Rory wakes up and finds a gift from Logan on the kitchen counter. She unwraps it and is bewildered to find it’s a model rocket. She has no idea why he would give her such a thing. She goes to the newspaper office and finds Paris has set herself up as a tutor. Paris freaks Rory out when she assumes she and Logan broke up.

Lorelai wakes up in Christopher’s bed and goes to leave. Christopher tries to get her to stay, but she says she has to go. When she leaves his room, she looks like she knows she did a stupid thing. When she gets home, Babette is there. She heard Paul Anka howling, so she came over and fed him. She tells Lorelai she heard about the fight. Luke shows up when Lorelai is leaving for work. He says he’s sorry about last night and he wants to discuss things now. Lorelai says it’s over and drives off to work.

Lorelai goes to the Dragonfly and tells Sookie she and Luke broke up. Sookie keeps saying they’ll work things out, but Lorelai says she’s done, she doesn’t want to see him anymore because it hurts too much. Meanwhile, Luke is in a horrible crabby mood at the diner. He sees Taylor and Kirk doing something outside so he goes out to investigate. Taylor is having a red light camera installed.

Rory goes to the Dragonfly to be with her mom. She says she already misses Logan and doesn’t want to talk about it. Lorelai tells her about her and Luke’s breakup and says she doesn’t want to talk about it, either. The Girls decide to spend the day together doing something other than talking. Michel suggests they play racquetball.

Logan calls and asks if Rory got his gift. She says it’s great, and Logan says he’s so glad she gets it. The Girls sit on the racquetball court and talk about what the rocket could possibly mean. When Rory suggests they talk about Luke, Lorelai decides to actually try racquetballing. Lorelai manages to hit herself in the eye. That’s the end of racquetball for the Girls.

Rory goes to the market to get some steak for Lorelai to put on her swelling eye. She gets there in time to see Taylor’s demonstration of the red light camera. Kirk drives Taylor’s ‘64 Ford Thunderbird down the street, but the camera flashes so brightly that he gets blinded and loses control of the car. He drives the car through the window of the diner. The tow truck guy tells Luke he needs to either take the car out of the diner or he leaves and Luke waits for the insurance guys. Luke starts freaking out about people pressuring him to make decisions. He says he needs time to decide what to do.

The Girls spend the rest of the evening getting rid of everything that reminds Lorelai of Luke. In the end, the living room is totally empty. Christopher calls and says he had a really great time last night. He wants to get together the next night, but Lorelai says she doesn’t think they should see each other romantically again. Christopher is pretty understanding.

Rory wakes Lorelai up in the middle of the night and says she’s finally figured out what the rocket thing is all about. It’s from a Twilight Zone episode, Logan’s favorite, and long story short, the rocket means true love. Rory calls Logan and says she wants to come to London to visit. He says he’s already gotten her a ticket to come see her over Christmas. She acts happy, but she’s sad that it’s so far away.

Lorelai wakes up early the next morning when Luke drives up. He says he’s thought about it and he wants to elope. He’s packed up his truck and filled up the gas tank and he’s ready to go. Lorelai says it’s over and that she slept with Christopher. Luke doesn’t say a word, just turns around and gets in his truck and leaves.

Paris: I can scare the stupid out of you, but the lazy runs deep.

Also in this episode: Sookie and Michel arm wrestle and Sookie wins. Michel spends the rest of the episode with a bandage wrapped around his wrist, complaining about how much it hurts.

Luke immediately says yes to Lorelai’s marriage proposal. They go to Doose’s to find something to toast with, but the market is closed. Taylor, who is in the town square ranting about the bike race that was supposed to be over twelve hours ago when the press was still around, sees them outside his store and tells them to go away. Luke and Lorelai tell Taylor their news and ask him to open the store. All he has for them is Zima. They go out to the gazebo and Lorelai shoos all the cyclists away.

Luke can’t sleep later and he wakes Lorelai up when he says he bought the Twickham house and then lost it. Lorelai’s kind of annoyed that he bought a house without talking to her first, but then she says it would be nice to have kids someday. The next morning, Luke is smiling and giving people free pancakes. Patty and Babette come into the diner asking about the proposal. They’re disappointed when he says Lorelai proposed.

Richard calls Lorelai to talk about Rory and tell her there’s a meeting with the lawyer the next morning. He’s angry when Lorelai says she won’t be there. Emily comes barging into Rory’s room and wakes her up with talk about redecorating the pool house. Rory asks how things went with Lorelai the night before. Emily says Lorelai was dramatic but that she’ll calm down soon.

Logan takes Rory to a surprise party where everyone is wearing jailbird outfits. Rory declares she’s going to spend the whole year doing nothing. Logan says he thinks she’ll be back in school in a month, but Rory disagrees.

