Old man Twickham, a Stars Hollow resident, is dying for about the twentieth time and the whole town goes to say goodbye. They wait in a line outside the house and Kirk comes by with Twickham souvenirs.

The man actually dies, and Luke wants to find out what’s going to happen to his house. He and Lorelai go to a town meeting where everyone is trying to find someplace for Kirk to stay. Turns out Mr. Twickham left the house to the Stars Hollow historical society so it could be turned into a museum for two months, and then he wanted it turned over to the head of the historical society, who is Taylor, to be disposed of as he sees fit. Luke volunteers to help with the museum stuff. He tells Lorelai it’s because he was close to old man Twickham, and he tells Taylor he’s volunteering because Lorelai wanted him to.

Rory is depressed that Logan hasn’t called, and Paris is depressed because Doyle hasn’t called. Rory tells Paris to go out and do something fun, and then she’s surprised when she goes home to Stars Hollow after Friday night dinner and finds Paris hanging out with Lorelai. Lane thinks Zack is having an affair with Sophie, the music store owner. Lane meets Paris and Rory at the grand opening of the Twickham museum on Saturday, and they all get drunk on Miss Patty’s Founder’s Day punch. Lane leaves to go confront Sophie, and Paris walks off in her bare feet to find a pay phone to call Doyle.

Lane goes to the music store, and Sophie takes her to the back where Zack is jamming with a banjo in a bluegrass band. He was embarrassed because it’s not rock and roll. Paris is yelling at people in the street, demanding change for the pay phone. Rory is the only one back at the museum, and she calls Logan and gets his voicemail.

The travel magazine from last week liked the inn so much that they’re going to interview Lorelai. The interview goes really well, but she ends up talking an awful lot about her mother. When she mentions this to Rory, Rory is horrified and tells her that unless Lorelai said it was off the record, it’s all fair game. Lorelai tries to get the reporter to cut the Emily stuff out, but she says she’d have to pull the whole article.

None of old man Twickham’s historical stuff is actually historical and the diorama Taylor sets up is totally creepy. Taylor says he wants to keep the house as a museum permanently, but Luke tells him it’s a bad idea. He wants to buy the house. Dean’s been working on the museum, too, and he’s been giving Luke the cold shoulder. Luke finally asks him what his problem is, and Dean tells him Lorelai is going to get bored with him eventually. Why this makes him so pissy at Luke is beyond me. And besides, Dean and Rory broke up three different times, and each time it was Dean who did the dumping, not Rory.

Rory gets totally trashed on Miss Patty’s punch, and Lorelai takes her home. Rory cries in her lap on the bathroom floor, wondering why Logan doesn’t like her.

Sophie, to Lane: Oh my god, Garrison Keillor, what is your point?

Taylor: Who doesn’t love Muzak?

Sookie: Oh! Music lovers?

Lorelai is trying to get a permit for two extra parking spaces for the inn, but Taylor keeps rejecting her applications. Taylor is also going after Jackson for the greenhouse he recently had built because it’s too close to the edge of his property. Jackson goes crazy and decides he’s going to run against Taylor in the upcoming election for town selectman. It’s kind of a weird thing because nobody ever runs against Taylor. Lorelai and Sookie set up their campaign table at Luke’s.

Dean and Rory are supposed to hang out, but he calls and says Lindsay has the car and he can’t get there. Rory drives to Stars Hollow to hang out at his house. It’s nice to see his sister, Clara, again, but Dean’s mom is kind of bitchy and disapproving. She makes Dean leave the door open while he and Rory are in his room and oh man do I not miss hanging out with my high school boyfriends in their rooms at their parents’ houses. The next time they get together, they make out in Rory’s car, which is problematic for Dean since he’s about ten feet tall. Rory asks Dean to go to Jackson’s rally with her, but he yells at her for even suggesting such a thing because he doesn’t want to flaunt the relationship all over town and rub Lindsay’s nose in it.

Lorelai asks Lane’s band to play at a rally for Jackson, and now I’m quite sure the writers of this show have never known anyone in a band. The voting starts, and Lane’s band is just then given a tape of the song Jackson wants them to play. They’ve never heard it before, but they’re going to go on and play it in like five minutes. Kirk has been polling, and he says everyone in town plans to vote for Jackson. Lorelai is happy, but then she looks through the window in the diner and sees Taylor sitting by himself in the dark in his soda shoppe. She thinks it’s sad.

Jackson gets on stage and says he has no idea why he’s running for selectman. He already has a job and not a lot of time and he doesn’t want to be selectman. The crowd just loves him more for being an honest man and of course he wins. Only ten people vote for Taylor, most of them because Lorelai asked them to.

After the rally, Zack brings a couple of tramps back to the apartment. Lane hasn’t told Zack she likes him because she’s worried it will break up the band, but she just can’t stand to see him with these girls so she tells him she likes him and then goes to her room. Zack goes outside to think about things.

