relate to each other.

And this episode brought all that out. Lorelai is finally realizing that Rory is leaving the nest for good; we saw that in the cold open when she tried to get her daughter to come to the wedding of Mia (Kathy Baker, who I haven't seen on TV in a while), who took Lorelai in when she was pregnant and put her to work at the Independence Inn, while Rory was trying on interview suits. Emily came face to face with the mistake she made when she and Richard shut out Lor all those years ago; we saw that when she inadvertently got herself invited to the wedding, even though she wanted to go to a spa instead. And, Lor realized that, no matter what happened in the past, she needs to stay connected to her mother, even when the person that previously connected them, Rory, goes to work for the San Francisco Chronicle or the Detroit Free-Press or what have you.

(By the way, why is Rory only considering certain papers? There are fine journalists working at tabloids like the Boston Herald, New York Post, and the New York Daily News, among others. Some of them actually used to work for papers like the Times and the Boston Globe. I don't care if she's going to Yale. She shouldn't be so damned picky.)

Kelly Bishop was again in fine form; she's one of the few actresses who can make you angry and sympathetic all at the same time. When Emily talks down to a waitress at a Denny's-like restaurant -- "Chardonnay. That's the clear one." -- you want to tell her to stuff it. But when she's confronted by how Mia was "almost like a mother" to Lorelai, you can sympathize with how hurt she's feeling at that moment. She's also one of the few actresses who can take two words, "Lucky you," and make the viewer just sit there and go "Oooohhh. That hurt."

There were some distractions: The Rory/Logan relationship came to a bit of a head, as Rory agreed with Mitchum that Logan needs to face up to his screw-up and accept responsibility rather than booze it up with Colin and Finn. In fact, the relationship took a nice turn when Logan came down to Mia's wedding in North Carolina to talk to Rory. Wimpy Rory's heart would have melted at the gesture. But the suddenly Tough Rory just scoffed and said "This is so last year's Logan." Nice. I think that was a call-out to the fans who were also sick of the grand gestures. But I was very surprised that Logan not only owned up to his mistake, he decided to quit his dad's company. Snipping the cord like that took balls. How is Logan going to deal with not being rich anymore? How will Rory deal with it? I'd be curious to see if it stays strong or falls apart quickly.

The Zack daddy freak-out was fun, if kind of by the books, plot-wise. What young father-to-be doesn't freak out right before his wife gives birth? I mean, hearing Zack "dude" it up during the freak out gave it a unique spin, but it wasn't any different than your standard father-to-be panic scenes. Of course, the story only illustrated how ready Luke is to be with Lorelai. He calmed Zack down and told him about finding his "daddy mode," relating to his experience with April. Oh, he's ready all right. Though, I really wonder why he had such a bothered reaction when Zack and Lane asked him to be the twins' godfather (so they're not against using the term "Godmother" or "Godfather." This puts extra significance behind Lane's wish that Rory be her twins' "Lorelai Gilmore"). Oh, and Lane had the twins. Amazing that they didn't make a big deal out of it. Refreshing, though.

Anyway, it seems like Gilmore Girls is on a roll of some pretty decent episodes. We even found out that Emily had a "thing" for Will Smith (great final scene, by the way. It encapsulates the Girls' relationships in a nutshell). We've got five episodes left. Let's see where they go from here.