Paris comes over and asks Rory if she wants to move into the apartment she and Doyle are getting near Yale. She’s pissed when Rory says she’s not going back to school and she thinks it’s all Logan’s fault. She goes straight to Lorelai’s and asks why she’s letting Rory quit Yale. Paris is freaking out about not having Rory around, so Lorelai gives Paris her cell phone number. When Paris leaves, Luke tries to get Lorelai to talk about a plan for Rory. Lorelai refuses to deal with it and says Rory’s on her own.

Emily comes over to Lorelai’s to get Rory’s things, but Michel answers the door. He says Lorelai sent him to let her in. Emily is appalled that nothing is packed and she can’t find anything for Rory to wear to court. When Lorelai gets home, she finds notes and messages from Emily. Lorelai brings Rory’s crap over in the middle of the night and yells at her parents for being so horrible.  Then she goes home and cries in Rory’s empty bedroom.

Court doesn’t go well for Rory. The judge orders three hundred hours of community service to be done in six months. The Gilmores freak out and Richard yells at the lawyer.

Luke: Men aren’t supposed to drink Zima.

This episode starts out with Rory and Dean in Rory’s bed. They’re whispering sweet nothings to each other when they hear Lorelai come home. We get to see the awkward “just caught having sex” scene from Dean’s perspective as he stands on the porch and listens to Rory tell Lorelai how much Dean loves her. He gets a little freaked out and runs home. Lindsay is waiting up for him. She says she answered his phone earlier but nobody was there. Dean decides to pick a fight. Poor Lindsay has no idea what’s going on.

Emily and Richard get home from the Dragonfly and fight all the way through the house and downstairs into the basement. Emily decides she’s going to Europe and she’s looking for her European luggage. Richard goes upstairs and slams the door and Emily gets locked in the basement. She crawls out a window, but her skirt gets caught so she just rips it off and keeps crawling. Richard meets her outside just as some security guys show up because the neighbors complained about their fighting.

Lorelai goes back to the Dragonfly and finds that Luke has taken care of Kirk and laid him down on the couch. He landed in a rosebush and now he’s got thorn scratches on his butt. Sookie comes downstairs and Kirk says something about seeing Luke and Lorelai kissing. Sookie takes Luke into the other room and hugs him because this is so exciting. Luke asks her to keep it quiet for now because he doesn’t know if Lorelai wants people to know yet.

The next morning, Taylor tells Michel and Lorelai that one of his shoes is missing and the other has been chewed. He’s yelling about it when Luke comes downstairs and says he’s leaving, then he looks all upset when Lorelai quickly says goodbye and then goes back to Taylor.

Sookie wants to gossip with Lorelai about Luke. Lorelai’s a little standoffish at first, but she says she’s just processing and she hopes Luke knows she’s happy about the kiss. As soon as she finds a minute, she calls him at the diner. Luke is relieved when Lorelai says it was a great kiss and she’d like to do it again sometime.

Rory comes by for breakfast. Lorelai tries to be friendly and talk about things with her, but Rory is bratty and leaves in a huff. She calls Dean from a pay phone and asks him to meet her at Miss Patty’s to talk. She’s planning to end things with him, but they end up having sex again. Then she goes to Lane’s and tells her everything. Lane thinks maybe she should talk to Lorelai, but Rory says that’s not an option.

Emily comes to the Dragonfly for a lunch Lorelai promised her, not understanding that when she and Richard left the night before, Rory and Lorelai thought lunch was off. Lorelai calls Rory and asks her to come back to the inn. On her way, Rory passes Lindsay talking to a guy at the butcher shop. Lindsay is panicking because she wants to make a roast beef for Dean and wants it to be perfect because it’s his favorite.

Lunch with Emily is awkward and uncomfortable because Rory is a brat. Then Emily announces that she and Richard are separated. Lorelai thinks it’s ridiculous that Richard is living in the pool house. Emily says she’s going to Europe for the summer and wants Rory to go with her. Lorelai manipulates the conversation so that Rory has no choice but to say yes. So now Rory feels like she’s being shipped off to Europe because she acted up.

That night, Lindsay jumps up and down when the roast turns out okay. Lorelai goes to the airport to see Rory and Emily off. Rory is as cold as can be when she says goodbye. Lorelai goes home and gets a message from Luke. He says Liz and TJ got in an accident. They’ve both broken some bones and he’s on his way to help them out at the renaissance fair for a week.

Richard: Only prostitutes have two glasses of wine at lunch.

Lorelai, to Emily: You’re separated by the pool.

