Previously: A cat died!
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Rory’s Birthday Parties
Catherine: This episode opens with a Friday Night Dinner where only Emily, Lorelei and Rory are in attendance. See how I used the term ‘in attendance’ because this is fancy? That’s the kind of fanciness you can expect in my recap. If you’re not already wearing your cravat, you should be.
Marines: RSVP: YES.
Catherine: GOOD. Let me just pull my monocle out of storage.
Emily tells Rory that her lawyer is going to be coming by the next day and Lorelei groans and calls him “Crazy Sissy’s dad.” Emily is of course, offended by this as always thought Sissy was Lorelei’s friend. It comes out that Sissy used to talk to her stuffed animals and they answered her.
Well, listen, if that’s the bar for crazy…
Yeah, that’s the bar for crazy.
Emily starts going on about how everything has to be a joke with Lorelei. Richard comes in and Emily gets back on track. She mentioned that her lawyer was coming because they thought it might be “nice” for Rory to go around the house and pick out what she wants left to her in their will. Emily tells her that she should go around and if she finds something she likes, stick a post-it note on it. Richard recommends that she snag the desk in his office. Rory is creeped out by this and tells them that she’s fine with whatever they want to leave her. Lorelai is creeped out too until she finds out that she gets to pick stuff out, too. Same. I love dead people’s stuff.
Mari: I don’t know if that’s on brand with your very fancy recap, but I’m tempted to say yes.
Catherine: Maybe this recap is fancy AND creepy? Sorry guys. IDK.
The maid brings out dessert and Lorelei is shocked to see that it’s pudding. Fancy pudding, but still. Of course Emily acts like this is totally normal and she’s hip and down with the cool kids. Rory says that she’s never had pudding from a crystal bowl before and Emily tells her that if she likes the bowl she should put a post-it on it when she’s done.
After the credits, Lorelei and Rory are walking around putting post-its on things and trying to decide what out of the gaudy rich people décor they would actually want. Rory says that this is the strangest evening she’s ever spent there. Oh just you wait, Rory. This is early days.
Emily comes in and asks Rory if she has any “special requests” for dinner next week and Lorelei butts in to tell her to go say goodbye to her grandpa so she can talk to Emily. She tells Emily that Rory’s birthday is next Friday so she was hoping they could do the dinner on Saturday instead. Emily says that Rory should just come to dinner normally and they can have a little party for her there. Lorelei, probably remembering all of the boring, stuffy birthday parties she had to suffer through as a teenager, begs her to change the night.
Emily says that Friday nights are her nights and thems the rules. Lorelei points out that she didn’t take the loan for Chilton with the intention of giving Emily a way to blackmail her. She firmly tells her mother that Rory is going to be having her party at home on Friday and that’s that.
Smash cut to Rory and Lorelei in the jeep with Lorelei asking Rory how she feels about having two parties this year.
Rory is disappointed that Lorelei couldn’t get Emily to cave but Lorelei promises her that they will have a party at home on Saturday and that it will be a “Stars Hollow Extravaganza.” I’m thinking all of my previous birthday parties have been missing the word “extravaganza.” (M: There’s always time to course correct.)
Independence Inn. Sookie and Lorelei are going over the menu for the party. Look at baby Melissa McCarthy! She’s 8 years old in this.
Sookie says that it’s too bad that Emily wouldn’t relinquish her Vulcan death grip on Friday night and Lorelei says that Emily is very predictable except that she did something super weird that night. Sookie guesses that she wore jeans and Lorelei tells her about the fancy pudding. She says that the fancy pudding meant that Emily had to have listened to her and taken a note of something that she liked which is impressive, for her.
Jackson runs in to the kitchen with something in a box and I’m distracted because I forgot that Jackson used to wear tye-dye and bandannas. I feel like that wasn’t a thing as much in the later seasons. Which… thank god.
Anyway, he has cross-pollinated a raspberry with a kumquat and that’s what he has in the box. Lorelei asks him if he built one of those machines like in ‘The Fly’ and if they’re going to find him wondering the streets with a giant raspberry head.
Michel comes in and Jackson tells him that he can’t make fun of him anymore because he’s god now. Lorelei starts to tell Michel about the raspberry/kumquats but Michel stops her because he doesn’t care. She tells him that Rory’s birthday party is that weekend so he needs to start thinking up reasons now why he can’t come.
