"There's nothing like a wedding to screw up a family" - Luke Danes (Scott Patterson)
"Actually, in my case, there's nothing like a family to screw up a family" - Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham)
Gilmore girls: The Complete Second Season DVD Review
By Frances L. Egler
Weddings - or near misses, in Lorelai's (Lauren Graham) case - bookend season two of the quick, chatty comedy/drama Gilmore girls. The beginning of the season has Lorelai all but walking down the aisle to the impossibly perfect (emphasis on impossibly) English teacher Max Medina (Scott Cohen), complete with a thousand daisies as a proposal, and a wedding shower that takes over the town square, complete with life size ice sculptures. After a topsy-turvy tour of relationships by both Lorelai and her daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), the end of the year finds the girls at their close friend Sookie's (Melissa McCarthy) wedding to her bumbling, quirky produce man, Jackson (Jackson Douglas) at the Independence Inn. With tears in their eyes. . .but not ones of joy.
Between the weddings, almost or otherwise, the second season sees the Gilmore girls growing nicely from their amusing first season. Still present are the machine gun dialogue and endless cultural references, explained in the handy "Your Guide to Gilmore-isms" booklet, a witty guide to the many pop culture allusions included with the DVD set, annotated by creator-writer-producer-director Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, fellow hyphenate Daniel Palladino. Season one established the world of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, mother and daughter best friends who live in the strange yet idyllic world of Stars Hollow, CT. They visit Lorelai's upper class parents Emily and Richard Gilmore (the fantastic Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann) for a weekly Friday night dinner, in return for Lorelai's parents paying for Rory's tuition at the rigorous Chilton Academy, an education that will hopefully lead her to Harvard, a place where Lorelai couldn't dream of attending when she was a teen, as she was pregnant with Rory at sixteen.
While a wedding seems imminent for the first few episodes, after Lorelai's strange bridal shower that culminates in a visit to a local drag bar (and attended by her mother Emily), Lorelai realizes that Max is not her true love. She calls the wedding off, and sets off on a road trip with Rory to Harvard. Lorelai spends the rest of the season dreaming of opening her own inn with Sookie, and continues to seek the one man for her. True to his form of terrible timing with a terrific smile, Christopher (David Sutcliffe), Rory's father from his and Lorelai's high school tryst, reappears. Gone is the motorcycle, and he reveals himself to be a reliable caring dad, all of which is immensely appealing to Lorelai. Of course, he admits that the changes are because he is now committed to another woman. Lorelai flirts a bit with a much younger fellow business student, and all the while finds herself confiding in and relying upon Luke Danes (Scott Patterson), who makes her coffee, runs the diner where she eats all her meals, and seems to be the most reliable man in her life, a fact which Lorelai is charmingly oblivious to.
The seismic shifts of the second season lay more in the world of Rory, the seemingly perfect sixteen year old genius with the ideal small town beau (Supernatural's Jared Padalecki). While the season begins with Rory being presented to society at the behest of her grandmother, Rory's life, and those of many others in Stars Hollow, takes an interesting turn when Luke's brooding, obnoxious teenage nephew Jess (Heroes' Milo Ventimiglia, smoldering and caustic) comes to live with Luke, after he was getting into trouble at home. Jess proceeds to cause a great deal of trouble in the Stars Hollow, even prompting a town meeting over how to address his antics. Classmate Dean takes an instant dislike to Jess. But Jess triggers a greater disturbance in Rory's life. While Dean may be attentive, tall and starry-eyed, who can resist a sexy smaller swarthy boy who can annotate Allen Ginsberg's Howl (after he stole it from her room, of course)? Rory apparently can't. Alexis Bledel nicely underplays falling for the wrong boy with the best of intentions. It goes against everything in her to lie to her mother, break Dean's heart, and even skip school to be with Jess. But still she does it.
The strangeness of Rory behaving, well, like a teenager, causes strain in her relationship with her best friend/mom, Lorelai. Lorelai knows that Jess is bad news for Rory, but when her own mother agrees with Lorelai's decision to try to keep Jess away from Rory, Lorelai changes her mind. After Rory ends up in the emergency room with a sprained wrist from a car accident when Jess was driving, Lorelai realizes how difficult it is to be both friend and parent simultaneously.
Lorelai's parents undergo some of their own changes this year. Emily is thwarted in her attempts to somehow create the closeness with Lorelai that Lorelai shares with Rory. At the weekly Friday night dinners, Emily is still one of the few souls not charmed by her daughter's incomprehensible cultural references and sarcastic jibes. Emily and Richard's marriage endures a tremendous strain with Richard's forced retirement. Richard wanders aimlessly for a while through his own home and Stars Hollow, but after serving as an advisor to Rory's school business fair project, he is inspired to open his own consulting business. He gains a new appreciation for Lorelai's business acumen when she opens him up to the world of office supply shopping, among other modern conventions. Despite Lorelai and her parents' constant bickering, they do attend Lorelai's community college graduation, and momentarily show their deep pride, with a tinge of sadness, in their daughter's accomplishment.
Other characters begin to flourish in the strange small town of Stars Hollow. Lane Kim (Keiko Agena), Rory's best friend, returns safely from a dreaded summer with relatives in Korea, and continues her amusing journey along the path of alternative music junkie, hiding everything from her Seventh Day Adventist mother. She suffers heartbreak of her own, but finds nirvana of sorts in clandestine practice sessions on a set of shiny red drums in Stars Hollow's new music store, run by cranky Sophie Bloom (Carole King herself, who writes and performs the show's theme song, "Where You Lead I Will Follow," with her own daughter, Louise Goffin). Lorelai's obnoxious, well groomed, disdainful, and (of course) French desk clerk at the Independence Inn, Michel (Yanic Truesdale) suffers Lorelai's presence in his life, and a visit from his vivacious mother. Town gossip Miss Patty (Liz Torres) runs her dance studio, always with a cigarette holder in hand. Perhaps best of all is jack of all trades, master of none, Kirk (Sean Gunn), who begins to appear more frequently. He pleads to Lorelai, who is programming the annual town movie night, to screen his own film, the cleverly titled and enormously odd "A Film By Kirk," starring Jon Polito and Mary Lynn Rajskub (24). While Lorelai can't afford any film other than the annual selection of The Yearling, she uses Kirk's film to set a very different tone for the evening (it's also offered as a separate extra on disc six).
Rory's life at Chilton sees the departure of Tristan (Chad Michael Murray, off to One Tree Hill), and a strange détente then friendship with the high strung, caustic and ultra-competitive Paris (Liz Weil).
In the final episode, all is seemingly well for chef Sookie and produce man Jackson's wedding, despite the fact that Jackson's father has forced him to wear a kilt. Yet there are surprises for both Lorelai and Rory on the wedding day, which point to even more interesting times ahead for them, and everyone else, in Stars Hollow.
