I fear Daniel Palladino is getting ready to double-axle us:
A Vineyard Valentine. As Valentine’s Day approaches, Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Logan (Matt Czuchry) invite Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Luke (Scott Patterson) to spend a weekend with them at Logan’s family’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. Rory and Logan have a wonderful time, but Lorelai is upset by Luke’s unfriendly attitude toward Logan. Luke’s attitude changes when he realizes he forgot to buy Lorelai a Valentine gift, and Logan saves the day by letting Luke give Lorelai one of the gifts he had bought for Rory. When Lorelai finally confesses to Luke that she is worried the wedding will never take place, he reassures her that they will get married soon. The weekend ends in an ugly scene when Logan’s father, Mitchum Huntzberger (guest star Gregg Henry), arrives and berates Logan for ignoring his responsibilities in the family business. Melissa McCarthy also stars. The episode was written and directed by Daniel Palladino.
Well that didn’t accomplish a whole lot, did it? The only real movement I saw was that Logan was further humanized, first by his courtesy to Luke, and then by the confrontation with his father. But Luke and Lorelai are still sort of static, with Lorelai torn over the situation with his daughter, and with him remaining purposefully ignorant of how she feels, paying no attention to what she isn’t telling him. Something’s got to give there, and soon. Which, given the wedding announcement, it may well do. Hopefully in an ASP-penned ep.
It’s funny, but an episode that doesn’t take place in Stars Hollow just feels so unsatisfactory to me. It really didn’t feel like I was watching an episode of “Gilmore Girls” at all. Maybe that’s because Rory was cooking and going to the gym.
I like puerile antics as much as the next guy, but really, how much comment does the name “Gay Head” require? Given how much time was spent joking about Gay Head, I’m surprised there wasn’t something in there about Woods Hole, too.
The lame Gay Head routine struck me as the writer trying and failing to come up with a good joke about it, so instead of either achieving a joke or giving it up, he passed it off on the character and had her say “hey, there should be a joke in this”. He’s done that before. I could rant about how mad I got at DP for all the crap he pulled in this episode, but I’ve done that before, so I will move on to the good stuff.
Logan was handled well, and once Luke stopped being a killjoy and Lorelai stopped being a doormat (whoops, rant, sorry) I enjoyed seeing how the two men got along. I’m glad they’re developing Logan with a little more depth; he’s a pretty consistent character and he makes sense. I like Rory with him too, even while I think ultimately he is not “The One” and his is not quite the world Rory will end up living in.
Another thing this episode did well, and why I didn’t mind it being taken out of Stars Hollow: they really captured that feeling of staying in someone else’s house, and the shift from feeling alien and awkward to feeling that the strangeness helps make the vacation something magical and memorable. Logan’s and Rory’s gracious hosting definitely made the difference, and incidentally gave us some sense of how much Rory is growing up and coming into her own.