Gilmore house. Rory is on the phone when Lorelei comes home. Lorelei makes fun of her by pretending that she’s talking to someone about Justin marrying Britney and how she’s going to cry and cry and cry. I straight up FORGOT about Justin Timberlake/Britney Spears. I forgot that ever happened. This show is making me feel old as fuck.
Mari: I can literally never forget about this because of that one time they wore matching jean outfits? Apparently I’m not alone because as soon as I started typing into Google, it was like “DO YOU WANT TO SEE THEIR MATCHING DENIM?”
Yes, Google. Yes I do.
Catherine: Oh God! It’s like trying to remember being drunk. It’s coming back to me and I don’t want it, make it go away. I can’t believe we ever forgave him and let him sing again after he wore a denim cowboy hat.
Emily calls and tells Lorelei that she wants to go shopping for a birthday present for Rory. She tells her that she wants to get something that Rory actually wants and she knows that Lorelei would know what that is. That is actually a really sweet sentiment. Although Emily dents it somewhat but accidentally calling Lane “Jane”. Lorelei agrees to go shopping with her and Emily starts to tell her to dress appropriately but Lorelei stops her and tells her not to finish that sentence.
Chilton the next day. Rory is at her locker when Tristan skeeves up to her. Ugh. Tristan. What a wiener. I can never see Chad Michael Murray without thinking about Psych now.
Probably because C-Mikes has done, like, nothing else since the early 2000’s.
He tells her that he wanted to say happy birthday and Rory is like, “It’s not my birthday.” He pulls out an invitation from Emily that was sent out to the entire school inviting them to the party. It looks like a wedding invitation. It even has tissue paper. Mortification station population: Rory.
Rory walks down the hallway and some mean girls point her out and say that their parents are making them go to the party. One of them seems to be Paris’ lackey, Louise who is a super bitch at first but pretty funny later… oh, shit, spoilers. Sorry! (M: Rude.) (C: I apologized and that makes it okay. That’s the law.)
Emily and Lorelei go out shopping and Emily tries to pick out this horrid, frouffy hat for a present. It looks like something that you’d wear to the Henley Regatta. It looks like something the Queen would wear after her death. It looks like—well, you get it.
Lorelei vetoes it and tries to show her a guitar shaped purse which is also pretty ugly but more in an early 2000’s way. I distinctly remember wishing that I had that purse when I first watched this episode. Emily suggests pearls and a cashmere sweater set and Lorelei suggests a funky, zebra print day planner. What store is this that it has all these things? In the same section, too. (M: IDK. I feel like that’s exactly what the shoe/jewelry/purse department looked like at JCPenny last time I was there.)
Emily finally tells her that they should just go and Lorelei tries to encourage her by telling her to “think pudding”. Emily is like wtf? But Lorelei tells her to try again and pick up something that she thinks Rory might like. Emily picks up some multi-colored beaded bracelets and suggests them and Lorelei says they are perfect. Emily notices that they’re only $12 and says that a birthday present cannot be bought on $12 alone!
I would be a terrible rich person. I would definitely still only spend $12 on birthday presents. Including the card.
Luke’s Diner. Lorelei comes in carrying a garment bag. Luke tells her that Rory isn’t there.
Lorelei invites Luke to the Stars Hollow party and he tells her that she doesn’t have to invite him but she insists that she wants him there. Rory comes in looking like sad Charlie Brown and begs for coffee.
Lorelei tells her that she has something that will cheer her up and opens the garment bag. Something puke-green and fluffy spills out. Apparently these are the party dresses that Emily insisted on buying for the party. Lorelei says that she thinks she can do something with them. Rory says that she’s never seen Lorelei so cheerful after spending time with Emily and Lorelei goes on about how the shopping trip wasn’t exactly fun but she didn’t get the shooting pain behind her eye that she normally does. Luke brings them coffee and they tell him about Rory’s eighth birthday where the cops were called and shut the party down. Luke just shakes his head and leaves. Lorelei asks Rory why she’s upset and Rory lies about the reason, saying she got a bad grade on a test.
Mari: Rory does a lot of taking care of Lorelai, or at least trying to. It’s precious, even if it leads to a lot of USE YOUR WORDS kind of situations. I mean, a lot so far, obviously.
Catherine: Back at the Gilmore house, Lorelei sneaks into Rory’s room in the middle of the night to wake her up and give her her birthday speech, which is a fun speech that Lorelei does every year about the night Rory was born. Which is adorable. But so help me god if my mother woke me up in the middle of the night to do this every year our fun, sitcom-worthy relationship would crash to a halt.