Dean comes up to Rory at the rally and apologizes for yelling the other night. He says he worked things out with his car and talked to his mom so things are going to be better. Rory asks if Dean would have left Lindsay if she hadn’t found her letter. Dean kind of does that weird grin of his and says yes, of course he would have left her.

Rory: You do not harass the voters. This is not Florida.

Lorelai: Kirk, sit down.

Kirk: Can’t. These aren’t my pants.

Also in this episode, Asher has left Paris a printing press and she puts it in the common room.

The Girls go to Friday night dinner, where they have drinks in the pool house with Richard and then go to the main house for the rest of the night. Emily hates the arrangement because the girls talk about everything with Richard and then they’re out of things to talk about with her.

Luke and Lorelai are being really cute and flirting with each other at the diner. They make plans for their first official date and really, they’re just so cute and it makes me happy. Luke takes Lorelai to a restaurant where they’re greeted by Mrs. Landingham from West Wing. Luke goes there all the time and knows the owners really well. They helped him out a lot when he opened the diner. Lorelai asks Luke if he remembers the first time they met because she doesn’t. He says it was at the diner eight years ago. She wrote a horoscope for him that said, “You will meet an annoying woman today. Give her coffee and she’ll go away.” After telling the story, he opens his wallet and takes out the horoscope. He’s kept it this whole time. The date ends in Luke’s bed.

Early the next morning, Lorelai gets up and goes down to the diner in one of Luke’s flannel shirts to get coffee. She doesn’t know the diner’s open. She expects to hear some gossip about her and Luke that day and thinks it’s a little weird when Patty and Babette don’t say anything to her about it. That night, Luke and Lorelai go to a town meeting together. Taylor brings up their relationship as a serious town matter. Everyone is worried about what’s going to happen when Luke and Lorelai break up. Taylor is convinced the town will be split between the Lukes and the Lorelais. Luke yells at everyone and tells them it’s none of their business.

Rory goes back to Yale and moves into her new dorm. She’s worried about Paris because she thought she’d be there already. She calls her and Paris says Asher died in Oxford. When Paris gets to Yale, she says she wants to have a wake in the suite.

Rory and Marty walk around campus together and run into some spoiled rich kids who act snotty to them. One of them recognizes Marty because he bartended for one of his parties. Later, Rory is hanging up flyers for the wake when the spoiled rich kids come in looking for some girl. The blond guy, Logan, makes fun of her flyer and then defends himself when Rory says he shouldn’t have been so snotty to Marty.

Emily and Richard make an appointment to talk to each other about functions and bills. One night, Emily sees Richard drive off and she calls Lorelai. She’s freaking out and wants to know where he’s going so late at night. She doesn’t want him to be the only one going out, so she gets in her car and drives away, calling Lorelai again from the road. Lorelai says she can’t talk, so Emily goes to Rory’s dorm. She gets there while the wake is going on and she unloads all her stuff about Richard on Paris. Marty asks Rory if she has a boyfriend. She says she doesn’t know and then drives to Dean’s house to find out.

Richard, to Emily: You’ve never been stark naked. We went skinny dipping one night and you wore an overcoat.

Marty: I met Nicole Ritchie and then spent the next six weeks showering.

Rory, about Asher’s death: It wasn’t during, you know…?

Paris: No, Rory. This great man was not brought down by my vagina.

Stars Hollow smells and nobody knows why. Kirk tells Taylor (who has a horrible new toupee) that the smell is coming from eggs hidden in the town square for Easter, which was a week ago. He was supposed to have made a map pointing out the locations of all the eggs, but he didn’t and now there are fifty-nine rotting eggs somewhere in the square. Kirk goes insane trying to find the eggs and make Taylor happy, but there are still twelve left. He doesn’t sleep for days. Luke finds the eggs for him and gives them to Kirk so he can tell Taylor he was the one who found them.

Jason and Richard acquire another company and go golfing to seal the deal. Jason’s father, Floyd, shows up on the golf course. He tells Richard he’d like to have dinner on Friday night. This is some big deal and Emily starts making preparations. Since it’s going to be on Friday, Lorelai and Rory will be there, too.

Lorelai sends Dean to Rory’s dorm with a bookshelf that doesn’t fit in at the Dragonfly. Dean says he’s taking time off from school so he can make money because Lindsay wants a townhouse. Rory can’t help but tell him what a bad idea she thinks it is and they have a big fight. Rory goes to the market with Lane and starts talking about how selfish Lindsay is for not working and making Dean drop out of college. Then she turns a corner and Lindsay is in the next aisle. She heard everything.

Lorelai is nervous about meeting Jason’s parents even though they don’t know she and Jason are dating. Things seem pleasant enough at first, and Rory leaves early because she has a paper to study for. After dinner, the girls go to the living room for drinks while the men go to the study for cigars. Floyd tells Richard he’s suing his company because Jason signed a no-compete clause. The men start yelling at each other and they take the argument into the living room, and that’s where Floyd announces that his private investigator told him Jason and Lorelai are dating. He and Jason’s mother leave, and Jason and Richard go back into study. Jason says he’ll fix things with his father.

