Welcome back Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life fans, this week I will be doing a brief overviewing commentary on “Spring.” If you haven’t read my “Winter” commentary, please check it out to get caught up on where we are in the life of our favorite ladies.
In “Spring,” some of the main things we see are Rory, still homeless and making terrible life and moral decisions, a terrible therapist not even trying to facilitate conversation between a mother and daughter, and Mr. Kim.
-
Therapy
Wow, is therapy depicted terribly. Yes, actually, a therapist’s office is genuinely calming. Dim lightning, nothing ever too harsh, maybe a candle wouldn’t be burning because of allergies and what not, but overall, the actual office of the therapist seemed to be accurate. What is totally inaccurate is the therapist letting the whole session between Lorelai and Emily going unfacilitated with conversation. No, silence doesn’t say everything, especially in this case when all there has been between Lorelai and Emily was silence or deafness of argument. This therapist is truly a whack-job. Also, the fact that the therapist couldn’t pull herself together, as if these two patients were the worst patients she’s ever had. What kind of therapist is this? The toxic relationship between Lorelai and Emily is hardly rare or traumatic, especially for someone whose job it is is to listen to people’s deepest and darkest worries, fears, and frustrations. It’s hard to imagine that bickering families are the most stressful patients this therapist has had.
Then, we have the whole untrustworthy mess between Lorelai, Emily, and Luke. Luke doesn’t know that Emily stopped going to therapy, and now it’s a one-on-one between the therapist and Lorelai, and Lorelai doesn’t know about Luke not turning down the diner franchise money, and playing along with Emily’s whim. It seems as if the only person who knows the full story on both sides of the field is Emily, and if Emily has this information in her pocket that this relationship is untrustworthy, she will use that to make an already rocky relationship more unsteady. After all, in Emily’s opinion, all Lorelai and Luke are are “partners,” and she finds it disrespectful to her relationship with Richard that Lorelai treats her relationship as a marriage, when in Emily’s mind, only married people are, well, in a marriage. I kind of agree with Emily, but at the same time, we all know Emily’s ways are a bit antiquated and traditional, whereas it is more and more common to find partners instead of marriages amongst younger people, and sometimes it is difficult to demand the same respect a married couple does. However, it raises a question which Emily grapples with: why not just get married? Too true, Emily Gilmore, too damn true.
-
They should call the show Rory is a Mess ™
Ah yes, the entitled, arrogant life of Rory Gilmore, where the whole town tells her how perfect she is, how honored they are to have her as a family member basically. What a sweet girl, right? Wrong. Rory Gilmore uses people just as much as she uses herself, which, yes is pitiful, but I have no sympathy for her. This time, she went to go for an interview at GQ (yay!) where she subsequently traveled to New York City to do a Line article. First of all, she falls asleep during one of the interviews. Okay, Rory, we get that you don’t think it’s the war in Syria, or the Presidential Election, but, wake up call, you’re still new to the industry, and you have to learn that you’re going to have to do a bunch of stupid, boring articles before you break through to the big stuff. This is something Rory struggles with, which is beyond me. Just because she has an Ivy League degree, and she wrote one hit piece for The New Yorker, doesn’t make her the next Ida Tarbell. Then, she ends up going to a bar with people she was interviewing with for the line piece, gets drunk in the afternoon, and ends up sleeping with some random stranger in a Wookie costume! In short, cheating, yet again, on Paul. Poor Paul. He deserves so much better.
In “Winter”, we had a glimmer of hope, well at least Rory was doing that book with Naomi Shropshire. That just fell through as well. Not only did Rory insult Naomi, she acted completely unprofessionally with Naomi over the phone. Yes, Naomi is a bit of a nut but, in the position of the hired writer, it is not Rory’s place to be melodramatically mad with Naomi after she said some stupid things while Naomi was drunk. Swallow your pride, Rory.
-
Mr. Kim
We first meet Mr. Kim (finally!), which was definetly a bitter-sweet moment for me, at the World Fair Market in Stars Hollow, where Taylor is running around trying to dish (pun intended) all of the countries out. Lane and Rory were chatting, Mrs. Kim was lining up her singing “off the boat”-ers, when Lane says, “Oh, there’s my dad,” and we pan over to get a maybe five second shot of Mr. Kim waving at Lane and Rory. O. M. G. “This was probably the biggest OMG moment in the revival” – (Abby Baker, ’19). I was extremely happy as well, Abby, when we got to see Mr. Kim, but I think it would have been better if we had maybe seen a conversation, or a bit of a story to him. Instead, he was just introduced, then gone again. I can see the coyness in that on Amy’s part, but I would have prefered a little bit more rather than just putting a random guy’s face to the name.
I hope you all enjoyed my little commentary on “Spring”. We see Richard come up again and again, in small ways that make big ripple effects throughout the episode, just as we did in “Winter”. I enjoyed “Spring,” but not as much as “Winter,” only because I was hoping we were to get more character development and backstory on minor characters, other than Kirk and Petal(s) (because they, in one moment, call the pig Petal, in the other, Petals). Though I love Kirk and Petal(s), I wish I got more of Mr. Kim, more of Lane and Zack, more Michel. However, we still haven’t gotten that yet. We saw a few seconds of Lane and Zack when Rory is trying to look for her “lucky outfit” and their little kids, but that’s about it. Overall, “Spring” was semi-disappointing, but I’m always the critic.
Stay tuned next week for the “Summer” commentary, where I will for sure be talking about that town musician…
If you would like to write for Her Campus Mount Holyoke, or if you have any questions or comments for us, please email mt-holyoke@hercampus.com.