The next day, Lane and Rory walk into Luke’s and sit down. He gruffly (as is his way) tells them they’re at the wrong table since he blew up a bunch of stupid balloons and made a dumb cake and put them at a different table. Rory’s all awwww and Luke tells her that if he counts to three he’s taking it away.
After they relocate, Rory complains that she’s getting old and then that she has to see the stupid Chilton kids at her grandparents party. Lane asks what Lorelei said when she told her about the party, and Rory says she didn’t tell her because of the pudding, obviously. Because Lorelei and Emily are sort of getting along right now and she doesn’t want to be the cause of another fight between them. She says that she can stand being around the Chilton uppingtons for one night.
Cue Dean, who walks into the diner looking all early 2000’s fine with his Backstreet Boys hair and his pleather jacket. He and Rory make flirty eyes at each other while he gets coffee and he mouths ‘Happy Birthday’ to her on the way out.
Anyway, once the party starts the Gilmore girls sit and complain about how fancy everything is until an old school friend comes up to Lorelei and tells her she hasn’t seen her since “her 7th month.” Lorelei’s like, ‘I was gonna say high school, but okay’ and the woman gets all awkies. I mean, yeah weird lady. Who calculates time like that? “I haven’t seen you since your third trimester!” Weirdo. Weird Lady (aka Mitzy. Which is a whole ‘nother thing) asks her about Christopher and Lorelei says that he is in California. She also thinks that Rory is the name of Lorelei’s cat. I just…?
Richard is talking to his business guys when Rory comes up. The men each hand her an envelope full of cash as a present. What was supposed to be so bad about this party again?
Mari: I’d even wear that green monstrosity Rory is wearing to collect envelopes full of cash.
Catherine: Hell yeah.
Oh right, the Chilton people are there, though. Emily tells Rory that there is a group of her “school friends” in the library and drags her in to say hi to them. Of course, none of them recognize her and they do the whole “Who is that?” “I think it’s her party” thing again.
Rory turns around and sees Paris who tells her that her parents made her come and she doesn’t want to be there. She’s also wearing a truly hideous purple, teal and orange striped dress. I’m not sure if you guys want all this breaking dress reporting but it’s distracting the hell out of me how bad the fashion was 16 years ago.
Making things even more UGH, Rory turns to leave again and bumps into Tristan who smarms about getting a birthday kiss.
Unfortunately Richard comes over and wants to be introduced to him and we learn that Tristan’s grandfather does business with Richard, but of course. Richard tells Rory that he approves of her friends and wanders off again so Tristan can be a dick some more and Paris can look at him adoringly for some reason.
Emily pulls Rory over and tells her she needs to do a speech for her guests. Lorelei sees Rory’s panicked face and tries to get her out of it but before she can Rory explodes like one of those paper mache volcanoes and tells her grandmother that this is her party and everyone there is her friends so she can do a speech if she wants. She stomps off and Emily, who is trying to save face in front of her friends, tells Lorelei that her daughter has no manners and she should be ashamed of herself. Then she stomps off leaving Lorelei to wonder how this became her fault.
Rory goes up to Lorelei’s old bedroom and we see among other things, Lorelei’s famous doll house and 80’s band posters. She also has a bunch of creepy porcelain dolls on the mantelpiece.
Lorelei points out that they had a real ‘Freaky Friday’ moment back there with her yelling at Emily and Rory comes clean about Emily inviting everyone from Chilton without asking her and that she didn’t tell her because she didn’t want them to fight.
Lorelei tells her that she can apologize and all will be forgotten. Interesting parenting choice. Might have been a good place to discipline her, too. (M: I probably would’ve mentioned not bottling your feelings until they explode, but I’m not sure that merits discipline. Rough situation was rough.)
Lorelei goes straight to being weirded out by being in her old room. She says that they gave her the dollhouse with the glass on and says that her last birthday there as a teenager she had a fight with her parents, too. Rory says she should go find Emily to apologize but Lorelei says to give her a minute and she’ll find them. Of course, right on cue Emily bursts into the room and tells them they’re being rude. She cuts off Rory’s apology and tells her to go back downstairs.
As everyone is leaving, Rory tries to apologize again but Emily straight up ignores her existence. Whoops.
But Richard comes up and gives her ANOTHER envelope full of cash to put toward her trip to Fes.
Emily comes back in to tell them to fuck off again and Rory invites her and Richard to the Stars Hollow party before she can cut her off. Emily says they have plans and Lorelei tells Rory to go outside for a second so she can talk to her.