The girls are back from their European trip. Rory has a week before school starts, and she and Lorelai have every minute planned. The first day back is for handing out presents from Europe, so they put all the gifts in their backpacks and hit the streets. They pass Luke yelling at Taylor for putting in a window between his soda shoppe and the diner, and it reminds them they didn’t get him anything. Lorelai gets some jam from Jackson and makes a label to go on the jar so it looks like it came from France or something. Luke knows it’s fake, but he’s a good sport about it.

Sookie is getting very pregnant, but Jackson doesn’t want to know the sex of the baby. He’s even had buttons made so that nobody tells him. Rory takes a button, but Lorelai wants to know. Sookie takes her outside to the shed, where she’s keeping all the baby stuff. Everything is blue.

Walking down the street, Rory passes Kirk putting up posters with her picture on them. Apparently, Taylor has proclaimed her the “ice cream queen” as part of his campaign to get people excited about the imminent opening of his soda shoppe. He’s deeply offended when she says she can’t do it and tries to guilt her.

Rory opens the mail and freaks out when she realizes she wrote down the wrong date for Yale. She’s starting school in two days. She has a ton of things to do to get ready, so Lorelai, who is super happy she’s not required at Friday night dinner, offers to take care of it while Rory is at the grandparents’ house. Emily is annoyed that Lorelai isn’t there, so she manipulates Rory into staying all night to watch hours of videos of ballroom dancing competitions. Rory calls Lorelai and asks her to come rescue her. Lorelai and Emily start arguing, but then Lorelai’s jet lag catches up to her and she starts laughing uncontrollably. She ends up sticking around, and Emily falls asleep in her chair.

Luke is being weird about his cruise with Nicole and won’t talk about it at all. He finally tells Lorelai he and Nicole got swept up in the romance of it all and got married, but now they’re getting a divorce.

Luke, about his marriage: We tried to ignore it for a while, you know, went snorkeling.

Lorelai is living with Luke and is pregnant with his twins. The she wakes up from this crazy dream. It’s the middle of the night, but she calls Rory in Washington. Rory tells her the dream means she’s in love with Luke. Lorelai rejects that interpretation, of course, and asks for another. After hanging up, Rory goes to her desk where she pushes aside all the letters she’s gotten from Dean and starts to write a letter to Jess.

Another student on the trip, Jamie, asks Paris to go to dinner with him. Paris says yes, but she’s so inexperienced that Rory needs to explain to her that he was asking her on a date. Now she’s all worked up and worried that she won’t know what to do. When Jamie knocks on the door that night, Paris makes Rory hide in the closet because she’s convinced if he sees Rory, he won’t want to go out with Paris anymore.

Lorelai and Rory have a clumsy reunion at the airport. When they get home, Lorelai is surprised that Rory wants to change into a nice dress and go to the end of summer festival in the town square. Rory is disgusted to see Jess making out with some chick and starts ranting about it. Lorelai doesn’t get why she’s so worked up. Rory tells her she kissed Jess at Sookie’s wedding, and Lorelai yells at her for treating Dean like dirt. She’s really an excellent mother.

Emily and Richard have been out of town all summer, so Lorelai hasn’t had a chance to tell them that she and Christopher are no longer together. She finally does at her first Friday night dinner after they return. Emily is pissed, but when Lorelai explains about Sherry, she understands. Richard, however, acts like a jerk and starts preaching about how Lorelai should have married him when she had the chance when she was sixteen. Lorelai walks out and goes to Luke’s. He’s still mad at her, but he lets her sit and have some coffee and tell him all about her woes with Christopher. He finally warms up and lets her have a donut.

Lorelai goes home and apologizes to Rory for yelling at her about Jess. Rory says Lorelai was right and that the thing with Jess was crazy. She’s decided to devote all her energy to making things good with Dean.

Paris: I can’t date. I’m not genetically set up for it.

Other notes: In this episode, Paris terrorizes two actual politicians in Washington, Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressman Doug Ose. Neither of them wants to talk to Paris.

The Gilmore girls go walking around town handing out Lorelai’s thousand yellow daisies. Rory tries to talk about wedding stuff, but Lorelai is predictably reluctant to discuss it. The whole town starts following them because they can’t wait to see how Luke will react to the news that Max has proposed to Lorelai. Luke seems okay with it at first, but he tries to freak Lorelai out by asking her where she and Max will live and whether or not she’ll work after she’s married. Lorelai seems bummed that Luke isn’t more upset by the news.

Emily is super excited on Friday night because Rory has finished the year in the top three percent of her class. She also seems surprised that Rory and Lorelai already know this. She tells Rory that the following Friday will be a special night and she should invite a friend and there will be presents and Twinkies and all kinds of good stuff. At some point during this conversation, Lorelai decides to accept Max’s proposal. She goes outside and calls him to say yes. Then she goes into the dining room and nods at Rory. They start jumping up and down and screaming, confusing Emily and Richard. And at no point, of course, does Lorelai think to tell her parents what she’s so excited about.