Rory is driving home from dinner when Dean runs in front of her car and says he wants to talk to her. He drags her into an alley and tells her he’s sorry about their fight. He says Lindsay doesn’t want him to talk to Rory anymore, but he doesn’t want that to happen.

Richard’s business can’t afford a legal battle with Floyd, so the two of them go golfing together to make a deal. They decide Richard will come back to Floyd’s firm and have his own company under Floyd’s company’s banner. Jason is out.

Michel: I am not standing funny. This is how you stand in these pants.

Jason, about Emily and Richard: They keep moving everything back and forth. The cart, the heater, me. I used to be over there.

Lane’s band is looking for a new guitarist and it’s not going well because everyone who shows up sucks. A guy named Gil comes to audition and he’s totally awesome, but Zack and Brian aren’t sure about him because he’s old. Lane goes to tell him he’s not in the band, but he seems so disappointed that she tells him he’s in.

Sookie and Jackson have decided to have the baby at home and they give Lorelai a baby pager so she can be there for the birth. Jackson’s brother Beau is in town for the baby’s arrival, but the baby is late and Beau gets annoyed that he has to keep changing his flight home. Sookie and Jackson have hired a midwife who is really scary and intimidating. She doesn’t like Lorelai because she thinks she’s anti-midwife.

The Festival of Living Pictures is coming to Stars Hollow and everyone is excited. Kirk is so happy to be assigned as Christ, but he takes it a little too seriously and acts like the troubadour is his mortal enemy because he’s going to be Judas. Lorelai is upset when she’s not the Renoir girl, but Taylor says it’s because she flinched last time. He wants Rory to be in one of the paintings, and she says she’ll only do it if Lorelai can be Renoir girl.

Half of the table for the Last Supper is missing and Taylor gets discouraged and wants to cancel the festival. Kirk, dressed as Jesus to help get him into character, starts preaching and convinces everyone to go ahead with the festival.

Sookie comes over to Lorelai’s at one in the morning. She’s totally freaking out because the baby is so late. Lorelai calms her down by showing her a box full of stuff from the night Rory was born.

Lorelai manages not to flinch during the festival, but her baby pager goes off while she’s on stage. She keeps it together until the curtain closes, and then she runs off to Sookie’s.

Nicole comes to the diner and tells Luke she wants to postpone the divorce and date for a while.

Miss Patty: Have a cigarette.

Taylor: I don’t smoke.

Miss Patty: Could you start?

Other notes: The Festival of Living Pictures is based on The Pageant of the Masters. Here are some pictures of the Gilmore Girls’ version of it. It seems like a really cool thing to see:

Now that Rory has gone to college and Lorelai is living alone, Kirk has installed an alarm system that doesn’t work properly. Lorelai has to lay down a path of Post-Its so she and Rory can get around the house without setting off the motion detector. Kirk finally gets it disconnected, but follows Rory and Lorelai around for a while in his silly little security company car.

Rory is out to have the perfect Stars Hollow weekend, but while she’s reading in the gazebo, a bunch of guys show up and start setting up for Lindsay’s and Dean’s wedding. She runs into Dean later and he invites her to the wedding.

Michel calls Sookie all upset that Lorelai never returned a phone call from over the summer. Sookie thinks Michel might be worried that they’re not going to take him along to the Dragonfly. They go to see him at his new job. I don’t really get what kind of place this is supposed to be, some kind of swanky hotel where everyone looks like a supermodel, I guess. Lorelai tells him that of course they’re expecting him to join them at the Dragonfly. Michel is grateful because he hates his new job.

Taylor sends Lorelai a cease and desist order on the inn. He says it’s something about the Dragonfly being a historical site and puts her through all kinds of rigmarole, which freaks her out because she has a construction crew coming on Monday. She finally snaps and asks him what she has to do to get him off her back. He says he wants her to get Luke to let him put an ice cream truck in front of the diner. And I’m confused, because did she not get all of this approved and permitted before hiring the construction crew? Anyway, Luke says it’s fine, so Taylor lets Lorelai start construction. Michel, Sookie and Lorelai take a picture to mark the occasion.

Dean’s bachelor party crashes the diner. Dean is totally trashed and he starts saying Rory’s name. Luke kicks everyone else out and drags Dean upstairs and puts him in Jess’ bed. Before he passes out, Dean starts talking about how smart and pretty Rory is. The last thing he says before falling asleep is, “Why didn’t she love me?” Luke runs into Rory the next morning and tells her it would be best if she didn’t go to the wedding. Rory stands across the street from the church and starts tearing up a little when Dean and Lindsay come out after the wedding.

Lorelai: Follow the Post-Its!

Rory: Does our life seem at all ridiculous to you?

Kirk: Damn my constant tardiness.

Lorelai, about Dean: What was his body language like?

Rory: Tall.

Other notes:

• Rory has cut her hair and Lorelai is upset that she didn’t tell her she was going to do it. They’re sick, totally sick.
• Zack hates Dave for going off to college.

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.