Lorelei tries to convince Emily to come to the Stars Hollow party, but Emily isn’t having it because she’s already been to a party for her granddaughter and it was fancy and there were individual bags for the gourmet cheese. Lorelei says that she invited the Chilton people without asking and starts getting mad about Emily trying to control Rory just like she tried to control her when she was a teenager. They fight about Emily not knowing anything about Lorelei and the servants look awkward before Lorelei storms out.
Next day, Rory goes to a college fair to get another Harvard brochure because she wants to see if they changed the pictures. Paris is at the Harvard booth also and they get grossed out when they realize that they both want to go to Harvard.
Poor people party at the Gilmore house. Rory is opening presents in front of the entire town although no one is sitting around actually watching her except Lorelei, Lane and a couple others. I also recognize no one besides the main characters. This town had a lot of turn over, apparently. (M: I hear the clams make people sick and also kill cats.) (C: There is something secret and dark going on within this town.)
Sookie brings out a cake that has Rory’s face on it. Rory blows out the candles and it’s pretty noticeable that the actress forgets that she’s wearing two feather boas before leaning over the open flames. Lorelei does a speech about Rory being the best thing in her life and everyone awwws.
Someone rings the doorbell and Lorelei shouts that it’s a party and tells them to get their ass inside. Emily and Richard walk in and Lorelei’s all “Or, asses…I guess” as they stand in the entryway looking incongruously dark and out of place.
Rory rushes up and hugs them and shows Emily the bracelet that she gave her which she is now wearing. Ms. Patti comes up and hits on Richard as is her way. Lorelei escapes the the kitchen under the guise of getting drinks so she can freak out and tell Sookie that her parents are there. Sookie asks her when was the last time they visited and Lorelei says that they have never been in that house ever. In 16 years?!?! They live a half hour away! Holy shit. I forgot about this detail.
Emily comes into the kitchen all excited and says that she tries some of the food and it was amazing and wants to know who her caterer is. Lorelei tells her it’s Sookie and Emily asks “What’s a Sookie?” Emily immediately starts trying to poach her for her parties and Lorelei tries to tell her that Sookie already has a job at the inn… the inn where she works… everyday… She gives up and walks out.
Out in the living room, Richard is looking over the fireplace for structural damage when Lorelei brings him his drink. Sookie rushes up to Lorelei and tells her that they are out of ice. Lorelei says that she will go and get some but when she gets to the door Luke is there.
Mari: And Luke has never been more happy he made an ice run.
Catherine: Rory finds Richard out on the porch and brings him a teen magazine to read so he can decide if he’s a summer or a fall.
Inside, everyone reminisces about memories of Rory’s long lost childhood and Emily feels awkward about all that she missed. She goes upstairs, and Lorelei follows her. Emily finds a quilt and Lorelei says that she made it out of Rory’s old baby clothes. Although, for some reason it’s on her bed, which struck me as weird. IDK.
Emily asks her about Luke and does the whole “Mmm-hmm” thing when Lorelei says that they aren’t dating. But she’s only lightheardedly teasing, which is weird because she spends so much of this series all pissed about Luke existing. (M: It’s early.) Emily finds an old picture of Lorelei with a broken leg which is a big deal because she never knew that Lorelei broke her leg and blah, blah, blah she missed a bunch of stuff, we know. Before she can go find Richard, Lorelei thanks her for coming and they bond.
Downstairs, Rory says goodbye to her grandparents and Richard tells her that the quiz told him that he’s an autumn. Before they leave Richard gives Rory ANOTHER envelope full of cash for Fes. Jesus Christ, I want these grandparents. I don’t care if they treat me like crap as long as they give me money.
That… might not say good things about me.
ANYWAY. The grandparents get in the car and Richard notices that Emily is withdrawn. She tells him that Lorelei was right and she doesn’t know her at all.
After the party, Lorelei and Sookie are cleaning up when Lorelei sees Dean giving Rory her birthday present through the kitchen window. No, it’s not that Winchester D, you perv. It’s a bracelet that he made out of leather or something manly like that. He ties it around her wrist and they hold hands. How very WB.
Lorelei sees all this and looks shocked and worried.
Mari: Winchester D is clearly the next stop.
Catherine: She’s gonna have to fight off the fangirls, then. End of episode.
Next time on Gilmore Girls: Rory doesn’t use her words some more in S01 E07 – Kiss and Tell.
I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