Dean comes over for his first post-breakup movie night and Rory invites him to her special night at the grandparents’ house. Emily is not happy to see him on Friday night, but Lorelai makes her warm up by reminding her it’s Rory’s night. Richard is a jerkface all night. At dinner, he starts interrogating Dean about what he plans to do with his life. He makes it clear he doesn’t think Dean is good enough for Rory. Rory yells at him and they all leave. Lorelai convinces her to let it go because she figures Richard saw Rory bring a boy home and just had a terrible Lorelai flashback. Later that night, Sookie calls Emily to invite her to Lorelai’s wedding shower. Emily tells Richard to apologize to Rory because “when Rory decides to get married, I’d like her to tell us.”

Lane’s parents are sending her to Korea for the summer and they won’t tell her when she’s coming home. Her suitcase is as big as she is.

Rory: How did you do that?

Lorelai: Oh, you know, with a flourish and a big ending.

Sookie: Michel thinks he’s gonna live forever.

Lorelai: Like on Fame?

The opening scene of the series shows an obnoxious guy hitting on Lorelai at Luke’s Diner. A few minutes later, the same guy hits on Rory. The point is that the Gilmore girls are hot.

After the opening credits, we see Lorelai hard at work at the Independence Inn, arguing with Drella, the disgruntled harp player. Rory, wearing the biggest sweater I’ve ever seen, walks to school with Lane, who changes clothes while walking and laments the fact that she has to go to some crappy hayride with a future Korean doctor. Lane’s hardcore Korean mother thinks rock music is evil and she likes Lane to wear slacks and button down shirts. Lane, a rock star at heart, would rather wear band t-shirts and pink hoodies. A guy (Dean, though we don’t know who he is yet) checks Rory out as she walks into school. In class, Rory smiles when a bunch of girls whisper about her actually doing the assignment instead of painting her nails like they are.

At the inn, Sookie knocks over a bunch of pots and pans because she’s a lovable klutz. Sookie and Lorelai talk about opening their own inn. Later, in one of my favorite scenes, Sookie goes bustling around the kitchen while the kitchen staff tries to keep her from hurting herself or setting the place on fire. Then Lorelai comes in screaming that Rory has gotten into Chilton, a snobby prep school. Rory is super excited when she finds out.

Lorelai gets an invoice for Chilton’s enrollment fee, but she doesn’t have enough money and the humorless woman on the phone won’t help her out. Sookie tells her to ask her parents for money. Lorelai doesn’t like the idea, but it turns out to be the only option.

Emily Gilmore is surprised to see her daughter and asks if it’s Easter already. Lorelai states her case, but when Richard goes for the checkbook, Emily says they will only pay for Rory’s schooling if Lorelai and Rory come to dinner every Friday night at seven.

Rory’s totally excited to be getting out of Stars Hollow High. Until she meets Dean, that is. He totally impresses her when he gets her Rosemary’s Baby reference. Dean’s from Chicago and has just started at Stars Hollow High. He’s looking for a job, so Rory walks him to Miss Patty’s after school to see if she knows of any job openings. Now Rory doesn’t want to go to Chilton because she likes Dean and wants to go to school with him.

The Gilmore girls meet for dinner at Luke’s and they’re both crabby and secretive. Lorelai doesn’t want to tell Rory she’s borrowing money from her parents, and Rory doesn’t want to tell Lorelai she has a crush on a boy. Rory says she doesn’t want to go to Chilton and Lorelai freaks out instead of understanding that her daughter might just be afraid of switching schools. On the way home, they run into Miss Patty, who mentions Rory’s “male friend.” There’s an argument, and Lorelai tries to smooth things over, but Rory acts like a brat. Lorelai lays down the law and says Rory’s going to Chilton whether she likes it or not. Finally, she does something motherly.

Friday night dinner is intense. After Richard says Rory’s father is smart and Rory must take after him, Lorelai runs into the kitchen. Emily follows her and they have a very loud argument. Rory overhears and learns that Lorelai asked her parents for money. She changes her mind about Chilton and the girls go to Luke’s for coffee. Luke is dressed up because he had a meeting at the bank earlier. He and Lorelai make googly eyes at each other for a second, and then Lorelai grills Rory about Dean.

Mrs. Kim: So, how was school? None of the girls get pregnant, drop out?

Rory: Chicago. Windy. Oprah.

All images in this post are from http://www.leavemethewhite.com/starshollow